LIBERALS ON-DUTY, CONSERVATIVES "AWOL":
According to the rules of the House of Commons, after the normal Christmas break, Parliament should have resumed its sittings on January 25th. But they got cancelled.
How? By Stephen Harper “ordering” Members of Parliament to stay away. It was a blatant abuse of power, intended to shut-down tough questions about government wrong-doing.
The tactic was condemned by every parliamentary expert, across all party lines. And it provoked a public backlash against the Conservatives.
Mr. Harper has blown a 15-point lead in public opinion. He dropped from his most favourable rating ever last fall, to his most negative rating now. Canadians are weary of hyper-partisanship that violates every rule of fairness and honesty.
But while Conservatives have gone AWOL from December to March, the Liberal Official Opposition has been on-the-job every day – doing the work we were elected to do.
In public meeting rooms packed with hundreds of interested Canadians, we’ve tackled urgent topics ranging from job creation and pension security to foreign aid and public safety, from inadequate support for people with brain diseases and other disabilities to the challenges facing rural communities.
On this latter topic, Liberals are pushing new ideas to bridge the urban-rural divide in Canada.
We are working with producers and consumers to develop a National Food Policy, including better farm income safety nets that are timely, predictable and bankable. The excuses for inaction that flow back-and-forth between federal and provincial governments must stop.
We need a rural health care system with the right incentives to attract and retain the appropriate teams of doctors and other practitioners. We need investments in rural infrastructure – especially rural roads, short-line rail systems and producer-car loading sites, water systems and high speed internet.
And we need to harness the full potential of the emerging bio-economy to achieve more diversification and value-added growth.
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