Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The Environment and What???

Just caught the end of an interview by Gary Doyle of Newstalk 570 with Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale.

Mr. Goodale was waxing poetic on the amazing Mr. Dion and how he has so quickly united the party during the Liberal caucus retreat just wrapping up in Quebec City. Ralph sounded very excited and energized with the fresh approach.

After a few slams at Harper and his too cozy ties with the 'Republicans' in the States, he started eagerly discussing their new focus - The environment, and wait for it... INTEGRITY!!!


* * * *

See also ChuckerCanuk - Dion Wants Sponsorship Cronies Back in Action.

Didn't they learn anything during the last year?

SDA - Party of Convictions: Dion Pardons.

Toronto Tories - Same old Liberals uner Dion.

Officially Screwed - Liberals Redefine "Life".


THURSDAY UPDATE: Stephane Flip Flops - Officially Screwed.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I said at Calgary Grits... you are judged by the company you keep.

Whats that bit about Liberals whining about Tories harping (no pun) about the old Liberal party, which doesn't reflect the new Liberal party.

Seem's to me that this move means Harper is entitled to link back to the old Liberals...

Wasn't it a Liberal that said "Hey, I'm entitled to my entitlements"...

Go to it Stephan... Harp at em'

Anonymous said...

Do the Liberals want to commit political hari-kari? Perhaps some of them actually prefer being in Opposition - same pay but no responsibility.

Can you imagine what the reaction from the Liberal Party (not to mention NDP, the Bloc, AND the MSM) would have been if the CPC had allowed former Sask Premier Grant Devine to run for the party nomination in Souris-Moose Mountain (south-east corner of the province) in 2004? And that scandal was longer ago than ADSCAM.

It would be interesting to hear from some of our saner Liberal friends. Can they justify it? Or would they say that their party is out to lunch on this?

wilson said...

I can't imagine the Lib Party letting the 3 'lifers' back in.

The damage Dion has done to himself , with his grassroots, well....even Julie Van Dusen can't interpret this one to make Dion look good.

Of course, it is the duty of all good Conservative bloggers, to find out who the 12 Liberal candidates were, what riding they represented, if they won, using the stolen money.
Perhaps the Bloc will just tell us, during an election campaign.

Anonymous said...

Your getting a sense of Irony!

The absolute absurdity of Dion, Goodale and Co. actions and words are sublime!

Anonymous said...

I'm no liberal but I hate all parties equally so I'll answer that call mentioned above.

Notice first that Dion said he had no problem with him getting his 'liberal membership'. What comes with that? Nothing. The liberals get ten dollars and another supporter. Apart from that they are no different than the average guy off the street.

Notice also the comment that the guys weren't even allowed to defend themselves. Where I come from that's a big no-no. Now, if Dion had said he was giving them their old jobs back, then I think people might be onto something, but that's hardly the case.

Wasn't Harper just chastised for messing up his election expenses or did I hear that wrong?

It was only really 'party people' who thought Gomery was a big deal anyway. For the rest of us, government contracts going to companies who do little work and donate back to the party is pretty much how politics and business has always been done. Need we really bring up Mulroney's contracts or Mila's decorating?

The Harper government announced billions to R&D companies, pharmaceuticals, and the auto industry, who here doesn't think the people who own, work for, or get customers from those companies won't be donating to the party that 'did them a solid'? Is it just coincidence they are in the places with the most representation and need it the least?

I don't remember too many billion or hundred million, or even ten millions going to rural Manitoba or Prince Edward Island.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Notice first that Dion said he had no problem with him getting his 'liberal membership'.

Anon - Martin had banned him "for life"!

But thanks for your take on it.

Anonymous said...

Anon begins by saying i am not a liberal and then proceeds to list what the conservatives are guilty off. Talk about dishonesty and the usual liberal deceit. What Goodale omitted was that the new liberal convictions include a sincere effort to help the environment namely that all brown envelopes given as kickbacks,bribes or other financial reawrds can only be made out of recycled paper. cote would fit right in there as their brown envelope expert.

Tarkwell Robotico said...

but the opposite is equally true, anon:

since there is no benefit to being a member, there is no need for him to join the party. why do it at all? i put up signs for my Tory candidate while my membership was lapsed - so what? I don't need to be a member to donate time at an election.

what's so incredibly suspicious about this is exactly what you point out: membership has no priveleges - so risk no honour over it. but they did and that's weird.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Gerry - Ha! Good one about the recycled envelopes. ;)

Chucker - Yes. Very bad optics. Dion's handlers must have been out for beer & pizza. They shouldn't leave him alone.

Anonymous said...

For someone who 'hates all parties' you sure do a lot of defending one party in particular. Just saying is all. For the record I am conservative to the core and would cut off my hand before I would let it vote Liberal.

On to point by point bashing of your partisan crapola.
1 The Libs only get $10 and a supporter out of it so what's the big deal? Well, they presumably already have him as a supporter, so that part doesn't really count. In the past, he handed out over $100,000 dollars to various Liberal campaigns, so it may be that they want a good deal more than $10. To the best of my knowledge, every penny that he handed out in the '97 election was illegal, why should a party welcome back a self-confessed crook? If it was my party I sure wouldn't want him, but as I said, I'm not into Liberal values.

You say Dion is not giving him his old job back, how do you know? They didn't exactly advertise the fact that he was passing out dirty money before, why do think they would be open about it now?

He was given due process, that is true, and a travesty, and oh so typical of the Liberal party. So what? If he has a legal leg to stand on he can take it up in court.

Re Mr. Harper, Tu Coque is not a valid argument. Thanks for trying, better luck next time.

It is not only party hacks that are concerned about this, did you not see any polls during the Adscam hearings? Only a Liberal partisan hack would make such a ridiculous claim. This was about much more than merely companies who got a government contract donating a little money to a political party. Re Mulroney, a) he was PC, this is the CPC, not the same party. b) see above re tu coque.

Re Harper and government contracts and kickbacks. See above re tu coque. If you have any knowledge of kickbacks, bring them to the attention of the police, it is your civic duty. If not, innuendo is not a valid argument either.

What contracts were awarded "in the places with the most representation and need it the least? " Most representation would be Alberta, how many automotive contracts did we get? How about pharmaceuticals? Rumour has it that half of our resource revenue will count towards equalization, benefiting Atlantic Canada to the tune of billions while costing us here in his stronghold.

It would seem that you're talking out of some orifice other than your mouth, and that makes me think that you are indeed a Liberal.

Jeff said...

quickly now, who is Marc-Yvan Cote? what did he do and why should he be banned from membership in the LPC for life?

i'll bet none of you know w/o the benefit of a quick google search.

harper's a scary social conservative, all libs are thieves...blah blah blah.

wilson said...

''During the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, Cote testified that he received $120,000 in $100 bills from the executive director of the party's Quebec wing. He distributed that money to 12 Liberal candidates in the 1997 federal election.''

And we all want to know who the 12 Liberal candidates were , and which ridings got the stolen money, Jeff.
And no one went to jail!
They lost their Lib memberships as a punishment that Dion thinks was too harsh!
It is my hope that all will be found out, during an election campaign.

Anonymous said...

Funny thread. I thought somebody actually really did want somebody to explain the opposing view, since at a conservative blog I doubt many of Dion's associate's visit. Silly me.

All I said was what the article stated. Dion only said that the party had a process in place, and that the process will determine whether they are in or not. Since neither of them were allowed to defend themselves then I could easily see why punishment would be 'too harsh'. If you were at a trial and heard the verdict and found out the accused couldn't even have a defense wouldn't you? So I don't see the 'big deal' here.

I don't know what a tucoq is, I'm just presenting the opposing view. There are dozens of reasons to not vote for Dion, nobody has to make everything into an issue to do so.

Harper's government has been pretty far from squeeky clean, that's the point. When people are voting, most of them are not party members. So they are comparing the two parties.

But the term 'kickbacks' is exactly the difference between politicos and the general public. To me, and most people I know, the only difference is that this is more explicit. Harper is well known to oppose Kyoto, so to me there is no real difference between Trican giving him money in his campaign than the Gomery case. Now they are giving contracts based on 'security' reasons, which once again to most people simply means 'people they like'.

Polls are highly unreliable, and even during gomery weren't that telling. Virtually everybody knew all the findings of the Gomery Report at the first minority election where Martin won. Most polls were also predicting a Harper majority up until the last two weeks when Harper made the mistake of saying that he was going to get rid of corporate welfare, a big no no in Ontario and Quebec, where the economies are highly dependant on it. Second time around he made sure he didn't open that can of worms and things worked out better. Now he's PROVEN that he has no problem with corporate welfare, so may do even better next time.

For equalization though, remember for years nobody would touch Alberta, it was the feds who kept pumping development money into it, keeping native land claims out of the way, and killing the NEP so Alberta could keep more of the proceeds.

A very have not province like New Brunswick gets 1.6 billion in equalization but never got any of that kind of federal protection or development, in fact doesn't get any kind at all. That 1.6 barely covers the educational costs of the training it does for workers it now ships to ontario and Alberta, among others. Right now they are deciding on an LNG pipeline, something that would be called a provincial decision in Alberta, yet the decision on it will be made in Calgary. Keep in mind that 10% of Alberta's budget comes from the feds and there is more of a federal presence there than all of the maritimes. In fact, the mad cow subsidies to Alberta processors is more than agricultural subsidies to the maritimes of the last decade and a half.

Right now its not even a question of 'fairness' but more of common decency. Alberta advertises all over NB to take what few workers it produces while being the only province without a debt. New Brunswick is absolutely broke, in fact will have to break its own laws and start deficit spending again. It has the worst economy in the country and the worst statistics, which would be a nice time for canadians to pretend they have a country and try to at least not kick it when its down.

You have to remember that for most people their interest in politics is nil or little better. Barely 40% even bother voting, and theres a reason that politicians rank lower even than lawyers in rankings-which unlike polls are usually fairly accurate. But by all means if your idea of fun is throwing epithets at posters go right ahead.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

But by all means if your idea of fun is throwing epithets at posters go right ahead.

I hope we can discuss this without resorting to name-calling. It does nothing to further the debate. You do seem a tad biased though, Anon, for a supposedly non-partisan POV.

However, thanks for your contributions.


Endiku said - For the record I am conservative to the core and would cut off my hand before I would let it vote Liberal.

I voted Liberal once, in my foolish youth. Then I grew up. However, in my defence, I was also living in Toronto at the time, where they add something to the water that turns everyone into Grits.

Anonymous said...

I sound biased because like I said, I was presenting the other view (which was specifically asked for). Like I said, I hate all parties equally so I'm about as objective a source as you'll ever find, but sometimes people don't want objectivity, they just want agreement.

But like I addressed, when you talk 'scandal' most people think 'politician' and I don't think Harper was elected because of Gomery at all. I said why, that reason could be called 'biased' but its as valid as saying it was Gomery-until you ask every canadian why they changed their vote nobody knows, so one guess is as good as another. My 'bias' is that politically, people tend to vote mainly on self interest.

If you live in Ontario or Quebec, where your economy would be devastated without the massive subsidies handed down for R&D, pharmaceuticals, military production and the auto sector, when a potential Prime Minister says something that might mean you won't have a job or a community, that plays a big part in your voting. That view may be 'biased', but its as easily defendable as the idea that Harper won because of Gomery.

I have no doubt that SOME people vote for political parties based on 'ethics', how many is the question. With the rankings of politicians, the low turnout, the terribly designed electoral system, the fact that virtually every party in power has had scandals tied to it, the fact that virtually every party has a conversion on the day its elected and forgets its policies, and the actions of the current government which tend in the direction of scandal (even a diehard tory has to admit that) during a minority government; then I think the 'scandal' line is a bit of 'the pot calling the kettle black'-which is my point.

That may be 'biased' but there is pretty strong evidence to back up any of the above claims, which will certainly be known by the general public. That's why most people don't pay attention when a politician speaks.

The difference here is that my 'bias' is not based on party ideologies, because I don't see any. Apart from management styles I don't see much difference between Harper and a liberal government anyway. There are some differences, while the liberals seriously underfunded the Status of Women, Harper cut it even more. Usually the words 'liberal' or 'conservative' are just used as swear words by party members, sort of like calling somebody a communist in the fifties.

The problem in cases like this is that the more a party screams about 'scandals', the more likely it is that media and the public look at politics from the view of 'scandals', and like I said, no party is safe from that, particularly one in power, and it certainly doesn't help political discourse.

Just as a final note, they say that blogs get more and more attention each election, the less a blog is partisan and tied to 'insults', the more likely it is to have an effect. I don't go to many conservative blogs anymore because they are often of the mind that Harper is God and can do no wrong. The general public doesn't share that view of ANY politician, so the more 'strident' a blog sounds and the more tied to scandal, the less likely it is to have an effect outside the mainstream of the party (where its hardly necessary).

My 'conservative' bias is not evident here because obviously its not needed, that would be at liberal blogs, but I am so far from that that I don't even bother going to liberal blogs. Well, there is ONE I think, but that's a regional one and I go there because its regional.

So take a chill pill people, nobodies talking about a cure for cancer.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link Joanne.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

No problem, William! :)

Anonymous said...

"Notice also the comment that the guys weren't even allowed to defend themselves. Where I come from that's a big no-no. Now, if Dion had said he was giving them their old jobs back, then I think people might be onto something, but that's hardly the case."

Actually he was allowed to defend himself.In his own sworn testimony,where he had an attorney present, he admitted to receiving $120,000 in $100 bills and handing them out in envelopes to 12 Liberal ridings in Quebec. Thats called illegal money laundering,seeing as how it was taxpayer money paid to advertising companies under the premise some of those funds would be delivered to the Liberal party.