The federal Liberal party has recently been experiencing hard times. An Ipsos Reid Poll in October indicated that the party had only 25% support among Canadians – an Ekos poll taken in the last week of October showed Liberal support at 26%, down even from the 28% support received by the party under its former leader, Stéphane Dion.
There are a number of reasons for this lack of support, not the least of which is the fact that Canadians have not warmed to Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff.
This may change with the appointment of Ignatieff’s new Chief of Staff, Peter Donolo, who previously worked as communications director for Prime Minister Jean Chretien. At the present time, however, Canadians do not seem comfortable with Mr. Ignatieff.
Liberals Are In Past
Another reason for the Liberals’ problems may be due to the fact that the Liberal party has not moved with the times in regard to social issues. Instead it has become mired in past policies, set in its heyday in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This retrogression was demonstrated by the Liberal Party when it marched in the Ottawa gay pride parade this summer under the banner, “The 69 position”. This referred to the 1969 omnibus bill, which decriminalized homosexual sex for those over 21 years of age. (See REALity September/October 2009, “The Way We Were, Trudeau’s Stamp of Corruption”, page 12). An editorial in the homosexual newspaper, Capital Xtra (September 30, 2009), urges the Liberal party to reflect a new generation of “gay-friendly” legislation following the precedent set in 1969, for example: by modernizing divorce and family laws to reflect the fact that marriage is no longer a life long commitment; allowing freedom to access explicit pornographic images on the Internet; and striking down so-called “antiquated” laws prohibiting restrictions on erotic mail, lewd performances and all sodomy. This gives rise to concern that the federal Liberals, well known for their unhesitating support of all homosexual demands in the past, will be doing so again, if the Liberals regain power.
Certainly, the federal Liberals have unquestioningly supported all feminist demands. The federal Liberal women’s caucus has prepared three volumes of the Pink Book – volume III was released in late October: Michael Ignatieff has happily endorsed it. The Pink Book includes the usual feminist special demands for a national day care program, pay equity, preventing violence against women, establishing an office of Commissioner for Gender Equality, a gender based analysis of all federal legislation, etc., etc. The feminists’ demands are endless, unimaginative, narrow, and based on debunked statistics.
The Liberal Party has also promised to restore the notorious Court Challenges Program – another nightmare. This boondoggle only serves the purposes of left-wing special interest groups, such as feminists and homosexual/lesbian organizations, to cover their legal costs in launching legal challenges to further their agenda.
Why don’t the Liberals deal with today’s problems, such as the breakdown of the family (see “Family Under the Spotlight”, p. 4), policies to assist women in balancing paid employment with their family responsibilities, family taxation, fixing our health care system, unemployment, and the problems arising in regard to private pension funds, etc.?
Liberals Support Special Interest Funding
The reason that the Liberals are so keen on special interest funding may be because of their party’s belief that the state can achieve utopia, where the imperfections of mankind cease to exist by endless government intervention on behalf of a parade of victims. Hence, the enormous special interest grants distributed during the Liberals’ time in power. Mr. Trudeau began this special interest funding early in the affluent 1970s. Mr. Trudeau argued that the government funding of the “under dog” would amount to “participatory democracy”. Significantly, this practice had the advantage of making special interest groups beholden to the government. Also, this policy greatly advanced the Liberal government’s own agenda. For example, in 2003 the Liberal government moved toward decriminalizing prostitution. Under the Access to Information Act, REAL Women discovered that between 2004-2006, prostitute associations had received nearly $700,000 in grants from the Liberals to promote decriminalization (see REALity, Sept/Oct. 2008 p. 5, “The Former Liberal Government and Prostitution”).
Today, the Conservatives are still funding special interest groups, (See “Status of Women Must Be Disbanded”, p. 1). Though the Conservatives have tried to cut back on these grants, they have not been very successful in doing so due to backlash from the groups insisting on their “entitlements”. In fact, the Conservatives lost seats in Quebec in the last election due to their attempt to reduce arts funding.
On the other hand, in late October, Mr. Ignatieff (at a meeting with arts stakeholders in Montreal) agreed to double the budget for Canada Council for the Arts, provide stable funding for CBC, and re-establish the cultural funding that the Conservatives had managed to cut.
The Liberals remain incensed that ever-increasing buckets of cash are not being handed out to special interest groups as they have done on a regular basis. They apparently attribute this failure of the Conservatives to their alleged “hatred” of special interest groups. According to Liberal Whip Roger Cuzner (Cape Breton, Canso) Hansard, September 14, 2009, p. 4910:
He [Prime Minister Harper] needs absolute power so he can teach his enemies a lesson, and he makes it clear just who his enemies are: women, minorities, anyone who dares to fight to protect their charter rights.
When will political parties learn that special interest groups do not represent the public, but serve only their own interests? Grants to them are a waste of taxpayers’ money – and a tax on our patience.
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