Stephen Harper has other things to do.

The left is furious. Stephen Harper chose not to meet with Bono. Some left-wing bloggers already responded by paraphrasing the Conservative party ads against Dion, calling Harper "not a Prime Minister". Prime Ministers take their time to meet important people, they say. But who said Bono is that important? Who is this Bono after all?

Bono is simply an activist who campaigns against poverty in Africa. A celebrity activist but that doesn't make much of a difference as there are plenty of them out there. But Stephen Harper is a Prime Minister. He's got a country of 32 million to manage. Harper's got opposition which wants to drive Canada into a recession with Kyoto. He's got provincial Premiers (as well as some of his MPs) upset about equalization. The economy is near stagnation, the manufacturing sector loses ground because of the high loonie, remote communities lack jobs and infrastructure... But here comes some Bono, so Harper must forget it all, sit down and listen how bla-bla-bla, people in Africa are poor.

Helping Africa? How about helping ourselves first? Why should Harper meet some activist to discuss poverty in Africa when there's more than enough poverty in Canada? Why should Canada bankroll "make work" projects in the countries that have cracked down on their own entrepreneurs when over a million Canadians have no jobs and at least five millions more are overworked and underpaid? Most of the people in Africa live on two dollars a day? Take the minimum wage here in Canada; subtract all the taxes, the rent, the utilities and the transportation expenses and you may end up with even less than that.

It was quite disturbing to see our former PM honouring a foreign celebrity activist as his policy-maker while the latter would lecture him for not being active enough on foreign aid. Thanks God the spineless Dithers is gone. It's great to see that Stephen Harper's priorities do not include taking advice from the leftist celebrities. Finally we have a real Prime Minister who stands up for Canada.

As for this Bono guy, I have a suggestion for him. If he wants to help Africa that much, why wouldn't he do that with his own money? I bet if Bono was compelled to match the G8 contributions by one tenth of a cent on a dollar, he wouldn't be calling the world leaders to just throw in more money and never think about where all that money goes. Maybe that would even make him dump his beloved mantra about rich having to share with the poor and think how come a country like Rhodesia, which used to be the breadbasket of Africa under Ian Smith, became the starving and unemployed Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.