McGuinty, Dion, and America

I am glad to see that Dion has sided with McGuinty on the more seats for Ontario issue and says that in contrast to what Peter Van Loan said, McGuinty is actually a great man of Confederation.


Barack Obama will probably win the North Carolina primary in the US today. Whether that alone shifts him into front-runner status remains to be seen. My endorsement is Hillary Clinton but I have no problem with Obama becoming President. All that really matters to me is that the Dem nominee can beat the GOP nominee.

Prohibative organ donation restrictions

I would like to express my concern over this new Health Canada policy that seeks to exclude sexually active gay men from donating organs. It opens the Harper government up to accusations of being homophobic. Unfortunately it zeroes in on a single group and reinforces stereotypes. STDs spread in the gay community but this is not inherently due to being gay. There are historical and sociological factors to do with promiscuity. In the articles I read about this I was seeing a lot about families being questioned on these things after a donor is dead. This seems to discount the numerous existences of live donors. This new policy is a blanket ban that doctors can only override in exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately this blanket ban endangers the lives of those in need of a donated organ. Here is a hypothetical example. A gay man marries a woman and has a daughter. They then divorce because the man realizes he is gay. The man enters into a monogamous sexual relationship with another man that carries as little risk of HIV as a monogamous heterosexual relationship. The gay man’s daughter suffers kidney failure in both kidneys. After some time of treatment she is in serious need of a transplant. A test is done on the father and there is a requisite DNA match. The doctors set aside this match and look elsewhere because they have much higher preference for a donor who is straight. It is difficult to find a matching donor elsewhere. This girl’s life is being endangered because of a blanket policy that does not apply to the circumstances and is clearly discriminatory. This is the fault of the Harper government through failure to exercise their responsibility. I also wonder whether this regulation is an invasion of provincial jurisdiction. The Supreme Court might actually use its precedence criteria to strike down this regulation when I think about it. Thumbs down again to the Harper government.

Joan Beatty, David Orchard, Nick Clegg

Dion is appointing Joan Beatty to be the candidate in the Northern Saskatchewan riding federal by-election. I have certain reservations about appointing her over David Orchard but think she is likely to be a better candidate than the disaster that was Jocelyn Coulon. Beatty is an NDP MLA in the Saskatchewan legislature and will have to resign her seat immediately. Because she is running for the federal Liberals, I doubt she would be welcomed back into the provincial NDP to run in the provincial by-election for her seat should she lose the federal by-election. This means that she has no job if she loses the federal by-election. Beatty herself has made some implication that running federally for her is all about being a member of the government. Beatty implies that she did not want to be an opposition member for the next 4 years in the Saskatchewan legislature. Beatty therefore must have believed the Liberals could return to power federally in a shorter time than that and she wanted to be a part of that new governing team. Beatty herself has stated she sees a return to power for the Liberals in the next federal election. I dearly hope that is true.


I would also like to congratulate Nick Clegg on his recent leadership victory that gives him the leadership of the UK Liberal Democrat Party. Under Clegg and his recent predecessors, the Liberal Democrat Party seems clearly to the right of Labour over economic issues. That may have been less so under leader Paddy Ashdown. Prior to the 1997 UK election Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown held private talks about forming a possible coalition government after the 1997 election. The idea would have been that Labour would have only a narrow majority or only a plurality of seats and thus the Liberal Democrats would be the coalition partner to create a stable coalition government. Once the large size of Labour’s majority in the 1997 election became apparent, the possible coalition did not happen. However, in the 2001 election, Labour and the Liberal Democrats coordinated their campaigns in a way that would inflict the most damage on the Conservatives. On a side note, Labour’s vote in the UK is very efficient. The Tories won more votes within England in the last election, but Labour had significantly more seats. This meant that 35% of the vote translated to 55% of the seats in Parliament and a comfortable majority. Since the fall, that parliamentary majority has been the only thing keeping Labour in power. I hope Labour’s fortunes can improve over the coming years.