CAUTIONARY TALE BEHIND TACTICS TO SMOKE TORIES OUT

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 were 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. 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 an attention-seeking gimmick to a 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.