The National Post’s Kelly McParland takes great delight in the “slow disintegration” of the Bloc Québécois, now down to just three MPs following last week’s resignation of Jean-Francois Fortin.
McParland observes that since the election of Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard in April, Quebec has begun to act like other provinces, avoiding “jumped up complaints” and “picking fights with Ottawa as a tactic in alienating voters from federalism.” The threat of separatism “has all but faded away,” he writes.
Senate solution
Canada can’t realistically abolish or even reform the Senate, but it should be possible to remove its power to defeat, obstruct or amend bills approved by the elected House of Commons, writes Andrew Coyne in the National Post.
“Similar reforms were enacted in Great Britain more than a century ago to restrict the powers of the House of Lords,” Coyne writes. “And it’s quite
clear how it could be accomplished: by the Constitution’s general amending formula, that is with the support of Parliament and seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population.”
Let Khadr speak
Omar Khadr should be allowed to talk to the media to give Canadians his side of the long-running saga at which he is centre, maintains the Edmonton Journal.
Canadians have only second-hand information about the former Guantanamo Bay detainee, the newspaper writes, with some describing him as an unrepentant terrorist and others a victim of circumstance.
“Who is Omar Khadr? It’s long overdue that Canadians heard that from Khadr himself,” proclaims the Journal.
Obama’s mess
With almost 1,000 US military personnel back in Iraq to help contend with ongoing chaos, President Barack Obama is “learning the hard way that, sometimes, it’s stupider to do nothing,” reasons The Globe and Mail’s Konrad Yakabuski.
Yakabuski writes that while Obama heralded “the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy” in Iraq before American troops left, the consensus among experts was that this goal could not be achieved by withdrawing every last soldier, as the President did.
“A residual US force was required not only for security purposes, but to put pressure on Iraqi leaders to build an inclusive government,” adds Yakabuski.
Police state?
Heated protests over the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has seen police treat the city “as a population to occupy, not citizens to protect,” writes Jamelle Bouie at Slate.com.
Ferguson officers’ use of automatic rifles, tear gas and armoured vehicles is emblematic of the broader problem of the militarization of police forces in America, Bouie adds.
