Now.
Would be a good time for the LPC to release our Urban Plan For Canada.
Now.
To highlight the Liberal positive concern for Canadian cities and their suburbs.
Thanks Harper - for taking Quebec, and now Toronto off the table. Now, just repeat your statement about the "defeatist attitude" in the Atlantic Provinces... Or better yet, let's roll on to Vancouver/Lower Mainland...
Living in Calgary for many years, the seething hatred towards Toronto (and to a lesser extent Vancouver and Montreal) was visibly on display by most all of the Reform crowd. Colorful language is often used to describe Vancouver, TO, or other large, non-Conservative cities... Harper and his ilk never hid their hatred for the "Big Smoke"... Perhaps childhood traumas for our PM???
Anyways, it appears today that their "gift" to Toronto is more like a big "F You Toronto". I mean, c'mon, they clearly KNEW what the summit would bring. They knew that holding it in Toronto would bring protest and more. They had mega-police protecting the fences, while the rioters laid waste to the rest of the fair city.
There's a lot more to the reason the summit was held in Toronto. First the disgusting waste of taxpayer funds... Now the realized Conservative dream of chaos and destruction wished on the good people of Toronto, our nation's largest, most diverse city. We often heard Conservative comments in Alberta and "off mike". Now we see what they really wanted for the "Big Smoke"... Real smoke, it appears.
Pathetic. Infantile. Reform-a-Tories...
... 16 Billion $$$s on a SOLE SOURCE fighter contract with the US. Canadian Forces go along, even though they never buy single-engine fighters (due to the vast barren North that we have to defend)... Report indicates that new fighters could have been sourced much cheaper if the bidding was open and competitive.
Just one more way your Conservative "government" wastes YOUR taxes.
Posted earlier.
Liberal success will come from recognizing an Urban-Rural synergy of 100-mile diets, organic and market farming, and the true needs of cities. As civilizations progress they urbanize, and we need to address the issues which arise as a result. Tying that in with "sustainable" agriculture and resource management is key to success in the new millenia.
Discuss...
The Conservatives could well be prompting a "hyper-charged" security community simply to ensure that they can "justify" their billion dollar spending spree on the G8/20.
Yesterday they captured a gardener buying fertilizer.
Who knows what they'll come up with? Brown people wandering around downtown Toronto? Uh... that could be a problem.
Seems like there is a "mutually beneficial relationship" between increased such incidents and justification of Summit security costs...
Just sayin'... Someone may be playin'... Just tell the security folks to be on "extra-special super-duper high alert" and arrest anyone and everyone right? Methinks there may be more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps not the actual investigation - which is legit - but the media feeding frenzy around it - which the government benefited from the distraction of...
Are you there Iggy?
It's me - Grit.
The rumours of coalitions didn't end with your very forceful statement to the otherwise. How to fight this?
Try this:
1) Once again rule out a merger - ABSOLUTELY
2) Laugh about the "anonymous party insiders"
3) Walk over to Jack's office (yes, YOU walk over to Jack) and work out a "non-aggression pact" for Parliament AND the election ahead. Come out with a strong joint press conference indicating that cooperation between parties is essentail to Canada and Canadians. Let Jack do a LOT of the talking. Indicate again that there will be no merger between the two proud parties, but that we need to rise above the current state of the House (created by Harper) and work for the MAJORITY of Canadians who would like to see him removed.
4) If it's about not having enough funds to fight an election right now, or every two years, introduce a private members bill that would support a spending cap and a ban on "off-season/non-election" advertising. This is CRUCIAL to our democracy. There will never be a level playing field if Conservative interest groups continue to fuel that attack ad machine.
5) Get out to Kelowna BC for the "Stock Car Experience", where - instead of sticking a logo on a CASCAR car, you can actually pilot a real stock car, and partake in your favorite sport. A real spectacle for ordinary Canadians, and a great way to divert from all this talk. More policy news conferences will get you nowhere at this point. You need to pull the "piano trick". Now.
This isn't really happening.
No, seriously. It's not.
The talks of merger are just a "shot across the bow" of the Harper party... who are terrified of such a prospect.
Fact is, if the public is exposed to enough positive talk about a merger... then we end up with "just" a coalition, or better yet, a "cooperation agreement", they will be much more accepting. This is precisely what is currently going on.
Go back to worrying about Harper's destruction of the Canadian economy people... The LPC is still the LPC. We may "work with" others, but "we're" still "we".
Loved James' post "The Sky Is Falling..."
To be sure, there IS a desire to kill off the Liberals...
For the Conservatives, it means they can push out of the way a party that stands for the majority of Canadians, who are moderates. Without a moderate "middle party" Canada would swing like a pendulum between right and "left" as in the USA (I put "left" in quotes, because in the USA there is no party of the left)...
For the NDP, it means no-one to run from the "left" to govern from the middle - and marginalize their party to 4th party status...
For the mainstream media (MSM), it would make things simpler to understand and report. You see, the days of journalism school grads is over. Many reporters are nothing more than runway models/ex-jocks and used car salespeople who wanted a bit of continued spotlight. The MSM is just too stupid to understand the intricacies of a multi-party system - so they would rather just have to report on "black and white", "with us, or against us", etc., etc. It's a LOT easier filing a report from a simple script of "right vs. left" (you don't even need to leave your desk) than it is to actually do some research and go out and get 4 or 5 differing opinions on an issue.
Thought provoking, isn't it?
And, yup. The Liberal Party is NOT going anywhere - and certainly not "merging" with any other party. Sorry suckers. This party WILL be the next government.
Forget coaltions, "treaties", and "agreements to cooperate". We need to establish a SPENDING CAP that ensures a level playing field between parties. Think about it. Parties could only raise up to a certain limit (make it attainable – so maybe 7-10 million), and can only use it in a year – and the advertising portion ONLY during elections. Any monies parties collect over and above the limit is put into public coffers, and money not spent by year’s end is also forfeit.
A spending cap WOULD level the playing field. The voter $1.95 could still be kept and worked into the final cap amount. Our main issue is with the runaway spending on year round advertising by the 1st place party. A cap would at least help control that.
People say the Cons do it “one member/donation at a time”. Bullshit. They have the religious right church machine raising funds for them. It’s like the unions, but not … lol… They are starting from a position of power.
Cap it. It's the logical next step to Chretien's electoral reforms.
So let's see...
If there is an issue that makes a Conservative Minister look bad (Isotopes, Bernier, Guergis, Jaffer, etc., etc., etc.), then it is the FAULT OF "JUST A STAFFER"...
Yet, if a Parliamentary Committee calls said staffers to witness before a committee (as is the law of the land and/or Parliament), Conservative MPs create childish antics to DISRUPT THE VERY WORKINGS OF DEMOCRACY ITSELF.
Seems Conservatives have a serious problem with democracy.
Contempt of Parliament doesn't just cut it anymore. These clowns are a disgrace to the institution of Parliament, and a disgrace to Canada.
Some good reading over at the Scott Ross this morning... Talking about coaltions, cooperation, and such...
Still, in all this discussion, we tend to miss a central theme... A point to be made about modern democracies, Parliamentary systems, and democracy in general.
Throughout Commonwealth Parliaments, there have been coaltions, and many of them have not involved the party with the most seats.
What do you do if the Cons have 100 seats, the Liberals 99, and the Dippers 78?
The FACT remains that in our system the MPs have the RIGHT to elect their own "leader in the House", or PM if you will. And.. NOTHING states that you have to talk to the "first place" party. Nothing. Nada. It is only for "appearances" that comments are made about "talking to so-and-so first".
Just like in the case of any vote in the House, the majority rules. It is the most simple of democratic principles.
But - Harper doesn't really like democracy does he? How else can a right wing, Prairie-centric religious fringe group - a small minority of Canadians - dictate to the rest of us how we should live our lives?
It's kind of pathetic, really, that the rest of us haven't stood up and decided to take back our government.
edit: And I'm no big supporter of a pre-election coalition here. Pre-election "cooperation/pact" maybe. We forget that we are not two "polar opposite" parties (that would be the NDP and Conservatives). We sit on the center of the political system in Canada. Most Canadians do to. We have enjoyed more governments than any other party - by ADHERING to that center. We have "run from the left" to be sure, but also "governed from a position of responsibility". We can agree with the NDP on most of their "social" issues/moral issues. We WOULD have differences on economic ones... but only SOME economic ones.
This is one area the Liberal Party does not differentiate itself enough in the public eye. We are a party that supports business - but its small and medium sized businesses that are home-grown. We do support large Canadian companies. We traditionally haven't supported "global corporate overlords" or foreign ownership - although we've been dragged into WTO/NAFTA, and like all nations (pretty much) have had to go along, or be left out.
Our support for any big businesses is usually paired with a strong concern for the impact on Canadians. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have always looked at "friendships" with large MNCs as a way to improve the bottom line of the "shareholder class"...
These are only some of the miriad differences between the Liberal economic/world view and that of the NDP and Cons... While we may agree on a small number of points, economically, we have FAR more common ground with the NDP on social issues. If we do end up cooperating with the NDP in some way, it should be made clear to the public that it is on one of these social issues - which the Conservatives take very un-Canadian views on - that we stand and fight. The NDP must kowtow to us on the economic front - perhaps with the promise of some job-creation strategies in the Green Sector as a compromise.
