For years and years, I have always regarded the month of March as being the worst month in the calendar. Nothing good ever came out of March and nothing good ever comes out of it – especially the weather. You just never know what is going to fall from the sky – rain, snow, sleet, hail, sunbeams, a bitter wind. At least that is what it is like in this part of the world. At least that is what used to happen. I don’t know if it has anything to do with global warming or something like it that some people refuse to acknowledge, but March (the typical Spring has Sprung month in Canada) has now been pushed back into the deep, dark cold of the Canadian winter months.

March is no longer a Spring month. It is a winter month. It is because of that fact that April is the new March. Now in April, you never know what is going to come out of the sky. You may have a week of bitter wind with cold temperatures and cold, or you may have a week of sunshine, melting snow and T-shirt and shorts weather. Yes, April is the new March. It is unfortunate because I’ve always liked April. April always meant a new beginning, new growth, fresh air and venturing outside without covering in head to toe in winter clothing.

Now, April has become that dreaded month of March with all its uncertainty and depressing weather. April showers no longer bring May flowers. They bring out the snow shovels and shorten our already short summer. When you think of it, Canada is not really out of the clear with winter until well into May. I don’t remember it being like that. Perhaps I’m just getting old.

When Alison Redford was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2011 and then won the provincial election in 2012, I, like many other people, thought that this would usher in a new climate of openness and transparency in politics. The truth of the matter is that no matter who is elected or appointed as leader or member of what party, province, city, riding, post, office or seat in this country, they will soon trip into and eventually wallow in the trough of entitlement – wasting and burning through the tax dollars of the people who elected them in the first place.

I am now convinced more than ever that things will never, ever change… and it’s our own fault. When I think of the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in this country by every political party who has ever taken office in my lifetime, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw up my hands and shake my head is disbelief. It’s our fault. We’d be the richest country on earth. We wouldn’t have deficits or debt. We’d have state-of-the-art infrastructure. We wouldn’t have a low-income housing or homeless problem. We have created this monster known as entitlement. As the generations pass, the next one just emulates what the previous one has done and adds to the problem. It’s our fault. People in government think that since they think they are acting in the public’s interest, buying a $16 glass of orange juice with public money is okay. Flying your friends business class on vacation using public money is okay. Lying about your principle residence to avoid having to reimburse public money is okay. It’s our fault.

The exit of Alison Redford as premier of Alberta (and even more importantly as leader of the PC Party) shows that the problem was not with her, but with the party and the political culture of entitlement. I am (as I am with every other politician) disappointed in her. I thought she was different, but she too played with the public’s money as if it was Monopoly money with no remorse. That’s the big thing: no remorse. ‘I’m entitled to use taxpayers money however I want because I’M a politician.’ The audacity. The nerve. The entitlement.

I don’t think that’s why she resigned. I think the party used it as an excuse to get rid of her – her and her liberal thinking. The old crows running the PC party wouldn’t know the word progressive if it came up and started talking to them about inclusion and equality. They still want to be known as the party of conservatism in Alberta, so look for the new leader to be a man and a champion of conservative values. The P in PC is just window dressing now. It used to mean something under Peter Lougheed. It doesn’t anymore.

I am no fan of the Wildrose Tea Party in Alberta. They simply have no social conscious. If their members were to leave their backward, regressive social thinking in their local churches and instead focus on fiscal prudency and restoring trust in government, I’d take them a lot more seriously.

But this is politics in Canada, where election campaigning means nothing. Whoever replaces old governments in Canada will fall into the same entitlement trough that every politician falls into. Politicians are OUR employees. They seem to have forgotten that. They seem to believe that they can get away with anything while they are working for us and if we don’t like it, we can fire them in four years. Four years? They flush billions of our money down the toilet in a day and we have to wait four years to get rid of them? We want to fire you now. If it was any other company on earth, they would be fired. Ah, life as an entitled politician, there’s no life like it.

There’s nothing we can do about entitled politicians. We can complain, write letters, protest. That is all window dressing. The only way that true change and a reversal of all the waste, boondoggles, cheating and entitlement will come about is if it is done on the inside by someone with the political will to do it. Who is that person who is going to excise all the bad habits, gross waste and the culture of entitlement that infects all politicians? Do they even exist? If they have, they got lost in a sea of entitlement on their first day on the job.