By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Earlier this week, Parliament voted 159-124 to kill two major anti-terrorism measures. One measure provided for preventive detention of terrorist suspects and the other allowed investigative hearings where witnesses could be forced to testify before a judge in a closed court. These extraordinary powers have never been used and were set to expire yesterday as the result of a sunset clause. Consistent with their previous positions, the Conservatives voted to continue the anti-terrorism measures while the NDP and the Bloc opposed their extension. The Liberals, who first passed these measures into law in early 2002 in response to the events of September 11, 2001, did an about face and opposed their extension, no doubt as a result of their new far left leader, Stphane Dion flexing his newly acquired muscles.
Some family members of Canadians who died on 9/11 were in Ottawa on the day of the vote including Maureen and Erica Basnicki whose husband and father respectively lost his life while on business in the Twin Towers. The families went to Ottawa to try and persuade non-Tory MPs to vote in favour of retaining the anti-terrorism law instead of voting along party lines.
Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, after dispensing the necessary platitudes about having sympathy for the families, labelled their presence on the Hill as "just a sideshow". So that's what the man who would have been king thinks about ordinary Canadians who dare to differ with the wisdom of the Natural Governing Party. A sideshow? Ignatieff really showed what an unsympathetic, uncaring, unfeeling piece of human garbage he really is. And this was not the first time. Last summer, during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Iggy sauntered back from vacation to tell Canadians that he wasn't losing sleep over the civilians who were killed in Qana. Iggy later tried to redeem himself by saying that Israel had committed war crimes. No trial; just the pronouncement of the great Michael Ignatieff. Luckily for the Liberals and for Canada, the man who left his ivory tower in Boston to become the leader of the Liberal Party and the next prime minister of Canada will become neither. The Liberals realized that the man who was billed as the next Pierre Trudeau was really on the verge of becoming the next Paul Martin.
A sideshow. If Maureen Basnicki had been a lesbian who came to Ottawa to lobby for more rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (whatever the hell that is) communities, there is no chance that Iggy would have written them off as a sideshow. But the families of Canada's 9/11 victims, especially the high profile members such as Cindy Barkway and the Basnickis are an embarrassment to the Liberals who would like to write off the war on terror and the threat posed by Islamofascism as simply "George Bush's war". The families put a human face on the threat that terrorists pose to Canadians and that is something that the Liberals simply don't want to think about.
What Ignatieff was really saying that if you don't tow the line of the Natural Governing Party, you have no right to come to Ottawa and speak. Or if you do, you will be ignored. What Iggy and the Liberals think is important; those who differ are simply a sideshow.
It is hard to believe that any member of the Bloc or the NDP would have treated the 9/11 victims with the disdain that Ignatieff did. Iggy's comments were just more proof of Liberal entitlement; everyone who disagrees with them can, just go to hell.
Is Michael Ignatieff the only Liberal MP who is so dismissive of the families whose lives were shattered on September 11, 2001 or do other MPs share his views but simply have the political smarts not to publicly state them? While many Liberal MPs are decent if not misguided people, it's hard to believe that Ignatieff is alone in his views on the families who dare disagree with Liberal policy.
Hopefully Iggy, with his dreams of becoming prime minister in tatters, will pack up and leave the country again when the next election is called. We'll all be better off.
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