War crimes trials like the one Saddam faces are less about revealing new atrocities than about providing life lessons

[. . . .]By Saddam himself, most obviously. Mass graves . . . .killing, torture, imprisonment, rape, . . . killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Kuwaitis and tried to kill Israelis with Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War.. . . engaged in a whole series of war crimes, from aggressive wars against his neighbours to genocide against his own Kurds and marsh Arabs.

But everyone was indifferent to human life in Iraq and around it. That's the true and terrible story demanding to be told.

The United Nations ought to be in the dock.

The absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq means that the U.N., by maintaining sanctions for a full decade after those weapons vanished from Iraq in the early 1990s (absent the U.S. invasion, the U.N. sanctions would still be in effect today), is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children and old people, as a result of malnutrition and lack of medicines.

The U.S. . . . France and Germany and Russia. . . .Iran. . . . Iraqis themselves.

In this long murderous chronicle, just one person with the power to decide, former president George Bush, made a conscious decision not to kill.

[. . . .]For that he was widely derided as a wimp. He went on to lose the presidential election.

[. . . .] This story would recount what happens when everyone becomes indifferent to human life. And the message would be that unless human life is respected, everyone shares the guilt of what happens next.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Prime Minister Paul Martin said that Canada was right to oppose the invasion of Iraq. Instead, as Mr. Martin said in an interview earlier this year, "a lot more could have been wrung out with inspections."

[. . . .] Mr. Martin appears to believe they can. Over the weekend, he said it's "important" that Saddam be tried before a tribunal with "international jurisdiction." Mr. Martin also said a preferred option would be a UN-mandated tribunal of the kind trying the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

[. . . .]Following the liberation of Iraq, Mr. Martin and the Liberal government have at times advocated for greater Iraqi control over their own affairs. Ironically, the Liberals are now trying to take control away from the Iraqi people in the trial of Saddam. For the purpose of legitimizing the Iraqi Governing Council and fostering national reconciliation, it is critical that Iraqis oversee the trial of Saddam.

Mr. Martin must recognize that the nations that chose not to have Saddam removed from power cannot now dictate how the Iraqi people should try him. This is a slap in the face to Iraqis. If Mr. Martin and the Liberal party's view had prevailed, Saddam might very well still be in power torturing Iraqi civilians and threatening global stability.

Clearly, Mr. Martin and the Liberals must put aside their past opposition to ridding Iraq of this brutal dictator and fully commit Canada's support to our friends and allies as they work to restore stability, prosperity and freedom in their country.

If Mr. Martin is truly committed to change, he should state clearly that the government of Canada was wrong to oppose deposing Saddam Hussein. For without that admission, he has no basis on which to wade into the debate over where, or whether, Saddam Hussein should be tried for his crimes.

Paul Martin bills himself as a Prime Minister for the 21st century. His first Cabinet better suits the 19th century.

Take the inner circle of his Cabinet, the Priorities and Planning Committee. Among the ministers overseeing the high-level portfolios mandatory in any Cabinet's inner circle -- inherently powerful departments such as Finance, Justice, Health and Foreign Affairs -- is a minister for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. . . . Canada's fisheries now represent less than one-tenth of 1% of Canada's GDP and sinking. There is no economic merit in favouring this industry by awarding it a minister in the Cabinet of a modern economy. . . .

Or take another inner circle Cabinet position, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. It will emphasize two forms of welfare: handouts to aboriginals, to meet Mr. Martin's desire to ease aboriginal poverty, and handouts to northern industries, to meet his desire to develop the hinterlands. . . .

The Cabinet rank given to the ministers charged with overseeing Canada's rural reaches has nothing to do with creating a 21st century economy and everything to do with old-fashioned electoral pork: [. . . .]There's a minister for the economic development of northern Ontario, a minister in charge of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and a minister in charge of Western Economic Diversification, all charged with delivering political pork. . . .

As for the populated parts of Canada, Mr. Martin has appointed no minister for either city or suburb. No urban industry, except for the financial sector, rates a Cabinet member.

. . . a bold and audacious Pre-Election Cabinet. With Urban Canada unlikely to leave the Liberals for the new Conservative Party of Canada, so leery of immigrants and otherwise socially conservative, Mr. Martin is plotting a historic sweep of the rest of the country. . . .

Klein, senior Tory party officials aggressively wooing New Brunswick Premier Lord

[. . . .] Tory heavyweights such as former Ontario premier Mike Harris and stalwart organizers such as former party president John Laschinger have been coordinating the efforts to lure Lord.

They have apparently secured funding and built the rudiments of a campaign organization for Lord, a moderate Tory whose bilingualism makes him an attractive candidate for those in the new party who oppose Harper.

When Alberta Report magazine died this summer, Canada's liberals rejoiced. No wonder.

The magazine was an antidote to boring, Toronto-centric, politically-correct, left-wing journalism.

Well, those liberals can put away their champagne, because a new magazine has been conceived: A proud, independent, pro-Western magazine called the Western Standard. We'll have our first issue out early in 2004, and I'm honoured to be founding publisher.

The Western Standard is being built by an entirely-new team of investors, managers and editors. But we will keep the best traditions of the old Alberta Report.

We will report the news from a western perspective, instead of the view from the CN Tower.

We will treat western and conservative opinion leaders with respect, rather than as curiosities to be ridiculed or just censored. And we will cover important stories that much of the media ignores -- the Sun being a notable exception -- or are afraid to report for fear of skewering sacred cows.

[. . . .] And Ted Byfield, the founder of Alberta Report, has agreed to write the back-page column.

Unlike Alberta Report, the Western Standard will not be an overtly Christian magazine -- you wouldn't expect that from a Jewish publisher. But whenever we detect anti-Christian bigotry, which is troublingly fashionable these days, we will expose it. That's not crusading, that's just being fair.

The Western Standard's opinion pages will be big enough for the lively debate within what is clumsily called the "right."

Libertarians and social conservatives will duke it out on the issues of the day.

[. . . .] Our first issue will be mailed out by March 30.

[. . . .] In the meantime, you can sign up now for a founder's subscription by visiting www.westernstandard.ca.

James Brown -- a former cop in the old Metro force, and later in Durham region -- returned home from another night shift on provincial security detail to find the calling card of a detective in the Toronto Police Service's guns-and-gangs task force stuck in his mail slot.

What prompted Det.-Const. Soon Lum's impromptu visit was a "hit" from a computer in the the billion-dollar wasteland known as the National Gun Registry, which claimed the German Mauser K-98 bolt-action rifle Brown had legally registered under penalty of law was the same German Mauser K-98 that had recently been stolen during a house burglary in Fredericton, N.B.

"But I have never been to Fredericton," said Brown. "And neither has the rifle."

[. . . .] Three days later, just as Brown predicted, his World War II German army rifle was returned.

It was clean, and so was he -- but with no explanation, at first, as to what went wrong at the National Gun Registry.

"All I was told when the rifle was returned was that everything was on the up-and-up," Brown said.

According to John St. Amour, owner of Ottawa-area Marstar Canada, the world's largest importer and exporter of Mauser rifles, there are potentially a couple of dozen Mauser rifles in circulation with the same number markings as on Brown's rifle, simply because the Germans manufactured them with serial numbers followed by alpha letters.

"It was all done to confuse the enforcers of the World War I peace treaty, and later to confuse the Allies," said St. Amour, indicating his company has handled at least 150,000 Mauser rifles over the last 20 years.

[. . . .] What Keys' investigation discovered was exactly what Mauser importer-exporter John St. Amour knew all along -- that there are a series of duplicate serial numbers for virtually every Mauser ever manufactured.

"It appears the Germans didn't want anyone to know the number of guns they were manufacturing in the buildup towards war," said Keys.

And those duplicate serial numbers, said Keys, were "why and how the confusion began" when a rifle stolen in New Brunswick carried the same serial number as a rifle legally registered to an ex-cop in Toronto named James Brown.

[. . . .]This isn't the first time a new government has imposed a general freeze to free up money for new priorities, and, in time dead files will become active again, projects will be resurrected and more public servants will be hired. That's always been the way.

[. . . .] Chrétien has left Martin a $2.3 billion surplus. Some analysts say, however, the $300 million left after the health-care payment is made could be wiped out by accounting errors.

The purchase of new military helicopters for $3 billion apparently will still go ahead. But everything else seems to be up for review. The planned political history museum and a new courts building in Ottawa have been mentioned as projects that could be postponed.

[. . . .]Few Canadians would regret a termination of the infamous gun registry -- in fact, that should gain support for the Liberals in the West -- but Canada's cities are expecting big things from this new government, and it would be unthinkable that anything related to the 2010 Olympics would be on the chopping block.

The cancellation of the scandal-ridden federal sponsorship program in Quebec has removed a source of funding upon which many small cultural festivals and sports events have relied. Other programs across Canada of symbolic, if not economic, importance to regions that will be hard to cancel.

We might ask why this spending review is necessary at all, since bureaucrats were ordered in March to cancel low-priority programs to provide $1 billion a year for the next five years for higher-priority ones. Martin may have his own priorities, but he may find, like other prime ministers before him, that reallocating programs doesn't work.

The ineffective programs that should be cut are often too politically sensitive to sacrifice. Instead, departments are forced to rely on quick fixes like hiring freezes, deferring major capital projects and cutting back on maintenance and repairs which lead to more problems in future.

As we reported yesterday, Judy Sgro, the new Citizenship and Immigration Minister, has been asked by Prime Minister Paul Martin to revamp the appointment process for judges of the Immigration and Refugee Board. We applaud the move. Reform at the IRB is long overdue.

[. . . .]Instead, since its creation in 1989, the board has been used as a dumping ground for the politically connected.

Many IRB appointees have little familiarity with immigration law. And in recent years, several questionable individuals have been appointed to the board. These include lawyer Michel Venne, a buddy of former prime minister Jean Chretien. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Venne pled guilty on five counts of professional misconduct and quit the Quebec bar. Another case, which is being investigated by the RCMP, involves two IRB judges with Liberal ties allegedly receiving bribes from immigrants for favourable appeals judgments.

These are not isolated cases. Over the past five years, this newspaper has documented a variety of examples of immigration fraud, such as our March, 2000, expose on Romanians posing as persecuted gypsies. The next year, we wrote about how the IRB released Pirakalathan Ratnavel, who the RCMP alleges is an assassin and a member of the Tamil Tigers.

In 2001, The Gazette in Montreal revealed that at least 32 of the 58 Montreal board members had close ties to the federal or provincial Liberals. Among them were seven defeated Liberal legislative candidates and six close family members of Liberal parliamentarians or former candidates. But this is not an exclusively Liberal phenomenon: The Mulroney government's staffing record was much the same.

Brison was trotted out like a prize 4-H calf by Martin last week - complete with Liberal red tie - as a symbol of ... well, something. We're not sure what. But Martin played up his great coup even more by giving Brison a minor cabinet job.

[. . . .]It's little wonder that Brison, Clark and some of the other PC defectors feel at home with the Liberals. It's because they are liberals.

For Pete's sake, Clark ran on a small-l liberal ticket when he won his seat in Calgary.

The lines between Liberals and Progressive Conservatives got so blurred that ordinary Canadians had a hard time telling them apart. If you want a Liberal government then you might as well vote for the real thing. That's also the reason why the Reform-Alliance phenomenon caught fire in the West.

The newly merged Conservative Party of Canada is not the multi-headed monster that Brison was pretending it's become. Heck, as it stands now, there aren't even any official policies.

What's transparently obvious is that both Brison and Clark are cynical opportunists.

Canadians had watched in near-despair as Jean Chretien blasted his "legacy" agenda through the House of Commons with barely a second-thought to how much it would cost. Now it appears as though some of Chretien's pet projects will be blown to smithereens.

[. . . .] Opposition critics suggest Martin is merely trying to distance himself from a government in which he was a key player for years.

[. . . .] Or, if it isn't just a brief pause as Martin prepares to untie the public purse strings for a new and even more frantic round of social spending.

Either way, it points to the glaring weakness in our system which gives the prime minister virtual sway over all matters of importance concerning Canada's well-being.

A set of checks and balances is urgently needed, which means another of Martin's pet projects, addressing Canada's "democratic deficit," needs immediate attention.

Listening to Secretary General Koffi Annan say the UN doesn't agree with the death penalty, no matter how horrific the crime, just emphasizes why the UN is no longer considered credible.

That the death penalty is not appreciated by the UN can be understood when one realizes a great many of the countries represented at the UN are ruled by tyrants and dictators just as deserving of the noose or firing squad as Saddam. They don't want to give their citizens any ideas.

[. . . .] The U.S. has given every dictator and tyrant in the Mideast pause for thought, hopefully preventing them from supplying a few million dollars to the next terrorist group needing a handout to kill some infidels (that's us, folks). . . .

"Does anyone find it curious that Chretien's government came up with a gun registry largely to appease Montrealers convinced that it was the best way to avoid a future Marc Lepine? Lepine was the deranged individual who killed 14 women on the campus of a Montreal university 14 Decembers ago.

Chretien, on the murdered backs of those young women, came up with a policy that is about as effective against a mass murderer as a United Nations non-resolution."

Pick up on this line!

Meanwhile, top Liberal sources are admitting to Bourque that "Lord is to one we have to watch, he can build the coalition that can trip us up".

Cute -- and transparent as hell!

I am beginning to suspect the worst and just so that all know, I do NOT trust Red Tories/Liberals after what I have seen Joe Clark put this country through and I am asking myself what they are up too. My best guess is that the REAL Liberals are scared to death of Harper who just threw his hat into the ring and LIBERAL "big business (read fleece the taxpayer)", fronted by Brian -- is trying to run a "spoiler" in an attempt to minimize the impact this new party will have on the country through direct control at the top. Personally, if I see through this tactic so quickly I am certain that others do also and that being said I would advise Mr Lord to stay put. Conservatives are just now shedding the yoke of Red Toryism.

It won't be back anytime soon if real conservatives have their way!
And if Harper scares them that badly, he's just the man for me!

Lord will count on the "hands-on" support of Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, former PM Brian Mulroney, and no less than Jean Charest, the Liberal Premier of Quebec, and the former Conservative Deputy-Prime Minister of Canada. . . . Meanwhile, top Liberal sources are admitting to Bourque that "Lord is to one we have to watch, he can build the coalition that can trip us up".

In other news, Bourque has learned that Paul Martin has appointed the following people to his PMO: Peter Nicholson (Senior Special Advisor), Scott Reid (Senior Advisor - Strategy), Mario Lague (Dept Chief Of Staff, Communications), Paul Corriveau (Dept Chief of Staff), Ruth Thorkelson, (Dept Chief of Staff, Parliamentary Affairs & Appointments), Mario Cuconato (Dir. Of Ops), Jim Pimblett (EA), Brian Guest (Dept. Principal Secretary), Veronique de Passille (Legislative Assistant), Melanie Gruer (Press Secretary), Jeff Copenace (Special Assistant - Aboriginal Affairs)

OTTAWA - A group of high- profile Tories has stepped up efforts to persuade New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord to run for the leadership of the new Conservative Party of Canada, even as Stephen Harper, the Canadian Alliance caucus leader, prepares to officially enter the race.

[. . . .] Calgary lawyer Jim Prentice, a former Progressive Conservative leadership candidate, said last week that he, too, plans to formally declare his candidacy early in the New Year. PC caucus leader Peter MacKay may also throw his hat into the ring after the Christmas holidays.

. . . Mr. Lord is being wooed aggressively by senior party officials. . .

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and counterparts Pat Binns of P.E.I., John Hamm of Nova Scotia and Danny Williams of Newfoundland have each called in recent days to implore Mr. Lord to stand for the leadership.

[. . . .] According to sources familiar with the discussions, such Tory heavyweights as former Ontario premier Mike Harris and such stalwart organizers as former party president John Laschinger have been co-ordinating the efforts to lure Mr. Lord.

[. . . .] "A leader can't be elected March 21 and begin thinking about an election 10 days later. One of the advantages that Peter [MacKay] and I have is we've obviously had to put our minds and some time to preparing for an election already. The leadership race can't get us totally off that track, it has to continue that process," he said.

Officials close to Mr. Harper said he will spend at least half the leadership campaign in Quebec and has recruited several organizers in the province, including a former key staffer to former premier Daniel Johnson.

[. . . .] Alliance fisheries critic John Cummins, a British Columbia MP, has signed on to Mr. Prentice's campaign team as caucus co-ordinator. He will be joined by Newfoundland Tory MP Rex Barnes, co-chairman of Mr. Prentice's last leadership bid.

[. . . .] Mr. Harper's preference is that the leadership be fought under the new laws, which will also cap individual donations.

Firm hopes users will watch ads for a computer

Metronomy says the free PCs will have a 56K dial-up modem and an Intel Celeron 2.4ghz processor.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A brand-new computer for free may sound too good to be true, but a British company is offering it to every UK household and even promising to replace it with a new machine after three years.

The catch? London-based Metronomy says in return for a free IBM personal computer worth 800 pounds ($1,400 U.S.), customers will have to bear with one minute of on-screen advertising for every 20 minutes of computer use.

Each household will also have to use the computer for at least 30 hours a month -- about an hour a day.

Recording industry to borrow U.S. tactic with 'chilling impact' for online siphoning

The millions of Canadians who share music files on the Internet should be prepared for the possibility of facing a lawsuit early in the new year, the head of the Canadian Recording Industry Association said yesterday.

Brian Robertson told the National Post his organization will soon begin launching legal action against Internet music uploaders.

[. . . .] One of the factors leading to heightened free music sharing is that there has been some ambiguity surrounding the Canadian Copyright Act, leading some to believe that sharing digital music files is legal.

The Canadian recording industry currently receives a tariff on blank media such as MP3 players and recordable compact discs in order to compensate music companies for music sales lost to piracy.

Last Friday, in a decision on raising levies on blank media, the Copyright Board seemed to indicate that music downloading over the Internet was not illegal.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in legal matters related to the Internet, said the law is less murky when it deals with uploading, but there could be problems pursuing downloaders in court.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal that Washington and Dr. David Kay, senior US and coalition WMD hunter in Iraq - far from groping in the dark for Saddam’s prohibited weapons, as conventionally believed – have a very good idea of where they are hidden.

The search has narrowed down to a section of the Syrian Desert known as Dayr Az-Zawr in Syria’s 600 sq. mile Al Jazirah province, which is wedged between the Turkish and Iraqi borders. The missing weapons systems are thought to be buried somewhere under these desert sands. This area is now probably the most keenly watched area on earth – from its outer periphery. At its eastern edge, US special force units, Predator drones and reconnaissance airplanes and satellites make sure no one steps into this ultra-sensitive patch of desert. Turkish special forces, intelligence and air force units are guarding it from the northwest. The Syrians are nowhere to be seen, acting as though the target-area does not concern them.
DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly have consistently reported that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were removed from the country and secretly buried in Lebanon and northern Syria with the connivance of Syrian president Bashar Assad.

[. . . .] But there is a third option.

It is that Saddam hand over to his American interrogators the details of the arrangements he worked out with the Syrian president for the transfer of the weapons of mass destruction to their present hiding places. He would have to name the Iraqi and Syrian officials who handled the operation.

[. . . .] According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts, Saddam Hussein has never forgotten the terms of the deal offered him by his old friend, former Russian prime minister and KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov, to prevent the war. One month before the American invasion, Primakov visited Baghdad and advised the Iraqi ruler to take himself and his family into perpetual detention in one of the presidential palaces. They would be kept under lock and key for life under international custody - albeit in sumptuous circumstances. The only proviso for averting war and saving his life was that the Iraqi president surrender his forbidden weapons systems to the United Nations.

VANCOUVER (CP) - A key witness in the Air India trial feared an accused terrorist would kill her if she revealed their secret about his alleged involvement in the Air India bombings, B.C. Supreme Court heard Tuesday.

Prosecutor Richard Cairns read from a police statement in which the woman said Ajaib Singh Bagri told her "she knew what he would do" if she told anyone. "The source is sure he meant that he would kill her," Cairns read from the Sept. 10, 1987, statement.

But the woman testified Tuesday: "I absolutely don't remember saying that."

She added that doesn't mean the statement isn't true.

Canada's privacy commissioner could be inundated with complaints when the final phase of sweeping new federal privacy legislation comes into effect Jan. 1, a leading expert in Canadian privacy law warns. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is only days from full implementation, but Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and editor of the Canadian Privacy Law Review, says many bound by the new law could be left scrambling to meet their obligations.

TORONTO -- The Ontario government will be looking to the public for permission to run deficits beyond this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday. "We're going to give the public a real say in terms of how quickly they want us to move and how they want us to move with respect to cleaning up the $5.6-billion deficit," McGuinty told reporters yesterday. "We're being very straight with people."

TORONTO -- Welfare staff have been refusing to push for criminal fraud charges for fear the convicted recipient would face a lifetime ban on benefits, according to Community and Social Services Minister Sandra Pupatello. Pupatello said her government will remove the lifetime welfare ban for fraud within the next year.

CALGARY -- Men at the University of Calgary are being offered a free two-week vacation in Australia in exchange for their sperm. Apparently it's getting difficult to find volunteers in Australia because of a new law that says sperm donors can no longer remain anonymous.

TORONTO -- As many as 2.5 million Canadians could be at risk of developing cancer because they don't eat enough fruits and vegetables to reap cancer-fighting benefits, don't exercise enough and don't keep their weight in check, suggests a new study by Cancer Care Ontario. And governments should be quick to institute educational campaigns about these preventable deaths, say authors of the study released yesterday.

To deny same-sex marriage is now deemed anti-Canadian. Partisan leadership which denies it is out.

This makes me angry. Democracy is the right each one of us has to hold and express openly his or her views of what is or ought to be in and of Canada.

What an irony that a minority interest group -- lesbians and gays -- so brave and strenuous in fighting out from their closets to make their public case with much success, now exults so far as to insist that any politician who refuses to stop critical motions of homosexuals' aims, should not and does not have a hope for power. No civic leadership for them! The newly righteous speak.

Thorsell has passed by the core of democracy which dissent provides in keeping a society free.

. . . . we have come to expect blurred kid/adult boundaries -- and not just in movies.

[. . . .]The average age of video game players was 18 in 1990, 29 in 2003. Fewer than one third of below-thirties voted in the last election. More 18-49 year olds watch the Cartoon Network than CNN. These trends suggest there is no longer a clear chronological cutoff point to youth.

[. . . .] Kidults are stalled between what used to be well-defined, continuous stages of growth. You grew up, went to school, got a job, got married. Marriage was exciting; it signified taking on an adult's responsibility and was the one sure measure of your independence and maturity. Writer Joseph Epstein recalls: "Everything in the culture of the 1950s provoked one to grow up. The ideal, in the movies and in life, was adulthood."

[. . . .] Marriage and motherhood-scorning feminism is the ideology behind decades of education that validates self-entitlement without responsibility, while actively encouraging sexual awareness in children. Feminism encourages early autonomy from parents, and in the process lends exaggerated importance to destructive peer pressure. Early ripe, early rot. Childhood has been banished: by 18, kids are sexually surfeited and jaded, ironically programmed to disengage sex from intimacy and the trust that leads to commitment.

[. . . .](Kidults hate President Bush because he put aside his early immaturity and soberly embraced responsible adulthood.)

According to sociologist Frank Furendi, "Adulthood has got nothing attractive about it anymore. . . .

In certain Ottawa circles there's a code word for the aggressive lobbyists that work for Paul Martin. Ottawa insiders call them "thugs." . . . . They know how to put pressure on the media and the government in a very serious way.

Better than that, the media and the "thugs" like each other. The "thugs" fill the media in on Martin's motives and spin doctor any problem he might come up against right into orbit. . . .

The "thugs" do their jobs so well that no one remembers that Manley was the best minister in the Chrétien government and the only one who had any reasonable contact with the Bush presidency.

The "thugs" are particularly good at television. . . . .

if a reporter steps out of line he can be cut out of the loop and have no access, which means no Martin stories to cover . . .

. . . Whatever the "thugs" are up to transparency is not the word to describe it. . . . and the democratic deficit becomes larger and larger.

[. . . .]What the "thugs" and their pollsters are telling Martin is to move left and dismantle the NDP's base of strength. Reclaim your father's legacy . . . .

They're also advising Martin to get as far away from the Chretien legacy as he possibly can. . . .

The "thugs" know their politics, but what they know best is how to lobby for their clients and charge them hefty fees. There's already talk of Earnscliffe splitting off and perhaps selling its polling wing so as to be able to keep on lobbying for the big corporate clients while sidestepping conflict of interest problems.

Even today, 34 years after our sodomy laws were overturned by the Trudeau government, traditional observers of all religious faiths present in Canada, and many non-traditional and non-religious people as well, believe homosexual acts are morally wrong. They do not agree that homosexuality is an "identity question". They can also dispute all the pseudo-science brought forward to push that idea. Bill C-250 can only be intended as a new way of shutting them up. [. . . .]

Bill C-250 thus flies in the face of BOTH our traditional moral beliefs AND our secular legal principles.

In my view, a law which restricts freedom of speech, while turning the traditional moral order upside down, is worth defeating, even in the Senate.