Paul Martin, in a scrum with reporters, after releasing the Liberal platform this afteroon;
“Let me be very, very clear.”
“The fact is that same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to an abortion are the kind of Canadian values that built this country. They are the values of my father and great Canadians like Tommy Douglas and I will not be the Prime Minister who goes down in history as having taken them away.
“The fact is that they are fundamentally more important than the preservation of Canada’s single-tier public health care system.”
(Or something to that effect.)
Update – The NDP have noticed. This is really their issue and if they can play their cards right, they’ll keep the soft NDP support from wavering to the Liberals. I’d be making a big deal of this, if I were Jack Layton.
Nothing on Conservative.ca yet. That may be tactical, leaving the field open for Layton. They’re not competing for the same votes here.
Canadians have been conditioned by the liberals to believe there are no sacrifices to be made to get where you want to go in life. Our forefathers knew otherwise, and they built a country because they understood that.
As Martin’s campaign unravels by the day he will be more panicked and be prone to making more irratic ill-concieved statements.
When it comes to the notwithstanding clause and those”scary” conservatives, Paul Martin has a unique recall of history. Junior seems to forget this:
Paul Martin Sr. refused to go along with Pierre Trudeau�s legalization of abortion and was banished to the Senate for his principled stand.
Please someone in the media question him on this the next time we hear about the country his father built and its values.
Liberal Health Minister
Clinics could face fines in Ontario
Toronto Star – 4 hours ago
A Vancouver-based private company wanting to set up medical clinics in Ontario is flirting with huge fines because of its plans to charge patients $3,500 to join, Health Minister George Smitherman says. Smitherman … via cnews
Steve, the fear-mongering won’t work. Liberal back-benchers have already tried to submit private mamber’s bills on abortion to no avail.
I like the 6 week – 3 month cooling off period. I told my son who’s in college now so he’s much smarter than me that we should allow mother’s to choose for the first 9 months and fathers for the next 18 years. 🙂 He wasn’t amused.
Sam, Chretien stood in the house of commons and committed 800 troops to Iraq – then recanted when he realized it was the eve of the Quebec election. Martin, too, wanted troops in Iraq as posted here several times where he is directly quoted in several media. And of course, then Defence Minister, and new Liberal leader in waiting Michael “Iggy Pop” Ignatieff are also strong supporters of Canada’s role as a traditional ally. Over the years though, Liberals have chosen to turn a blind eye to all sorts of atrocities committed by dictators, particularly if they have a vested interest vis a vis oil, shipping, trade, to do so. They’re only interested in human rights when protecting them doesn’t cost them anything.
Good god, Paul Martin is losing it, isn’t he? As a Conservative party member in a same sex marriage, I am not at all threatened by a Conservative majority government.
We have to get some accountability legislation passed and make it much more difficult to divert (translation: steal) tax dollars.
Martin is saying anything, no matter how outrageous, to try and get the focus off the FACT that the Liberal gov’t has diverted billions of tax dollars.
maz2…What’s your point? You’ve made a statement without an opinion or conclusion. There are people here who are not members of your clique. Please clarify. Also there are people that want private health care and are willing to pay whatever it costs.
Kyla…Are you actually married in Canada with a Canadian marriage certificate?
Just as Harpers group is involved with profitting off the poor around the world, thats why we need a minority government, to create the laws that will stop the profiteering off things like the oil for food.
Power corp.has just as many conservative as liberal friends.
Kate: I knew your “something to that effect” quasi-quote was a paraphrase of the actual comments in the link. However, PMPM actually has used those phrases before – just not literally in the sequence you depicted. It was fun to play rebuttal – particularly this line:
“..and I will not be the Prime Minister who goes down in history as having taken them away.”
TRUE. Your Prime Ministership will end on January 23, 2006. You will be spared the burden of a job for which you are ill-equipped.
Further your affiant sayeth naught.
sam…You’ve made at least 1 good point. Give Harper’s conservatives 4 years of political power and they will unravel as fast any other political party in Canadian history.
I suppose if this country was built on same sex marriage and abortion, I should count myself damn lucky to be here.
Who knew?!?!?
correction…..unravel as fast as every other political party
So Homosexuality and Abortion are what Canada is built on? That’s her foundation? Not Freedom? Not Liberty?
Gad! How did Canadians vote creatures like this into office? What, are they closet US Democrats? Yeesh!
Wow, if those are the values this country was built on, we are doomed. Thankfully, it is not true.
Here’s a new slogan:
“As Canadian as abortion and gay marriage”
Yes, this is not the time or place for an endless abortion debate, I jumped in on it because there was a troll posting to smear the Conservative party with one of the old classics, “the abortion issue”. True, there are lots of Liberal MPs almost fanatically opposed to abortion, every party no doubt has different individual opinions. Given the historical pattern of “socialist” governments executing people I would expect the NDP to have a deeply hidden capital punishment agenda.
It’s my personal opinion that those dogs don’t hunt, that toothpaste ain’t going back into the tube, it’s simply not rational to expect to govern this country on a platform that includes banning abortions or bringing back capital punishment. Whether you agree with it or not, these actually are widespread “Canadian Values” and, in a democracy, you’ve got to have a sense of what the citizens want if you want to be elected. It hurts the Conservative party when supporters make a lot of noise over these issues, my opinion is Conservatives should shut up about them, leave them off the table, focus on the main issues of governance.
Who knows what the future holds? Massive economic depression, nuclear war, a global epidemic, $150 oil? There may be profound future changes to the pulse of the nation – a massive resurgence of Christianity, a hardcore socialist majority government – that could make the banning of abortion or implementation of capital punishment viable political issues but, at this point in time no party can sensibly embrace these issues and it costs votes to tie these issues to a party. “Moderation in all things” is the democratic way to fly, without any hints of a “hidden agenda”, whether one likes it or not.
Canada was founded by a Conservatives, Reformists, Populists and Monarchists….not a patrician Liberal plutocrat amongst them…of course this is because the fathers were “Statesmen” not a cadre of “entitlement” obsessed kleptocrats like the Martin Liberals.
They constituted Canada upon the principle of a decentralized, distribution of power between sparate but equal confederal parners….this was done as a safe guard against political tyranny resulting from the concentration of power in one governing body ( Canada had undegone 2 civil revolts to overthrow corruption in government and acheive responsible representative democracy). Thery also modeled civil rights upon the British standard except for Quebec which was allowed the Napoleonic code…..non of this realtes to the crass electioneering Martin is doing by turning personal moral choices into law as charter “entitlements”.
Martin Jr’s rank corruption, his wish of charter concentration of power in the PMO and its appointed court, is the very evil that the founders wanted to avoid with their limited, decentralized power confederal governing model.
Not only is Martin and his revisionist-statist cadre dangerous to confederation but if the founding fathers were alive I know two of them would cross the commons floor to “thrash” him (as was the practice of the day) for defaming “Canadain values” with associations to infanticide and solemnizing sodomy.
I can see the reverend TC Douglas choking on these degenerate “values” being sold as “rights”. You recall TC was fond of the idea of state sterilization of “idiots and devients” (eugenics)…If Tommy had his way SSMs would be performed in state mental institutions after the participants had eugenic treatments and idiots like Martin Jr would not be able to pollute the gene pool.
Right from the very start this country was born of graft and srife, corrupt to the very core, fighting over who gets what.
Read your History
A troll didn’t move the conversation to abortion…this was the opening comment on it…
“All Kate did was clarify what the freedom to choose means – the freedom to choose to kill your child.”
I should have ignored it…I just came over to see if you guys were talking about the position Derek Zeisman has put the CPC in, so close to the election.
Also, I think the founding mothers and fathers intended to create a country that was democratic and as time has developed the principle of freedoms, rights and protection of minorities has expanded farther than they invisioned.
Sure, they knew about abortion and homosexuality, but didn’t think or didn’t act.
Bullwinkle ponders: “Last night during the debate Martin mentioned that by allowing Property Rights to individuals that that in fact would have severe ramifications to education, health care, etc. Can someone explain to me how that is possible.”
In Martin’s kleptocratic utopian state the state claims ownership of all property for the holey cause of redistribution on a patronage basis….we can’t have this executive Racketeering fouled up with something as plebian as an individual having entitlement to own his own property!!! Only Kleptocrats are allowed entitlement to your property…sheesh get a clue eh 😉
“There are people here who are not members of your clique.”
Cliques! ..A clique ! …like in high school?!?!
And the clique members are conversing?!?!
Without an inclusion level that Ron seems comfortable with.
For the love of God Maz2 ..think of RON!
Ron ,Worry NOT.
Let me be very very clear, exclusion is fundamentally very very er uh… exclusive.
The fact is ,we will leave no minority behind , we are factually a country of minorities, that need to be protected from the majority.
We’ll do that by removing the NWC , and a supreme court justice will of course make Maz2 not exclude you and then you’ll be very very fundamentally not excluded ever again.
And thats a fact….JACK !
Thanks for the “progressive” revisionism of our history Steve…this is becoming so transparent it’s insulting. If the founders “thought” about sodomites and abortionists you will find their “thoughts” codified in the law…and both proclivities were outlawed in the founders first criminal code. Neither is a right and our nation was certainly not founded on the vulgar political agendas of mercenary abortionists, gay lobbyists or the materialist obsessions of Kleptocrats.
Well steve, many of us who support women’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy don’t buy into the left’s insane and repulsive position that a fetus is nothing more than a tumor or a piece of gristle to be surgically removed. That kind of dehumanizing degenerate thought is why “socialist” governments always end up executing lots of people, they cheapen and dehumanize human life out of their frustration at the challenges of transforming human nature. You’re a troll when you start preaching your ignorant dogma about when life begins, when killing a human being in a viable form is OK and when it’s not. We may be prepared to accept the reality of abortion but we’re not going to see it as something much less than what it really is.
Paul says:
Abortion, and SSM more important than preserving our public health care system.
I’m not making this up.
(there goes the seniors vote)
Zeisman is toast. His papers cannot legally be withdrawn this late in the campaign,says Harper. But if he should be elected, he will not be allowed to sit as a Tory until all matters are cleared up. THe charge is not a criminal one but a civil one involved customs administration. Either way, Harper says it’s too serious and so the party will not allow him to sit as a Tory.
the liberals have got to the point that SSM,SCREWING WITH THE CONSTITUTION & NOW Abortion is all that is left, These are THEIR TOP priorities? What about the FARMER’S in this land, because of BSE, Wheat, Dairy to name a few without these guy’s WE DON”T EAT. What about HEALTHCARE, TAXES, LUMBER/FORESTRY,GUNS/CRIME/MOLESTER’S,SMALL BUSINESS,CHILDCARE, THE LIST GOES ON & ON LIKE THE EVERREADY RABBIT, Neglect to these issues has created serious problems in Canada. TOP PRIORITY FOR THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA, SMOKE SCREEN JOE PUBLIC TO STAY IN POWER.
One thing I mean’t to mention, have you noticed that every time Martin or his cronies give speaches it is LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR or EVIQUIVCOLY CLEAR god I cant’t even spell it!. But let me make this PERFECTLY CLEAR, IF MARTIN was around in the time of DIEF THE CHEIF, TOMMY DOUGLAS OR LESTER B. PEARSON THEY WOULD HAVE TOSSED HIM DOWN THE STEP’S OF PARLIMENT HILL, “THAT’S THE KIND OF CANADA THEY BUILT” HIS OLDMAN SHOULD HAVE BOXED HIS EARS & KICKED HIM IN THE ASS A FEW TIMES TOO.
‘American Masters’? Are these their painters or musicians? Get a grip Sam.
We wimp Canadians want a ‘world gov’t’ as characterized by the U.N. but haven’t the guts to deploy our troops in the service of the downtrodden and oppressed of vicious dictators, unless the corrupt and dysfunctional U.N. says so. Where were the U.N when people were slaughtered in Cambodia? Rwanda? Bosnia/Kosovo? Darfur?
OTOH, Iraqi’s have an emerging democracy and the Taliban are no longer oppressing millions of women and children.
As for the Free Trade Agreement, it’s resulted in a tripling of trade between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. with huge benefits to all three.
Is Paul M. claiming our ‘great economy’ is in spite of the Free Trade Agreement?
As for “allowing American companies the unfettered right to buy Canadian companies and move production to the low-wage southern United States.”, it cuts both ways. Lots of Canadians have invested in American countries, and if our wages are too high to attract capital the situation obviously must be addressed through competition and not further regulation.
Be thankful that the US is WILLING to share a common security perimeter, or a single immigration policy, or an integrated North American defence system – for we are screwed without them. And why is it that leftwingers love the ‘continentalism’ of the EU, but loath the idea of a North American alliance to compete with them?
Imagine a world where the U.S. withdrew completely: no more financial aid, no more food aid, no more military, no more trade, etc….. do you really think the world would be a better place?
CHOICE is the word that Pro Abortion lobbyists picked to describe their movement at the time of Row v Wade. It is a wonderful all inclusive word. Included in the concept of �choice� is everyone from the hugely profitable abortion provider industry, needy women in desperate circumstances, to people who personally and morally abhor abortion but would not want to force their morals on anyone else. Choice is political correctness at it�s strongest point.
Mary, if you drank every time Paul Martin waved his arms about during the French debate, I would have no other choice but to conclude that you are now dead from alcohol poisoning..lol
OK, cool it.
This is a post about Martin’s promise to remove the NWC and how that relates to the two–tier debate.
No more offtopic, including abortion debate.
Let me be clear on this – a few days PMPM’s dad (PM Sr.) was a key architect of Canada’s “single tier” [Unless you have the pull to get into NDMC or the $$ to go to Florida] healthcare system, a system that is basically the sin qua non of “da canadian value”, but today he’s a married homosexual who had an abortion? Who knew?