Paul Martin is only doing this because he will be facing a leadership vote at the liberal party convention in two weeks.
There are 20 proposed amendments that are in opposition to BMD. If Dither's actually came out in favour of BMD, he couldn't survive politically. He would lose any support he had in Quebec and drive the left wing of his party to the NDP splitting the vote. We conservatives would walk up the middle and get enough seats to form a majority government.
The problem is Bush has given us folks up here a chance to show our committment to North American defence, frankly I don't think Bush cares a rats bare behind if we signed on or not. What this does is it allows your administration the legitmacy of acting unilaterally in the interest of Continental defence, and Martin can't say diddly.
It almost like our liberal government didn't learn anything from the run up to the Iraq war. The UN was given ample time and opportunity to do something about Saddam then.
Same thing here, we had a choice of signing on to BMD or could have started carrying our weight. We have done neither. The weiners that are opposed to this can promptly walk their ass down to the CF recruiter if they don't want the US to cover our ass anymore.
And there's an underlying reason for that which is that the Canadian people know they can be, and wish to be, free riders with no responsibility. If they didn't, the political reality you speak of would not exist.
The problem is Bush has given us folks up here a chance to show our committment to North American defence, frankly I don't think Bush cares a rats bare behind if we signed on or not. What this does is it allows your administration the legitmacy of acting unilaterally in the interest of Continental defence, and Martin can't say diddly.
Good point.