Why I Left the Party

By David Kilgour

MP Edmonton Mill Woods - Beaumont

National Post, April 19, 2005

Issues & Ideas, A18

After almost 15 years as a Liberal MP, and after serious consideration, I concluded last week that I can no longer remain in the party's caucus. My objection to many of the party's new policies, as well as some facts that have emerged recently at the Gomery inquiry into the government's sponsorship program, proved painfully decisive.

Calls and e-mails to my office suggest that most constituents support my decision to sit as an independent legislator. Like me, they are concerned by the Liberals' stance on numerous issues, including the following.

THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT

According to opinion soundings taken over many years, most residents of southeast Edmonton (and well beyond) want Senate vacancies to be filled by elections, as in other democratically legitimate bicameral systems.

Brian Mulroney's appointment of the late Senator Stan Waters in 1990, after he'd won an Alberta-wide election, showed that Senate reforms could be accomplished without changing a word in our Constitution. In our most recent Senate nominee election late last year, Betty Unger and Bert Brown each received more than 307,000 votes; the third place finisher, Cliff Breitkreuz, obtained about 238,000. Accordingly, this trio should have been appointed by Paul Martin to fill the three Senate vacancies from our province.

THE FARM CRISIS

A major income crisis now faces many farming families across the country. Following a weak commitment to agriculture in its budget, the federal government has recently pledged a billion dollars to the sector -- but only about half appears to be going to beef producers. That isn't enough: The Canadian Federation of Agriculture says that about $2-billion is needed to keep our cattle industry afloat.

Ottawa's much-criticized farm-income stabilization program is finally set to be redesigned, but no consultative mechanism for producers is yet in place. Farmers also ask why the government is promising $50-million to promote our beef abroad when the more urgent need is for more processing capacity here at home.

Overall, Ottawa has done little since the U.S. banned import of our live animals almost two years ago.

A MEANINGFUL ROLE FOR CANADA IN THE WORLD

Despite some conspicuous exceptions, our country is not living up to the expectations of Canadians in the spheres of defence, diplomacy, trade and development.

On development, for example, all opposition party leaders recently signed a joint letter calling on the PM to increase Canada's development assistance to 0.7% of GDP. The budget not only failed to make a significant move toward fulfilling the pledge Lester Pearson made decades ago, but didn't even offer a plan to achieve the goal. Instead, the Canadian International Development Agency recently suspended its Project Facility Fund, upon which an estimated 240 Canadian NGOs depend to do projects in many parts of the developing world.

Nowhere is our foreign policy vacuum more evident than in Sudan, where more than 300,000 civilians have already perished in a disaster Romeo Dallaire has described as "Rwanda in slow motion." The government of Canada must finally assume an effective leadership role with the African Union, NATO and the UN in order to bring the systematic killing and raping of innocent civilians to a halt.

As in other cases of "ethnic cleansing," most notably Bosnia in the mid-90s and Kosovo in 1999, the international community must find the political will to act effectively. If Canada is still "the human face of the West across Africa," as an African diplomat put it last week, our prime minister must find an acceptable multilateral way to get enough peacemaker boots on the ground in Darfur with all deliberate speed.

The Prime Minister's refusal to do anything substantive was the straw that broke my Liberal camel's back.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

The government's same-sex marriage bill (C-38) represents a clear departure from the Liberals' successful tradition of moderate liberalism, which, for generations, has kept the state from tampering with major societal institutions, including family, marriage and religion. Permitting same-sex marriage would take us in the direction of post-liberal European states such as the Netherlands.

As with many things this government has done, this simply isn't something I can support.