Blue Like You

Using the deaths of Canadians for political purposes.

It is beyond bad taste. It is absolutely appalling.

I wonder how the families feel?

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Update : It gets worse. (H/T Canada.com)

Also please check out ASTTR - ‘I’m Bob Rae, and Stephane Dion approved this message.’

Warren Kinsella obviously condones the new Liberal ad.

Star Phoenix - …Lighten up:

…Remember, his jokes weren’t meant to be heard outside the office. He was conferring privately with his professional colleagues. The indiscretion, if there was one, was that of the disloyal bureaucrat who anonymously leaked his remarks, thus introducing them into a venue for which they were never intended. We can only guess at the motives of an anonymous tattletale, but rarely are they entirely virtuous …

And I wonder what Marc Mayrand would say about the actions of this Liberal MP?

Many thanks to Sammy in comments for this tip - A bit of private black humour has the sanctimonious seeing red: Christie Blatchford.

Sunday Update: Paul McPhail has some questions too - Negative Advertising.

Norman Spector - The Big Loser after Two Weeks? CBC (H/T to Sammy, one of my most reliable tipsters.)

Plattytalk: Simply put, the man is a liar.

Monday Update: Charles Adler nails it:

…The real question to the voter is, "Who is really guilty here of shamelessly exploiting a Human tragedy?" The Conservative Government of the day or their desperate, hateful, and shameless opponents who will say anything to scare Canadians into voting for them?

Stephane Dion will have to kick off the Federal election campaign with a bus, because his fuel-sucking jet is not quite ready.

For some reason, the LPC just didn’t get it done again.

Things appear to be in chaos already. They hadn’t prepared enough ahead of time to have a cleaner jet ready, the way the CPC and NDP have done. Stephen Taylor and Steve Janke have the details.

And he said it was going to be a ‘Clean campaign’.

Hah!

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8:45 am Update : The Writ has been dropped.

Press conference in front of Rideau Hall. Harper is asked about the warm, fuzzy family-oriented ads (sounded as if it was David Akin who asked).

Harper’s response was amazingly candid and genuine. I hope to find the exact wording soon on the net, because I don’t want to do it an injustice. He didn’t duck the question. He answered it head-on and honestly. (Note: Not surprisingly, Kady O’Malley has quite a different take on things.)

Another question about the timing of this election. Harper’s translated response was something to the effect that the population must decide who has the mandate - the government or the opposition? Well said.

CTV has a great election page up, BTW. Try the little quiz on the right. It’s lots of fun for political junkies and useful for any undecided Canadian voter.

9:30 update : Dion’s on now. He says the Government sat on their hands??? C’mon Stephane!

Duceppe’s up now and playing the Bush card. *snore*

More live-blogging at the National Post.

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Monday Update: Don Martin - Liberal campaign shows all the signs of poverty, poor planning.

Dalton McGuinty plans to ask the federal party leaders for fairness for Ontario:

…After meeting with students at a Pickering high school today, McGuinty said he will ask each federal party leader how they would deal with Ontario’s claims that it is not treated fairly by the federal government…

Too bad Dalton doesn’t worry about fair and equal treatment of Ontario citizens himself.

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Wednesday Update : Waterloo Region has big problems with long wait times for specialists. Here is the latest crisis developing - Region loses two dermatologists (Record). Where is Dalton McGuinty on this file? Why is he ignoring the health of Waterloo Region citizens?

…Area dermatologists see a mix of medical and cosmetic cases. But Papp said they could see more medical cases if the province provides more funding.

Money to introduce electronic health records would boost efficiency, he said. And hiring nurse practitioners or other trained practitioners to help monitor less serious cases would free up specialists to care for complex ones, he said.

Two years ago, Papp asked the province for funding for a nurse practitioner but was told none was available.

He added that there have been only minor increases to fee-for-service payments for dermatologists.

"Basically, we are getting paid the same as we did in 1986 and the costs are much, much higher."

Dalton McGuinty should stop pandering to unions and start funding the health sector properly. Where is our health tax going???

Regarding McGuinty’s electioneering style, check this out: Obama goes to McGuinty U. (Sun)

Now wait one gol darn minute here.

Didn’t the Liberals enable the Conservative Government’s immigration amendments to pass?

And now Iggy is being sent on a tour of Canada to try and woo back their supposed base by asking for new ideas?

New ideas for what? How to abstain from voting?

"We don’t like what the Conservatives have done on immigration but we want to come with a good plan to propose to Canadians and Michael and Maurizio have decided they will come with recommendations for the party."

The Star points out that the real problem was that somebody didn’t want an election:

…Liberals voiced their outrage but didn’t defeat the immigration change because it would have prompted an unwanted election in July. But their tacit agreement is seen as a further weakening – if not a betrayal – of the Liberal connection to immigrant communities…

And of course, Canadians apparently don’t want an election in the summer - or the fall, or the winter, or the spring…

Rick Mercer’s brilliant song still rings true:

"We’re not afraid to face the electorate. We’re just afraid to face them in the context of an election!"

Dion feels all this cross country touring will help the Liberals really learn how to be an effective opposition:

"Last year we were full of goodwill but we were still a party learning to be an opposition, while the NDP (had been doing) that for decades," he said.

So this is really a sort of an opposition summer school.

Good plan. Looks like they’ll be there for a long, long time.

H/T to National Newswatch for this one - The Original in and out election financing .

Elizabeth Thompson had an ‘aha’ moment today:

…Listening today to one Bloc Québécois MP after another get up to denounce "in and out" financing and praise Elections Canada, those bells started to ring even louder.
The term "in and out" in connection with election financing was first used by my former colleague and classmate Andrew McIntosh to describe a lucrative arrangement cooked up by the Bloc to take advantage of a loophole in election financing laws to extract the maximum amount of taxpayer-funded refunds from Elections Canada. We might never have heard about it if Bloc MP Jean-Paul Marchand hadn’t balked at the obligation to spend the maximum amount possible on his campaign in the 2000 election, prompting a court case, a scandal and a decision to close the loophole…

Quite amusing in view of the Bloc’s fawning confidence motion .

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Update : The Trusty Tory has been doing a great job tracking the hypocrisy of the opposition parties on this matter - Hypocritical Party of Canada .

More at Sandy’s with links to Andrew Coyne and Hunter .

Jack’s Newswatch - Tories Blast Elections Canada .

Is it fair to expect members of the Kyoto Kult to practise what they preach?

In today’s National Post, Kevin Libin uncovers a scathing exposé of hypocritical actions by so-called environmentalists and green advocates- Emissions omissions.

He cites the Kyoto high priests themselves, Suzuki and Gore, whom we all already know emit more hot air when giving speeches than most ordinary Canadians do in a lifetime.

But he also hones in on Liberal Environment critic David McGuinty, of the Flying McGuinty Brothers. (Great blog there, BTW)

Libin provides a stinging list of David’s environmental sins acquired by access to information. Just check out McGuinty’s carbon footprint! You’ll be blown away by the greenhouse gases.

Anyway, as we all know brother Dalton is having his own problems - especially lately with news leaking out of his own Environment Minister Laurel Broten’s unpopular plans to build a huge two-story garage to accommodate “one of their four vehicles, baby gear and bikes.” Neighbours are not happy due to the threat to a large nearby tree and the perceived visual impact of such a monstrosity.

Then there is the matter of those fours vehicles, which Broten defends as something her husband is entitled to, after having become a “mining town boy made good”.

Ah, so if you achieve some financial success in your life, you’re allowed to drive a bunch of fancy cars. Or maybe they’re just saving them for the boys, who should be ready to drive in around 15 years or so…

Anyway, back to the Post article. An actual Doomsday Believer is frustrated with these high-profile, so-called green advocates who make convenient exceptions for themselves:

“It’s arrogance. It’s a sense of entitlement. A lot of people in the environmental movement, and in government, are so convinced that they’re smarter than everybody else, a certain amount of behaviour just comes from that.”

What do you think? Do you feel it’s acceptable for these environmental saviours to preach one thing but do another?

If you’re rich enough to purchase carbon credits to offset your lifestyle, does that seem fair to others that are being asked to make huge personal sacrifices with cutting back on the A/C in the summer, shivering in the winter, letting their lawns go brown and taking the bus to work?

Or are such questions considered to be an act of heresy?

Ontario Government - World class smokescreen.

H/T National Newswatch.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Environment Minister is busy planning her four-car garage. Well, she’s gotta spend that raise somewhere…

Update:

Oh here’s a good one - Ontario schools to receive Gore’s ‘Truth’:

Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten says the former U.S. vice-president’s film will inspire students to “reduce their environment impact.”

Tides Canada Foundation director Tim Draimin says the film helps viewers think about the long-term implications of lifestyles.

Could someone please drop off a copy to Laurel? Perhaps she could play it for the kids when driving around in one of those four vehicles. I’m sure one has a DVD player.

Joel-Denis Bellevance relates a story in La Presse that suggests that the former Liberal government was keenly aware of warnings of torture in Afghanistan (H/T National Newswatch).

This is a translated version of the article, so it reads the way Stephane Dion speaks English, and is therefore somewhat difficult to follow, but well worth the effort.

Bellevance makes the point that the present government is surely to blame for a lot of confusion this week, but the Liberals may not have been lily-white in the affair themselves.

And here’s your weekend quiz courtesy of ChuckerCanuk: Am I a Liberal..?

…anyone one else is fair game.

Today’s National Post Editorial (Dear Stephane: Be a Man), highlights Stephane Dion’s outraged hysteria over the Prime Minister daring to suggest that “the opposition seems to care more about the rights of Taliban detainees than the safety of our troops in Kandahar”.

So Steffi then called Stephane Harper a ‘bully’. The Post then goes on to outline other instances when the Liberals did their own ‘bullying’:

Since last fall, the Liberals have labelled Mr. Harper a Neanderthal over his government’s cuts to the Status of Women Canada budget; implied he is racist for axing the $5-billion Kelowna agreement on native funding; claimed he is anti-democratic for “stacking” the committees that advise on judicial nominees; accused him of “undermining our Canadian values system” by eliminating funding to the left-leaning Court Challenges Program; and suggested he was homophobic for reviving the debate on same-sex marriage. They have called him a “control freak,” “Bush-lite,” “deceitful” and a practitioner of “Republican voodoo economics.”

I might add to that that the Prime Minister of Canada has even been called a “Political Whore” by a sitting Liberal MP; albeit not in the House itself. I even asked Garth if he was planning to apologize. His response was:

Of course he (Harper) completely prostituted his Reform principles. That’s fact, not character assassination. He executed himself. — Garth

So, I suppose if the accuser believes the statement to be true, then no apology is required.

And yet, we now have Post columnist Jonathan Kay, the National Post itself, and others being served libel notices over Kay’s piece about alleged Liberal backroom deals. Jonathan defended his position in the Post’s Full Comment blog back on Feb. 28.

This morning I asked Mr. Kay if he was planning to comment about this latest development, but he replied that he has “been advised not to make any statement”. However, he did thank me for my note.

The Big Red Liberal Machine is worried, folks. They are demoralized by their glaring mistake in electing a ‘whimp’ as a leader and by polls showing rising support for the CPC.

- And just like a cornered animal, the LPC is lashing out in anger and fear.

I am emerging from my self-imposed ‘reading retreat’ because I just couldn’t let this pass.

Apparently there were rallies in major cities across Canada yesterday, calling for peace in the “War on Terra”. (Can you believe it?)

Anyway, the rallies were supposed to be non-partisan, but many politicians seized the opportunity to push for Kyoto compliance (Post - “Tories Knocked at Kyoto Rally“):

Chief organizer Brennan Louw said he intended the event to be non-partisan; however, local federal politicians took the opportunity to court voters and to challenge the record of Prime Minster Stephen Harper.

“I say to Mr. Harper: You have no right to take Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol. That’s Canada’s signature on that document - that’s not you’re signature,” said NDP Leader Jack Layton. “We must send that message to Stephen Harper.”