For Michael Ignatieff, September has been the cruellest month, and can’t end soon enough. But the potentially fatal political wounds he has suffered this month are entirely self-inflicted.
He began the month by declaring at a Liberal caucus meeting: “Mr. Harper, your time is up,” a quote he couldn’t climb down from, and which he gave as a hostage to fortune.
He set the Liberal Party on course for an election it wasn’t ready for, and set the country on the road to an election it doesn’t want. This time, Canadians really, really mean it when they say they don’t want an election. Just to quantify that, a Nanos Research poll for Policy Options, being released tonight, shows that three Canadians out of four, and even two Liberal voters out of three, don’t want an election. As pollster Nik Nanos comments: “That’s a very hard number.”
Question: How come Ignatieff’s pollster didn’t give him that information a month ago, before his Sudbury declaration of war on the minority Conservative government?
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“But the potentially fatal political wounds he has suffered this month are entirely self-inflicted”
I disagree. The fatal wounds are due to the LPC that has not stood for anything, since Trudeau, but achieving more power and control. At least Trudeau stood for something. The LPC has defaulted into something that was co-dependant on the Bloc. L Ian puts cosmetics on that idea by phrasing it as “Since the time of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to the present day, the Liberal Party has been built on the twin pillars of Quebec and Ontario, and the unity of French and English-speaking Canadians.” L Ian, I have news for you, Quebec is only 22 % of Canada now and we are no longer Upper and Lower Canada.
The ROC is becoming more and more happy to decentralize by returning to the BNA Act and the division of powers. Actually, L, Ian used to call this “two mints in one”. That’s the idea that would allow a stronger federation by making the Provinces stronger.
But the Liberals want to be the banker to the Provinces and take their skim to buy off special interest groups. For example, they want even more centrally planned entitlements like National Day Care run by CUPE.
The irony is , as soon as Quebec realizes they will have to look after themselves, they be like the Euroweenies are with Obama; the Euroweenies now think the USA is no longer defending them and Sarko is upset to have to spend some of their own money on a defense shield. That’s what happens with “the end of welfare as we know it”.
Hello Nom – can’t find that article where we were discussing the HST and its implications. After much thought and exploration of various reports and the Revenue Canada website, I do think it’s the only measure that will allow for Ontario in particular to avoid complete bankruptsy like Chicago and Detroit. HOWEVER, I’d recommend the tax be levied against junk food products and tobacco, not the essential goods and services as listed. There are myriad sugar and high fat products that this tax can apply to without hitting on citizens’ basic needs and requirements.
Also, I’d like to point out that as the allocation of this tax involves re-seeding failing business and industry with re-equipment and infrastructure monies due to poor management business failures, the purpose of the tax should be applied to creating living wages (salaries). In other words, taxpayers will foot their own paycheques, even beyond business garnering free employment for a couple of decades at least now.
No doubt, the HST issue is proffering as the non-confidence motion over which we’ll go to an election. This tax is levied even as the ehealth loss to Ontario is recorded at 1 billion. Interesting.
I agree with nomdeblog. The current Liberal malaise isn’t due to and only to Ignatieff’s egotism and isolation. It’s due to the deep infrastructure that has developed over the past decades as the Liberal Party.
This infrastructure is not political in the sense that it has an ideology for the nation. It is strictly and only an appendage of power for a select group of business interests in Quebec – the Desmarais and PowerCorp. They have moved in and essentially remade the Liberal Party as their means of economic control of massive business interests in Canada and internationally. Governance of Canada was only an appendage to retain power…and their means of retaining power was by patronage and special deals..whether these deals were giving the Gun Registry to the Maritimes as an employment centre, or various other ‘special interest’ deals to buy votes.
Their political control is based in Quebec and their minions have been Mulroney, Trudeau, Chretien, Martin..and now..Rae. They got cocky and the Sponsorship scandal, the only one of their basic style of governance that was made public, threw them out. They want back in power, because that’s how their business operates..via the backroom deals of political power. They have no agenda for Canadian wellbeing and that’s why their election strategies are empty.
Ignatieff is not one of their team; neither was Dion. Rae is theirs…What is going on is yet another attempt to get rid of the non-members of this cabal…they got rid of Dion, whose naivete permitted them to allow him to run on pure romantic ideology (the green shift). Then, Ignatieff moved in…and now, they have to get rid of him.
Ignatieff, in his own nature, has no business in politics or government. He’s an academic and belongs in the heady analytic realm of the university.
The question then becomes, do Liberals across the country want to be members, even distant ly, of a cabal run by and in Quebec?
And as nomdeblog points out, Quebec is no longer the centre of Canada. Its socialist lifestyle, supported by the ROC, is no longer the goal of Canadians. And, supporting Quebec is no longer deemed a necessary guilt trip for ‘not being French’.
The insiders’ powercorp cabal, ET, are in their preferred place. In the wilderness, they might escape accountability and restoration of the missing taxpayer dollars — it can be estimated in the billions, not millions, imo. With Dion, Ignatieff (obvious calculated plants on the Canadian scene), they escape personal indictment. Like Chirac in France.
And we might look at Mo Strong’s ‘depopulation plans’ — out of pure self-interests as democratic citizens.
Anna, thanks, good for you to make that adjustment. It isn’t easy to do that and I admire it. Conservatives often disagree with each other and the dissent is our strength … to find the best ideas, versus an ideological stance that the Liberals “project” upon us. We are not paying Hudak’s MPPs to just oppose Liberals. We want an opposition that can think and offer alternatives and amendments.
ET that is excellent. The only “nuance” (conservatives are nuanced too, LOL) is that I don’t put blame on Desmarais. Anymore than I blame Goldman Sachs for trying to take over the US treasury , that’s what businesses try to do, it’s as natural as a wolf going for the kill.
But the politicians are working for us and we expect those crony conflicts to be stopped , like Adscam. Furthermore we want lots of competition and tenders from any businesses who do work for the government and for all that information to be disclosed. But the Liberals never operated that way, they were the Natural Governing Party because they had mastered 2-way patronage with crony capitalism. The clean up is not done yet.
Powercorps group may be considered the Canadian equivalent of the roughly 1,500 American heavy weight enterprises than run the over 500 members of the U.S. Congress. You can bet they are and were Enron and Worldcom lite entities and didn’t they all successfully scuttle out of the way, like the Quebec cabal is doing now — but the downsizing IS at the final historical point. That’s what’s got to change. I’m serious in pointing out the HST tax categories have to be amended and applied to a wide variety of known crappy/junk products out there. This is a citizens’ issue. I object to the HST as it represents stimulus in another form and robs living wage paycheques without which the recovery is doomed for up to a decade. My family can’t wait that long. Neither can the majority of families.
You pass that message along nom, even as I write it here which will be picked up.
There’s another issue regarding reports saying EI rates will be raised 35 percent. Again, no doubt to replace the $50 billion Paul Martin transferred to General Revenue to create the surplus, even as he clinched 2.5 percent tax bracket on CSL.
The planned tax hikes aren’t doable if one can add, subtract, multiply and divide, people.
Yes, Hudak should pick up on the amendments now and run with them. The wrong products/services are getting targeted. Also, Carney is right about the business industrial sector stepping up to the plate and we may indeed recommend that the HST that gives them a ‘another kick at the can’ be applied ONLY to salary scales FIGURED into their bottom line financial reports. Let legitimately earned profits from production and sales fund their re-equipping and infrastructure needs.
As well, the G-20 according to the reports want to look at the aged and disabled as part and parcel of the revived employment picture. These groups should step the hell aside as job creation should for now be reserved for the rising generation. The former groups’ turn is up. Step aside is my recommendation as I’ve had to do. We find other ways to contribute by speaking up where we can.
“We find other ways to contribute by speaking up where we can” I’ve noticed. LOL
Would you believe I’m holding back, even nom. Sure, you do. haha.
Well, if the clever Libs hanging out on the sidelines (intentionally) can play like Canada’s Gilligan’s island with Ignatieff as the star of the show, then what’s the problem with trying/trying to help straighten things out! It’s doable.
Now, seventy five percent (thereabouts, approx) of Canadians don’t want an election due to the fact they’ve witnessed the PM steering and implementing policies that work, they might now consider throwing him a majority at around 80 percent approval rating. You see, we don’t want to scraaaaaaape by. We want resounding approval as he got a ‘standing ovation’ at the G-20 and Carney is finally issuing the statement that business/industry must innovate and participate. Gov’t/business/industry in tripartate cooperation..the possibilities are endless.
nom, I wondered why you and I seulement were talking back and fro on that thread. Think of my idea as the sin tax expanded to swath of food products out there that aren’t foods, but heart stopping vessel pluggers.
Oh, did I mention in other times, Ontario needs a startup operation for infant foods, formulas, an international competitor of worth.
Everybody should be putting up entrepreneurship ideas to do with the global economy as a revived smorgasbord but quality oriented. Repeat business happens then.
We all realize that we’re trying to restock the empty barn as the stallions have exited.