Will We Have a Socialist Prime Minister in Canada Within Weeks?

No one saw this coming. With a week to go, Canada stands in mortal danger of electing a socialist prime minister dedicated to wild spending on every left-wing special interest group imaginable.

The National Post and Globe and Mail are both reporting on new polling numbers released today that show that the socialist NDP has, for the first time ever, passed the Liberal Party and now stands in second place. The Conservatives have dipped a bit and are projected to win a reduced number of seats (around 130) and the NDP may win up to 100 with half coming from Quebec. The Bloc is dropping into oblivion and could win as few as 14 seats.

But it is the Liberal Party of Canada that is in shocking shape. Michael Ignatief, the Liberal leader, has been campaigning from the left in this election and voters have apparently bought his ideas (i.e. billions of dollars in spending promises) but concluded that the NDP is a more credible party for implementing them.

If the current numbers held, the NDP would end up with 95-100 seats, the Liberals with 65-70 and the Conservatives with approximately 130-135. In our Parliamentary system the party with the most seats gets to try to form a government first. If it fails because no party has a majority and it cannot find a coalition partner, then one of the other parties might be allowed to try. And so, if the NDP got the support of the Liberals, then Jack Layton would become Prime Minister. The Bloc would not be part of the coalition, but it would have 50-60 seats from Quebec in it.

What would this mean for government policy?

1. Well, for starters, the NDP, never thinking it would ever have a chance at power, has made expensive spending promises to every left-wing special interest groups imaginable - 29.5 billion dollars worth in fact. This has the making of a fiscal disaster.

2. NDP foreign policy would shift to outright and blatant support for those forces working for the destruction of the State of Israel. Radical Islamists everywhere would relax and watch the Canadian government throw Israel under the bus and loosen ties with the US on many issues.

3. The NDP is full of true believers in global warming and the new environmentalist religion - pantheistic Marxism. An NDP government would likely work to reduce Canada to third world living conditions while transferring as much wealth as possible to the UN, third world socialist leaders and the big corporations which stand ready to profit from cap and trade.

4. On social issues, euthanasia would be pushed and maybe become legal during the life of an NDP-Liberal coalition government. There would be no chance of limiting or eliminating the Orwellian-named "Human Rights Commissions" that do so much to limit human rights, especially free speech.

Is there any hope of averting this catastrophe?

The only potentially silver lining in this situation is the fact that the polling numbers became public with a week to go. That may give Canadians time to sit back and think twice as to whether or not they really want to elect a socialist party to power.

If the Conservatives respond with hard-hitting attack ads targeting the radical agenda of the NDP and ask Canadians if a radical shift in fiscal policy is wise at this time, they may succeed in stopping the momentum. But they also need centrist Liberal voters to shift Conservative in hopes of stopping the NDP. This may present an opportunity for a Conservative majority by destroying the Liberal Party with its left wing going NDP and its right wing going Conservative. We just have to hope that the Liberal vote collapses in Ontario, especially in the GTA.

But nobody knows at this point. We are truly in uncharted waters.

Its Amateur Hour in Parliament

When even the Liberal-leaning columnists like Don Martin think you are a joke, you know the jig as Liberal Party Leader is almost up. If he wasn't playing games with the lives of unborn children in order to score cheap political points, Ignatieff might actually deserve some sympathy.

"Stiff competition for the worst misstep of this gaffe-plagued parliamentary session ended with a no-contest loser on Tuesday when amateur miscalculations and aloof behavior backfired on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, sending his bewildered MPs slumping in their seats.

A needlessly provocative Liberal move to sneak abortion back on the agenda, aimed at dividing the Conservatives, actually drove a wedge deep into the Official Opposition. In a result political veterans cannot recall happening for years, if ever, the Liberals were defeated by their own MPs on a motion Mr. Ignatieff had steadfastly maintained was a defining issue. In the words of a senior Liberal MP: "Ouch".

The motion had demanded a "full range of reproductive health services" -- which loosely translates into birth control and abortion -- be part of any foreign aid funding for maternal and child assistance. The motion's defeat was a jaw-dropping setback for a party gathering this weekend to ponder its longevity by developing a 2017 vision for a 150-year-old Canada.

Instead of unleashing obvious heckles, usually boisterous Conservative MPs responded with sympathetic silence for severely battered Michael Ignatieff on Wednesday, perhaps sensing he faced enough opposition from his own ranks on this particular day. When they pity you in politics, you're halfway dead. . .

The mood was even more downbeat inside the Liberals' private caucus meeting a few hours earlier.

After Mr. Ignatieff rose to take responsibility for the voting debacle, sources say MPs sat on their hands and refused to applaud his act of contrition. Popular caucus whip Rodger Cuzner also rose to grovel and take responsibility, shrugging that he'd received the motion while living it up at a hockey game.

It now appears nobody bothered to declare the vote important enough to be whipped into compulsory Liberal MP support and, what's worse, nobody tried to round up every MP in the hours before the vote was called.

That explains the 13 Liberal no-shows and why a trio of pro-life Liberals felt they could stand with the government (and against their leader) without being seen as breaching caucus discipline.

Whatever procedural mixups took place, the damage caused by Liberals rising in person or by proxy to defeat their leader on a rare, firm party position is hard to understate. . .

The seeds of the motion's defeat lay in its strange wording. Had Liberals confined the focus to birth control provisions, stripping away any hint of abortion, the government would have been forced to support the plan and pro-life Liberals might have fallen in line.

But by piling on the rhetoric about "failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by George W. Bush" which linked international humanitarian assistance to anti-abortion beliefs, they handed the Conservatives an escape hatch from the trap."

Read the rest here.

"Abortion and Other Forms of Contraception" - Bob Rae

The pro-abortion extremism of the Liberal Party of Canada was on full display yesterday as they cynically attempted to force the Government of Canada into adopting a policy to force abortion on poor countries as the price of receiving aid designed to improve maternal health.

For weeks now Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff has been telling anyone who will listen that the best way to deal with too many poor people in the Third World is to shove abortion on them and let them kill their babies. This is "compassion" liberal style. What a travesty for a supposedly enlightened and progressive politician.

Now we have former NDP'er Bob Rae making a motion to take money away from real efforts to improve maternal health for poor women and spend it on abortion instead. And the motion failed. Now Ignatieff has egg on his face and the liberal caucus is split instead of the Government being embarrassed. Good stuff. This is from the Globe and Mail. Note the quotation of Rae in (my) bolding.

"Liberal attempts to ignite muffled anti-abortion sentiment on Conservative benches and foster doubts about the social policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper have been foiled from within.

A motion by Liberal MP Bob Rae demanding that the government’s maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions include “the full range of reproductive health options” was defeated by a vote of 144-138 yesterday when three Liberal MPs – all long-time opponents of abortion – voted against it.

The Tories immediately pounced on the result, saying it shows Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff does not have control of his own caucus.

There was much talk during the day about the wording of the motion, which did not specifically reference abortion. The New Democrats said that was a capitulation to the dissent within Liberal ranks.

Liberal MP Paul Szabo, who voted against the motion, told LifeSiteNews.com that he was caught off-guard by the topic of the motion, which, he said, was not raised at the party caucus meeting.

“I am a pro-life MP,” said Mr. Szabo, “ and there are many of my colleagues in the Liberal caucus who will protect the unborn in their decisions as parliamentarians, and should matters come before the House, they will continue to act accordingly.”

Mr. Rae said the party understands that it is not up to Canada to dictate the reproductive policies of other countries.

But, he told reporters, the Conservative government must make clear whether it intends to cut off funding to those international development groups that fund and facilitate abortion and other forms of contraception."

This is how Bob Rae thinks? He sees abortion as such a trivial matter that it is just another form of contraception? He can't distinguish between preventing a pregnancy and killing an unborn child? Does this mean he thinks abortion as a means of birth control is perfectly fine by him? Oh, yes, this is the great advocate of women's rights who has never been able to bring himself to condemn gendercide? What a piece of work.

The same Globe and Mail article rightly suggest the Liberal transparently cynical motivations in all of this and concern for mothers does not enter into it.

"Liberal Party polling has previously shown that abortion is an extremely powerful issue, one that is a game changer for many Canadians, especially women.

A Canadian Press/Harris-Decima survey released yesterday indicates 74 per cent of Canadians believe Mr. Harper’s plan to champion maternal and child health in developing countries should include government funding for contraception. But respondents were almost evenly split as to whether the initiative should include funding for abortion services, with 48 per cent opposed and 46 per cent in favour."

The Liberal motion also specifically mentioned the "right-wing policies of George W. Bush" in a blatant attempt to criticize the US and link Stephen Harper to George Bush's policies. They are just trying to use abortion (about which they have no moral convictions) as a wedge issue to swing a small demographic of feminist voters their way in the next election. I predict it will backfire just like yesterday's vote did.