By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Trudeau skips out as Liberal conventioneers vote to legalize assisted suicide
Federal Liberals have voted in favour of legalizing assisted suicide but whether Leader Justin Trudeau will run with the idea is a mystery.
Trudeau was not in the room Sunday when delegates to the party’s national convention passed a resolution urging that voluntary, medically assisted death be decriminalized — although moments earlier he had been just outside the convention hall, cheering as the Canadian men’s hockey team won Olympic gold.
He was in the room later when delegates gave him an overwhelming, after-the-fact endorsement of his decision to kick senators out of the Liberal caucus.
[slideshow_deploy id=’1982’]
Delegates also passed a raft of potentially costly resolutions that included supporting many big-ticket items:
— An $18-billion-a-year investment in infrastructure.
— Creation of a basic annual income.
— A national transportation strategy.
— Funding for aboriginal education on reserves equal to that spent on provincially operated schools.
— Increased funding for mental health services.
— Expansion and enhancement of the Canada Pension Plan.
None of the resolutions are binding on the leader and, since he gave no closing remarks and did not hold the traditional wrap-up news conference at the convention’s end, it was unclear which resolutions Trudeau believes should make their way into a 2015 election platform or how a Liberal government would pay for them.
He did give a number of one-on-one television interviews — which were taped before the resolutions were voted upon.
In an interview with Global’s Tom Clark, Trudeau, who has promised not to hike corporate or income taxes or the GST, said the debate to come will be over where to spend the surplus the Harper government has forecast for next year. (Source: Yahoo News Canada)