Parliament Votes Against Extending

[jdobbin]

This vote will please people who are hard core on the left anyway, and who would never have voted Conservative regardless.

It will trouble all the rest of the people, the ones in the middle, and it will make them more likely to vote Tory.

I'll be sure to look for this massive shift in the polls in the next several days.

[jdobbin]

FOR FOREIGNERS. Foreigners with terrorist associations at that. You guys prefer to put this country in danger in order to protect foreigners who can walk out of the jail any time they want by simply agreeing to go home.

Alleged associations for which the government doesn't present a case for.

It seems you Conservatives are against due process. Forgive me if I don't feel confidence giving you a rope so that you can gather a lynch mob without presenting any evidence.

[Argus]

This vote will please people who are hard core on the left anyway, and who would never have voted Conservative regardless.

It will trouble all the rest of the people, the ones in the middle, and it will make them more likely to vote Tory.

I'll be sure to look for this massive shift in the polls in the next several days.

National polls don't tell you much. As I have already said, there are only about 75 seats in play every election. The rest don't matter. There are hundreds of seats which WILL vote Tory, Liberal or NDP. You don't even need an election. The polls taken by the parties on a riding by riding basis show them this. It is those ridings that are in play that matter, and the key groups which populate them.

Who will be pleased by this? People in Toronto I suppose. But the Libs won every seat in TO. They can't pick up any more, at least, not from the Tories. The areas the Tories hope to pick up votes are in the burbs - where this will not go over nearly so well. In Quebec, the Tory hopes are the very conservative areas in the east, away from Montreal. Again, this will not please people in those areas.

[madmax]

Inexplicably the Liberals along with BQ & NDP are painting themselves into the corner marked 'Soft On Terrorists'. (Also soft on criminals etc.) It will be up to them to explain to Canadians in the coming election why they voted for terrorist's rights over the desire of Canadians not to be victimized by terrorists.

You want to explain this?

[Canuck E Stan]

Oh yes, it was all about the polls. Sorry that this will put your Conservatives back into opposition.

Tories lose anti-terror vote

The vote presented Stéphane Dion with the first real test of his fledgling leadership of the Liberal party. With his caucus split over the issue, he had decreed that all Liberal MPs must vote against renewal of the security measures.

“This issue is not going to go away. It’s going to haunt the Liberal party from now until the election campaign,” Harper said after the motion was defeated by a vote of 159 to 124.

“Any party that doesn’t take the national security of Canadians seriously will never be chosen by Canadians to form the government of Canada.”

And Dion dismissed Harper’s “mistaken” prediction that voters will turn on the Liberals, countering that Canadians would rather have a leader who will balance security needs with protection of civil liberties.

“Canadians want somebody, a leader, able to fight terrorism with determination and to be there to protect their rights with determination.”

Canadians will definitely decide and Mr.Stephane(Third Place) Dion won't be the leader they pick.

[madmax]

It was a free vote. Good try on trying to say it wasn't.

Baloney it was a free vote. The Liberal Vote was whipped. If it was a free vote you would have seen a realistic split in the party for reason that there are good arguments on both sides for its continuance or its elimination.

The CPC were for it, and the NDP against and Liberals are and were split on the matter. The vote was whipped.

[jdobbin]

Canadians will definitely decide and Mr.Stephane(Third Place) Dion won't be the leader they pick.

I await the next polls that show the Tories way out in the lead.

Think I have been waiting all year to see that and it just hasn't happened.

[jdobbin]

National polls don't tell you much. As I have already said, there are only about 75 seats in play every election. The rest don't matter. There are hundreds of seats which WILL vote Tory, Liberal or NDP. You don't even need an election. The polls taken by the parties on a riding by riding basis show them this. It is those ridings that are in play that matter, and the key groups which populate them.

Who will be pleased by this? People in Toronto I suppose. But the Libs won every seat in TO. They can't pick up any more, at least, not from the Tories. The areas the Tories hope to pick up votes are in the burbs - where this will not go over nearly so well. In Quebec, the Tory hopes are the very conservative areas in the east, away from Montreal. Again, this will not please people in those areas.

I'm sure victory is in sight for you then.

Harper must be extremely confident and should call an election tomorrow.

[Catchme]

For heavens sake, the Supreme Court has already ruled that these two provisions are constitutional as they are currently written.

That is NOT true, in fact it is the opposite

[Canuck E Stan]

Harper must be extremely confident and should call an election tomorrow.

He can't tomorrow,he promised to take the cat to the vet.

[jdobbin]

He can't tomorrow,he promised to take the cat to the vet.

Harper ate another leg of a cat?

[Canuck E Stan]

He can't tomorrow,he promised to take the cat to the vet.

Harper ate another leg of a cat?

No dummy, Stephane's attack dog Kyoto was responsible for that.

You know what Stephane and Kyoto are like

they attack anything just for the sake of attacking.

[jdobbin]

No dummy, Stephane's attack dog Kyoto was responsible for that.

You know what Stephane and Kyoto are like

they attack anything just for the sake of attacking.

Dion's dog is a vegan.

[newbie]

The vote was whipped.

And of course the CPC members were not. Yeah, right........

[Catchme]

20 or so, MP's both Bloq and Liberal were not present, 1 voted against and 1 abstained from the Liberals.

There will be no reprisals for those who did not vote, or who were abscent. The Bill extinguishing them passed by a large margin.

But of course the CPC were whipped, they just watched Harper boot 2 *Conservative Senators off of committees who spoke out.

* different from the CPC

[geoffrey]

For heavens sake, the Supreme Court has already ruled that these two provisions are constitutional as they are currently written.

That is NOT true, in fact it is the opposite

I've showed you the decision on the provison twice now. Your being completely dishonest now. I'm beginning to hear something along the lines of Dion's, "but it's not fair!!!"

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold the use of the act. End of story.

Using a page out of Dion's book, the Liberals must be against the judiciary and have no faith in our judges. Disgusting!!!

Funny how Dion ignores his party:

The proposal to extend the measures has somewhat divided Liberals in recent weeks, but MP Tom Wappel was the only Liberal who voted alongside the Conservatives Tuesday. He was a member of the subcommittee that reviewed the anti-terrorism measures.

Former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler abstained from voting Tuesday. He was present in the House, but never rose from his seat during the vote.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/27/terror-vote.html

Despite two experts, former Justice minister Cotler and the Liberal member on the anti-terrorism committee, Dion thinks he knows better. So the count stands at Cotler, Wappel, Iggy (in his book The Lesser Evil he argues for these types of provisions... but he has little integrity and has already sold his values a few times since becoming an MP), the Liberal former head of the Air India inquiry Bob Rae, the presenter of the original legislation and former Emergency Preparedness Minister Anne McLellan, John Manley (he's kind of random I admit) and most importantly the SCC in their 2004 decision on the act.

Dion flexed his leadership muscle here, but on the wrong issue. He looks like an idiot standing there, voting this down with all the rational Canadians in support.

[Catchme]

You are being disengenuous geffeory, there is a difference between the anti-terroism act, and the 2 sunset clauses that were extinguished today.

It serve no purpose that you and others would try and misdirect people so.

The 2 sunset clauses did NOT meet the Charter litmus, as was stated by the SCC, the same as the security cetificates did not and for the same reasons.

The rest of the anti-terrorism act passed by the margin of 1.

[August1991]

What is this supposed to mean?

Pierre Poilievre: Well I think we are all trying to understand what happened to the Liberal party. They brought in the Anti-Terrorism Act. They brought in the very measures, word for word, right down to the comma, that they now want to kill. And now the Coalition of Victims of Terror in Canada support the prime minister's plan to keep those -- that Liberal anti-terror law. The police and the RCMP support the prime minister's plan to keep that anti-terror law. The Supreme Court supports the prime minister's plan to keep the anti-terror law. And up to two weeks ago the Liberal party supported the prime minister's plan to keep the anti-terror law. But suddenly there was a dramatic 180-degree change in the Liberal Party, and I think all of us are searching for a motive. Why is it that the Liberal party is voting against its own anti-terror law? And is there an explanation out there? Perhaps it's that the "loony left" of the Liberal Party, which up until recently didn't have a lot of authority in that party, has now gained a lot of power because it helped Stéphane Dion win the leadership.

Q: Are the Conservatives then -- and I'm trying to get this right -- are the Conservatives then insinuating that the Liberal policy of wanting to expire investigative hearings and preventative arrests (is) being done so to protect the father-in-law of (Mississauga-Brampton South Liberal MP) Navdeep Bains? Is that the accusation?

Pierre Poilievre: All of us are looking to understand why the Liberals have had this sudden flip-flop. We're looking for an explanation of their motives. Now we know that a lot of extremist groups and people with some very hard left-wing views have advocated for a long time that these provisions should be scrapped. Now a lot of those people supported Stéphane Dion in the leadership. A lot of them are in Stéphane Dion's caucus. And, for example, there are members of Stéphane Dion's Liberal caucus who want to legalize Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization from south Lebanon. There are people in the Liberal caucus that want to shut down the investigation into the Air India terrorist attack, which is the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. And up until recently, the former Liberal government was blocking the very anti-terror -- the very RCMP investigation and hearings into that Air India investigation. So, we know there are extremist elements in the Liberal party.

Toronto Star

Are the Liberals turning on Dion?

[geoffrey]

Are the Liberals turning on Dion?

Other than Cotler who metaphorically slapped him in the face today, no, not yet. Or the Liberals that were suspiciously absent today...

But a policy line like Dion is setting up isn't going to fly in a mainstream party. Opposing such measures is for fringe protest parties, the NDP does a good enough job of raising a ruccus over little details. The Liberals and Conservatives are the mainstream Canada, and mainstream Canada would vote for these clauses.

If this were 10-15 years ago, Dion would be in serious trouble. The real money, before all these new rules, in the Liberal party was big business... they really are the party of the establishment business community. We don't see that in Dion's leadership, which is tending way way to the left... we're talking European social democrat here.

Without money talking too much in the party anymore (though I'm sure it still does), it's let in an element of ethnic extremists, who bring to the Liberals massive ethnic vote blocks in Vancouver and Toronto. If you can't win through massive war chests, your going to have to win by selling a little bit of your policy to a few extremists that will bring you the Sikh's or Muslims or whatever of an area.

There just isn't room for that in Canada... the Liberal party will eventually take itself back from this element, but not under Dion IMO.

It's obvious that there is some element playing here, as every knowledgable person on the topic in the Liberal party was urging for the other direction. His right hand man wrote an entire book on provisions like this (which I highly recommend)!! Who's telling him to go the other way? It's either the extreme radical wing or it's his dog Kyoto.

If Dion doesn't smarten up and start playing the rational guy, not the loony left sell out, it will cost him his leadership very quickly. I still have confidence that there is some rationality behind the scenes in the Liberal party. The business types of the 90's will keep him in line.

[scribblet]

20 or so, MP's both Bloq and Liberal were not present, 1 voted against and 1 abstained from the Liberals.

There will be no reprisals for those who did not vote, or who were abscent. The Bill extinguishing them passed by a large margin.

There was a bill to extinguish those who did not vote or who were absent ? - say what I know the bill was whipped but that's a tad extreme even for the Liberals.

There were 12 Liberals unaccounted for, one who abstained and one who voted with the Tories. Too bad they chose "internal caucus politics over the national security of Canadians."

Supreme Court did rule that these two provisions are constitutional, in fact the Mounties attempted to use the provision once in the past but its constitutionality was challenged by the wife of Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person ever convicted in the Air India bombing. The provision was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Argus]

Are the Liberals turning on Dion?

If you read Ibbitson in the Globe today, most of the Liberal English establishment wanted to support the terrorism acts. It was the Quebec wing which was opposed to it, along with ethnics. This vote will please the more liberal areas of Quebec, but won't do him any good in those areas the Conservatives won seats. And it definitely won't do him any good in English Canada.

[margrace]

Argus do you remember the Crisis in the early 70's when our rights were taken away from us, especially the people of Quebec. Maybe you wouldn't be so quite to lose your rights again if you thought about it.

[White Doors]

It's going to be fun watching the liberals implode this spring.

[hiti]

For heavens sake, the Supreme Court has already ruled that these two provisions are constitutional as they are currently written.

That is NOT true, in fact it is the opposite

I've showed you the decision on the provison twice now. Your being completely dishonest now. I'm beginning to hear something along the lines of Dion's, "but it's not fair!!!"

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold the use of the act. End of story.

Using a page out of Dion's book, the Liberals must be against the judiciary and have no faith in our judges. Disgusting!!!

Funny how Dion ignores his party:

Funny how you keep on leaving out the part where the SCC said these provisions did not violate the Charter "as long as" they respected existing laws of rights and freedoms. By themselves these provisions were not acceptable. So you can roll your eyes all you want but leaving out key parts of the ruling is dishonest.

Steve could have had his extension "IF" he would have accepted amendments to protect the rights and freedoms, but oh no.... he wants to play politics. He wants the Opposition to pass these provisions and "then" he will study them. The Opposition knows they cannot trust Steve to do what is right and honest for Canadians and that he would "never" bring forth any amendments to these provisions if they had voted with the government.

As the Dion told Steve.... he is welcome to bring to the House his recommendations for amendments for these provisions and they will vote to reinstate them.

The Liberals are not going to implode over this vote. In fact they have been brought closer together as a team under Dion's leadership. Irvin Cotler said that he abstained from the vote because he did not agree with either side, especially the government's refusal to accept amendments to these provisions.

[geoffrey]

Funny how you keep on leaving out the part where the SCC said these provisions did not violate the Charter "as long as" they respected existing laws of rights and freedoms. By themselves these provisions were not acceptable. So you can roll your eyes all you want but leaving out key parts of the ruling is dishonest.

I haven't left out any point of the ruling. The SCC approved their usage AS IS in 2004 for use in Air India. It shouldn't change in 2007, the laws are the same, equally constitutional.