Vote for This Liberal But For That New Democrat

Following upon this and that, there would be no contest at all for my vote either here or there.

Kirk Tousaw may well be a nice New Democrat, but if I had to choose between him (a former British Columbia Marijuana Party manager who has found the time to post 965 times on the Cannabis Culture Forum when he's not preparing a Charter of Rights challenge to win legal protection for smoking doobies with a "sacramental use" argument) and the Liberal Stephen Owen (a former Amnesty International adviser in South Africa and Yugoslavia, a senior expert at the IGAD Secretariat for Sudan peace negotiations, the chair of the South African Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel, an advisor to the Israel Palestine Center for Research & Information on Final Status Peace Negotiations, a moderator in Peace Building Policy with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in Zimbabwe, for starters), who'd I choose?

Stephen Owen, Liberal, in Vancouver Quadra, hands down.

In Vancouver Centre, Hedy Fry, also a Liberal, is hampered by just one small problem, however: She's Hedy Fry. My comrade Jonathon's got her number here. Which leaves me more than pleased to confess that I'd vote for, campaign for, and wash dishes for her NDP oppponent, Randall Garrison.

Garrison, that unapologetic internationalist I profiled in my Chronicles column last year, came inches away from winning in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca last January, but for this:

The problem is a debilitating legacy within the NDP, and within the left in Canada, generally, that has resulted in a kind of political and cultural illiteracy about military policy. You can test for it yourself. Ask an NDP supporter this question: What is the NDP position on Canadian troops in Afghanistan? Chances are good the answer will be "Dunno." Ask the same question about Sudan. Or Haiti. You'll get the same answer. Dunno.

Garrison told me: "An independent foreign policy requires a strong military. . . People who serve in the Canadian Forces are ordinary people, and the `left' has distanced itself from people who do that service. We disdain that service, and we should not." And he was unafraid to say this:

You know, if you were a woman or a gay person, what happened in Afghanistan wasn't a war of occupation. It was a liberation.

Which set off conniptions here.