Paul Martin: Canadians want to live without fear 13-Jun-2004

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Letter 14 13-Jun-2004 Canadians want to live without fear

Dr Keith Martin

"It also goes into the hidden foreign policy agenda that party has � the blind support they have for Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians. That's rooted in the party's fundamentalist Christian roots � Stockwell Day, and others around him." � Liberal Candidate Dr Keith Martin speaking of Canada's Conservative party

13 June 2004

The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Mr Prime Minister:

The Vancouver Sun of 12-Jun-2004 reminds its readers not only of the imminent Liberal shipwreck, but of how it can be avoided.

The imminent Liberal shipwreck is electoral defeat, as presaged by the polls:

The latest projections would give the Conservatives 123 members of Parliament, compared to 100 for the Liberals. [...]

The ongoing study for Global National by Wilfrid Laurier University professor Barry Kay shows a steady Liberal collapse in favour of the Conservatives.

"This is bad news for the Liberals, who are still falling. The polls from the last few days are worse than last week, and the polls last week were worse than the week before. The Liberals have to figure out a way to stop this hemorrhage," Kay told CanWest News Service.

Anne Trueman and Sean Gordon, Tories could be edging towards majority: Liberals "hemorrhaging" as voters continue to abandon Martin's party, polls suggest. Vancouver Sun, 12-Jun-2004, p. A6.

You will have noticed that during the height of the Sponsorship Scandal, Liberal support in the polls seemed unaffected, and dropped only later � but in response to what?

I suggest that Liberal support began to plummet when Canadians came to realize that you had appointed as Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler who had once been an associate of Steven Rambam � the same Steven Rambam who had spent eight years of his youth in a psychiatric facility and 20 months of his adulthood in a Tallahassee federal prison, and the same Steven Rambam that Robert I. Friedman described as "violence-prone" and as a "psychopath," and the same Steven Rambam who is today fond of broadcasting his opinion that "Canadians are scum!" I suggest in other words that support for the Liberals began to plummet when voters discovered that you had appointed as Justice Minister a Canadian Jewish Congress fanatic who had once participated in the Deschenes Commission Witch Hunt, and who had once collaborated with a convicted terrorist bomber to stage the Fifty-Confessions Hoax, matters which you will find explained in detail in my previous thirteen letters to you.

It is not only Ukrainian and German and Lithuanian and Arab and Muslim voters that would have taken exception to Irwin Cotler � it is all Canadians who are tired of living in fear, and who will abandon any party that promises them more fear. What fear?

Fear that their having mentioned Jews in a student discussion of power relationships ten years ago may be dredged up in an effort to destroy their career � as happened to NDP candidate Malcolm Azania just a few days ago. That the sole accusation of Azania "anti-Semitism" came not from the Canadian Jewish Congress or from B'nai Brith, but from Liberal candidate Debby Carlson adds to Liberal dishonor.
Fear that the Liberals will countenance citizens being imprisoned for speaking the truth.
Fear that the Liberals will continue to flout Canadian Charter guarantees of equality before the law, as by singling out some ethnic or national or religious groups for prosecution, while giving other groups de facto immunity from prosecution.
Fear that the Liberals have adopted what Noam Chomsky calls "the familiar Stalinist-fascist doctrine that the State has the right to determine historical truth and to punish deviation from it."
Fear that more violence-prone psychopaths will be shipped up from the United States to dictate to the Canadian government what quotas of prosecution it is required to fill.
Fear of an Attorney General who views criminal prosecution as an instrument of indoctrination.
Fear of speaking out against injustice, out of the anticipation that the same injustice will turn and rend the speaker.
Fear, in other words, that the Liberal party is steering Canada toward the sort of despotic regime that some Canadians remember having already fled once in their lives, and have no desire to have to flee again.

This fear is not discussed by the press � because reporters are afraid of getting fired. This fear is not measured by pollsters � because they are afraid of being accused of stirring up hatred. And in any case, pollsters would be unable to measure this fear even if they tried because those polled would not trust the offer of confidentiality, and would fear that any politically-incorrect opinions they might express would redound to their injury. This fear is not brought up in question period � because every parliamentarian fears that doing so would get him kicked out of his party. It is a fear that can be spoken of only in whispers � and yet it is a fear so distressing that voters flee the party that threatens them with more.

And the only reason that voters have not abandoned the Liberal party altogether is that many among them see that the Conservatives may be even worse, as was boldly expressed by Keith Martin � and one might say courageously expressed, because even such moderate statements as his are capable of unleashing vicious condemnation:

Liberal candidate Keith Martin slammed his former Conservative colleagues Stephan Harper and Stockwell Day Friday, declaring Canada would be bringing home dead soldiers in body bags if Harper had been prime minister when the U.S. was seeking support for the invasion of Iraq.

[Keith] Martin alleged the Conservatives have a "hidden agenda" on Iraq and a "fundamentalist Christian" pro-Israel policy. [...]

As a doctor who has worked as a volunteer surgeon near the Mozambique-South Africa border, Martin said, he has witnessed what happens to civilians during wars, unlike other MPs.

"I've seen people eviscerated, burnt to death, shot, stabbed, legs blown off," he said. "What I found shocking was how easy the decision was to put our troops in harm's way."

Said Martin: "It also goes into the hidden foreign policy agenda that [Conservative] party has � the blind support they have for Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians. That's rooted in the party's fundamentalist Christian roots � Stockwell Day, and others around him."

Glenn Bohn, Harper's Iraq policy assailed, Vancouver Sun, 12-Jun-2004, p. A7.

Among the good things that the Liberal party has done is to keep Canadian soldiers out of Iraq, and to accept Keith Martin into their party, and to permit him to make the above statements, and it is because Canadians see such things as these that they do not yet abandon the Liberals entirely.

The salvation of the Liberals, then, is to offer Canadians a future free from fear. Removing Irwin Cotler from the cabinet would send an unmistakable signal that the Liberal party intended to serve all Canadians equally without regard to their ethnic-national-religious origins, and would also send an unmistakable signal that the Liberal party had ended its flirtation with despotism � and which if done in time might yet return the Liberals to power with a solid majority.

Lubomyr Prytulak

cc:

Hon. Irwin COTLER, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, 284 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8

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