The biggest barrier to the legalization of Marijuana is now and will remain the Americans.  The Liberal Government realizes this and so has sought to balance the concerns of the Bush administration with the population’s desire to see the country’s marijuana laws liberalized.  What Liberal government proposes will not work.  The government can not have its cake and eat it too.  The problem is that the population, rightly, views marijuana as being pretty innocuous.  Indeed, it is to the point now that the government, thankfully, has dropped any pretense of it being otherwise.  A 2002 Senate Committee bluntly stated that should marijuana be legalized it would be less dangerous and socially corrosive than alcohol.  Public officials talk about having tried the drug without embarrassment.  However, no one exemplified the country’s new casual attitude to the drug more than the man who first announced plans to decriminalize it, viz., Jean Chrétien.  When asked about the subject, the outgoing Chrétien said he might try the drug, but that he would happily pay the fine for doing so.  “I will have my money for my fine and a joint in my other hand.”  Chrétien acceptance aside, even parking tickets have to be seen to serve some legitimate purpose for people not to view them as an unfair imposition.  Such is not the case with the proposed Marijuana fines.  Sure, Canadians understand that the Americans would not be pleased about legalization and as such there would be certain practical advantages to not legalizing it. However, that does not make marijuana prohibition in a general sense legitimate in their eyes; it just means that Canada is tailoring its own laws to meet the illegitimate demands of the Americans. This can not stand.  Any perception that Canada is enforcing laws to please a bullying third party, whoever that may be, is simply poisonous to the health of a functioning democracy.  

The whole Mark Emery affair http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/ 2005/07/29/pot-raid050729 .html" title="http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/ 2005/07/29/pot-raid050729 .html" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/story/canad...  will simply reaffirm for many Canadians that Canada is bending over backwards to please a bullying third party.  Indeed, Mark Emery is not just any distributor of marijuana seeds; he is the leader of the Marijuana Party.  Rightly or wrongly his threatened extradition will symbolize an attack on Canadian sovereignty.  It will be seen as an attempt by the Americans to short circuit the political debate about marijuana in Canada.    

This will be politically disastrous for the Liberals.  Given Chrétien’s aforementioned pronouncements and the Liberal dominated Senate Report, attempts to justify such criminal proceedings against Emery will ring hallow and Vichy like.  Martin’s reputation as a dither and someone easily cowed will be reinforced.  What is more the discord between upper echelon of the Liberal party and the party base will grow ever wider and one prominent Liberal Party ghost will cast an even greater shadow on today’s Liberals.   

Trudeau was not only part of the party’s advant-guard he was to use Hegel’s term for Napoleon “history on horseback”.  In other words, Trudeau’s foresaw historical forces just as they were emerging on the horizon and had the courage to champion policies that would birth the new age quicker than it might have otherwise been (e.g., his pronouncement that that the government has no business in the bedrooms of a nation.) This is in marked contrast to Martin.  Far from being part of the advant guard of the party, Martin has tried to rein in his party base as they and ideological kinfolk, such as Mayor Larry Campbell, press for policies designed to birth a new era.  The Liberal brass has been so tentative and temperamentally conservative that the judiciary seems positively activist by comparison.  This is quite a feat.     

The ability of the Liberals to make substantial gains in Vancouver, to solidify their support in Toronto and to reestablish a foothold in Quebec will be in no small measure determined by their willingness to champion socially liberal causes such as marijuana liberalization.  Championing them after the fact (i.e., after a landmark court decision) will not benefit the party.  (If the government continues to sit on its hands, the 6-3 2003 Supreme Court ruling Canada’s revamped marijuana laws constitutional will be revisited at some point and I would say reversed.)