As you may know I lost my respect for the Senate long ago, during the days when Stephen Harper ruled the roost.
And those stuffed turkeys couldn't kiss his ass enough.
And although Justin Trudeau allowed them to become independent, they're still gobbling like crazy.
And the ghosts of Harper past still haunt the place.
And are still playing zombie games.
Justin Trudeau's Liberal government plans to make recreational pot legal in Canada by July, but there may be one significant challenge to that timeline: the Senate.
As Conservative Sen. Ghislain Maltais sums it up, "there are 95 senators and as many opinions."
Which isn't really surprising, since the Con creeper Andrew Scheer made banning marijuana the main issue in the recent by-election in the Saguenay,
And even though his Cons got smoked, is keeping up his anti drug crusade.
Even if he can't quite get his facts right.
Which would be hilarious, since Scheer lies all the time, if it wasn't so tragic.
Because it's only too clear that the creepy religious fanatic shares the same approach to drugs as did his depraved mentor Stephen Harper...
Who never lifted a finger to head off the opioid crisis that has killed THOUSANDS of Canadians.
And the Cons have plans to re-criminalize marijuana if they win the next election...
Even if they can't spell re-criminalization properly.
And the good news?
Justin Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana will allow him to retain the support of most young voters.
Polling data that surfaced after the 2015 election suggests that the youth vote strongly contributed to the Liberals’ majority win at the ballot box. Millennials reportedly turned up at the ballot box in “unprecedented” numbers. It has also been suggested that most millennial voters want to see pot – and in some cases all drugs – legalized.
David Colletto, who leads Abacus Data’s Canadian Millennial Research Practice, says it’s important for the government to make good on this promise if they hope to retain the youth vote that was largely responsible for their majority victory two years ago.
And since those millennial voters are expected to play an even bigger role in the next election than they did in the last one, they could be the ones, and marijuana could be the issue, that propel Justin Trudeau to another thumping majority.
It's not a promise the Liberals can afford to break or delay because young Canadians are tired of bearing the brunt of the insane War on Drugs....
So Scheer and the turkeys in the Senate can flap their wings and gobble gobble as much as they like.
But I'm pretty sure that next July 1st will be both Canada Day and Cannabis Day...
The beginning of the end of Scheer's reefer madness Cons.
The beginning of the end of the turkey Senate.
And the beginning of the end of The Great War on Drugs...
Once the province gets some drug money there is no going back.
ReplyDeleteNeither will the cigarette companies.....hehe
DeleteWho knows what the Senate is thinking these days? There are probably enough Harper appointees that rational thought is difficult.
ReplyDeleteAnother bill that seems in limbo in the Senate is Rona Ambrose's C-337 that calls for judicial education on sexual assault issues. In an interview with CBC she reported that she could not even get senators to meet with her to discuss the bill.
While I can see some of the dinosaurs in the Senate having reservations about the marajuana legislation it is hard to see why there would be opposition to Ambrose's bill.
Long gone are the days when civil servants appreciated questions and suggestions from Senate committees.
It many seem like small potatoes, but one of the things I'm really disgusted by in your Senate is the cruel sabotaging of the national anthem bill that exploited a man's terminal illness as an excuse to "follow protocol." The only reason that bill no longer had a sponsor was because Mr. Belanger died of A.L.S. He never got his dying wish fulfilled, and who knows if, in his posthumous memory, the very simple and unobtrusive gender-equal lyric change will ever come to pass.
DeleteAt a time when the southern neighbor is on the brink of civil war over the cultural significance and meaning of the national anthem, you'd think Canadian politicians would have the decency to set the right example. It's petty, and I'm not surprised that far more substantial issues like sexual assault education aren't being discussed in the higher chamber either. I'd hate to see what kind of regressive caveman legislation her 26-year-old Breitbartian replacement, Scheer's Apt Pupil, introduces. Perhaps he'll want to change the national anthem to the "Horst Wessel Lied."
I missed that bit of nastiness. Why don't we just follow traditional Canadian tradition and change anyway? I am pretty sure there have been a few changes since I almost learned the English words a century or so ago.
DeleteI still try to sing it in my broken French as I first learned the words in Gr. French class.
The senile senators can get away with anything, until we finally abolish that relic of an institution, but God help any political party or premier who stands in the way of marijuana legislation. The bullshit war on weed is almost one hundred years old, and it's time it was over.
ReplyDeleteTrudeau has never given any indication about legislation regarding other drugs. However, if simple possession were decriminalized, it would set a positive example to the rest of the world, and go a long way towards helping millions of Canadians with what is really a public health issue rather than one of "crime rates" or "national security." Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2010, and the sky didn't fall either. The opiate/heroin crisis continues to plague Canada, as it does its southern neighbor, and a number of other countries as well. Drug courts work. Compassion centers work. Prohibition does not, any more than it did in the 1920s. Neither does expecting "prayer" to one or more imagined deities have any effect on treating an addiction disorder, any more than it does treating cancer.
ReplyDeleteBy thumping the drum to treat sick people as felons, Scheer reveals his inner fascist. Trudeau is trying to take a measured approach because he knows that a significant chunk of the public is still mired in punitive thinking that dehumanizes addicts and those who wish to "experiment" with one or more substances for whatever reason. If they get in over their head, they should be allowed to have treatment. Once again, prohibition is far more harmful -- and power is a dangerous drug in and of itself.
Not to mention, new research is emerging that shows beneficial effects for various mental health and neurological disorders, using supervised (key word being supervised) treatment with ketamine and L.S.D. This isn't fringe 1970s hippy-dippy stuff either. Time magazine even had a cover story about the breakthroughs in psychedelic medicine being held up by regressive drug laws. As one of Trudeau's personal advocacy platforms is mental-health research because of the suffering of his poor mother, it might behoove the P.M. to look into this. It would figure, though, that if he were made aware of it and the Liberals issued a proposal to study it, the voting public would probably have a freakout that Trudeau is enticing depressed teenagers and autistic children to drop acid. But I digress.
In any event, it's fitting that Scheer threw a tantrum about Payette's science speech at the same time it appears that the cons would try to throw a monkey wrench in progressive drug-law reform. He would rather see millions of Canadians suffer and accrue criminal records just to support his hateful and sadistic ideology and exploit unfounded fears among the populace, rather than let science, compassion, and reality reign supreme.
He's a poison plant, and the media is fertilizing the ground by spreading manure and sowing seeds of distrust. Time to "weed out" the crap -- er, crop -- for the coming 2019 harvest season.
# Anonymous3:21 PM
ReplyDeleteHe would rather see millions of Canadians suffer and accrue criminal records just to support his hateful and sadistic ideology and exploit unfounded fears among the populace, rather than let science, compassion, and reality reign supreme.
A worthy successor to Steven Harper.