There is no doubt that the Liberal Party of Canada is looking forward to the next election. In fact, the winding down of their convention in Ottawa last weekend looked like an election campaign kick-off. although the opposition to the Liberals has been in disarray since Jean Chrétien first came to power in the late months of 1993, never has the opposition been as weak as it is now. Stephen Harper, the leader of the only other political party that is anywhere close to being able to form the government is being outdone and outmaneuvered by the weakest prime minister in recent memory. Harper’s most blatant failure as an effective leader of the opposition came immediately after the budget came down when he jumped up and down with glee and announced not only was it a "conservative budget" but that his party would support it, depriving the Conservatives of any attempt to force amendments to the document by threatening to vote against it.
Harper’s latest "silence" came with his comment concerning grow-ops in the wake of the tragic deaths of four RCMP officers in rural alberta. When asked about what should be done about marijuana grow-ops, Harper responded that laws should not be made based upon one major event, referring to last week’s murder of four RCMP officers. as true as what Harper said is in theory, the proliferation of marijuana grow operations with their inherent dangers and the ability of the growers to sell the drug south of the border in exchange for harder drugs and guns has been discussed for some time. Yet, Stephen Harper, head of the so-called law and order party seems too squeamish to want to talk about harsher drug penalties.
This is not the time for Canada to have a dysfunctional official opposition. There are so many things that the Liberals can’t or don’t want to talk about that they are vulnerable on several fronts. For the Conservatives to have Stephen Harper as its leader at this time seems like a comedy of errors.
One thing that the Liberal Party doesn’t want to talk about is foreign policy and what is now transpiring in the Middle East. The last few months have seen free elections in afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. The "revolution" that took place in the Ukraine now appears to be spreading to Lebanon and may go further to Saudi arabia and Egypt. Many of the European Bush-haters are even starting to say that perhaps the U.S. president really did start a democratic movement across the Middle East when he invaded Iraq and brought down the regime of Saddam Hussein. Even the CBC’s Peter Manbridge, no fan of the United States, penned a column in Macleans comparing what is going on in the Middle East with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism back in 1989. We never thought we would live to see this but Manbridge’s article was entitled, "Maybe Bush was right".
Given the fact that the Liberal’s refusal to join the United States and the "coalition of the willing" was accompanied by much fanfare, hooting and hollering as well as juvenile anti-american bashing makes it highly unlikely that Martin and his cabinet even want to mention what is now happening in the Middle East, except to praise those wonderful "Syrian peacekeepers".
The soft-on-crime Liberals are now extremely vulnerable about their wonderful billion dollar gun registry and will do what they can to avoid the issue. any mention of the gun registry will likely be met by the question of how a deranged cop-hater, known to possess firearms could freely walk around with impunity before gunning down four young police officers. The argument that the registry saves lives somewhere now rings hollow. The incident in alberta makes it difficult for the Liberals to now justify their silly policy regarding marijuana; decriminalizing possession while doubling the maximum penalty for cultivation from seven to 14 years. Fourteen years, 20 years of life imprisonment; James Roszko would still have been walking around with his guns.
The longer the Liberals remain in power, the more and more that they appear to be on the wrong side of many issues. But don’t worry Paul — you’ll be back with a majority.