It was Day One of the G8 summit in Muskoka cottage country when the eight world leaders went for an afternoon stroll down a winding walkway to Stephen Harper’s political rescue.
For months, Harper had been globe-trotting the world’s capitals to garner support for his centrepiece of the three-day summit — a massive boost in aid aimed at improving the health of pregnant women and infants in impoverished areas of Africa.
Behind the scenes, Canadian diplomats had been frantically working with their counterparts in the other G8 countries, trying to stitch together an acceptable agreement on the maternal health initiative.
Their target was to nail down at least $5 billion from the other G8 partners by this weekend’s summit, and a matching amount from other countries and private donors.
Despite all the best efforts of Harper and his officials, they were still well short of their target by the time the G8 leaders posed for their first photo op on Friday.
Indeed, as the power octet smiled for the cameras, Canadian officials apparently figured they would be lucky to extract $3 billion from the other seven countries.
But there was an even bigger political embarrassment looming for Harper.
[More]
Updates:
6:07 pm EDT, June 27th, 2010 — Harper rejects advice to eliminate tax incentives for oil patch
Notes:
I’m waiting for Obama to fire Harper like he did McChrystal as our PM made a monkey out of him this weekend. If I have it right the Obama administration will place Harper well to the right of the devil.
As if we care.
All American doctors are welcome and entry guaranteed. Every town in the country is open and America can kiss goodbye to “Obamacare” as all their doctors bugger off to a more welcoming climate.
That’s no joke.
Has the Canadian MSM sunk that low? That has to be the most non story story I’ve read since maybe waffergate? ! If you think Harper would look bad if Italy didn’t kick in some dough what do you think Italy would look like?
“There isn’t a Canadian economy any more, there is a global economy … some people may think that’s a loss of sovereignty but that is a simple reality”
Who just said that?
a) Barack Obama
b) Nicolas Sarkozy
c) Stephen Harper
Take your time ….
I agree with Joe. A poorly written article but I threw it up because people need to be able to read it and the response.
The article seems to say ” Harper didn’t fail ” while the truth is more that he got a whole bunch of cats herded in the direction of better economical health i.e. at moving in the right direction instead of more destructive stimulus spending with no end in sight !
There might still be some stimulus spending in the near future but at least the objective is to find and exit strategy towards lower deficits in the next few years.
I wonder what the ” Coalition ” of losers would have lobbied for ? Bigger and BIGGER spending and social programs paid for with phoney monopoly money