This guy must be smoking crack. It took god knows how long to get the thing out of London and he wants to take a look at it 'as a whole'. What a constitution for Canada not good enough for you Mr. Harper, you are sounding and talking a lot like Joe Clark. If he wants to open up this huge can of worms again and divide the country, again! Then by all means do it, just so you know that you won't see another right of centre party in power for another 20 years and you will leave with Mulroney like numbers.
[H1]'There will have to be constitutional changes,' Harper says[/H1][SPAN class=byline]Last Updated Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:34:32 EDT[/SPAN] [DIV class=text][A href="vny!://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html"]CBC News[/A]
[DIV class=text] Prime Minister Stephen Harper is willing to re-enter debate over the Constitution in order to address concerns across the country, he told CBC News as legislators prepare for Parliament to resume Monday. [UL] [LI][FONT size=1]INDEPTH: [/FONT][FONT size=2][A href="vny!://www.cbc.ca/news/background/parliament39/index.html"]Harper at the helm[/A][/FONT][/LI][/UL]
[TABLE cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=0 width=210 align=right hspace="4"] [TBODY] [TR] [TD align=middle][img height=360 hspace=3 src="vny!://www.cbc.ca/gfx/pix/harper_stephen_cp_9012131.jpg" width=210 border=0] [/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD align=middle] [DIV class=caption][FONT face=verdana,arial size=1]Stephen Harper said he might open constitutional debate not just to 'accommodate Quebec,' but other parts of the country. (CP file photo)[/FONT] [/DIV][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] "Ultimately, there will have to be constitutional changes," Harper said in an interview with CBC Radio's The House on the weekend. The comment came as Harper and his Conservative minority government get ready for the opening of the 39th Parliament in Ottawa. Harper became prime minister after the Jan. 23 general election that saw the defeat of the Liberal minority government under Paul Martin.
Harper told the CBC that, as he considers his moves in the weeks and months ahead, constitutional change would be on his list – and not for only one province.
Harper said he would act not "just to accommodate Quebec but also to accommodate demands we have from the West and from other parts of the country."
The prime minister also said that any revisiting of the constitution would have to involve concerns from all of "the population of Canada."
Since its election, the Harper government has put an emphasis on five issues: accountability, GST cuts, law and order, childcare and health care.
Harper also told the CBC he will work to rectify questions of a fiscal imbalance between the federal and provincial levels.
"We're prepared to do what we can to address it," he said.
"Now, the truth of the matter is the provinces don't all agree on the size of the problem, the nature of how that problem should be solved across the country."
