Stéphane Dion is marking his territory - badly
The Conservative government of Canada wants to make some changes to Canada’s Immigration and Refuge Protection Act.
Fair enough.
However instead of writing a new bill so those changes can be debated on their own merits, the Conservative government has decided to bury the changes inside Bill C-50, a bill currently before the House of Commons which is about implementing parts of this year’s federal budget.
The changes being proposed to the Immigration and Refuge Protection Act clearly are worth some serious debate and review. They are major changes that could affect the social fabric of our country. I am not suggesting that the changes proposed are good or bad, they just need to be reviewed, discussed and debated on their own instead of cramming them in with a host of other items that are budget related.
Canada’s policy on Immigration has nothing to do with the yearly budget.
By including the changes within the budget bill the Conservative government is insisting that parliament pass the entire bill or reject it as a show of confidence (or lack of) in the government. If the bill fails, we get to have an election.
Conservatives have been doing this bit for awhile and the Liberals just aren’t showing up to vote. No vote against means the bills get passed and there is no election.
Its a shame that our country is being run like this right now.
The minority Conservative Party government is doing its best to push its social policy on all Canadians by force rather than by legitimate debate and consensus because they know many of their social policies won’t stand up to real debate and discussion.
Minority governments are great for Canada because all our voices get to be heard. Healthy debate occurs. Points and counter-points are discussed and in the end we should end up with laws and policies that are truly the best possible solutions.
Canadians don’t want to be threatened with unnecessary elections every time the Conservative’s can’t get their way. Unfortunately we currently have a spineless alternative with the Liberal Party MP’s who only want to gripe, grumble and act like they are trying to provide alternative ideas. The Liberal Party, instead of being a real alternative, is simply hoping for some miracle that will enable them to win a majority in the next election.
On March 31st, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was quoted by Globe and Mail online:
“Each time that we vote against something without triggering an election, it’s a marker. That means that when we will be the government with the help of Canadians, we’ll change these bad policies by much better policies.“
Remember the broken promise the Liberals made when they said they would get rid of the GST? And now look which party is against lowering the GST.
If this keeps up and the Liberal Party of Canada ever does form the government again, we can look forward to them spending all their time trying to reverse all the bad things (unless they decide the bad things are good once in office) instead of working on building our country - assuming they keep their promise A big assumption
I am a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, but this political gamesmanship is not part of the values that I believe hold this great party together.
Canada is not well served by a Prime Minister who imposes his own personal social agenda on Canadians and we are not well served by a cowardly alternative.
We need to think of ways to make our government more accountable because its clear we don’t want to have an election every time the Prime Minister doesn’t get his way, no matter which party he or she belongs to. But if we can’t figure out a way for this parliament to work then we need to have an election - win, lose or draw. And we need to have an election as often as necessary until we as a country figure this thing out.
Right now Canada’s democracy is a joke, because the people we elected are not doing their jobs.