The subject of the e-mail was Martin’s logic is flawed (again) …
Charles,
1. In the leaders’ debate, Mr. Martin talked about 500,000 handguns in the hands of collectors, “one break-in” away from being used in a crime, and therefore the need for a ban on these guns.
I thought the killings in Toronto were being caused by illegal guns smuggled into Canada from the U.S.
2. Eliminating the “notwithstanding” clause in the Charter of Rights?
I suspect that Mr. Martin woke up this morning and thought, “I can’t believe I said something so stupid.”
Ernie
Regina, Sask.
Dear Ernie,
Martin is in the death rattle. It ain’t pretty.
Cheers, C
This is just some of the back and forth that goes on between a talk show host/columnist and a guy named Ernie who listens to Adler on Line (I leave out his last name and e-mail address because I guarantee anonymity to those who correspond with me).
Ernie in Regina is the ordinary Canadian who gets it.
The prime minister, a man seen for years as having well reasoned arguments, now appears to have taken leave of his senses.
For years he has been talking about himself as the defender of the charter. Now in the middle of a debate he decides to use the charter to create some kind of gotcha moment.
In a question he is fielding about values he suffers a rhetorical seizure. He asks Stephen Harper to join him in agreeing to kill the charter’s notwithstanding clause.
He was asking Harper to agree to put the final say over all constitutional issues into the hands of the Supreme Court.
In the United States that is precisely how it works.
But here is Martin proposing to Americanize the constitutional process in Canada.
If Harper had wanted to play Dr. Kevorkian to this terminal patient, he could have said:
“Sir, when will you abandon your fantasy that judges appointed by Liberal governments reflect mainstream Canadian values? When will you, Mr. Democratic Deficit, start to understand that in a Canadian democracy the people want to elect representatives who think about Canada the way they do, not the way Liberal judges do? And finally when will you stop Americanizing our country?”
Last week at this time, the breaking news around the planet was Ariel Sharon suffers massive stroke. Paul Martin was asked for a reaction and while doctors were tending to the Lion of Judah, our PM said he had offered condolences to the people of Israel.
Condolences? To a man who was still alive, and in the fight of his life? My inner Freud told me that Paul Martin was losing the political fight of his life and he knew it.
Does anyone doubt that the best doctors in Israel, a country with a two-tier health-care system where nobody waits for anything, will keep Ariel Sharon alive until well after Jan. 23?
Can Paul Martin’s spin doctors do the same for him?
We’re now reaching the crucial climax point in this column; I am supposed to string it all together with an inspiring quote from Milton or Shakespeare.
But instead, allow me offer you the words from an important movie in my life, The Big Lebowski, in which a character played by Sam Elliott might as well be talking about Paul Martin when he says, “Darkness warshed over the Dude. Darker than a black steer’s tookis on a moonless prairie night. There was nooooooo bottom.”
Say amen, Ernie.
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