The Reality Of Conflict

There is no question it has been a challenging summer for Stephen Harper but I believe that the opening of Parliament will work in his favour because voters will see that the so called opposition is in disarray and this will work in Harper's favour rather than, as the fence sitters/head in the sand morons, would have you believe. The reality of life is that the world is changing and there are serious challanges out there and we will not be able to continue to hide behind the "traditions and policies that have defined us for decades."

Three critical issues face returning MPs

Sep. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM

When Parliament resumes tomorrow after the long summer recess, Canadians will be eager to hear what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to say about three key issues that his government failed to address before the House of Commons rose in June. And how he responds will go a long way toward determining whether Harper can turn his minority government into a majority in the next election, which could occur in 2007.Indeed, with an election certainly on the horizon, Harper cannot afford to lose control over the parliamentary agenda if he hopes to remain PM. Topping the list of issues that Harper must face is the Afghanistan mission.With Canadians almost evenly split over our military involvement, Harper must set out clear markers for the mission and a timetable for meeting them.In doing so, he has to give Canadians definite yardsticks to measure whether progress is being made and whether the huge sacrifice our troops are making is actually contributing to bringing "freedom and democracy" to Afghanistan, as the Prime Minister claims.Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Ottawa later this week gives Harper the perfect opportunity to spell out his expectations for the Afghan army to take over the war on the Taliban, and for Karzai's government to gain control over regional warlords and bring stability to areas beyond Kabul.Harper also needs to tell Canadians what Ottawa intends to do to help Karzai rebuild essential institutions, particularly the kind of justice system that democracy demands.And Harper must specify what plans he has to help Afghans perebuild essential infrastructure and bring development to regions as they become stabilized. On the domestic front, Canadians want to know what has happened to the last of the five election promises Harper made, namely his wait times guarantee for essential medical treatment. The provinces are doing as much as they can, as demonstrated last week by the Ontario government announcement of another $108 million to shorten wait times. But their efforts to cut wait times do not constitute the guarantee Harper promised. To date, all he has said is that it will require consultations with the provinces, while refusing to give them any money to underwrite his guarantee.But if the government has obfuscated on the wait times guarantee, it has been almost totally silent on the environment.Before Parliament broke for the summer, Harper said Canada will not meet its commitments to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto accord on climate control. He talked vaguely about a "made-in-Canada" policy on climate change.Then, quickly switching gears, his government seemed to drop global warming entirely from its environmental vocabulary, and started taking about combating smog and pollution through a new clean air act.While clean air is certainly part of the environmental mix that Canadians expect, it is not a substitute for a strategy on combating climate change.The government cannot keep side-stepping this issue, which ranks at the top of Canadians' environmental concerns.For Harper to succeed in this crucial session of Parliament, he must set a clear and credible policy direction on each of these three key issues.At the same time, the Opposition must press hard for progressive policies and offer voters viable alternatives to the Conservatives' agenda. That's because there is too much at stake for them to let Parliament drift into inaction, or to let the Conservatives take Canada down a path that runs counter to the traditions and policies that have defined us for decades.

Another view........

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/insight/story.html?id=3643099b-9845-4408-9494-7287c9f79909