It is the last chance for the drones of parliament. They can either rebel now or fade away with their ill-fated Conservative Party of Canada. Those who have done nothing before or during the time of a majority have a last chance to stand on their hind legs and speak for their constituency. They hardly have long odds on returning.
You heard about Michael Chong in Ontario trying to reform parliament by proposing rules, most of which Members of Parliament are already able to do without his bill. It does not seem all that innocent to be challenging the right of the party leader to select candidates for the party. That is a direct challenge to Stephen Harper.
We are also starting to hear more from the religious right. Reform and Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott is proposing parliament get into questions about abortion. Judging by his religious background, he is probably just playing to the folks back home in Saskatchewan. He has already announced that he is not running in the next federal election. We suspect he is preaching for a calling.
He thinks he is getting around Prime Minister Harper’s avowal to not discuss abortion by creating a couple parliamentary bible classes to discuss the needs of the unborn. While there is no doubt that Mr. Harper would prefer to send Mr. Vellacot to Coventry, he has probably never talked to him anyway.
There is also likely to be some ideologue in that caucus of eunuchs who wants to bring back capital punishment. Will that motion try to get around the Prime Minister on the issue by getting parliament to discuss more humane ways of killing people? You would think the gun nuts would want to stand up for shooting people. If they can reach a decision on that, will the PM then let them discuss whether executions should be public or private affairs?
As it is, they have already sentenced one segment of Canadian society. The Conservatives have reduced the once socially stabilizing Employment Insurance system to a sad joke. Nobody trusts it or should. In their efforts to be sure that nobody gets anything that they might not deserve, the Conservatives prefer to have people starve to death.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty intends to wave his banner announcing his budget is deficit free before the 2015 election. It will demonstrate more than anything else, the cruel, unfeeling, unkind, destructive nature of the Conservative Party. They will not be missed in our Parliament.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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