Liberal Fear of Backlash

After the Throne Speech made by Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion eventually made clear his intentions as far as dealing with it. "Dion pledged to stop any anti-environmental Conservative legislation," which would result in a vote of non-confidence and a subsequent election (As reported in the CanWest News Service article Won't support anti-environmental legislation: Dion).

While it is good to see Dion finally take some initiative in this criticism of the Conservative government, he seems to be taking his time in actually revealing his true opinion. While the NDP and Bloc Quebecois made their intentions to vote against the Throne Speech public from the beginning, Dion kept his parties intentions to himself.

While it Dion's intentions pertaining to the actions of the Conservative government may be seen as some as commendable, I believe that they took the cowards way out by not actually casting a vote in regard to the Throne Speech. Instead of forcing an election, the Liberals instead choose to stay home and let the Throne Speech pass.

Dion is now saying that his party will vote against the Conservatives if they see them acting incorrectly in their running of the country. But if they did not agree with the Throne Speech in the first place, why did they not vote it down? They simply did not want to force an election because they feared that the voters would blame them for it and therefore not give them their vote.

If the Liberals actually cared about the state of Canada, they should have called the Conservatives on their proposed policies that do not seem to benefit Canada, and especially the environment.

In my opinion this is a clear example of cowardice on the part of the Liberals, who fear the backlash of forcing an election so much that they risk the passing of policies that do not benefit Canada, its citizens, or the environment.