Paul Martin: floundering in the slough of despair.

"Go ahead, take a bow, Paul," said the Toronto Sun on April 21, as it offered ironic congratulations to the Prime Minister for getting Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP, and the Toronto Board of Trade, and the economists, and three out of four Ontarians to yell at him on the same issue. Not since the NDP government of Bob Rae, the paper said, have so many people of different political persuasions been yelling at the same guy all at once. And all this has happened while Martin continues to bring in massive federal surpluses "while Ontario is told to stuff it."

Of course, as an election looms, not even Ontarians are being deprived of goodies. At the end of April, the government announced 72 projects in one week--including $100 million for what the Star called "the strange, Winnipeg-centred, Canadian Museum of Human Rights," but also $25 million for a centre for Toronto's International Film Festival and $7.8 million for the revitalization of Toronto's waterfront. There is a long list of other awards to Ontario centres, awards not unconnected--as James Travers put it in the Star--to the urgent need for the Liberals to win seats in the province that decides federal elections.

While the Globe was praising Martin for marshalling all the resources of government to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal, the National Post's Don Martin was describing the delight of opposition MPs as Chretien confidant Warren Kinsella told how the Prime Minister's circle of friends were involved in shady dealings with Earnscliffe Research, a lobbying firm with long-standing ties to the former finance minister's department. This was the first direct implication that Martin's inner circle was involved in contract manipulation and cost inflation. Don Martin conceded that Kinsella's testimony could be taken with a shaker of partisan salt since he is a bitter enemy of Paul Martin. Yet he was probably right to conclude that "watching Liberals devour each other live on television merely confirms this party is a bitterly divided shell of its former dynasty." Everything Martin is releasing now is being viewed as an obvious casualty in the election. "Bills are languishing in committees and public service union leaders are lamenting the end of proactive policy, resigning themselves to another year in political limbo." In other words, the spring election has almost become a procedural necessity to get a derailed parliament back on track in the fall.

Paul Martin as a Man of Action

Link Byfield reported that during the Rally for Marriage on Parliament Hill April 9 a young boy kept circulating, provoking laughter and applause with a sign which read "Paul Martin: Catholic by name--Hypocrite by choice." Many reporters were appalled at the Liberals' sleazy attempt to cling to power by letting the NDP decide what should and should not be in the federal budget. Terence Corcoran in the Post was reminded of Pierre Trudeau's description of this party as "seagulls, squawking and squealing above the ship of state and pretending."

Other commentators began to produce whole lists of promises Martin had made but not carried out. Conservative M.P. Brian Palliser said he "claims he wants to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal but continually digs with a plastic shovel." His biographer John Gray states that the qualities which made Paul Martin a successful businessman and a brilliant finance minister are not the qualities of a great prime minister; and that now he gives the impression of a desperate man on a high wire who suddenly realized that in the big job there is no safety net."

But the main objection to his staying in office is that suggested by the boy carrying the placard. As Michael Coren wrote in the Toronto Sun on April 16: Paul Martin has no right to govern at all. If anything ... he has a moral duty to resign and ask the Canadian people whom they would like to act as a leader in his stead. "Let our rulers have green skin, three heads, and be from Pluto for all I care. But let them be honest and true. And moral."

If he had possessed greater integrity, Martin would not have pressed the claims of homosexuals the way he did. He made it seem that the Charter obliged him to pass legislation revoking the common understanding of marriage and legitimizing same-sex "marriage." In an expert opinion delivered at the end of April, constitutional lawyer Eugene Meehan pointed out that the Supreme Court had not required Parliament to amend the traditional definition of marriage, nor has "gay" marriage received protection under the Charter. Also, when Martin and the Minister of Justice claim that religious ministers who do not want to perform same-sex ceremonies would have federal protection, their views were completely misleading: the provinces, not the federal government, have jurisdiction in such matters.

David Dooley is an associate editor of Catholic Insight. He is English Professor Emeritus of Saint Michael's College of the University of Toronto.