Canadian Alliance Convention Launches Liberal Lips

   
Edmonton - Saturday, April 7, 2002 - by: Ron Thornton
   

slash and
cut policies

The Canadian Alliance must have done something right at their recent convention in Edmonton to cause some high-level Liberals to foam at the mouth. Just two days into the event, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion declared that Stephen Harper's "right wing, slash and cut policies" make him unfit to be a national political leader.

 

 

spend

Sure, Harper has never owned a golf course, never throttled a toque wearing protester, or blown billions of your dollars on various schemes and dreams, and probably never will. He also isn't a left wing, spend till the well runs dry kind of guy.

 

 

Alberta
based

Maybe it is the company Harper keeps, who the head of the Liberal caucus Stan Keyes refers to as "a parochial Alberta-based" party filled with white men over fifty that shuns women and minorities. I might have agreed with Keyes if it weren't for all those young people, women, and minorities I kept bumping into at the convention.

 

 

Young
Muslim
Sikh

Alberta's reputation of narrow mindedness would surely suffer if word slipped out that behind the scenes women actually ran this convention, that Alberta is the home to an eighteen year old member of the party's governing body and a Muslim Member of Parliament. In fact, my own constituency came dangerously close to electing a fine twenty-six year old man of the Sikh faith, falling short to a respected 60-year old Liberal white man in the last election.

 

 

division

Of course, not being a Liberal, all I see are people of all ages, genders, faiths, and races coming together to work toward a common goal as Canadians. We will leave the politics of division to those who do it best.
   

 

Ron Thornton