Blue Like You

Archive for the ‘election’ Category

Yesterday on MDL, Joël-Denis Bellavance of La Presse tantalized viewers with a preview of today’s big story - L’ex-ministre Jacques Brassard varlope le Bloc.

Bellavance disclosed something to the effect that a former PQ Minister says the Bloc has become the clone of the NDP and is no longer relevant.

I used Google translator, but it leaves something to be desired. I gather that Brassard feels he has nothing in common with Duceppe and his party?

Since my French is a bit rusty, I would love to hear from anyone who could give us a rough translation and thoughts about the article. Thanks.

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Update: CBC says this is having a big effect on the Bloc this morning.

Julie Van D. mentioned that Michael Fortier is scheduled for a presser later on today, which may be related to this subject.

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More recommended articles for your reading pleaure:

Liberal leader proves he’s no rock star - Greg Weston in the Sun.  (BTW, what ever happened to Lorrie Goldstein???)

Dion Stumbles - L. Ian Macdonald

Surrey MP wrote letter in support of drug trafficker - Kim Bolan

So much going on. So little time.

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Evening Update: Layton welcomes sovereigntist’s NDP-Bloc comparison - CTV.

Plummeting Que. sovereignty support good for Tories - National Post.

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Thursday Update: Sovereignty silence bites Bloc - Star.

…that Stephane Dion mentioned her company’s website in his kickoff speech to the Federal election campaign, right? National exposure after all… [sarc off]

For future reference, it’s THE Green Shift for you Mr. Bean, and Green Shift for the company who’s owner is filing for an injunction against your party .

And that’s the last bit of help I’m giving you.

Gaffe #1 and counting.

(Please see Monday update at end)

(Oh, o.k. just one more hint. Don’t accuse the Government of "sitting on their hands". That one could come back to haunt you.)

O.K. Just one more. It’s "Richer, fairer, Greener ", not "Richer, fairer, richer ".

Didn’t you check the script, Stephane?

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Update: Please check out Angelo Persichilli - Best to bomb the other party’s weakest link (Star).

And via Wilson’s comment at Christian Conservative, we have this juicy tidbit - Note on the new Liberal website, the name being used now
” The Liberal Green Shift” .

Will Jennifer Wright be o.k. with this further revision of the Green Shift? Stay tuned…

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Monday Update: Well, it seems that the CTV translator made a mistake and it has now been corrected. Mr. Dion did actually say "The Green Shift", but it was translated as Green Shift.  However, CTV has now changed their web page to reflect the correct translation.

Which all goes to show that you can’t always trust MSM, and neither should bloggers.

I just finished reviewing the beginning of yesterday’s ‘Question Period’, which I had fortunately recorded. Lloyd Robertson and Lisa LaFlamme clearly chastize Dion for saying "Green Shift", and Lisa calls it the first gaffe of the Liberal Party in this campaign. Strange that that segment is not available on the CTV website…

BIG UPDATE: LIBERALS HAVE A NEW WRIT EXPENSE: PAYING FOR ‘GREEN SHIFT’ - Steve janke

This op-ed in today’s Sun is incredibly insightful - Tories outfoxing Liberals for Mushy Middle Vote.

Not a lot of time for blogging today, but I do hope to come back to it. Please feel free to comment.

BTW, to paraphrase the ever indignant Stephane Dion, I’ve never seen a leader of the Official Opposition do so much damage to our country in such a short time.

I shudder to think what might happen if he were Prime Minister.

Monday Update: Ezra Levant - Grits Chew on Nutty Rhetoric.

Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara has delivered the Ontario Liberal pre-election budget.

As the National Post notes, there is no across-the-board tax relief. The various measures for low-income families appear to be designed to lure soft left voters.

Since the Ontario budget seems to be highly dependent on the recently announced Federal budget, I find it extremely ironic that Liberal MP David McGuinty will be voting against the very set of bills that is so crucial to his brother Dalton’s political future.

Sometimes you just have to wonder.

Our Supreme Court seems so progressive and forward-thinking in areas of social engineering like same-sex marriage, abortion and swingers’ clubs, yet so slow in others.

I was just listening to Elizabeth Witmer on a local news-talk show. Liz is one accomplished and classy lady. She is gracious, but can cut through the BS with razor-sharp clarity.

No offense to John Tory, but I sure do wish Elizabeth was the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party. Tory seems like a nice guy, but I just don’t see him being able to wrestle the crown from McGuinty. Anyway, as I said in a previous post, it may actually be to the Federal Conservatives’ advantage to have the Ontario Liberals working well with the Harper government.

But in my daydream, Elizabeth Witmer would be the leader. Her deputy would be the witty, no nonsense attack-dog Tim Hudak.

I would love to see those two go up against McGuinty and Smitherman.

Suggestion to John Tory: Get Elizabeth and Tim into some of those ads! You’re not trying to sell sleep-aids, John.

Spring election or not? That speculation is the latest buzz everywhere in blogs and MSM.

National Newswatch has their “Election Fever Meter” at set 91% today! They apparently base the chances of a spring election on related buzz and spin. Personally, I don’t see the connection. Spin means speculation; not statistical probabilities in my opinion. But what do I know?

In any case, we have two eminent MSM pundits putting forth their case today that an election is less likely than ever - or at least it should be.

Don Martin playfully christens Stephane Dion “Flipper” based on his inability to demonstrate clear focus and position on policy and issues (”Liberals go from Dithers to Flipper“):

It was a lousy week for Mr. Dion, a pattern in danger of becoming a trend. Not once or twice, but three times in four days we saw Mr. Dion flip-flop on positions he’d taken during the leadership race or his party had supported last fall.

Martin goes on to list a whole host of flip-flops including his changing support on Afghanistan, his reversal on the anti-terror provisions extension and his inability to define exactly where he stands on carbon-tax policy.

I love this gem:

To be fair, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been known to change his mind. Just ask income trust investors.

Still, it takes considerable effort for one party leader to irritate Afghanistan peaceniks, infuriate law-and-order types and alienate energy producers in the space of a week.

That last line was a thing of beauty.

In any case, Martin doesn’t feel that Harper necessarily should, nor will take advantage of this pathetic display of ineptitude:

But for Mr. Harper to unilaterally seek a spring vote would flip-flop on a scale dwarfing even Mr. Dion’s regular mind changes.

The Sun’s Licia Corbella appears to concur (PM should relax, enjoy view from the top):

The Angus Reid poll, released yesterday shows the Conservatives at 40% with the Liberals 14 points behind at 26%, even lower than they were in the last election.

In other words, Dion’s post-leadership convention honeymoon was short-lived, likely because when he makes a decision he tends to waffle on it and when he is decisive, he makes the wrong one.

But the primary reason Harper is in no hurry to hit the hustings is that he knows the more Canadians see and hear Dion flip and flop the better Harper looks.

I agree. As tempting as it is to yank poor Flipper out of the water, it is far wiser to muster up some patience and play him for a while. Let him shake his head furiously and tangle himself in the line.

Then when he’s totally exhausted himself, Harper can calmly reel him in.

The anti-terror laws die Thursday. Yesterday in the Commons, Stephen Harper offered a compromise, but Dion has stubbornly refused to consider it.

Unfortunately, this very important issue has spiraled out of control and become some sort of political showdown.

I hope to have an more extensive commentary later, but let’s start with Don Martin’s column, “Not all Liberals will enjoy the kill”:

…Opposition parties argued yesterday that these emergency powers are too radical for rights sensitive Canadians, yet in the next breath insisted they merely duplicate measures available elsewhere in the Criminal Code…

PM Stephen Harper is getting pummelled in MSM today - and of course the sanctimoniously-enraged Liberals are demanding an apology for the alleged allegation that he was never actually allowed to articulate due to their raucous chorus of “Shame”! (Hansard - 14:20). Clearly, they were ready for the Conservatives to reference this article. They had a game plan.

And perhaps I would be more convinced of the lack of substance to the Vancouver Sun story if Stephane Dion hadn’t ordered his caucus to vote against extending the anti-terrorist measures; with threat of severe punishment for any dissenters. The phrase “Methinks he doth protest too much” springs to mind.

But the real puzzle is why would Harper risk jeopardizing his current high poll results, by apparently attempting to draw a connection, based on a news story, between Dion’s steadfast refusal to even consider the extension for a short period of time and a possible conflict of interest and/or indebtedness to certain factions that supported him during the leadership convention?

I suspect that there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Perhaps this was Harper’s attempt to warn Canadians about something that he ordinarily would not be able to divulge. Who knows what exactly he was going to say, or how he was planning to frame it? He was never given a chance to finish.

So the Liberals demanding that Harper apologize for something that he was not even permitted to say is rather rich. Why didn’t they allow him to finish what he was reading, so that it would be in permanent record in Hansard, and then they could crucify him with the glaring evidence?

I agree with Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez that the passage of his private member’s bill (C- 288) was a huge victory; but not for his party.

In today’s National Post, Don Martin states the following (The Fantasy that is Kyoto) :

“It’s not enforceable, not economical and not even constitutional,” fumes a senior official in the Environment Ministry. “But we’re working on something to deal with it.”

“…The cost and consequences of Kyoto’s implementation will not be sugarcoated by this government. The intention is not to deliver warm and fuzzys on ways to meet our international obligations, but to pour cold water and hard realities on the folly of aggressively trying to meet the 2012 target.

And the bureaucrats know there’s no way to deliver on the target without making Canadian consumers recoil in horror at the sacrifices they will have to make — which is precisely the message the Conservatives aim to deliver before summer.

Martin goes on to demonstrate in very cold, concrete terms what dear Pablo’s bill will mean for the average Canadian:

Canadian greenhouse gas emissions will have soared about 270 megatonnes above the Kyoto target by 2010, about 40% over the limit, leaving us just two years to scale back to the emission discharge of 1990 minus 6%.

“…That’s a big-sounding reduction, but consider what meeting it means to the economy. Canada would have to shut down all the power generation in Canada. Twice over. Or, it would have to eliminate all gasoline-fuelled cars and trucks. Three times over. It could shut down the manufacturing sector. Six times over. Or it might choose to scrub all mining activity. Fourteen times over…”

But more bad news for Pablo and Dion - Even the Red Star is presenting what must be for them some very disturbing news. Richard Gwyn says the latest Angus Reid poll suggests that Canadians are getting tired of trying to be the world’s do-gooder. This has negative implications for Kyoto, and by extension for its cheerleaders:

The subject was global warming and respondents were asked their preferences about alternative policy approaches.

By a wide margin, 66 per cent to 34 per cent, Canadians said they preferred “domestic action” to halt climate change rather than “international policy.”

Uh-oh! It seems that Canadians are getting weary of concentrating on the rest of the world, and now want to focus on concrete issues at home. This does not bode well for parties that only have Kyoto in their election arsenal.

And now that the Liberals have handed Harper a gift-wrapped ultimatum to deal with Kyoto, you can be sure that he will be letting Canadians know exactly what this fantasy is going to cost us in real terms. My guess is that we will soon see a money bill coming that will be up for a vote in the Commons. The opposition will either have to vote for it and incur the wrath of Canadians, as they realize who is responsible for their misery, or else the opposition will have to vote it down and trigger an election, since any money bill is a confidence vote.

And thus, Pablo Rodriguez will be hoisted by his own petard.

But the fatal blow will be to Dion.