Impossible Dreams

"This Prime minister has an imported vision of Canada as a second best country which must ape the ideals and principles of another country. A Prime Minister who is spared the difficulty of critical thinking by simply falling in line, as if building Canada was simply putting it into a new set of imported clothes." "This country deserves better. A continuing world envirornmental crisis of enormous and devastating proportions has been addressed with mechanisms heavily-biased in favour of economics. And Kyoto, an object of distain by the prime minister and his party, a plan, which in his opposition days he effectively condemned vehemently as nonsense, is now used as a kind of blackmail token, a dare to the Liberal Party to stand against this Speech from the Throne, and suffer the consequences and effects of a federal election. Thus goes the thinking of this prime minister and this government. It matters not what happens to our environment, and indeed our lives, it matters only that he secure political advantage, in order to dress the country in second hand clothing. " "In my time of leadership of this Liberal party I have suffered more than the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I have suffered my own failings, but in doing so I have learned valuable lessons. One of them is to stand for what you believe and I believe that the idea and spirit of the Kyoto Accord unfailingly held to, and with sacrifice on our parts, each and every one, are the only elements which give us a chance to moderate and nullify the devastating effects upon our whole world of increasing GHG’s. Therefore, I, and the Liberal Party of Canada, cannot accept those elements of the Speech from the Throne which negate Canada’s official acceptance of the Kyoto Accord. This is a cause worth fighting for one’s life for, because the outcomes of the Accord’s effects are indeed life saving. " "So we, all of us, are at a crossroads and this Speech from the Throne, filled as it is with gifts and lures, is a siren call to take the bait and give this prime minister the numbers he needs to give up our sovereignty and our abilities to continue to build a society in North America based upon sharing and caring rather than grabbing and stabbling. To end the Canadian alternative which has given hope through peaceable means to much of the world’s disadvantaged peoples." "I ask the Canadian people to rally with me against this onset of mediocrity and second-handedness upon which the Prime Minister is so fervently attached.” Then I awoke, drenched in sweat and mumbling, “No Dion, no, that’s what he wants you to do”. [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 16, 2007]