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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 11:10 am Post subject: Liberals push for fall election |
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Another election looming:
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The Liberals say they will try to trigger the defeat of Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government at the earliest possible date this fall, delivering a message to the prime minister: "Your time is up."
"You�ve failed to protect the most vulnerable, you�ve failed to create jobs, you�ve failed to defend our health care, you�ve failed to restore our public finances," Ignatieff said.
"We cannot support this government any further. After four years of drift, four years of denial, four years of division, four years of discord, Mr. Harper, your time is up."
A Liberal government, Ignatieff pledged, would return "competence and compassion" to the federal government to replace an "incompetent" Harper government that "doesn't care."
"The secret weapon on our side is Stephen Harper's record," he said. "We can do better."
Ignatieff also hit out at Harper for not seeing the recession coming and predicting during the last election that the government wouldn't run a deficit, while also failing to stand up for Canada and Canadians abroad.
"You can't count on a government that can't count," he said.
The Conservatives, he charged, have sat back and done nothing all summer as Canada's health-care system is dragged through the mud in the United States.
"The Liberals are fiercely proud of our health-care system and, unlike the Conservatives, we are not afraid to defend it," he said. |
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/01/ignatieff-liberals090109.html |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:32 pm Post subject: |
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| It seems that Canada may give Italy a run for their money. |
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blade
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
| It seems that Canada may give Italy a run for their money. |
Who cares, it's only Canada  |
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oldtactics
Joined: 18 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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Fingers crossed that they postpone it until the winter so I can get involved and campaign.
Otherwise... looks like I'll be voting from here? |
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gakduki
Joined: 16 Jul 2009
Location: Passed out on line 2 going in circles
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| Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Waste of money. Harper is no better or worse than that academic American guy who appeals mostly to Liberal partisans and university students. Pehaps Ignatieff could be the next Trudeau. Who knows, but I think an election in the fall will only produce another Conservative minority. Perhaps throwing more votes to the NDP so they can add to Canada's surmounting deficit. I will protest this nonsense by not voting again. Vote in real elections, not in games, send a message. So many elections, so ridiculous Canadian's can't afford this. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:41 am Post subject: |
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| gakduki wrote: |
| Waste of money. Harper is no better or worse than that academic American guy who appeals mostly to Liberal partisans and university students. Pehaps Ignatieff could be the next Trudeau. Who knows, but I think an election in the fall will only produce another Conservative minority. Perhaps throwing more votes to the NDP so they can add to Canada's surmounting deficit. I will protest this nonsense by not voting again. Vote in real elections, not in games, send a message. So many elections, so ridiculous Canadian's can't afford this. |
I'll vote, but I agree with your post. Harper lost me with the income trust change and his position on pot. I voted Green last time but will prolly vote Con this time around as a nice middle finger to the Liberals. My district is among the most 'blue' in the country, so my vote won't matter. The Conservative will will regardless. But this is such a waste of time and money. |
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gakduki
Joined: 16 Jul 2009
Location: Passed out on line 2 going in circles
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| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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| If I was in country I would be more likely to vote. But my opinion on voting under an electoral representitive system is not the highest. Really its riding by riding and in mine I had a few jerks and a couple of idealists. (Once I voted green too so they could have their dollar.) |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:43 am Post subject: |
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The unfortunate state of Canadian politics is that it is no longer really very ideological but rather geographical. The prairies will only vote Conservative because of how the Liberals and Trudeau treated them, Ontario and the Atlantic will only vote Liberal because it's the best deal for them, and Quebec will only vote for a Quebec party. Thus voting trends don't change very much because demographics don't, and for the foreseeable future we will have minority governments.
I don't like everything Harper has done, but he's hardly a raging rightist, and the country isn't doing too badly compared to much of the world. Much of this is Liberal party bluster.
Ken:> |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:46 am Post subject: |
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http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/05/robert-fulford-the-man-behind-canada-s-political-psycho-drama.aspx
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Robert Fulford: The man behind Canada's political psycho-drama
Posted: September 05, 2009, 10:30 AM by NP Editor
Robert Fulford, Canadian politics
Consider the emotional state of a Liberal MP. Except for a fortunate minority, members of parliament live insecure lives, never sure that their constituents will send them back to Ottawa in the next election and painfully aware that in 2009 voters don�t even want to hear the word �election.� Members in this position hope they can quietly hold their jobs a little longer, at least until polls indicate the Liberals are better than tied with the Conservatives.
So of course they tremble as they turn on the news, fearful that their leader, Michael Ignatieff, has once more attacked their shaky confidence. Ignatieff has made the last four or five months in federal politics the season of the bluff, his threats against Stephen Harper�s government a memorable performance. The Tories are inadequate and uncaring, he says, and he knows for sure that the Liberals should replace them and will.
Therefore, he threatens to bring the government crashing down. But then he retreats, to the confusion of everyone, especially his party. He has a bizarre way of claiming victory to explain just why he refrains from throwing the rascals out. He insisted early in the summer that he was satisfied for the moment, having wrung a concession from the Conservatives on the issue of Employment Insurance. In fact, the concession was an inquiry that everyone except Ignatieff believes to be not much better than meaningless.
Ignatieff says that in his earlier life as a professor and writer he didn�t entirely understand the potency of words: �One word or participle in the wrong place and you can spend weeks apologizing and explaining.� That sounds like someone promising to be careful about what he says. Yet his talk in public grows increasingly sloppy, even on minor points. This week he declared the Liberals are now �more united than ever.� Could be, of course, but how would he know? He�s been a Liberal only since 2005, an MP only since 2006 and party leader only since December. His only basis for comparison is with the increasingly fractious caucus led by his unfortunate predecessor, St�phane Dion. Or does he simply believe what his followers say to him in private?
This week at his caucus meeting in Sudbury he made what seemed to be an irreversible promise to vote against the government at the first opportunity. He knew that in itself this won�t lead to an election, unless other opposition members vote with him, but he nevertheless poured out a flood of rhetoric implying that the government�s fate rested in his hands alone. �Mr. Harper,� he said, �your time is up.� Again, could be. But how does he know? Ignatieff also said he would cut away the huge deficit created by Conservative policies that the Liberals insisted on. How will he do it? �Wait and see,� he said, sounding like a leader who still hasn�t figured out the shape of his election campaign.
This week it was hard to avoid the thought that we are watching a kind of psycho-drama, the acting out of a politician who has discovered that he�s become a party leader without knowing what leadership means. Ignatieff has never been in a cabinet, and has therefore never worked closely with a leader. Much of what he�s learned has surprised him, as he tells Adam Gopnik in the Sept. 7 issue of The New Yorker. His remarks there make his peculiar behaviour understandable as an attempt to redefine himself on the run.
Ignatieff has found the mental, spiritual and emotional demands of his job enormous. It�s much harder than being a professor or a writer. He�s always been a spectator, he says, but now he has to accept responsibilities. Above all, he tells Gopnik, �it�s highly adversarial. It�s combat. And you have to be ready for combat, and you have to lead troops into a kind of rhetorical battle. And you�ve got to show fight. This is not a seminar.�
There we have it. He�s confused much of the country since last winter by threats of an election that turn out to be empty, half-hearted, or at best changeable on a whim. He�s also startled us by the unreasonable vehemence of his attacks on policies that don�t differ much from his own. Perhaps we can understand all this verbal jousting, these attempts to lead his troops into rhetorical battle, only if we see them as the signs of a man compelled to endure one of his life�s major transformations while the whole country watches him. |
Iggy doesn't inspire me. Dion could make him cry. Chretien was tough as nails. The Liberal Party is embarrassing itself. |
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AgentM
Joined: 07 Jun 2009
Location: British Columbia, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 11:11 am Post subject: |
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| I've joined the ranks of apathetic non-voters when it comes to Canadian politics. I won't be voting anymore, even though I'm a Poli-sci Major. Unless we get rid of the horrible First Past The Post electoral system, there's no point voting unless you live in a swing riding. |
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Kimbop
Joined: 31 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Canada won't see an election in 2009. Iggy will again put Harper on "probation". Trudeau was a horrible Prime Minister. Canada's political parties are: left, more left, very left, and extreme left. Expect more stagnation as the gta swells with immigrant government-employee socialist freeloaders, and qubec does nothing.
Proportional represntation forms unstable govts while giving communist party quacks a voice. I like that Elizabeth May garners only 11% of the federal vote, and I like that she cannot get a seat. |
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