"Most Canadians if they don’t show up for work they don’t get a promotion."
The above ad was from the NDP's positive hope-filled election campaign. In it, the NDP pointed to Ignatieff's attendance record and accused him of "not showing up for work".
Funny thing though. As pointed out by Jeff Jedras in October, and the Globe this morning, NDP MPs looking for a promotion to the job of opposition leader have been playing hooky quite a bit:
Five NDP leadership hopefuls are among the top 10 MPs with the worst attendance record, and two others were in the top 30 – a far cry from the party’s strong performance of consistent attendance in the previous Parliament.
Just outside the top 10 is Peggy Nash, who has missed 37 votes this fall. Nash, you'll recall, made Gerard Kennedy's attendance record her top issue during this spring's election, repeatedly saying things like: "I do believe it is important that when you elect your member of parliament your vote be respected in the MP voting in the House of Commons".
If the Parkdale High Park Liberal campaign is looking for 2015 pamphlet ideas, that quote might look good on the front, eh?
Labels: Peggy Nash
posted by calgarygrit at
11:14 a.m.
25 Comments:
And what is the Liberal leader's parliamentry record this term?
Uh huh.......
By
Michael, at 12:01 p.m.
Still licking your Liberal wounds, 'eh??? This post is a classic example of why the once great Liberal Party of Canada is now slithering around on its belly in the muck. Canadians are enduring a Harper majority NOT because of New Democrats, but because of those bloody Liberals who ran to Harper in the last election. If the LPC did one day evaporate, you, sir, would be running to the Conservatives. Your hatred of New Democrats is such that you'd be right there with the CPC.
Give it up. You lost not because of the NDP ... but because the Liberal brand is broken.
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leftdog, at 12:51 p.m.
Yes Dan, how dare you point to the gulf between the NDP's rhetoric and their actions, and how dare you attempt to hold them to the same standard they seek to hold others!
The NDP can rip on the Liberals all they want, but you better stay focused on the Conservatives and don't care respond in kind, or else you hate Canada.
By
Jeff, at 1:08 p.m.
Michael, the Liberals didn't campaign on the silly idea that the only valuable work that can be done is to be in Parliament, voting. All those votes the NDP cast in the last Parliament sure didn't help fend off the Consevative majority... Bob had exactly the right response, which was to point out that he's out doing other work which is still part of his job. That option isn't available to the NDP leadership candidates, who have revealed themselves to be hypocrites on this issue.
Feel free to argue that the Liberals or Cons are still more hypocritical, or that you were opposed to attacking Liberals on their voting records in the last election. But your defence really can't be "you guys do it too" when Liberals were the victims, not the perpetrators, of the attack.
"Leftdog" (presumably not your real name) I disagree with people who voted for Harper because they were afraid of the NDP; they were uninformed about how our system of government works. They were, however, driven to vote Conservative because of the NDP surge.
And I won't speak for CG, but I definitely dislike Conservatives a lot more than I dislike the NDP; unfortunately for you guys, that just makes me sadder when we see stories, like this one, that demonstrate the NDP is far less than the angels they run as.
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Jesse, at 1:29 p.m.
The dishonesty of the NDP campaign was a huge turn-off for me.
The Liberals and Conservatives were dishonest too, but they didn't get a free pass.
Fortunately the NDP free pass is likely to expire soon.
Disclaimer: I'm not objective here - the NDP is the only party for which I've never voted (other than BQ).
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Robert Vollman, at 1:53 p.m.
The reality is that parliament is irrelevant.
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Skinny Dipper, at 5:07 p.m.
Great! Where can I find you saying that when Iggy, Gerard, etc were being maligned?
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Jesse, at 5:18 p.m.
I see your point, although this leadership race will be over in March. From that point forward, whoever is elected leader will be there for the key votes and will be in the House when its required. With that in mind, I'm sure the next NDP leader will hit the same target Layton hit over a 4 year period.
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Anonymous, at 7:03 p.m.
I see your point, although this leadership race will be over in March. From that point forward, whoever is elected leader will be there for the key votes and will be in the House when its required. With
The problem is that there are some key pieces of legislation right now -- the Wheat Board, the Long Gun Registry, Kyoto, the Omibus Crime Bill -- that the leadership hopeful would have been absent for in the House of Commons. They might pass some further big pieces of legislation, but I have a feeling they decided to go wild while the NDP is preoccupied with their leadership race.
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sharonapple88, at 8:28 p.m.
The leadership candidates are not the leader right now though. That leader is Nycole Turmel, and she has been there for the key votes.
With the need to get out there to every province on a tight schedule and meet the party members for the leadership race, I think it is an acceptable reason to be absent.
The criticism against Igantieff was that while he was actually leader, he was mostly absent for the key votes. That is the difference.
And like I said, come March 2012 to 2015, whoever is elected leader (and happens to have a seat) will be there. And will have the stats to prove so by the next election.
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Anonymous, at 9:00 p.m.
You also forgot to mention that Rae has a worse attendance record in this parliament than Turmel.
I'd be interested to see a comparison between the NDP leadership candidates and the 2006 Liberal leadership candidates. Something tells me they're attendance was fairly poor.
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Denny, at 12:01 a.m.
Sorry, which part of "it's hypocritical because the NDP attacked on this, and now they're doing it" didn't you guys understand?
I think Bob's right to be out building the party. So I don't care if he misses some votes.
But what you guys have to deal with is the fact that the NDP based a series of attacks around Liberals missing votes, and now, just months later, the very Dippers who benefited from those attacks are skipping out on what you defined as work.
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Jesse, at 12:05 a.m.
I don't think its hypocritical for several reasons:
1) As mentioned already none of them are the NDP leader, Turmel is. And she is there.
2) When the leader is selected, they will have fantastic attendence record and be there for key votes guaranteed.
3) The attack against Igantieff was based on his total attendence record which was very low. Between 2012-2015 we will certainly know what the new NDP leader's attendence record will be, and it will be quite a good one.
So we won't really be able to come back and truly weight on this until 2015. This leadership race is a pretty small timeline for this entire term.
By
Anonymous, at 12:16 a.m.
Yeah I think this blog post indicates that most people didn't understand the NDP's critique during the campaign.
By
Anonymous, at 8:46 a.m.
1) That might work as a way of saying "no, no, what we meant in the election was actually super-duper narrow, so we're good here" except that the NDP attacked several individual Liberal candidates for the same thing. Photo evidence here: http://impolitical.blogspot.com/2011/10/full-time-mp-of-parkdale-high-park.html.
2) Will you go back in time and vote for Ignatieff if I promise he would have had a fantastic record in the current Parliament?
I understand your argument, but I think it's a huge reach to say that the message the NDP used in the election was something other than "Liberals miss lots of votes, we won't do that". But, now that there's something else to do (run for leadership), In politics, lots of people say one thing then do another, but it's still disappointing.
Instead of playing games with "Turmel vs. Iggy", why don't you address the clear quotes from Peggy Nash in the original post?
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Jesse, at 12:04 p.m.
1) As mentioned already none of them are the NDP leader, Turmel is. And she is there.
Gerard Kennedy wasn't leader of the party, but they still attacked him on these grounds.
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sharonapple88, at 1:51 p.m.
The NDP was pretty clear in its choice of words: "... if they don’t show up for work they don’t get a promotion".
These are people looking for a promotion, and by the standard set in the NDP campaign, they aren't showing up for work.
I happen to understand that there are a lot of ways in which MPs perform their duties without being present in the House of Commons as props, but it is entirely appropriate to point out that the NDP members benefited from their ad and are now demonstrating the heights of hypocrisy.
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Anonymous, at 5:12 p.m.
Well if we want to talk about hypocrisy we can always mention the Liberals tendency to campaign on the left and govern from the right over the last century.
Let's start a list of all the things the Liberals have been hypocritical about - even if we only included the Chretien era it would be a quite extensive list.
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Denny, at 7:10 p.m.
We could all draw up lists, but by moving on to general attacks I assume you concede the point.
By
Jesse, at 7:11 p.m.
Jesse: Michael, the Liberals didn't campaign on the silly idea that the only valuable work that can be done is to be in Parliament, voting.
Well, except when they were pretending to be outraged about Harper's prorogation "vacation" a couple years back...
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The Invisible Hand, at 11:22 p.m.
I'm pretty sure you realize there's a different between "shutting down Parliament to avoid being defeated in a confidence vote, and thereby not legislating at all" and "missing votes where one vote wouldn't matter", and are just grasping.
I understand why the NDP leadership candidates aren't in Parliament; it doesn't matter how they vote in a majority situation. A smaller number of opposition MPs can be effective.
But the NDP ran nationally and locally on the idea that that wasn't OK, and now you're stuck.
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Jesse, at 1:28 p.m.
The votes the Liberals showed up for were the ones that kept Harper in office. Enough said.
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Anonymous, at 3:34 p.m.
Again, I'm assuming you're implicitly recognizing the hypocrisy, and feel bad about it, but don't know how to defend it.
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Jesse, at 4:31 p.m.
There's a pretty big difference between Ignatieff, Kennedy, Rae et al skipping out on Parliament over the course of three years to keep Harper in power and some NDPers missing because their leader kicked the bucket and someone needs to run and replace him. Jeez I'm a Liberal voter and even I get this. If the comments here are of any overall reflection, the party is starting to sound like the NDP of old! And to boot, the current Liberal leader STILL has the worst record. What a terrible line of attack.
By
Anonymous, at 2:20 p.m.
There's a pretty big difference between Ignatieff, Kennedy, Rae et al skipping out on Parliament over the course of three years to keep Harper in power and some NDPers missing because their leader kicked the bucket and someone needs to run and replace him. Jeez I'm a Liberal voter and even I get this. If the comments here are of any overall reflection, the party is starting to sound like the NDP of old! And to boot, the current Liberal leader STILL has the worst record. What a terrible line of attack.
By
Anonymous, at 2:20 p.m.
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