Not this Canadian's Values

"Who is really going to balance Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the next Parliament? A broken, defeated Liberal party? Many of whose MPs agree with Stephen Harper’s agenda? Or a strong, effective NDP?”

That’s a good question. The Liberal party is at it again. If they had focused and done the job they were elected to do we would not be looking at the prospect of Stephen Harper moving into 24 Sussex Drive. Paul Martin should be packed by now, ready to take his stuff back to Montreal. No need for him to move into the residence of the official opposition, he isn't going to be there long enough.

We have a government that when elected to a minority position said it would govern like a majority. Their actions were not those of a party that heard Canadians in the last election. They were the actions of people that felt entitled to govern. A government led with a visionless leader.

Paul Martin does not know why he wants the job of Prime Minister other than to it is the completion of a family project. His father came close so Paul Martin set out to do it. He and his faction muscled their way through the Liberal party ranks to make it to the top. The values or should I suggest the lack of values in his takeover were painstakingly clear. How many millions of dollars were spent to do this? Who coughed up all the dollars to do this?

Federal Liberals got on the Martin bus in 1993 and began the methodical take over of the Liberal party apparatus. When Jean Chrétien was not willing to leave right away, Paul Martin set off the fuse. A metaphorical bomb was ignited. One of those bombs the US uses that destroys the people but not the structures they are in.

Martin’s brutalization of any opposition on the way to the top was largely accepted and thus ignored by the Canadian media. In Government they set an agenda seemingly like that of a government in the majority. When the opposition called him on it he ignored them, when he said he would open up Parliament, he ignored the opportunity.

A good example of the Liberal Government’s values has played out here in Kelowna BC. We had a successful local drug treatment centre for youth, it was operating on a three year funding contract from Ottawa. That was the good effort of the Liberal government but it has ended for now. The Liberals refused to extend the funding.

The success of the Centre is widely known locally and within the Ministry of Health. Now in the middle of the election, almost eight months after the centre had to close, Kelowna gets a visit from Ujjal Dosnajh, Minister of Health, he implies if the Liberals win the election the money will be found for the Centre.

Today young people in the Okanagan are going without treatment because the federal Liberal government was too focused on its own problems like adsacm and Income trusts to be involved in real governing.

A bigger example would be the Liberals election announcement of new funding and a strategy for research and development. There is one major problem with the strategy. The only resemblance to a strategy was the word strategy. Surely this kind of announcement would have been accompanied by a detailed document, worked out over the last year within the government and stakeholders.

It appears the strategy was similar to the AIDS announcement made by Martin to allow for the making of generic HIV medications for the third world. This announcement bought the high profile support of popular world singer and activist, Bono.

Martin passed legislation to allow the making of the medication but the conditions put in place made it unworkable for a generic manufacturer to do it. Not one pill, not one has been made yet Martin was able to convince many that he stood for with Canadian values. Those Martin values turn out to be, “ sound compassionate while everyone is in the room, then go back and make it impossible to do what you said you wanted done."

When I hear Martin talking about protecting Canadian values, I see the kids on the street here in Kelowna, without treatment because we have an election underway. He could have acted if he was paying attention to their needs. I hear of more people around the world dying because they have no access to HIV medications and a program that would have made it possible, at no cost (maybe there is a cost to Liberal financial support) to taxpayers.

Both Martin and Harper champion a wait-times guarantee for health care. Neither of them have any suggestion as to how to implement it, nor are they being honest about this Trojan horse. It will open up the field to billions of tax dollars going into the for- profit health care industry.

On the west coast we have a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and a provincial government set to start drilling the minute Ottawa says go ahead. Two things have stood between the lifting of the moratorium. Long time Liberal environmentalist David Anderson and NDP leader Jack Layton. The government would have fallen had they tried to lift a moratorium and David Anderson would have voted against them.

Add to this the number of social conservatives Paul Martin has signed nomination papers for. When Paul Martin says he is fighting the extreme right wing agenda of the Harper Conservatives he knows just what they might do, he knows of what he speaks. He has many of the Harper like extremists in his own party. And many Canadians are mad enough at Martin they don’t care anymore.

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Election, Liberal Party, Canada, Politics