My party's heartbreaking idiocy.
I was too nervous to watch the whole debate, only the last ten minutes in which Paul Martin was fine, in fact the best of the bunch... so I'm feeling good. And then I go read the Globe and Mail and... good fucking God. What the hell were the Liberals thinking re the notwithstanding clause?
I am a Liberal. I want to believe in the Liberals. I went to the Liberal site to see if they can convince me with their spin. But their press-release on the issue reeks of flopsweat. I'm totally unconvinced that ditching the notwithstanding clause will in any way "protect" Charter rights. I'm not even sure how exactly the Liberals thought anyone would believe that it could.
The Globe and Mail report just gives me a bigger headache. Martin's tactic in the debate, and in the campaign, is to defend the Canadian identity:
That prompted Mr. Martin to say the debate was "really getting down" to its central issue. "We are talking about values," he said, adding that Mr. Harper said in a 1997 speech to an American group that Canada would never have a national identity as great as theirs.
"This is the issue that we've got to talk about," said Mr. Martin. "The basic value gap that exists between us and quite simply I don't believe that Canada was built on American Conservative values … America is our neighbour, it is not our nation."
Which is well and good except for the small problem that judicial supremacy is an American institution, not a Canadian one. The Canadian system is based on Parlimentary supremacy, not on "checks and balances" between the legislature, executive and courts. Martin's proposed constitutional amendment would make Canada more American, not less. And both liberals and conservatives in the US have at various points feared and complained about the abuse of power by the appointed federal courts and especially the Supreme Court... imposing decisions on social issues that are too progressive or "elitist" for the population, or, on the other end of the spectrum, curtailing the power of Congress to legislate and regulate across state lines. The basic problem is that the courts don't just "enforce" Charter/Constitutional rights. They also interpret them. Anyone who follows US politics at all knows that this is what it boils down to: judges and the legal theory they rely on is as polarized into liberal and conservative schools as are the political parties themselves.
This doesn't help either:
When it was pointed out to him after the debates that he had once said he would use the notwithstanding clause to protect churches' rights to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, Mr. Martin said his position had changed.
The thing is, of course, that Martin was right to threaten to use the notwithstanding clause then, and there will be other times when using the notwithstanding clause will be the right choice. Martin's promise to get rid of it isn't "scary" as some Globe and Mail commenters are saying, and I really doubt this is some sinister ploy to increase Prime Ministerial power by heightening the importance of judicial appointments. It's just a half-baked proposal and lousy, stink-to-high-heavens politics. It makes Martin look opportunistic, unprinicpled and desperate. How could the Liberal strategists not see that? Was this a spontaneous thing?
Paul Martin is a liberal and a scrapper. He's handled the softwood lumber dispute beautifully. His position on Iraq was always correct, more so than Chretien's crowd-pleasing demagoguery on the subject. In the 90s, he made the tough, necessary choices to rescue us from our insolvency and from dependence on the US economy. The sponsorship scandal was not his fault. I looked forward to his becoming Prime Minister; I joined the Party when he did. And I wanted him to have a majority government, to have the chance to govern. There's no longer any chance of that, and by running such an appalling campaign, he's probably forced himself into the position where he'll have to resign the leadership if his party can't eke out another minority government.
It begs the question: what difference does good governance make when you chuck it all away during campaigns?
Update: Dave of Galloping Beaver agrees with me in comments but says Martin is almost certainly just trying to reinforce his dedication to seeing the gay marriage bill stand. A friend emails to say he agrees in principle but that I'm overreacting; that the public won't care. And at least one blogger I like thinks Martin hit a bullseye. The polls will tell us, I guess.
I am a Liberal. I want to believe in the Liberals. I went to the Liberal site to see if they can convince me with their spin. But their press-release on the issue reeks of flopsweat. I'm totally unconvinced that ditching the notwithstanding clause will in any way "protect" Charter rights. I'm not even sure how exactly the Liberals thought anyone would believe that it could.
The Globe and Mail report just gives me a bigger headache. Martin's tactic in the debate, and in the campaign, is to defend the Canadian identity:
That prompted Mr. Martin to say the debate was "really getting down" to its central issue. "We are talking about values," he said, adding that Mr. Harper said in a 1997 speech to an American group that Canada would never have a national identity as great as theirs.
"This is the issue that we've got to talk about," said Mr. Martin. "The basic value gap that exists between us and quite simply I don't believe that Canada was built on American Conservative values … America is our neighbour, it is not our nation."
Which is well and good except for the small problem that judicial supremacy is an American institution, not a Canadian one. The Canadian system is based on Parlimentary supremacy, not on "checks and balances" between the legislature, executive and courts. Martin's proposed constitutional amendment would make Canada more American, not less. And both liberals and conservatives in the US have at various points feared and complained about the abuse of power by the appointed federal courts and especially the Supreme Court... imposing decisions on social issues that are too progressive or "elitist" for the population, or, on the other end of the spectrum, curtailing the power of Congress to legislate and regulate across state lines. The basic problem is that the courts don't just "enforce" Charter/Constitutional rights. They also interpret them. Anyone who follows US politics at all knows that this is what it boils down to: judges and the legal theory they rely on is as polarized into liberal and conservative schools as are the political parties themselves.
This doesn't help either:
When it was pointed out to him after the debates that he had once said he would use the notwithstanding clause to protect churches' rights to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, Mr. Martin said his position had changed.
The thing is, of course, that Martin was right to threaten to use the notwithstanding clause then, and there will be other times when using the notwithstanding clause will be the right choice. Martin's promise to get rid of it isn't "scary" as some Globe and Mail commenters are saying, and I really doubt this is some sinister ploy to increase Prime Ministerial power by heightening the importance of judicial appointments. It's just a half-baked proposal and lousy, stink-to-high-heavens politics. It makes Martin look opportunistic, unprinicpled and desperate. How could the Liberal strategists not see that? Was this a spontaneous thing?
Paul Martin is a liberal and a scrapper. He's handled the softwood lumber dispute beautifully. His position on Iraq was always correct, more so than Chretien's crowd-pleasing demagoguery on the subject. In the 90s, he made the tough, necessary choices to rescue us from our insolvency and from dependence on the US economy. The sponsorship scandal was not his fault. I looked forward to his becoming Prime Minister; I joined the Party when he did. And I wanted him to have a majority government, to have the chance to govern. There's no longer any chance of that, and by running such an appalling campaign, he's probably forced himself into the position where he'll have to resign the leadership if his party can't eke out another minority government.
It begs the question: what difference does good governance make when you chuck it all away during campaigns?
Update: Dave of Galloping Beaver agrees with me in comments but says Martin is almost certainly just trying to reinforce his dedication to seeing the gay marriage bill stand. A friend emails to say he agrees in principle but that I'm overreacting; that the public won't care. And at least one blogger I like thinks Martin hit a bullseye. The polls will tell us, I guess.
1 Comments:
I agree, Laura. I have received a clump of emails from some of our American readers asking for an explanation of the Notwithstanding Clause. I had answered them and then considered doing a post on the subject, with the explanation that parliamentary supremacy and provincial legislative independence was protected from the possibility of a constructionist Supreme Court. As I stated to one respondent, "It guarantees that the final word on legislation remains in the hands of the body elect as opposed to the body elite..."
Martin's suggestion is ridiculous and I believe he knows that. I understand what he was trying to do, but it was a desperation move which would ultimately damage Confederation and provide no protection from ludicrous interpretations of the law.
Do not lose heart. I believe that this is one promise that Martin would never keep. It was made to force Harper's position into the open. It gives a new meaning to the term "red herring".
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