Mid-Week News
1. The Conservatives have unveiled their confidence motion. The Globe story says this will mark the first time in over 100 years that a government will fall on an outright non-confidence motion, but I'm fairly sure Diefenbaker went down on a non-confidence motion in '63. To the best of my knowledge that's the only other explicit non-confidence motion to ever bring down a government so at least Paul is living up to his promise about "Making History":
2. Although the recent...uhh...roman orgy of spending has clearly been prematurely brought on by the upcoming election, for once I'm tempted to agree with the official Liberal position. The fact is, the Liberals aren't pulling these announcements out of thin air - these are all policies that have been in the works for a while.
Were these policies written to win vote? Probably. Should they have been completed sooner? Maybe. Are they being rushed? Likely. Do I find it humorous that every Cabinet Minister on the news last night said their announcement had been "in the works six months"? Hell yeah! (apparently the whole government only started working the day Belinda crossed)
But it's a little unfair to say the Liberals are making up spending announcements on the fly to win votes.
3. Star Candidates: Marc Garneau and Allan Cutler will be running for the Liberals and Conservatives. I'm not sure either will win, but they certainly will help. Cutler, especially, is huge because he'll be able to keep the sponsorship issue alive.
4. It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of David Herle. But when everyone else is knocking the guy, there's not a lot else I can add. There are only three reasons I can see for not tendering the contract they gave to him:
1. The Liberals rushed the mini budget, out of fear the government was going to collapse.
2. It was an example of PMPM rewarding his friends on the government purse.
3. David Herle is the greatest pollster ever! And no one else could have come up with as good data as he did!!! The brilliance! The insight! The bang-on analysis!
Regardless, it looks fairly unethical. I really hope Paul decides to call an inquiry into this. "Come hell or high water" and all that nonsense about "getting to the bottom of it"...
"That the House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its 'culture of entitlement,' corruption, scandal, and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House."
2. Although the recent...uhh...roman orgy of spending has clearly been prematurely brought on by the upcoming election, for once I'm tempted to agree with the official Liberal position. The fact is, the Liberals aren't pulling these announcements out of thin air - these are all policies that have been in the works for a while.
Were these policies written to win vote? Probably. Should they have been completed sooner? Maybe. Are they being rushed? Likely. Do I find it humorous that every Cabinet Minister on the news last night said their announcement had been "in the works six months"? Hell yeah! (apparently the whole government only started working the day Belinda crossed)
But it's a little unfair to say the Liberals are making up spending announcements on the fly to win votes.
3. Star Candidates: Marc Garneau and Allan Cutler will be running for the Liberals and Conservatives. I'm not sure either will win, but they certainly will help. Cutler, especially, is huge because he'll be able to keep the sponsorship issue alive.
4. It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of David Herle. But when everyone else is knocking the guy, there's not a lot else I can add. There are only three reasons I can see for not tendering the contract they gave to him:
1. The Liberals rushed the mini budget, out of fear the government was going to collapse.
2. It was an example of PMPM rewarding his friends on the government purse.
3. David Herle is the greatest pollster ever! And no one else could have come up with as good data as he did!!! The brilliance! The insight! The bang-on analysis!
Regardless, it looks fairly unethical. I really hope Paul decides to call an inquiry into this. "Come hell or high water" and all that nonsense about "getting to the bottom of it"...
posted by calgarygrit at
1:14 a.m.
7 Comments:
Re all the spending. It really just proves that Layton was right. The Liberal's plan was to fly Cabinet ministers around the country for the next 4 months dropping money out of airplanes.
By
Greg, at 7:08 a.m.
it's a little unfair to say the Liberals are making up spending announcements on the fly to win votes
You can't be serious! We in the financial and tax communities were being told as recently as late last week by Finance that there was no chance of an income trusts announcement until after the consultation process was finished on December 31. From the way they botched the annoucement, it was clear that until 2pm yesterday *at the earliest* they didn't know what policy they were going to follow. This was a total seat-of-the-pants freakout.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you. :)
By
Anonymous, at 8:50 a.m.
Cutler, especially, is huge because he'll be able to keep the sponsorship issue alive.
I doubt it - outside of Quebec, Sponsorship is pretty much moribund. Even here in Alberta, people's eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the word.
Personally I think it would be a serious mistake for the CPC to depend on sponsorship as an issue in this election.
By
Anonymous, at 8:55 a.m.
Cutler is running in Ottawa-South, which isn't as yuppish as Centre, but still has lots of civil servants hwo may view the whistle blower somewhat heroically, and are more concerned about issues of government corruption then people (further) south of the Queensway. McGuinty will be tough to beat, but it will be an interesting fight. Is Arar's wife going to run there again? Now that would be a fun three-way battle.
By
Anonymous, at 10:51 a.m.
Think it's "inquiry" not "enquiry" ?
By
Anonymous, at 11:17 a.m.
That's great!
"outside of Quebec, Sponsorship is pretty much moribund."
What does that say about the rest of the country exactly? - What's a little corruption between friends seems to be the message. Or, "all the cool kids do it".
Seriously, are we happy to have our pockets picked by the Liberal Government because there's what - no other alternative? We've become so frightened of Harper et al that we run to the Capo di Capo and ask for "protection" from those bad people.
What an emasculated electorate we have become. How sleazy and greasy can we get? We don't care about corruption? Then we're a bunch of pussies!
Nice message we're sending to Quebec by the way, is it any wonder the separtiste numbers are going up?
By
Anonymous, at 12:01 p.m.
I think you are way off on this on Calgary.
"it's a little unfair to say the Liberals are making up spending announcements on the fly to win votes"
The Liberals will say anything to get re-elected and cannot be trusted to follow through on any of their promises (simply because it would be fiscally impossible to do so).
By
Anonymous, at 12:11 p.m.
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