Perhaps the Liberals Forgot how to Count

Hi,

It's been a while. I hope you're all well. You must have known I couldn't keep quiet forever right? ;)

So I was watching the At Issue Panel on The National tonight (CBC at like 9 or 10 pm on Thursdays, Peter Mansbridge has three political pundits on and they discuss whatever's current) and after the crazy Ann Coulter story they discussed the Liberal motion failure earlier this week. I had no idea what they were talking about. What Liberal motion? Why did they look like fools? What's going on? Why are they talking about abortion? Hello? Where have I been?

Oh right. I've been living under a rock. But still! I do try to keep in touch to some degree with the real world.

So I went online and checked out the story and found out what was going on. Perhaps I've become a little too jaded under my rock, but since we've had a minority government for so long it seems to me like the people we've elected to govern us really spend a lot of time accomplishing absolutely nothing. It's nice to see that they're actually in Ottawa and showing up for work (some of them anyway), but really, are they doing any real governing or are they just wandering around meeting with each other and making noise?

For those of you who don't want to read the story on CBC's website, the short story is the Liberals came up with a motion to table in the House regarding the government's G8 maternal and child health initiative. As some of you may know, Canada is hosting the G8 summit this summer. This is how the motion read:

Motion introduced by Liberal MP Bob Rae

That, in the opinion of the House, the government's G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world's poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with the policy of previous Liberal and Conservative governments, and all other G8 governments last year in L'Aquila, Italy;

that the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence, which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths; and

that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States, which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a "global gag rule" that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically sound family planning.

This motion was supported (in theory) by all three opposition parties; or so the Liberals thought. It was supposed to be a whipped vote (meaning that the MPs were supposed to show up and vote the party line or there would be consequences). Things did not go as planned however, and the motion was defeated by a vote of 144-138. Not only were some of the Liberal MPs absent from the House that day, three of them voted against the motion, and one of them abstained. OMG! Mr. Ignatieff does not seem to have his house in order! What the hell??

Mr. Ignatieff has since taken responsibility for the failure of the motion and all that noble stuff, but that's not really what prompted me to write. Ineptitude of elected officials also did not prompt me to write, because really, I'd be writing all of the time if that was my motivation. What prompted this was the use of the word abortion by not only the pundits on the National, but by the actual MPs who either didn't show up for the vote, or abstained, or voted against the bill.

Again I say WHAT THE HELL??? I may be railing against the machine to no avail again (actually I know I am), but seriously: that motion was about education, family planning (primarily contraception), availability of access to these things and oh yeah, maybe a little bit of information that might not have been available to women previously that might help prevent death and all they can do is talk about abortion! Why do politicians have to be such self-important airbags? Nowhere in that motion could I find the word abortion. Admittedly, the gag-rule mentioned referred to the ban that Bush's government placed on providing aid to agencies that would educate and/or perform abortions so the idea wasn't completely absent, but the motion itself was not advocating abortion. It was advocating for the inclusion of an initiative at the G8 summit for maternal and child health care that included contraception and family planning.

And by the way, what business is it of theirs? All people have a right to self-determination.

Okay, rant over for now. Thanks for reading and drive safe peeps,

Lesley