A Have Province?

You know how the definition of a national party leader kept changing prior to this election?

First, the Greens couldn't have a leader in the debate because they didn't run candidates in all riding's. Then they did.

Then they couldn't have anyone in the debate because they didn't have a member in the House. Then they did.

Then they couldn't have anyone in the debate because they didn't have a candidate who'd been *elected* as a Green candidate.

Well, the excuses sort of stalled there when public opinion got in on the act, but, you could see that the definition of a debate-able leader was a moving target.

I wonder if these "have" and "have not" definitions aren't much the same thing? Moving targets? What exactly defines a "have" province? We have a chap living in a tent in Nain -- in November.

We "have" hundreds of kilometres of roads -- in many cases the only road in the entire region in fact -- that are still dirt roads.

We "have" hundreds of communities under constant boil water orders.

We "have" far to many disabled persons being denied adequate access to goods and services.

We "have" hundreds of kids falling through the cracks each year.

We "have" hospitals where patients cram the toilet paper in the gaps around the windows and count themselves lucky they have families to bring them extra blankets.

We "have" a legal system that allows deadbeat parents an extra eight or nine months of being deadbeats because we can't get them in front of an overworked circuit judge -- all at the cost of some child's quality of life.

None of that sounds like a "have" province to me. I don't know much about oil revenues, and all that stuff, but, I do know that there are a lot of people in this province who likely don't feel that their lives "have" improved in the past few years.

There's a section at the top that is doing better, and a wider gap between them and the pair of working parents who, despite their pair of 40-hour weeks, can't see how to get their rent paid and new school clothes for their children. Their salaries "have" stalled, but costs continue to spiral. I think "have" and "have not" have a political meaning on a very broad scale, but governments in this province still have to narrow their focus to the very difficult time many of their constituents continue to have.

Brudder