Posted on 10/30/2005 8:01:29 AM PST by Heartofsong83
Our leaders don't want to know what we think By Ted Byfield
If anything characterizes the prevailing Ottawa attitude on government, it is dread, doubt, suspicion, contempt, loathing and fear of the Canadian people.
At bottom, they simply do not think we can be entrusted with any real power over government.
In American politics, that the public should have the final say goes without saying.
In Canada, every expedient is invoked to prevent this from happening.
"We do not want to be ruled by the mob," said one editorialist, arguing against a referendum on gay marriage.
And who is "the mob?"
The mob is you and I and everybody else qualified to vote. We can't be trusted, you see. We might vote wrong -- meaning not the way the "sensible people" and the "people who really understand the issues" know we should vote.
The contrast between the two countries has never been sharper than it became last week.
In Washington, the Republican president's nominee for the Supreme Court came under such scrutiny from Republican senators that she withdrew.
Their complaint: She was not conservative enough. It was a major embarrassment to the Bush administration and it will force the president to propose instead someone of far stronger conservative convictions.
How did the opposing senators discover what they discerned as the candidate's latent liberalism? By examining her speeches, by the advice she gave the president in her former role as his adviser, by everything right back to the thesis she wrote in law school, her record became an open book. The senators, and through them the public, was given full knowledge of what she might do on the Supreme Court.
Thus armed, so many people pressured the senators to reject her that she withdrew, knowing her nomination certain to be defeated. That's how the system works. It's called democracy.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, a very different system prevails. For years, our judges have simply been appointed by the minister of justice. Who they are, what they think, how they have ruled on key issues in the past, what if any church they belong to -- all highly relevant questions to the decisions they will be called on to make -- these things are considered none of the public's business.
They're strictly confidential. Only once they're in office do we discover answers to these questions. There they make the laws -- quite literally make the laws that we are to live under.
However, reform is now in the air. Perhaps, only perhaps, our MPs will be allowed to interview the minister of justice on the appointment he is about to make, but the interview must be brief.
And the appointee? Will MPs get to interview the proposed candidate?
Certainly not. "I'd hate to see a situation where we had a public ratification process where the prime minister nominated someone and then the Liberal party forced him to withdraw his nomination," says Edward Ratushny, professor of law at the University of Ottawa.
In other words, save us from rule by "the mob," defend us against democracy.
We're Canadians. We don't believe in it. And because we don't believe in it, we now have a Supreme Court jammed to the rafters with ideological liberals, none of them elected or even publicly scrutinized, and all of them making laws for the whole of the country.
Precisely this same attitude prevails on the use of referendums.
We are continually being lectured on "the Canadian way," meaning the lib-left slant of our legal code, effected over the last 30 or so years.
Yet not one of these so-called "moral issues" was submitted to a public referendum and for a self-evident reason.
The electorate is not trustworthy. It might vote wrong.
Any time some liberal points to our laws as reflecting "the way we Canadians think," ask him if he would be in favour of putting some "moral" issue to a referendum.
Watch the alarmed expression, while he describes the horrors of "mob rule."
He doesn't want to know what Canadians think, only what "sound Canadians," or "informed Canadians," or "enlightened Canadians" think.
Will a price be paid for all this arrogance? There will indeed.
Gradually, imperceptibly, the word "Canada" means less and less to more and more people.
Their patriotism evaporates; the country itself becomes a joke.
That is the price.
Canadians apparently WANT to be ruled by the French.
bump for later rant !
How do we know? We don't get a say in anything except the rigged elections...
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
LIBERALS are a plague and a menace to society both in Canada, the U.S. and across the globe. Too bad most people are apathetic to their political processes. If they weren't this scourge would have been WIPED OUT long ago.
In the case of Prime Minister Paul Martin, he is trying so hard to be the DICTATOR of Canada, and pushing further and further to do so. Democratic deficit he was talking about? He really meant to say Dictatorship deficit!
If the Libranos get re-elected, that is coming - after Quebec does - and they won't be the last region to separate from Canada...
Please include the vast NW of Ontario. It's a great place.
Yep, we'll try to do that...and take all the resources with you. (You also get a golden opportunity to rebuild the Indian reserves of far northern Ontario that the Liberals have pillaged, such as Kashechewan)
Atlantic Canada will likely separate once the west does...leaving only the area from Ottawa to Windsor in Canada (and even there, I am sure some counties will try to secede).
The communists do not fail the people, the people fail the communists.
Balkanize now before it is too late to turn back.
I feel sorry for the conservatives trapped in that liberal nightmare of a country. What the hell happened up there? It used to be a stand up country. Now look at it.
I don't know!!! Once Trudeau got into power in 1968, he broke promises and began the slippery slope toward becoming a corrupt dictatorship...
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