cannabisnews.com: Senate Comes Out Smoking as Opposition Goes to Pot





Senate Comes Out Smoking as Opposition Goes to Pot
Posted by CN Staff on September 09, 2002 at 09:26:55 PT
By Chantal Hebert
Source: Toronto Star 
By surprising the country with a recommendation to legalize marijuana and by putting forward a substantial body of argument to back it up, a special Senate committee has managed to trigger an instant and passionate national discussion.Since last week, the marijuana debate has been giving the ratification of the Kyoto protocol some solid competition for space in the papers and electronic media.
Taken together, the two issues have stolen the spotlight from the federal opposition parties, three of whom had chosen last week to gather their caucuses to prepare for the fall session of Parliament. Not that anything of consequence was lost as a result. At first glance, the opposition parties are set to spend yet another political season putting in competing claims for a bigger ledge from which to take shots at the Liberals rather than providing Canadians with compelling policy reasons to give any of them more space.Never has Canada had so many opposition voices and rarely has the opposition contributed so little bold or original thinking to the national debate.Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to remember the last time in recent years that one of the federal opposition parties broke out of its reactive shell to inspire a major public policy discussion. Take the New Democratic Party. These days, it is complaining that its leadership campaign is getting short shrift in the media. But one's eyes glaze over as one takes stock of the generalities on offer on the Web sites of its leading candidates.The NDP may claim to be the party of medicare but none of its leadership bright lights seems capable, so far, of bridging the gap between wishful thinking for a more effective program and the reality of funding it.Nor, for that matter, are any of the other opposition parties. In this case, as in that of marijuana, the most exhaustive parliamentary contribution to the debate is going to be coming from the Senate.Even before it issues a final report next month, the Senate committee headed by Liberal Michael Kirby has provided more challenging input to the discussion than all the opposition parties combined.A case could be made that, given the risks of getting mugged either by the competition or the media early on in the game these days, only non-elected bodies such as the Senate or various think-tanks can afford to test-market innovative policy directions.That may be true in the midst of an election campaign, when there is so much conflicting competition for the public's attention. But what about between elections, when — as is the case of all opposition parties — one has so little to lose ?One of the reasons for the rise of the Reform Party was its willingness to explore new policy avenues. Since then, the failure of the federal Tories to use their decade in exile to replenish their policy store has gone a long way to keeping its right-wing competitor in business. And it is probably no coincidence that, just as the Alliance seems to have lost much of its early policy impetus, it is out of traction in public opinion.In Ontario in 1995, Mike Harris brought the Tories back to power on the basis of a platform that most observers originally described as suicidal.In Quebec, these days, voters are bypassing the traditional parties to flock to the untested Action démocratique party, in large part because of its willingness to venture into policy areas that the Liberals and the Parti Québécois had come to treat as minefields.The ADQ may not have a track record in government, but it does not lack controversial policies. From a moratorium on the sovereignty debate to the introduction of school vouchers, an end to ironclad job security in the public service and a bigger private hand in health care, Mario Dumont stands for notions that Quebec's chattering classes had tended to consider as anathema to the province's voters.Indeed, when the ADQ started to surge in the polls last spring, both the PQ and the Liberals felt they would promptly deal with the challenge by exposing the main planks of the party's platform. The thinking was that the more Quebecers found out about Dumont's ideas, the less they would find to like about his party.Instead, the ADQ was commended for having the honesty and the courage to tackle contentious issues.And now, six months later, Dumont's party is so far ahead in the polls that, if an election took place tomorrow, it would win a majority government.Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)Author: Chantal HebertPublished: September 9, 2002Copyright: 2002 The Toronto Star Contact: lettertoed thestar.com Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Related Articles:Canadian Senate Calls for Marijuana Legalizationhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14049.shtmlThe Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13987.shtmlPot Less Harmful Than Alcohol: Senate Report http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13986.shtmlSenate Committee Recommends Legalizing Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13985.shtml
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