Re: Two democracies on widely divergent paths, Editorial, Feb. 4th, 2010

Democracy could function if the Liberals had the courage of their convictions while in opposition. However, their core principles are few and far between, setting aside sheer opportunism, skulduggery in the Senate, and a twogenerations old hate and distrust of both America’s interests and our own Canadian military.

And now the media and popular love-in with U.S. President Barack Obama. While it is inarguable that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has failed to rise above his Reformist roots, does not play nicely with others politically, and uses his elbows ferociously in the corners — but didn’t Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, too, even taking his gloves off and grabbing someone by the throat; and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, himself, never ventured near the boards such was his Guy Helping to Lafleur-type gorgeousness concerning his sexy good looks and European-chic stick-handling and heavyon the-practice style.

Perhaps the Olli Jokinen of Canadian politics, Mr. Harper has made a solid, leading, and magnificent response to Haiti’s grave disaster and has taken great strides to restoring our broken, belittled Canadian Armed Forces, showing resolve to carry through positively and stoically a conflict to which Prime Minister Chrétien committed us, though ill-prepared, and to which Prime Minister Paul Martin deeply, dangerously entangled us by sending our ill-equipped army — entirely bereft of its own helicopters — into Afghanistan’s southern provinces.

And still, democratically speaking, if the Liberals had either courage or core convictions, they could force the long-threatened election as early as the week of March 3, when Parliament reconvenes. However, they have neither.

This editorial describes Prime Minister Harper, in places, suggesting he is “dictatorial” or that he has “far more power” than he ought. However, with the patriation of the British North America Act in 1982 and the enactment of The Charter, the real power in Canada has been usurped by the courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

Now legislation routinely falls or falls into abeyance as the Courts speak their boring and dictatorial monologue.

The Charter is making it impossible to prosecute a man who has taken multiple wives, concurrently. Canadian Muslim men are watching our courts’ irregular moves toward polygamy with keen interest and some appreciation. Doubtless, the Supreme Court will soon weigh in on the legal euthanizing of our most vulnerable elders, marginalized and neglected as they are, creating law where Parliament fears to tread for fear of being legally undercut by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The courts, even more than Mr. Harper does or could, rule in Canada.

Mr. Harper, courageously, is fighting this uphill battle, as well, by creating new senators like Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu from Quebec and Bob Runciman from Ontario. Parliament has become increasingly less relevant with every passing decade since 1982, the year a great, open-ended, legal Pandora’s Box was introduced by that charismatic and devilishly clever politician, that “sexy thing,” that colourful and iconic womanizer, that actually dictatorial “gun-slinger” — who, by the way, prorogued Parliament no fewer than nine times during his extended and absolute hold on the reins of power — that Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Rob Bredin,

Orangeville