How the NDP overtakes the Libs

Having apparently decided that alienating any voters even remotely concerned with honesty or civility in politics hasn't given him a steep enough hill to climb, PMPM adds to his challenge by making sure that no voter who cares about public health care will vote Liberal:

Question (Gloria Galloway, Globe and Mail): What are you going to do if the Supreme Court decides that you have to set up a parallel system [of health care] to protect security of the person?

Prime Minister Paul Martin: I think that quite clearly one is going to fight very hard in front of the Supreme Court...

Question: With all due respect, I don't think you answered my question. If the Supreme Court ruled you had to do that and you have no notwithstanding clause, are you going to do it?

Prime Minister Paul Martin: with all due respect, I have answered your question. If the notwithstanding clause does not exist then the decision of the Supreme Court and its interpretation of the charter is the one that will stand. I can't be much clearer than that.

Now, over the past decade-plus the Libs have done a masterful job of claiming to be defenders of public health care while actually doing nothing at all to preserve it. But today, Martin's position became absolutely clear: in no event will collective values (of which the health-care system is a prime example) ever be allowed to trump an individual court decision - no matter how many individual Canadians stand to lose out from any resulting policy changes.

And in the case of health care, which is already subject to a shot across the bow in the form of Chaoulli, Martin has given Canadians a concrete example of the type of popular and necessary national program which, in his view, is less important than the political ramifications of contradicting a single court decision.

Martin has clearly made his choice out of the options I discussed this morning. And he's squarely on the side of both ignoring the inherent limitations on one Parliament's ability to restrict the freedom of action of future ones, and using that ignorance as an excuse to let important programs die.

Needless to say, Martin's position shouldn't and won't go unopposed. Layton now has his opening to stay in the headlines on the NDP's strongest issue, armed with powerful new evidence that the Libs' policy is radically different from the Dippers'. Which should both give the NDP an unprecedented number of seats after January 23, and help ensure that future Libs don't go as far off the rails as Martin in trying to vilify their opponents.