PIPE DREAM?

A few thousand federal Liberals gathered in Ottawa over the weekend to
gossip about leadership and try to come up with some innovative new
policy ideas that might seize the public's imagination. None of their
ideas was very innovative or even particularly new, but nonetheless,
most of them were voted down. No republicanism here, thank you very
much.

One of the few ideas that did get the green light was the legalization
of marijuana. This newspaper has repeatedly argued that prohibition is
a hugely expensive, utterly failed policy. We're joined in this by
such diverse voices as the Fraser Institute, The Economist, Time
Magazine, former secretaries general of NATO and the UN, and our own
Sen. Larry Campbell, among many, many others.

So there's certainly no shortage of thoughtful analysis available on
this issue. But the Liberals still have a lot of hard policy work to
do for this to graduate from attention-seeking gimmick to serious
election platform plank. In a Canadian context, the foremost issue
will be our trade relationship with the Americans, who will no doubt
be aghast at having the world's largest legal grow-op on their doorstep.

Chaos at the border means harm to the economy, which likely means lost
jobs. That's probably not the easiest way to unseat a Conservative
government. Besides, voters for whom this is a pressing issue have
likely already long since found a home in the NDP.

So we applaud the Liberals for taking a bold, if symbolic, step. Now
let's see if they can back it up.