Quote:
Originally Posted by longsuffering
fyp
You don't have a crystal ball and can't say with any certainty what any actual legislation might have looked like.
Even King Harper has modified Party policy and, in some cases, decided not to implement policies he campaigned on.
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True enough but a party's policy document should be the best indication of what they plan to do.
On this front the Liberals probably should get a bit of a pass on because their policy included things like abolishing the GST, implementing Pharmacare and Free Daycare programs that they never implemented and may never have intended to... that whole campaign from the left, govern from the right thing. I wouldn't consider this to be a positive feature of that party, except in the most cynical sense in that an economic right-winger can at least hope that they'll change their mind when they regain the levers of power in some future election.
Perhaps the changes that would have affected the Oil Sands fall under the aegis of platform planks that are intended to be forgotten but I doubt it given the temperature of the environmental rhetoric from their supporters in the last two general elections.
I don't mean to imply that changing platforms is the sole realm of any particular party. I do think that when they inevitably do change their mind, they'd better have a good reason and explain it well lest they may find their supporters to have changed allegiances next time around.