Fuschi’s Canadian Forum

The boneheads who are pushing carbon cap or tax proposals display the oblivion of someone trying to sell barbecue lighter to a man whose house is on fire. As well, they make no correlation between the damage that is being wrought by high oil prices, and the similar consequences that would result from their tax-shaft schemes. And last, even if their entire sales pitch was formed of impeccable logic, the one hundred percent increase in oil prices is the hammer blow which will prove or disprove the lunacy they pursue. Nothing more needs to be done. In the face of this cataclysm, Dion’s pathetic plan to stick his hands into our pockets, will not make an iota of difference to the ecosystem. We have already been slammed and the abuse is not yet over.

I’m not sure what is driving up the price of gasoline, and I suspect it is a combination of things. But I believe that much of the increase will be temporary and, in fact, do us a favour. This is so because it will preclude the much more harmful longer term effects of proposed carbon taxes and other ludicrous schemes to halt the advance of nature. To understand how dangerous these proposals are, you need only notice that they are being proposed by the oblivious in the face of the economic conflagration that is unfolding before our eyes. Are these the people we want running our country in such time of economic crisis?

Today’s news that General Motors teeters on the brink, on top of everything else, is evidence of precisely the very things skeptics had warned about when they cautioned of bullheaded plunge into eco-mania without concern for economic realities. But remember what the eco-saviours said to us, and Dion is apparently still trying to peddle. They said that the economic stress caused by higher energy prices would precipitate a boom of economic activity to search for solutions and offsets. Right! Instead, the very real danger that now rears its ugly head is that the economy of the western world will be a smoldering ruin long before we can redirect our efforts. This ship will not turn quickly in the bathtub provided for the maneuver.

The people who will rejoice at these developments are Suzuki and his Luddites. The devastation is perhaps what they wanted all along – a Thoreau-like return to the forests. The silver lining is that with every cut inflicted on western society, the scorn for carbon tax lunacy and its gurus will reach tax-rage status.  My advice to Dion, who evidently does not read the papers, is get your western swing over with asap, and get out of town while you can. As consolation, consider that we might be able to claim a Kyoto exemption on the basis that we will be a developing country.

Jean Chretien has again intruded onto the public radar, this time, to save his legacy. He should beware what he wishes for. In typical fashion he has presumed to be "vindicated" from judge Gomery’s implied accusations - that he was asleep at the controls.

Recall how Chretien’s government was elected. He clearly lied to Canadians that the GST was "a dead duck" if they gave him the mandate. When confronted with his subsequent inaction, he lied about having made the promise. Then when he managed a minor harmonization with the Maritimes, claimed that this pathetic improvement was the grand achievement he had promised. The overt presumption of the stupidity of Canadians is on display again. After Justice Teitelbaum intimated that judge Gomery was having too much fun with his inquest, Chretien has felt free to extrapolate that to a redemption of his legacy. I agree, Mr. Chretien’s legacy of flim-flam is intact!

His one greatest, and only accomplishment was the art of bringing out the worst in Canadians, to his electoral benefit. Chretien was happy to feed  the multicultural beast, without ever discriminating against its violent factions, for fear it was worth a few votes. He relied on the divides which separated ghetto Canadians, and the need for tribal defense which they sought against historic rifts. And, he was happy to protect those divides and that dependence, with taxpayers’ money.

He was equally happy using those taxes to spread institutional dependency. Expensive projects of dubious value - like the gun registry - were designed to provide the illusion of action to ensnare the gullible, while creating large, new bureaucracies which were indebted to the Liberal master. The enormous waste discovered in a cursory investigation of the HRDC, only hinted at the depth of taxpayer abuse.

Any attempt by the opposition at deeper scrutiny or reform of such abuse, was met by the ususal blanket defense that Conservatives wanted to gut Canada’s social safety net. Or, worse yet, that they wanted to unleash the bogeyman under the bed of most Canadians - Americanization. This was an accusation used without restraint or remorse, in spite of feeding a destructive divide between us and our neighbours.

It was in this poisoned culture of bought support and bedevilled opposition that the adscam gestated. After dividing their enemies, and co-opting all the levers of power - the Supreme Court, the Senate, the RCMP, the CBC, most bureaucratic heads - Liberals began to act on the suspicion that they could get away with anything. This assurance inevitably lead to the appropriation of tax money for personal party use.

While the standard reply of all top Liberal MPs, that they did nothing, knew nothing, and heard nothing, certainly describes the Chretien years, it was a preposterous defense, for which the Liberanos have yet to atone. Mr. Chretien need not fear damage to his legacy. It remains unassailable. The dysfunction of parliament, catalyzed by a party that knows and flaunts the fact that they got away with it, and that Canadians are prone to believe anything repeated often enough. A dozen years of ravaging taxation to fund Chretien’s bogus governance. And the profound distrust of all Canadians, who have mistakenly brushed all politicians with the proprietary Liberal brush of arrogance, larceny, and perjury. This is Chretien’s true legacy!

Canada must be the only place on earth where the presumption of virtue is so strong that we think we can eliminate hate by administrative fiat. This is the presumption that gave birth to our human rights commissions. Their pursuit must fail on two major counts. First, the kind of hate which they deal with most, is either racial, religious, or ethnic and all these have deep roots. Secondly, these HRC bodies are just as prone to political ideology as any other, and have the power to inflict considerable damage to the lives of those who are in conflict with their biases.

As to my first accusation, the least of us is probably aware that worldwide racial, religious or ethnic conflicts, have left behind smouldering cauldrons of seething resentment. They are all around us and take many different shapes. They are often imported and sometimes domestic, and create impassable divides between self-identified groups of myriad descriptions. The hate that spills from those cauldrons is often based on both ancient and recent misdeeds or atrocities, which have kept the embers burning, and periodically fanned new life into them. To think that any Canadians can whimsically bridge these divides with a little politically correct duct tape, is folly . Only time and the absence of renewed conflicts can heal the wounds that those conflicts tend to reopen.

Worse yet, when people of vision step into these divides to pass judgment on one of the contending sides, he may be victimized by the defender. To understand why this can happen, it is first important to acknowledge that often, one side is more culpable than the other in some significant way. For example, radical Islamists defy all the conventions of humanitarian conflict, by forcibly co-opting innocents as tools of war. Whatever their nemesis has done to provoke them, they alone abandon humanity to reach this extreme. Overlooking this reality in order to cling to an undeserved equanimity is the first hint of political bias, and reflective of the illusion that both sides in a conflict are equally guilty. The inquisition of Mark Steyn demonstrates this fact in allowing the defenders of Islam to reflexively defend all Islam, including the radicals, in allowing their attack on Steyn.

This leads to my next criticism of the most dangerous flaw. The people who populate HRCs are, quite simply, left-leaning. This is a remnant of their Liberal roots. Give a lefty power over others, and he will wield it, secure in his mantle of righteousness. Give them the opportunity to attack the conservative devil, and you can wave good bye to any pretense at objectivity. Worse yet, there is no need to make it past the defensive bafflegab of their spokesmen to uncover their real motives, these guys wear those motives and biases on their sleeves. Dean Steacy of the Canadian version of these kangaroo courts recently stated that, “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.”

It is characteristic of the left that they willingly surrender principles whose evolution has taken us hundreds of years and much pain to evolve, and scrap them, simply because they stand in the way of their unquestionable and righteous agendas. It is equally characteristic that they can declare a bias, like their rabid anti-American zeal, as a valid reason to reject the cornerstones of our society without making any attempt at subterfuge. When people who think this way were given the reins of this human rights ox-cart, it was done for well-meaning reasons. But many of the legal safeguards on which our justice system depends, were sidestepped for convenience or stupidity. The biggest lesson of all is, never give a socialist unfettered power without safeguarding the public. They simply have no concept of their own fallibility.

I am old enough to remember the seventies oil shocks and the street wisdoms which were being accepted as gospel truth. “There are tanker ships lined up right now, ten deep as far as the eye could see, behind some island, just waiting for the price to go higher.” I overheard this bit of beer wisdom and the snorts of agreement from other barflies, and it typified the sort of comment that passed for public knowledge.

We have not come so far, and our public understanding of what is happening at the pump, is still nebulous and we are still blaming the supplier. The overall picture, however, is considerably more confusing and shot through with complicating factors. These will conspire to produce substantial change in the way we live. Some of it worthwhile, some more damaging than the original problem.

The reasons why it is happening are not so different - because it can. All the inquiries, royal commissions, and gas rage by the supply-and-demand-challenged, will not make a fig of difference, because you have no other choice. Only idiots and Hugo Chavez would give away something that they will not have forever, but everyone wants. In the seventies, it occurred to the OPEC fraternity that they were selling us something that we could not do without. To top that, demand was inelastic. They could beat us all they wanted, and we would come back to lick their feet. Today that reality is compounded by the emergence of new economic consumers like China.

But something happened after the seventies shocks which caused the price to collapse to a fraction of its height. Even while the high prices were boosting new output to unseen levels, recession set in and demand collapsed. There was a point at which the inelastic demand could be stretched no further. It appears today, that the demand remains constant, and the price continues to rise. But today a variety of trends is emerging which will drastically alter the outcome.

Alternatives to oil are being gang-pressed into use by tremendous economic pressure on the auto manufacturers and energy producers. Hybrids, flex-fuel engines, electric cars, wind farms, solar panels and other innovative ideas are coming on stream at an ever accelerating pace. And, the search for oil is spurred on by the vision of profits, like never before. Meanwhile economic activity is being curtailed by the relentless price increases. At some point the convergence of these factors will cause the price to collapse again.

Before that happens, good things will evolve. Among them will be the stifling of environmental squeals. The idiots who are keeping vast reserves of energy, in the US, from being tapped because of their Cassandra idealism, will lose to new and freer legislation in the face of angry consumers. Similarly, nuclear power will play a larger part in spite of their annoying complaints. Stupid ideas like carbon taxes will also be repudiated by a tax-exhausted consumer, and those who might have gotten away with them in better times, will rightfully receive the political beating they deserve. By the time the price collapse comes, we will be less dependent on volatile suppliers.  

Some bad things will happen as well. As we have seen, poor ideas like bio-fuel, and costly, ugly windmills will find acceptance through political fiat rather than logic, and cause unintended consequences. Electric cars may begin to proliferate even as our already overextended power grids suffer brown-outs. That is bad, but the political ineptitude that is allowing that to happen, will come under intense scrutiny. (Are you listening Smitherman?) We may be abandoning our SUVs and big trucks for the moment, and they may never regain some of their lost popularity, but history shows that a substantial portion of Americans will return to their big cars regardless.

Unfortunately for all of us, the catalyst which will produce the price collapse will be the US economy. Its current resilience in the face of the mortgage crisis is producing a slow decline which has not yet affected prices, but the prospect for escape from recession diminishes by the day. If there is a consolation it is that the Saudi hierarchy will have to settle for t-bone instead of tenderloin, and monsters like Dion’s tax shift (from your pocket to his) will be kept at bay.

Just when we thought that the Liberal carbon tax was meant merely to save the world, it turns out their plan is more ambitious than that. After all, this is the party that added the word boondoggle to the jargon of politics. We would be naive to think they are not ready to embellish a boneheaded idea of world class distinction, by piling onto it another crock of discredited bull.

Liberal MP Martha Hall Findley gave a hint of what is to come in a recently printed defense of Dion’s carbon tax nightmare. Fishing for words to justify her party’s embrace of the square wheel is a challenge of no small consequence, but Liberals have excelled at attempts to contain dung in a package acceptable to voters. Hence, this “revenue neutral” tax ogre that they are telling us to accept with pinched nostrils, comes with a fresh silver lining. They intend, in fact, to revenue-neutralize the enormous expense by returning it, not to your pocket, but to those of the “poor”. (Who can argue with saving the poor?) The effort to decarbonizes us, then, is not just that, but an effort to equalize us as well – again.

But Miss Findlay is being modest. We will soon be reminded that all of this is a jobs creator. After all, it takes hard-working bureaucracies to administer all this decarbonization and equalization, not to mention the sudden increased demand for brown envelopes for freshly refunded Liberanos. It took thousands of busy paper shufflers to accomplish nothing in the gun registry at a cost of two billion, imagine the new possibilities for the creative relocation of untold carbon tax billions.

Those amongst us who were sniffing the carbon bait should heed the warning bells that accompany Miss Findley’s revelation. That truth would be tortured in the carbon debate was a certainty all along, but already revenue neutral does not necessarily mean neutral to everyone. If the Liberal-defined poor are going to be enriched by this – and made to owe their everlasting allegiance to the Liberal party – your tax related revenue transactions are going to fall short of neutral. And, I suspect, by quite a bit, because if your collective guilt allows you to be conned by this policy duet, you will be further conned by others as well. There is enough revenue in this thing to allow for a whole new generation of “Just Society” initiatives.

In fact this is an opportunity to relive the golden age of tax-funded Liberal largesse, and to revisit the ensuing pain of fiscal imprudence. To feel again the challenge of double digit unemployment, interest rates above twenty percent(!), and the fast approach of the debt wall. (How quickly we have forgotten.) Dion’s plan to decarbonize us will indeed accomplish that along with the destruction of the wealth that millions of Canadians have worked so hard for. Hence we now know that this plan is not for the purpose of  furthering the illusory pursuit of saving the planet. Naming your dog  Kyoto, is as close as the Liberals will ever get. This plan is designed to re-acquaint voters with the open hand of  Liberal dependency and save them from a generation in electoral purgatory.

In a week in which the absurd was commonplace, nothing should have come as a surprise. The clearest hint that common sense had become as rare as the most precious jewels, was the obscene appearance of Mugabe at the UN’s food crisis finger-wag. (What was he doing there? Was he concerned about his people, or was he entered as exhibit A?)

But we don’t need to look across an ocean to have our minds boggled. Right close to home Dalton McGuinty was performing on local stage. Had he decided that he should outdo Mugabe for chutzpah, he could not have made a bigger splash. In fact the premier’s drift toward economic lunacy seems to display common traits with Mugabe’s wholesale destruction of his country.

If there was ever anything certain about the global warming hysteria, it is that to lead the way on measures to curb it, is indeed lunacy. This is a race to the economic sewer. McGuinty’s biggest concern at this time should be, how do I retain the remainder of Ontario’s manufacturing. Instead, in the inimitable way of a Liberal government dedicated mainly to governing by photo –op, and devoid of a true sense of direction, we are presented with the Ontario-Quebec cap and trade agreement.

The devolution of Ontario’s auto industry, punctuated by the latest closure announcement from GM’s Oshawa truck facility, is another clear warning of the enormous dangers of complacent economics at this time. Only Buzz Hargrove and his entourage are surprised at this announcement. It has been clear since the UAW’s groundbreaking  pact with the US manufacturers, that the big three wanted a similar path taken in Canada. That they did not insist on greater gains during the CAW negotiations, was ominous, like the lull before a storm. It is clear now that their strategy is to bide for time and then make an exit at the earliest convenience. Under the current economic duress, they have little reason left to build in Canada. This is a clear indictment of McGuinty’s sole visible economic measure – bribing the companies to stay. Again, a manufacturer has accepted hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money, and then folded its tent.

In the face of this reality, McGuinty is like a drunk with a gas can at a bonfire. The cap and trade agreement promises to impose huge costs on the businesses that still remain. The notion of leading the way because the US will follow, is lunacy. We may easily cripple ourselves long before the debate in the US is over. Companies will pass the costs on to beleaguered consumers, who are already shell-shocked by energy prices. Those that cannot do so because competition does not allow it, will pick up roots and move elsewhere.

One last and persisting illusion harboured  by the environmental crowd, is that these onerous new costs heaped on business will incite them to find more acceptable alternatives to the current way of doing business, and spark great economic activity. That auto manufacturers will redouble efforts to reinvent the car. But manufacturers have all the incentive they need in the ballooning of oil prices. They can already see clearly the wisdom of being first to provide marketable alternatives. With this in mind, they must also survive the tremendous dislocation they are currently suffering. Having the cap and trade lunacy piled onto this, by politicians who are challenged by the search for useful measures, can only precipitate their downfall, and ours.

One of the most dangerous fallacies embraced by our intellectually passive society, is the notion that; if it saves one life it is worth it. We should immediately have become wary of this statement when it became part of the throw-away dialogue of politicians and bureaucrats. Instead we find ourselves wagging our heads on cue, like the dog in the rear car window, unconditionally agreeing to something we know nothing about. We know only that we are culturally averse to abandoning that mythical “one life”, especially if somebody throws in the word children, for good measure. Then we are truly at the mercy of whatever charlatan promises to save that one life for us.

Today the charlatans that run Ontario forced all convenience stores to hide their cigarettes. Will this save a life? Perhaps, who knows? You most certainly won’t know by biting the hook baited with self-serving statistics. Statistics which prove that we need an army of enforcers to monitor, observe and intervene wherever the ever-growing tree of don’ts is contravened. If this wimp of a government really believes what it says, let them outlaw cigarettes, period. But wait, that may alienate a lot of voters. This way is better. We get society to browbeat them into submission and force them to smoke in the cold and rain where no one can see them. After all, there is no danger that the pipeline of tax revenue will dry up, and the true purpose of this exercise will have been accomplished: that is to appear to be doing good.

The NDP government of Bob Rae was the last to exhibit a pathological desire to regulate the life out of us, on a scale similar to McGuinty’s. The other compelling similarity to that government, was the inability to govern productively in the face of serious economic challenges. The busy work of telling us what to do and hiring armies of regulators to enforce it, most often took the place of real measures to mitigate economic problems. And, it is doing so again. Today’s Statscan news about the shrinkage of the Canadian economy points a finger at Ontario, the country’s manufacturing heartland. In the face of this news, McGuinty’s busybodies are boarding up cigarette displays.

Insidious social intrusion on everything from dogs to God has been this government’s modus operandi. Its sole economic initiative is to donate taxpayer’s money to auto corporations which threaten to close, and then do so anyway after the money is received. A real winning strategy, heartily endorsed by Buzz Hargrove. Yes, we know about the dollar, the price of oil and the US economy. But those oars have already been washed away, the only remaining one in the tillerman’s hand says “tax cuts”. Will McGuinty abandon the resource which allows his government its true policy goal – the purchase of votes? Probably not. It will be up to the people of Ontario to discriminate between policies of value, and con jobs perpetrated with the Trojan horse of “saving one life”. A life, maybe saved, at real expense to thousands of others.

Beware of Liberals sermonizing about conservative anger/accusations/bullying. It means you have found the mark and are competing on soil they presume to own. That is, anger, accusations and bullying are part and parcel of their superior humanist presumptions, and how dare you use these against them?

For a quick example, see the comment by Sam regarding my post "Wanted, Terrorists…" (see below). In a typical display of that superior humanist presumption, he lectures me with the descriptions, "juvenile, tiresome, and sick", making no intelligent effort to defend the position I attacked. 

A meatier example of the same occurred during my 2004 federal campaign. Candidates were invited to a labour-sponsored debate, to which I took the bait, (I should have known better) along with, notably, an incumbent Liberal from the adjacent riding. Since we were at the height of the adscam furore, I took aim at the juicy Liberal target with my opening address, and lambasted her with a lecture about abusing the trust of Canadians for personal party gain. I remained tactful and impersonal at all times, but gave no quarter on a topic which I thought was the quintessence of importance to voters. Her defense, (surprise) consisted of a lecture about the collapse of civility from the opposition and their candidates, at a time when we should all be working together. (I prefer Tony Soprano.) To cap that charade, I was personally beset, after the debate, by young partisans who were appalled at the anger in my speech. I should have been more graceful with liars and thieves.

And now here is a current example of a liberal journalist displaying her superior humanism and civility. Susan Riley www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/editorial/story.html of the Ottawa Citizen, wearing her journalistic impartiality clearly on her sleeve, said the following:

Progressives need to dismiss the yapping dogs…                                                                   In this appraisal of parliamentary activity, it is obvious that she has never bothered to look at the other side, where blowhard puffery and raucous fingering was brought to a fine art.

Harper’s hit-men are framing the carbon tax as another burden on over-taxed consumers.                                                                                                                                 Only a Liberal can see this as a dastardly ploy to fool the public. Taking the public’s tax money and using it as their own, to disperse in brown envelopes, as campaign strategy dictated, was merely business as ususal. Now, anyone who does not trust the existence of honest intention in a scam to rake billions out of those same pockets, is a hit-man.

Harper is …suggesting that criticism of Isreal’s government…amounts to "good, old-fashioned anti-Semitism,"                                                                                                     Quoting Bob Rae, Riley calls this a smear, because the Israelis themselves are often critical of their government, and is this not simply democracy? Smooth, but too clever. The real topic is a whole different story. Liberals have consistently failed to support Israel in most UN motions which criticized its actions - whether justified or not. And, in so doing, emboldened the pack of hostile accusers which regularly pre-empt the logical thought processes of the general assembly.

Remember that the radical right requires a shouting war…                                                  Imagine that assessment coming from the left, where balaclavas, bricks and bottles, have often been the instruments of diplomacy. 

But he (Harper) will keep pounding away, fuelled by his inexhaustible anger…             Need I say more? It’s enough to make you "lose it".

The two  most recent Liberal dynasties owed a great deal, for their existence, to world class lies.

Pierre Trudeau lied to Canadians about a made-in-Canada price for oil and was able to defeat Joe Clark and his eighteen cent gas tax. At that time Canada was a net importer and was unable to produce sufficient oil, because the Liberal- decreed wellhead price was too low to entice oil extraction. Trudeau knew this but played politics with it. Once he was re-elected the price was allowed to rise by more than a dollar.

Chretien had similar disrespect for Canadians, and lied to them emphatically about removing the unpopular GST. Once elected on this promise he was eventually called on it. In response he exhibited probably the most gall in Canadian history, by lying about having made the promise. Rather than being turfed out of office at the first opportunity, he was re-elected twice. The indifference of voters to such abuse, probably had a lot to do with the development of a culture in which adscam politics was acceptable behaviour.

The reason I have reviewed these is because of Dion’s latest ruminations about energy taxes. It is tempting to think that this guy has a political death wish, but then these previous incidents show that perhaps Canadians, and especially Ontario, exhibit one as well. Both these men were obvious one night stand con-artists, and yet we fell for them. To emphasize the point, we re-elected McGuinty, whose abuse of our trust made us feel like battered partners. 

Before wading further into this wonderland, consider the absurdity of this proposal at this time. If new energy taxes ever see the light, they might arrive about the time gas hits two dollars a litre. Evidently Mr. Dion thinks that the Canadian driver will do nothing in self-defense while these prices rise inexorably, and must be wacked with a new tax to make him see the light. Which tax, by then, will be about as popular as a social disease.

But wait, this tax will be revenue neutral, a promise made in the memory of all past Liberals. And if you believe that, you are still in the subservient position we left you in during the Chretien dark ages. No less an authority than the TD bank, reported at the end of that period, that all wage gains made by Canadian workers in that time, were taxed away by the ever ready hand in your pocket. After all there were brown envelopes to stuff, people to pay.

Let me conclude by wondering… does no one see anything strange about a platform which contains nothing but a potentially devastating new tax? A tax which in spite of its potential to devastate our economy, is founded on an illusory goal. I just read that China is projected to build almost 600 new coal-fired generating plants. Whatever you think about the truth of global warming, it is obvious that we may be jeopardizing our economy and the wealth of future generations, for nothing. The one sure thing that appears endangered in a Canada with Mr. Dion and the Liberals at the helm, is disposable income. 

Romeo Dallaire is a Liberal soldier. That’s similar to jumbo shrimp. Before he became confused about right and wrong, he was best known for having had  emotional difficulty after witnessing wholesale slaughter in Rwanda, and becoming confused about the required action. The height of his confusion was becoming a Liberal senator. Now he is doing his best to confuse the rest of us about the definition of "enemy". Evidently, you can be too young to be an enemy, in spite of the gun you have pointed at us.

Some will recall that, for some time, Liberals have had the same sort of confusion about our very own "young offenders". They became so confused that they changed the name of the "Young Offenders Act" as a week-kneed reply to those of us who were beginning to think that our treatment of young lawbreakers was a crock. No one with a real life can remember the new name, but its forgettability was specifically meant to make us think that the problem was cured. Out of sight, out of mind. In fact, there were no longer any "young offenders". They disappeared and became (hold your seat) "young persons in conflict with the law".  Sounds like the law is so inconvenient.

I bring up this latter point because the Liberal treatment of terrorists, now led by Senator Dallaire, is so typically Liberal. The terrorist pointing a gun at us, is no longer a terrorist if he does not qualify according to the proper age criteria. Then he is a child, whom, at age fifteen is incapable of differentiating from his family’s twisted alliances. (Note that some of the family still lives in Canada though, and no Liberal is wailing to have them ejected.) Hence the word terrorist disappears. Rather than child, however, may I suggest "young person in conflict with civilization". This is so much more Liberal and consistent with past practice.

Let me leave this insane discussion with just a few thoughts to clear the feeble mental processes of this government’s Liberals. First of all, a fifteen year old from the Middle East has long since left childhood. Then, it has been clear for some time where exactly the allegiances of the Khadr clan lie. Do Mr. Allaire and Goodale and company really think we are going to group hug them back to reason? Or are they just lying about it? Or is it that they really need these few twisted votes that badly?

One last thought for Mr. Dallaire and Goodale and Dion. If you see a small child wrapped in bombs, coming toward you, is it an enemy, or is it a child who clearly is not guilty for his or her actions, and just needs a hug? And will you be the first to do it?