Quebecor president Pierre Karl Peladeau, right, and Robert Depatie, president and CEO of VideotronPaul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
Yes, I know who will be in the cabinet of newly merged Liberal-Democratic Party of Canada, but no, I won't tell you.
At least not now. I am pledged to hold my tongue until my contract with Sun TV News is publicly announced.
When will that be? Well, let me non-reply this way, in the strictest confidence and just between us.
The new channel will not be what all the advance hype might lead you to expect. I share this glorious secret with you alone. The actual intention of M. Pierre Karl Peladeau, head honcho of Quebecor, which owns almost all of Quebec and a good deal of Canada, and who is a really wonderful person, is to provide Canadians with the socialist TV network we have long longed for. That's why it was so devilishly clever of him to hire a former Stephen Harper mouthpiece (and a truly wonderful person), Mr. Kory Teneycke, as the front person for the channel.
I regret that this necessary subterfuge had to be carried out at the expense of Ezra Levant, not always such a wonderful person, who will try in vain to find evidence of distasteful ulterior motives at work here. But when you look at the initiative calmly, nothing else but a socialist tendency makes sense. Now that the CBC-the Capitalist Broadcasting Corporation-has substantially given itself over to a daily diet of Gordon Gekko supplemented by Rex Murphy, why would the country need a second right-wing channel?
The only vacuum left to fill is on the left, and Peladeau-Teneycke have the courage, the decency, the astuteness, and the hard-earned lucre to fill it. With me. I will ---I guess it's more discreet to say "I would"---operate with the balance and fairness of a Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck, but without the dreary predictability of another attack on Barack Hussein Obama as a Hitlerite Commie Kenyan Muslim who is also black and not an American anyway.
Everything in this life is complicated, it surely goes without saying, and an impossible, wrenching choice may be necessary here. Of course the essential paradox of the human condition , as Camus may well have said, is the curse and blessing of choice. I need to share with you my fear that the almost irresistible imminent Sun TV offer will conflict with the pending request by the Prime Minister that I consider becoming the next Governor-General.
I should explain.
It became known some time ago that Mr. Harper, whom I've always considered a really wonderful fellow notwithstanding minor nuanced subtle shades of difference between us, had decided that it was a scandal that Canada has never had a Jewish socialist GG.
He determined to rectify this damning historical slight. (I also understand full well the terrific political payoff my appointment will have for the Conservatives.)
Once the news broke, my fellow analysts on CTV News' Power Play ---Canada's most loved political panel--- immediately swung into action.
Tom Clark, Canada's most loved host, generously threw his support to me, surrendering his own lifelong dream for the higher priority of Jewish socialism. Jean Lapierre, as only he could, has delivered virtually all factions in La Vrai Belle Province. And Carole Taylor has bravely stood aside, grasping that having three CBC women in a row as GG would likely mean the end of the monarchy as we know it.
So together we wait. Will it be GC for GG or Billy Glenn Caplan for Sun TV?
In the meantime, I keep my political ear to the ground, hoping it won't get too dusty.
I can certainly confirm that serious merger/coalition talks may be taking place. Certainly there is much talk about whether there are talks. And I can confirm that one of the stumbling blocks to an agreement is whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will allow Libby Davies to be in the new cabinet or whether Ms. Davies will be put on a slow boat to Gaza with Israeli elite commandos dispatched to greet her.
Nor can I deny that the former Jean Chrétien is, inevitably, to be found lurking behind the scenes. Of course Mr. Chrétien is Mr. Liberal. He loves his party and will do anything to see it succeed, even splitting it if necessary. It's just other Liberal leaders that Mr. C. cannot abide. He spent a good part of his illustrious career in opposition undermining his predecessor, John Turner, and a good part of his career as PM loathing his finance minister, Paul Martin, who implemented the vast cuts to socials services and critical government programs for which the country is paying even as we speak. Mr. Martin then skewered Mr. Chrétien and replaced him. Those Liberals.
Now, in what may well be his final political act, Mr. C has made it unequivocally clear that he has no confidence in poor Iggy. This is of course just what The Big Ig needed to bolster his support within the party and to convince Canadians that he's not the hapless fellow he so far has been.
And to give the Liberals really strong leverage in the merger/coalition talks with the NDP that may well be happening at this very moment. Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Chrétien are said to be quite close in a Liberal kind of way.
As for me, I dust off my ears, walk humbly with my Lord (Micah 6:1-8), and wait patiently for whichever call to serve comes first.