Of late, Canadians have learned much about how rotten is the state of their government and the ruling Liberal party.
The country eventually will know from Justice John Gomery, after he has connected all the dots in revelations pouring out at the sponsorship inquiry, the extent to which Jean Chretien’s government contemptuously treated hardworking Canadian taxpayers.
In a recent cover story on the scandal in Maclean’s magazine, Paul Wells began, “Finally, there came a moment when it was raining tax dollars so hard in Quebec that even a resourceful man started running out of buckets to catch them.”
Canadians are being advised, however, by interested and disinterested parties, to wait until the full details of the Gomery commission are available before passing judgment on a minority Liberal government they elected a year ago.
But the putrid smell of corruption and sleaze emanating from Ottawa has become so foul the political health of the country demands Parliament be immediately fumigated less the rottenness of those who were architects of this scandal, and those who sat as silent accomplices, seep into our collective thinking, rendering us ethically incapacitated—as are so many of our elected representatives in the nation’s capital.
The odd aspect of this matter, though, is how some editorials and opinion columns are painting the opposition in Ottawa, particularly the Conservatives, as being irresponsible or worse for the rapid descent of the country’s politics into disrepute.
It is only natural that Liberal MPs, thrashing about as quarry harpooned by the Gomery hearings, would strive to stain their opponents with the slime they carry upon themselves.
It is not natural, nor informed, when editorial writers view opposition efforts to bring down a scandal-ridden government as being merely a grab for power and, hence, no better than the government’s effort to cling to power.
When such opinions are offered during the week marking the 60th anniversary of democracy’s victory over fascism, then it is time to ponder how well those who comment on politics understand our political system.
Our democracy and its institutions belong to the English tradition. The primary role of the main opposition party in this system of government—some would say the only role—is to expose defects of the ruling party in as many ways as it can, and as often as required, to keep the voting public informed.
It was this system of government that Canadians went forth to defend twice in a generation in the last century.
Of such a system, Sir Winston Churchill, the British wartime leader, famously said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed, it has been said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Churchill understood this system, respected it greatly and suffered its consequences. He brought his nation victory in the Second World War, yet was defeated at the polls in the spring of 1945, within weeks after the guns fell silent in Europe.
If the opposition is unable or unwilling to drive a stake through the heart of a government as rotten as the one that now sits in Ottawa, it will have failed in the primary function the system demands of it.
Moreover, the only effective weapon the opposition possesses within this system are procedural rules with which to stop Parliament from functioning, thereby preventing further harm to the country, when those claiming the right to govern are shown to be corrupt, inept, or both, and lacking numbers to defeat a confidence vote brought forward by the opposition.
When the opposition has performed as is required by the system, then it is time for the people to decide once again by whom they should be governed.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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