Liberal Caucus Event and Miscellaneous
First off I should mention it is Paul Martin's 68th birthday, so a happy birthday to our former PM. This past week I attended the Liberal caucus event where I got to meet the remaining leadership candidates with the exception of Martha Hall Findlay and Joe Volpe. I also met over 20 different MPs from across Canada as well as a number of past MPs. Much of the talk recently has been on the party divisions. I don't necessarily see this as totally a bad thing as long as the party has a position. If everyone blindly agrees with the party policy on every issue, this likely says it is a narrow tent party, which I have no interest in belonging to.
A couple of other events I should comment on is Boryz Wresnewskyj's resignation as associate foreign affairs critic and some Conservative bloggers advocating the Status of Women department be eliminated. On the first one, I believe Wresnewskyj was wrong to advocate that Hezbollah be removed from the terrorist list. They clearly are a terrorist organization. Wanting to end the Israeli occupation from Palestinian territory is something I support, but that does not give them the right to randomly target innocent civilians and then put their weapons in civilian areas for cover. However, for those who use this as an excuse to claim the Liberals are terrorist sympathizers, I should remind you that only Canada, Israel, Netherlands, and United States fully ban Hezbollah, while Australia and the United Kingdom only ban the military wing, so advocating they be removed if one believes that is the best way to achieve is not an extreme view, although a misguided one in my view.
On the second issue, I don't believe full gender equality has been achieved and therefore the government along with business and labour does still need to work to achieve this goal. However, as much as I despise Real Women, I do agree that political advocacy groups that advocate on other issues in addition to women's issues shouldn't get public funding. No person should be forced to subsidize any political advocacy group regardless of their political leanings. However, I still believe the Status of Women department is necessary and should continue to work to achieve equality for women, but without funding special interest groups that lobby on different issues.
A couple of other events I should comment on is Boryz Wresnewskyj's resignation as associate foreign affairs critic and some Conservative bloggers advocating the Status of Women department be eliminated. On the first one, I believe Wresnewskyj was wrong to advocate that Hezbollah be removed from the terrorist list. They clearly are a terrorist organization. Wanting to end the Israeli occupation from Palestinian territory is something I support, but that does not give them the right to randomly target innocent civilians and then put their weapons in civilian areas for cover. However, for those who use this as an excuse to claim the Liberals are terrorist sympathizers, I should remind you that only Canada, Israel, Netherlands, and United States fully ban Hezbollah, while Australia and the United Kingdom only ban the military wing, so advocating they be removed if one believes that is the best way to achieve is not an extreme view, although a misguided one in my view.
On the second issue, I don't believe full gender equality has been achieved and therefore the government along with business and labour does still need to work to achieve this goal. However, as much as I despise Real Women, I do agree that political advocacy groups that advocate on other issues in addition to women's issues shouldn't get public funding. No person should be forced to subsidize any political advocacy group regardless of their political leanings. However, I still believe the Status of Women department is necessary and should continue to work to achieve equality for women, but without funding special interest groups that lobby on different issues.
posted by Monkey Loves to Fight at 8:54 PM
4 Comments:
what leadership candidate do you support?
I'm supporting Stephane Dion as my first choice. I give my full reasons for my endorsement here: http://mileslunn.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-endorsement.html
Miles,
You might want to read my post on the Liberal leadership race. Your comments would be appreciated!
PSM - I read your post and only somewhat agree with it. While I agree all the frontrunners carry some baggage with perhaps the exception of Gerard Kennedy, who I still think could win, I don't think their baggage is insurmontable. With the exception of Bob Rae, I would argue Stephen Harper's negative baggage was definitely worse than Michael Ignatieff's or Stephane Dion (whose positive baggage heavily outweighs his negative baggage, besides who cares if the hard-core separtists hate him, they aren't going to vote Liberal anyways). Even Bob Rae's baggage is probably less negative amongst Liberals and centre-left voters than Harper's although it is probably more negative amongst centre-right voters.
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