Another time around the Mulroney bush?

While the nation's media is busy chasing Senators and investigating their expenses -- and Mike Duffy has now made it so that calling Stephen Harper a liar is demonstrably, categorically, and undeniably not slander -- where is the investigative reporting on the $3 billion that the Auditor General pointed out was "missing" under the Harper Conservatives? More so, where is the outrage from the so-called Tory "base", the one that chased the moribund Liberals out of office by repeating "billion-dollar-boondoggle" and "corrupt government" ad nauseum?

This promises to be a much larger scandal than Adscam. But the Auditor General has been replaced, and the words "missing $3 billion" have not been uttered by his predecessor. People all over are pissed about pipelines, and petroleum products in railcars raining fire on our towns. Native populations are set to burst in anger at their land and treaty rights being ignored, their leadership perpetually coopted and divided. And then we have the circus of the Senate.

If journalists have an oath or some ideal of serving the public good that made them become reporters, then now is the time to invoke that in themselves. Just as Mike Duffy implores Senators to look to why they exist and who they should serve, so should journalists look into the mirror.

Canada needs big changes, from many people in important places, if we are to grow and prosper as a truly independent democracy. Otherwise 20 years from now we'll be asking ourselves the same questions. Yet again. And maybe we'll have another Prime Minister who accepts cash from lobbyists in a brown paper bags. Yet again.