donvonbra

Mme. Jean has dual citizenship, like many Canadians, including myself. I would hope my British citizenship will not disqualify me from becoming GG one day.

And our friend Stephen Harper has learned the perils of compromise on these hot-button social issues. He is proposing civil unions with the same legal status as hetero married folks. As a result he has got the gays pissed off at him who say the proposal is demeaning and also the religious right is mad because that don't want gays to have any rights at all. don

Laughing stock? I'm not sure I would go that far. If there is a top candidate for laughing stock-designate I would nominate Stephen Harper. The Church of Rome has become irrelevant. Part of that is a normal process of secularization that has been on-going since the Reformation and more recently by the efforts of several of the hierarchy to cover-up crimes committed by priests. The stature of the RC Church has not of course been helped by some bizarre attacks on the Harry Potter books and the novel "The Da Vinci Code". The church does not seem to be aware that these are not theological treatises but in fact works of fiction. don

I don't care about the monarchy. It's totally irrelevant to me and doesn't affect me in way. But for important posts like SC justices it can't be just left up to the head of government to make the decision. There needs to be some form of legislative oversight before such an appointment is finalized.

Appointing a SC justice IS part of the political process. The objective is to make it open, fair, allowing public input without turning the process into a circus. Right now it is a purely closed procedure.

What, an open process to appoint a Supreme Court justice like they do in the US? Gadzooks, what next? Elected senators!

He said that in the last election too - during the leaders' debate The official position of the party is: That being said I agree that if (and it's a big if) the tories win the next election abortion restrictions could come about through a priavte members bill, if there are enough CPC'ers elected. don

If you check the CPC website you will see that at the party policy conference in Montreal in March this year they passed a resolution that if elected they will not introduce legislation to restrict abortion. don

A nightmare? O'Brien and the rest of the anti-SSM Liberal whackjobs force an election on the budget vote. We then have the Liberals fighting on the lost budget and the irresponsibility of the election before the Gomery Report is finished. The Tories will have to placate the right-wingers who brought down the government and will fight the election on SSM. The BQ will be looking for someone to replace Duceppe who takes over the PQ job. Nightmare? Or farce?

Who knows -- "independence" might be just a way-station en route to Torydom? Did not 30 or more Libs vote against C-38 at 2nd reading? In fact, Martin has said all long that they could vote as they wished on SSM.

Good riddance, really. I don't think O'Brien sold out, however, but deserves credit for standing by his beliefs (no matter how mule-ignorant I think they are). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Why now? Martin has been pro-SSM ever since he became PM. O'Brien is not in the cabinet so he is free to vote on this issue any way he wants. He's vocal about it. I have never heard him criticized by the Lib Party elite becuse of his views. He has no hope of advancement of course in the Grit ranks. Does he expect to be welcomed into Tory ranks with the hope of getting into the Cabinet if the CPC wins the next election, as slim as that looks like right now?

But this has to the most poetic of justice. The so-cons in the CPC have been calling her a Liberal for over a year now. And now she is -- but the cost is that the Cons are not going to overthrow the governmemt. Don't ya got to love it. don

We are a society of vested interests. Groups will look at the BC proposal only within the context of how it helps them, not what is does for democracy. don

To be fair to Bishop Henry he was talking to his parishioners and the press caught hold of it. Of course, since the matter pertained to Paul Martin's relationship with his church, Henry should have simply written a private letter to him.

When Chretien left the Bloc were a spent force. The sponsorship scandal gave them a new life. Save the country? He has saved the Bloc? dvb

LAKE COUCHICHING, Ont. - A religious advisor to George W. Bush, the U.S. President, was heckled and jeered by participants at a prestigious Canadian conference after he denounced same-sex marriage, warning it leads to polygamy and consensual incest. Richard Land, president of the ethics and religion liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, was interrupted several times by the normally reserved intellectual audience at the annual Couchiching conference. "If the compelling reason for same-sex marriage is you have a caring loving relationship, how are you going to stop polygamy? If it is a caring loving relationship, how are you going to stop consensual incest, between adults, brothers and sisters, if it is a consensual relationship," asked Mr. Land, head lobbyist on Capitol Hill for the largest non-Catholic denomination in the United States Mr. Land was responding during a Saturday evening session to a question -- asking him if he would be advising Mr. Bush to drop "this ridiculous idea" of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and focus instead on other matters such as the economy. David McGown, the president of the Couchiching Institute of Public Affairs, which hosts the annual conference, said it is the first time he has witnessed heckling at the event since he started attending 10 years ago. Mr. McGown, who describes the retreat as "Canada's annual gathering of the great and the good," denied the heckling was "anti-American" but rather "very pro-Canadian." "I think what we heard last night was that stark social cultural difference that Michael Adams talked about," said Mr. McGown, referring to the pollster's presentation on the growing divide between Canada and the United States on the question of religion. University of Toronto Professor David Novak, who was in the audience, called the interruptions from the audience "out of order" and "rude."

L. IAN MACDONALD Freelance Monday, August 09, 2004 Martin preferred to meet Bush in the formal surroundings of the White House, instead of the casual setting of the Texas ranch. Before becoming prime minister, Paul Martin made it clear that improving relations between Canada and the United States would be a top priority for his government. How's he doing so far? On his first day in office last Dec. 12, Martin revealed at a press conference he'd offered the ambassador's post in Washington to John Manley, his defeated leadership rival. Manley, astonished the offer was made public, eventually declined with thanks. In Washington, our ambassador, Michael Kergin, was equally taken aback. His effectiveness as Canada's premier envoy was also completely undercut. The prime minister, in a very public and humiliating way, had offered his job to someone else. Nearly eight months later, Kergin's successor has yet to be named, and he remains on the job, though his four-year posting is up and he would normally be replaced this fall. Now the thinking is that Martin may wait until after the U.S. election in November, in the hope that George W. Bush loses, so that his choice as ambassador can present his credentials to a new president, John Kerry. In his first full week on the job, the Prime Minister's Office leaked to the Globe and Mail that Martin had declined an offer of an early meeting with Bush, opting to meet him instead on the margins of a hemispheric summit in Monterrey in January. This came as quite a surprise to the White House, which doesn't like being shown up like that. It also came as quite a surprise to President Bush himself, who was quite happy to see the back of Jean Chretien, and eager to get down to business with Martin. As Bush told a close Canadian friend at the time: "I've made it very clear I'll meet him wherever and whenever he wants." It could have been at the White House, or it could have been a weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, or at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. Martin's father, as external affairs minister with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, was at the table for the signing of the auto pact at the LBJ Ranch in Texas in January 1965. A visit to this president's Texas ranch would have been a good way to get acquainted informally. It also would have been a nice touch, indicating a sense of continuity and history. Ultimately, in a visit that took place nearly five months after he took office, Martin chose the formal setting of the White House and the Oval Office, accompanied by a large delegation that even included one of his assistants, an eye-raising breach of protocol that dictates that only principals are at the table. The April 30 White House meeting was the last public event, rather than the first, on a two-day trip to Washington, downplaying the importance of the visit, and leaving the impression Martin wanted to keep his distance from Bush, an unpopular figure in Canada. Martin had his itinerary exactly backward. In the real West Wing, such things do not pass unnoticed. Afterward, asked if he would accept an invitation "to the ranch," Martin uneasily replied, "we'll see." Martin then launched his campaign in the last week of May on an anti-American note, proclaiming, "we don't want to be Americans, we want to be Canadians." He accused his opponents of advocating, U.S.-style health care, among other U.S.-style bogeymen, though he did not shrink himself from stooping to U.S.-style attack ads, the most savage ever seen in Canada. The constant denigration of the U.S. in the Liberal campaign left a bad taste, but the Americans are used to it, and were prepared to get down to business with Martin after the election. But after the first meeting of his new cabinet last month, Martin announced the government would be bringing back a bill to decriminalize marijuana that died on the order paper of the last Parliament. Welcome to long line-ups at the border. However, the real test of Martin's conduct and management of the Canada-U.S. relationship is where he nets out on the North American missile-defence shield, an issue on which, as American ambassador Paul Celluci has pointedly noted, "the clock is ticking." Bush has made it clear he wants to deploy the first land-based missiles under the NORAD umbrella before the end of the year. Despite announcing satellite and radar data-sharing under NORAD with the U.S. missile defence command, Defence Minister Bill Graham insisted last week that Canadian participation was not inevitable and that a final decision was still months away. Months away means not until after the U.S. election, in the hope Kerry wins the presidency and stands down from missile defence, sparing Canada a decision. In effect, Canadian sovereignty is being handed over to Americans at the ballot box. Missile deployment has always been an emotional and highly charged issue in Canada. A previous minority government fell in 1963 when the prime minister, John Diefenbaker, reneged on his promise to arm Bomarc missiles with nuclear weapons. Twenty years later, there was a great fuss over cruise-missile testing in Alberta, but Pierre Trudeau agreed to it, explained it, and accepted the consequences. It's called leadership. [email protected]