By Brian Lee
Stephen Harper was sworn in as Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister on Feb. 6, 2006. It doesn’t seem that long ago, unless you consider the last time Stephen Harper wasn’t our Prime Minister:
• Paul Martin was;
• Facebook wasn’t public;
• The Canadian economy was growing at three per cent per year with a surplus of more than $13 billion while our debt was $492-billion and falling. (Canada has run a deficit since 2008 and the federal debt is now $615 billion and rising.);
• Clint Eastwood’s "Million Dollar Baby" won the Oscar for best picture, beating Brokeback Mountain;
• Canadian prime ministers took questions from journalists;
• Kanye West was nominated for best new artist at the Grammys (he lost to Maroon 5);
• Canada’s exports were 0.3% less than now — the start of our slowest period of growth since WWII;
• Joe Sakic was named captain of our 2006 Olympic hockey team;
• Canada ranked 55 (out of 108) as a UN peacekeeping nation based on commitment of military and police personnel (it now ranks 67);
• The Iris Griffith Centre was still under construction;
• The following would have been considered scandalous:
Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner, recommended charges be laid against high-ranking RCMP members for destroying gun registry information that was the focus of an access to information request. It is a criminal offence to destroy records if an access request is being processed — so the federal government passed an omnibus bill that rewrote the laws to retroactively erase the RCMP’s mishandling of gun registry records to protect these officers from facing criminal charges;
• Justin Bieber was 11;
• Canada had never lost a vote for membership in the UN Security Council (Portugal beat Canada in 2010, despite being on the verge of bankruptcy);
• The video-sharing website YouTube was founded;
• Government scientists could inform media about research related to topics like climate change;
• The Painted Boat was still Lowes Resort and the Sarah Wray Hall was a crumbling old school;
• Canadian’s consumer debt was below $1 trillion (now it’s $1.82 trillion);
• The Copper Sky Cafe was called Jill’s Place;
• No Canadian government had ever been found in contempt of Parliament. (That changed in 2011, after Mr. Harper refused to release costs on certain programs to opposition MPs.);
• Irvines Landing Pub was open, and,
• I thought it was more likely I’d be elected Chief of the Pender Harbour Indian Band than take over this paper.
This issue makes nine years for me but next month’s issue will be the Harbour Spiel’s 300th. It’s a nice round number on its own but if you divide it by the number of months in a year, which I just happened to do recently, it makes the Harbour Spiel 25 years old.
How’d that happen?
Comments