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.
