Politician, heal thyself

Premier Kathy Dunderdale — just like her predecessor — doesn't think much of the body that she volunteered to be elected to:

"I don't find it a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate to start with," she told the CBC in a post-election interview.

"Most of my issues are around the quality of debate and the research and the fact that you can pretty well get up in the House of Assembly and say whatever it is you like. You don't have to be concerned with truth."

For the record:

Dunderdale was first elected as MHA in 2003, along with 33 other Progressive Conservatives; a 34-member government caucus facing a combined opposition of just 14.

She was re-elected in 2007 as a member of a landslide 44-member PC caucus, facing a combined opposition of just four.

Including those members who were elected in intervening by-elections, Kathy Dunderdale's entire eight-year experience as a Parliamentarian has been as one of 55 Progressive Conservatives against a rolling total of 17 Liberals and New Democrats. (That figure doesn't include this year's crop of first-time MHAs; seven PCs, four Dippers, and three Liberals.)

Thirty of those 55 Progressive Conservatives, an absolute majority of the new House, were incumbents who were re-elected on Tuesday night.

That is to say: Kathy Dunderdale, in her entire elected political career, has never known anything other than a House of Assembly that is overwhelmingly dominated by fellow Progressive Conservatives.

So when she says that the House isn't "a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate" — just whose fault is that, anyway?

And why hasn't she, or her party, having sucked almost all of the political oxygen out of the province, ever once taken steps to change that?

Oh yeah — right.