Liberals Fail to Do Their Job, Again

Well, this was grimly predictable.

Controversial changes to Canada's immigration system are poised to become law after getting final approval from a majority of MPs tonight.

Despite the opposition of many MPs, Bill C-50 got easy passage in a 120-90 vote, thanks mainly to the Liberals who stayed away in sufficient numbers to ensure the legislation was endorsed - and an election avoided.

[...]

Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua (Vaughan) was left defending the Liberals' "opposition" to the bill. Even most of his caucus colleagues stayed away from the vote.

"We don't support the direction in which the government is going and we will have ample time in an election campaign to in fact illustrate that the Liberal plan for this country is much better," he told reporters.

Bevilacqua hinted that Canadians might not have to wait long to make that choice.

"Perhaps later in the fall, there will be an opportunity to go to the polls and to illustrate in fact to Canadians that there are two visions for this country," he said.

Bullshit, for two reasons:

First of all, the Liberals are not going to trigger an election in fall 2008, or winter 2008, or spring 2009, or summer 2009. They've made it entirely clear that they don't give a damn about anything except what the polls say, and the polls haven't budged for two years. Time after time, the Liberals have failed to capitalize on Harper government scandals, crappy Harper government legislation, and their own alleged better alternatives. They show no sign of doing anything different in the foreseeable future.

Second, even when there is an election (which will be when Harper's term naturally expires in fall 2009), the Liberals will not be able to show the Canadian people anything. Every time Dion says, "We opposed this bill," all Harper will have to say is, "So why'd you let it pass?" And Dion will have no convincing answer to that. Every time a Liberal candidate on the trail says, "I opposed this bill," all his opponents will have to say is, "So why didn't you show up to vote against it?" And there will be -- there can be -- no good answer. And no, "We were waiting for the polls to favour us" is not good enough; what that says is that you care more about your own damn career than you do about your constituents.

When I was a kid, a friend tried to teach me chess. I was awful. The reason was that, although I considered myself intelligent, I really had no idea what I was doing. As a result, I would concoct these elaborate, twenty-move plans that had nothing to do with how to win the actual game in front of me, and which I was utterly unable to adapt as the board changed. That's more or less the game Dion is playing. It depends on a whole series of things going his way which are not going his way. Worst of all, it depends on his opponents not actually wanting or knowing how to beat him, and on the voters being incredibly naive and gullible. He's cruising for a disaster, and he doesn't seem to have any idea of it.