Is it just so swell when our first family of protest can take a vacation together in the great Canadian outdoors and perhaps plan what’s next in a new open season on rule of law?
Yalda Machouf-Khadir. The daughter of left-wing radical separatist Amir Khadir is facing 11 charges in connection with the student protests.
They include ransacking a minister’s office and a university, assault, and blocking bridges.
Bail was granted to the 19-year-old last month. One of the conditions was that she had to be home every night by 10. Sounds fair.
Now the duly elected Papa Khadir, who was also charged in another protest, found that bail condition to be, in his words, “abusive.”
It would spoil the Khadir family camping and canoeing expedition.
So what does a judge do this week? He removes the curfew.
And that’s exactly why the students and the other protesters do not take the system seriously, Injunctions? Nah, why respect them? Court orders? Forget ‘em. Illegal protests? Who cares?
The judge who rescinded that bail condition has made a grave error.
If there are no consequences there is no accountability.
If there is no accountability there is no civil society.
Having an August election campaign is like having a pool party in January. Not a great idea.
But the Liberals know this is when they must go to the polls.
Their voters tend to be more loyal so lower interest in an election might help them.
The opposition says it’s a cynical act, but they should grow up.
Politics is about power and nothing else. They have been hollering for an election for months.
Political parties have one goal and that is to take power. Nothing else really matters.
Charest wants an election before the Charbonneau corruption commission really gets going.
He wants an election while students are resuming their antics.
He wants an election while the memories of a pot-clanging Pauline Marois are still fresh.
And our friends the students are gearing up, promising to be back after their summer season of protest kind of fizzled out.
(Probably too many of them on camping trips. Holidays are holidays after all. Have to get priorities straight.)
They will target vulnerable Liberal ridings, hoping to elect anyone but a Liberal.
Not surprising, because this student protest has largely been a PQ operation all along.
Hopefully an election can extract us from our quagmire, but given what I have seen in the last six months, I have my doubts.
Democracy is what Canadians have died fighting for and an idea that many people around the world just dream of.
But here too often, rule of law from a democratically-elected government is all too often ignored.
Yes, they will have their chance through the ballot box
And yes they should be prepared to accept the verdict whatever it may be.
Because that’s the way it works.
