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Palmer, Vaughn

Aggrieved White Guy, veteran Vancouver Sun small-c conservative provincial pundit, with the temperament of a overfed wharf rat. He's wild about the infinite malfeasance of government, but lazily uninterested in social policy, culture, environment, and subjects beyond easy reach. Having written close to 1000 consecutive columns attacking B.C's NDP governments may be excusable in the circumstance. Being a major contributor to the media's demonization of governement where ever it is found on the West Coast is without excuse.

Parizeau, Jacques

Recent Quebec separatist leader, Premier and poutine-inflated Lee Van Cleef look-alike. Parizeau led Quebec's 1995 attempt to escape from Canada until Lucien Bouchard took over. Resigned as premier after pointing out that if everybody in Quebec were French-speaking and of French origin, Quebec could be a republic with ethnic and cultural policies as much fun as those in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Parizeau is currently drinking 7-Up, pondering imponderables, studying the career of Cardinal Richelieu and jamming his foot into his mouth whenever the Parti Quebecois needs someone to take a fall for it.

Parliament

Before Pierre Trudeau started the movement to Americanize the Canadian political system, parliament was the governing legislative body of Canada. Members of Parliament are now alternately comatose and hysterical while they await their pensions and the results of cabinet sessions, although the advent of parliamentary television has led to an illicit trade in amphetamines and other awakeness-simulating drugs.

Parti Quebecois

Formerly a social democratic political party in Quebec led by Rene Levesque and aimed at reenacting the Plains of Abraham battle of 1759 where British General Wolfe defeated a gang of drunken French soldiers under Montcalm. The party has gradually been taken over by crazed nationalists, language-deluded New Conservatives, church/state integrationists and Lucien Bouchard-for King enthusiasts. Separation referendums in 1980 and 1995 were inconclusive, except to let Quebec know that the financial community wasn't going to stand for much more nonsense from either side.

Partnerships

Recently-invented cultural procedure in which governments and corporations leap into bed, pretend to hump one another, then invite the public to sit on the end of the bed for the announcement that, in the interests of economic growth and sound management, tax burdens have been shifted from the corporations to the general public, and that all cultural programs will put on a profit/loss basis, with the profits group to the corporate sector.

Party Building

PARTY BUILDING: a political euphemism for selling out core values and sacrificing the public good along with any other institution in the country for short-term practical gains and/or more seats in parliament. Ed Broadbent did this in 1988, turning Canada over to Brian Mulroney’s corporate trade fiends in the hope of gaining a few more seats in parliament at the expense of John Turner’s Liberals, with whom he was in agreement over the dangers of involving the country in a free trade agreement with the US that would undermine the country’s political and economic independence. The Progressive Conservatives did it in 2003 when they climbed into bed with the fundamentalists and corporate crackpots of the Canadian Alliance to form the “new” and patently “unprogressive” Conservative Party. The Liberals do it all the time, but since all they believe in is power and contingency anyway, no one notices.

Peacekeepers

Troops sent to political hot-zones to keep crazed ethnic groups from murdering one another, and to keep enough of our armed forces outside the country that we'll remember we're not [Americans]. Canada's most successful peacekeeping foray has been in Cyprus, where Canadians and others have kept Greek and Turkish factions from their genocidal destinies for three decades. Canadian peacekeepers in Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo-how can this be put delicately-notably less successful in recent years.

Pearson, Lester B.

Nobel prize-winning Canadian diplomat,who almost single-handedly avoided the Suez crisis in 1956. He was a sleep-inducing Prime Minister (1963-68) frequently pissed on by American diplomat, and the main achievement of his tenure was to lead the country into a ludicrous debate over the design and colour of its flag during a period when the U.S. was dismantling our foreign and military policy. On the other side, he was enough of a baseball fan to have been the primary force in getting Montreal a Major League baseball franchise for Expo 67. The fact that the CIA believed Pearson was a communist annoyed him enough that he annointed Pierre Trudeau as his successor, thus giving Canada the only Prime Minister in the 20th Century who had real social democratic ideas and an IQ above the national average.

People’s History, A

The reason why there have been no serious criticisms—or even serious critiques—of CBC lifer Mark Starowicz’s giddy attempt to re-bind the nation without offending any of its minorities is that no one has been able to stay awake through an entire episode. The few critics who have tried have slipped back into their comas mumbling "nice production values", which is a phrase that probably circumscribes our collective cultural future better than any other.

Perry, Mathew

Star of the television show Friends, but also the son of Pierre Trudeau's former travelling companion/secretary Susan Perry. It's unclear if the association with Trudeau elevated the younger Perry in any way, but boy, can this kid lose weight when his career is threatened.

Pettigrew, Pierre

Federal Minister of International Trade and Canada’s self-anointed philosopher king of corporate globalization. In "The New Politics of Confidence" he posited the greasy argument that globalization will allow the corporate lions to lie peacefully with the lambs--which in his parlance means women, minorities and anyone under 30 with spikey hair. He was last seen signing free copies of his book in Quebec City behind a ten foot fence and clouds of tear gas. Outside the fence, his gee whiz techno-doublespeak and affection for hair gel imported from Paris earned him the nickname "Slippery Pete".

Poets

Canada has more published poets per capita than any country in the world, which isn't surprising given that Canadian poetry as practiced is overwhelmingly writing for people who don't want to think anything through. Since poetry is a commercially obsolete medium of statement, one could interpret this unabated statistic as a signal that Canada's publicly funded cultural system has failed to respond to common sense. Canada's successful poets usually play guitars and other musical instruments, and they're so easy to find I won't name them. I'll offer three poets, relatively unknown outside their communities, who give in to no vulgarities and write as clearly as the age allows: George Stanley, Anne Carson and Robin Blaser. Find them, read them.

Police Unions

Among the many dangerous notions that can arise within a democracy is the idea that people who work within its various regulatory apparatuses are free to exercise political free agency so as to influence—as a group—political, social and cultural outcomes. This idea is particularly dangerous when those declaring free agency carry weapons that ordinary folks are not permitted to own let alone walk around brandishing in plain sight. The recent political activism within Canada’s police unions is therefore a deeply disturbing development. Toronto Police Union head Craig Brommell, who opines that it is acceptable for police departments to promote political candidates and to undertake behind-the-scenes investigations into unfriendly political candidates, is an example of a growing trend within the public service sector that no elected representative appears to have the courage to do much more than whine meekly about. Such people ought to be of the utmost concern to governments supposedly trying to limit the control, ownership or use of weapons and don’t want to see an entire generation of heretofore peaceful, law-abiding citizens arming themselves and turning the country into a refrigerated lookalike of Waco, Texas.

Political Courage

Technically an oxymoron, this term is deployed when politicians want to do bad things to good people, programs, or policies. "We need to find the political courage," you might hear, "to transform medicare into a private-public hybrid," or "we need the political courage to privatize the CBC." One notable exception: the ability to sit through one of George Elliot Clarke's readings.

Political Parties

Canadian Political parties are too obsessed with raiding one another's ideological and demographic ground to do the two things they ought to: have some fun, or have a few substantial ideas about the future. Canada's Liberal party is no longer liberal, the social democratic party isn't social or democratic, and its Progressive Conservatives, har, har, control the country even though they have the fewest seats in Parliament of any recognized party. Just over a third of parliamentary seats are held by radically deranged representatives from our two main lunatic asylums, Quebec and Western Canada.

Political System

Canada's devolving political system was once a British-style parliamentary system albeit without the kinky-looking, wig-wearing Lords and Ladies). It is now moving toward a nasty melange of corporate boards of directors, U.S.-style rule-by-lobbies, and a lie-in-the-sun-crawl-under-the-nearest-rock expert systems modeled after the behavior of desert reptiles and the Russian Mafia. Currently, Canada's governments are primarily supervised by U.S. bond-rating agencies, who are considering assuming direct management so as to guarantee investor confidence. (see investor confidence

Postal Unions

Labour relations laboratory in which the corporate sector has been experimenting with union-breaking devices for two decades. The result has been the virtual collapse of the Canadian postal system, and it is only a matter of time before Canada's postal workers become the sort of threat to public safety those in the U.S are

Poutine

French fries, cheese whiz and the chemical sludge found at the bottom of the St. Lawrence river east of Montreal. This piece of authentic Quebec cuisine is the best argument going for kicking Quebec out of Canada on the grounds that Quebec can't possibly be French.

Powe, Bruce

An overly friendly man and Supermind who began well with a serious book entitled The Solitary Outlaw, Powe might have become McLuhan's true heir, but now seems more determined to rewrite Pierre Berton's The Comfortable Pew for the remaining listeners of Morningside and otherwise drown all sense in metaphoric drooling over electronic communications. A big fave of Pierre Trudeau in his dotage, an endorsement which may or may not be a compliment.

Pratt, Christopher

Hyperrealist painter who manages to be non-figurative at the same time. The artistic equivalent of Otrivin. Related to fellow-painter Mary Pratt, who also causes dry sinuses.

Premiers, Prime Ministers And First Ministers

During periods of sanity, elected provincial leaders call themselves Premiers, leaving the Prime Minister designation to the elected federal leader. In recent years, however, depending on the degree of provincial egomania and hostility, some Premiers have taken to annoying Ottawa by designating themselves Prime Ministers. Ottawa responds by dragooning all the Premiers to Ottawa for time-wasting protocol festivals and transfer payment cutback announcements. During these conferences everyone carefully uses the term First Ministers, although during planning sessions the Premiers and Prime Minister refer to one another as Those Assholes, which is closer to the way voters regard them while they're playing these silly games.

Prince Edward Island

Former island province, now merely a potato patch at the end of a bridge, and the on-location site for Anne of Green Gables, Canada's primary cultural export. P.E.I's campaign to have everyone in the province declared an M.P. or senator has met with partial success only because the young, female Japanese tourists that constitute 40 percent of the island population during the summer don't yet qualify as citizens.

Private Heath Insurance

Watch for the proliferation of companies selling this commodity in the next few years. While our governments continue to insist that universal medical care is a basic Canadian right, the individual provinces continue to pare down the number of medical procedures they're willing to pay for until UMC will cover nothing more than a biannual medical exam to find out if we're suffering from cholera, yellow fever, beri-beri and whooping cough. Vaccines for these afflictions will be available at Walmart for a nominal charge.

Progressive Conservatives

Oxymoronic Canadian political movement based on the theory that life is best viewed with one nostril up the ass of the current U.S. president and the other up the posterior of the nearest tax accountant-all while genuflecting for the Chartered Banks. Nearly exterminated in the 1993 election, still on life support (or rather, corporate support) after the election in 1997, and may yet be swallowed up by the Reform Party and its successor, CRAP. Joe Clark, with enough fatty tissue to make his chin disappear completely, is its elderly leader.

Publishing Industry

Canada's publishing industry, nurtured over three decades to relative financial competence by modest government subsidies despite the inherent economy-of-scale disadvantages, is now being asked to suck hard on the tailpipe of GATT and other toxic globalization apparatuses expressly designed to exterminate indigenous cultural instruments. Now, we all know that house cats don't turn into tigers, but one of the essential tests to see whether Canada deserves to go on being a real country will be whether Canada's publishers can fight off the subsidy cuts and the playing-field leveling devices of globalization-crazed governments.