"Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government has ignored a nonbinding motion passed by opposition parties in the House of Commons last month that would have allowed the Iraq deserters to stay."This coming right on the heels of evidence of the torture of a Canadian teenager at Guantanamo bay. It is appallingly clear and has been for some time that Canada has an anti-Canadian Prime Minister.
Mr. Harper is staunchly pro-Bush, even on issues of war crimes, torture and child abuse. He is pro-Bush even when it hurts Canada and Canadians. He is absolutely anti-enviroment, he is against art and free speech but strongly supports censorship and government secrecy. As I said though, we already knew all of this. The thing is Harper would no longer be in power if the Liberals hadn't completely bungled their leadership election. Even with that, you cannot blame Stephen Dion for not being a leader. True he should, at this point, step down for the good of the country but his lack of charisma is not his fault.
The person, other than Harper, who is most to blame for the current situation is Gerard Kennedy. It pains me to say that. I supported Mr. Kennedy when he was the MPP for my riding. I supported him in the Liberal Leadership race. He seemed like the ideal candidate. Young and charismatic and full of ideas and optimism. He also had none of the negatives of Mr. Rae and Mr. Ignatieff.
Originally from Mantioba, Mr. Kennedy was creating food banks in Alberta when the sponsorship crisis happened and so cannot be tied to it. His wife is from Quebec and so Quebec wouldn't have to worry about being forgotten about and Mr. Kennedy currently lives in Toronto (and Ottawa) - so, with the exception of the Maritimes, Kennedy has the entire country covered - Quebec and Ontario, the Prairies and the West.
I honestly thought Mr. Kennedy would be the new leader of the Liberals, but he did worse than lose - When his chance came to be kingmaker, to shift his support to a candidate and effectively decide the outcome, Kennedy Supported Dion.
I cannot help but think, and I thought this at the time, that someone as politically astute as Kennedy knew what would happen with Dion in power. He must have known that Dion was the weakest and least charismatic of the three candidates and, although I cannot prove it and cannot read minds I suspect that Kennedy was hoping for a short leadership stint from Mr. Dion and another chance to run himself.
Whatever his reasoning or motivation it was this decision by Kennedy that has kept Stephen Harper in power for so long, and because of this demonstration of poor judgement, and because my current MP Peggy Nash has been on the right side of every issue I am concerned about I have decided to support her and the NDP in the next election against Gerard Kennedy.
3 comments:
You mention your concern about 'the negatives of Mr Rae and Mr Ignatieff'
Perhaps Kennedy supported Dion due to the same concerns.
Possibly, but only if he overlooked Dion's obvious negatives such as having no apparent leadership skills.
It took a lot of guts to do what he did.Although Dion did not succeed he was still the best of the three.Kennedy is still the future of the liberal party.
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