Iggy the Carpetbagger

Claire Hoy, writing from some hickville paper, does a beautiful hit piece on Iggy that gets straight to the point. So called Tory 'negative ads' are dead on

If he didn't win his Toronto riding, he said, he would move back to Massachusetts.

No great surprise there. After all, this is a man who continually referred to himself as an American, both in his speeches and his writing. In fact, in 2004, just one year before he was coaxed into coming north to grab a chance at his party's leadership, Ignatieff appeared on C-SPAN, the congressional cable channel, and said this:

"Look, this is America and you have to decide what kind of country you want. This is your country as much as it is mine."

At that time, by the way, Ignatieff was one of then president George W. Bush's strongest supporters of torture, the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine against terrorism on U.S. soil.

And now, just a few short years later, Ignatieff would have Canadians believe that Tory advertisements openly questioning his allegiance to his birth country are not only insulting to him, but to every Canadian who has ever lived or worked abroad.

What a hypocrite.

Why doesn't Claire Hoy have a column in a major newspaper?

The point is true and everybody knows it. Iggy lived virtually, his adult life away from Canada, and comes back in his 60's to be Prime Minister? It's absurd. The public can see it. (Well, he's popular in Quebec, but they're a "nation" themselves, and not Canadian right?)

Michael Ignatieff is a carpetbagger.

Poll: Tories in the Lead

It looks like the coronation of Michael Ignatieff by the media as the new PM of Canada, is on hold for now, as the liberals fall back into second place.

The latest survey, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global National, shows the Harper Conservatives have edged up two percentage points in recent weeks, to capture a slim lead with 35 per cent support.

The Liberals, while significantly ahead of their showing under former leader Stephane Dion, have dropped three points to 33 per cent support of decided voters.

The Liberals haven't quite understood that regular Canadians haven't fallen in love with Iggy, like they have. Why should they? Has the man said anything other than bland generalities? What are his policies? Even in boring old Canada you have to pretend to stand for something.

UPDATE: I'm watching Question Period live from the House of Commons. Liberal Finance Critic John "Too Drunk To Be Allowed On An Airplane" McCallum is criticizing Harper and the Tories for running a deficit. Wasn't the whole point of the Coup d'Etat last year, was to get the government to spend more money, and use fiscal stimulus? So do they want the Tories to now do spending cuts? Who are these light weights? There's a term in politics, it's called: Staying on the message.

I always wondered how Chretien got elected to three straight majorities with these clowns. It was that the right were still divided and hadn't got their act together. It had nothing to do with the talent of the Liberal strategists. We're seeing now what amateurs they are.

UDATE II: I don't have an exact quote but Harper made a crack, to paraphrase: "I don't understand the opposition, they criticize the deficit and are also asking us to spend more?"

UPDATE III: The exact quote is: "I think Canadians can see... we have the opposition parties coming in and saying the deficit is too large, why don't you spend more?" The Tory benches erupted in laughter.

Conservative Attack Ad on Iggy

Not bad!

Homeless Cons = Voteless Cons

Fractures in the Tory party are talking place. This splinter group is disappointed with Harper.

...But what on earth are Homeless Cons? It's a group started by Robson and his wife, fellow writer and pundit Brigitte Pellerin as an outlet for people who don't think the current Conservative government is conservative enough.

"If you are a conservative in this country," Robson says over the phone, "you believe in free markets, traditional social values and strong national defence. You are lucky if you get one out of three out of any Conservative Party you elect."

And Robson thinks that with the way the Harper Conservatives are acting right now, the score is zero for three. The government will not touch the abortion issue he notes, gave up on the vote they promised on gay marriage and in his mind doesn't fund the troops properly. The final straw for Robson appears to have been the latest budget with its projection of a $64,000,000,000 deficit over two years; this after the government was already the biggest spending government in Canadian history. "If that's conservatism," he says, "why not vote Liberal."

I'm not very interested in this group.

Firstly, if it gains traction it will mean two to three straight Liberal majorities. Vote splitting allowed Chretien to win three straight majorities with less than 40% of the vote.

Secondly, if they are talking about banning abortion, they might as well take up arms and become a guerrilla band, because they aren't going to get elected in Canada. The US is much more socially conservative, and they had W. Bush, and a majority in both houses of Congress and it's still legal there.

Thirdly, belief in a strong defense is also not a winning issue. Not in these tough economic times. Harper has increased military spending substantially but why do we need an even stronger defense? Is somebody threatening to invade us? Or does it mean help buffer the US commitment as they occupy two Middle Eastern countries? People in western countries, across the board, are growing weary of those conflicts.

Finally, and most importantly, I don't know if you can talk true fiscal conservatism while Quebec is part of Canada. There's no real private sector there, they rely on handouts. If a government tries to cut back on that, they will not win any seats in vote rich Quebec. If you still proceed with cuts, somehow cobble a majority out of the rest of Canada, they will threaten to separate. I don't know if there is popular support to allow Quebec to leave Confederation within English Canada. Not enough people have caught on to what a sinkhole Quebec is to our tax dollars.

In sum, 2009 is not the time and Canada not the place for this movement.

Tories Dig Through Footage for Attack Ads Against Iggy

I like the sound of this, as the Tories plan an offensive on the vulnerable Ignatieff:

OTTAWA — The Conservatives are scouring hundreds of hours of videotape as they prepare to pummel their key rival Michael Ignatieff with attack ads leading up to the next election.

(...)

All the BBC programs Mr. Ignatieff hosted, C-Span call-in shows he participated in, and books he wrote are being sifted for ammunition to be used before and during the next campaign.

(...)

Tories say there will be three themes to their attacks: that Mr. Ignatieff is an out-of-touch elitist; that he flip-flops (they will cite his shifting positions on a carbon tax, on coalition with the other opposition parties, and on Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon); and that he's a fair-weather Canadian.

What I hope they dig up is a segment on CBC from 1996, maybe 1997 with Iggy and Mordecai Richler from London. The point of the interview was: Why would you live away from Canada? Richler wintered in London, and at the time Iggy was living there. My interest was piqued, because I thought I might have made a terrible mistake leaving London myself. I can't remember exactly, but Iggy was saying how interesting and cultured London was. How he also loved the little things like the names of things like the Piccadilly Line. I'm pretty sure I remember him saying that he couldn't leave. He also said that his kids made fun of his "plugged nose Canadian accent."

Maybe I should send this post to the CPC HQ.

Politically Correct Speak: Women's Pay Equity

Just what the heck is "Pay Equity" for women? I hear this all the time. The Liberal and NDP benches are always claiming Harper and the Conservatives are setting back women's pay equity issues. I ran across this in a Toronto Star article today:

In this case, the Conservative attack on pay equity – the idea that men and women should be paid equally for work of equal value – provides the most telling example. Bill C-10 would end the right of federal civil servants to take pay equity complaints to the federal human rights commission. Instead, such issues would have to be dealt with as part of the normal bargaining process between union and management.

And in determining whether wage rates for men and women were fair, any arbitrator would have to take "market forces" into account.

The problem with this is twofold. First, as a federal task force wrote five years ago, collective bargaining involves tradeoffs. But a woman's constitutionally protected right to be paid fairly is hardly something that should be traded away for an extra coffee break.

Equally important is the reference to market forces. Toronto lawyer Mary Cornish points out that pay equity was designed specifically to rectify a failure in the market that permitted systemic wage discrimination against women. To turn around and subordinate equity to this same market is to negate the entire exercise.

She notes that when former Ontario premier Mike Harris made a similar attack on provincial pay equity, the courts slapped him down.

I wish they could provide specific examples of where this inequity takes place? I don't know what they mean. As far as I can tell some number cruncher came up with the stat that for average salaries, women's are 70% of men's. There are so many factors that go into that, it's meaningless to cite it. I'm sure if they did stats they could find out left handers make or less than right handers. But still they are trying silly social engineering, to bring up women's numbers. It's a fake issue. I've never met a woman who has felt they make less because they are female. There's no secret cabal of evil white men who decide that women will make less than men.

Why are we wasting time with this?

Bleak Budget Outlook From Andrew Coyne

From his blog at Maclean's today:

Say what you like about the Tories: they don’t do things by halves. When they spend, they spend. When they go into debt, they do it $100-billion at a time. And when they decide to put an end to conservatism in Canada — as a philosophy, as a movement—they go out with a bang.

We can safely say that the strategy of incrementalism, at least, has been put to bed. With this historic budget, the Conservatives’ already headlong retreat from principle has become a rout: a great final leap into the void. For there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget’s soothing talk of “temporary” this and “extraordinary” that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, “investments” repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — ultimately, inevitably — higher taxes. And all this before the first of the Baby Boomers have had a chance to retire, and cough up a lung.

Liberals Posturing Before Budget

Are the Liberals going to take down the Tories over tax cuts?

Opposition parties are threatening to vote down this week's much-anticipated Conservative budget because it contains a potentially contentious proposal to permanently slash taxes for middle-class Canadians.

While the Conservatives say the tax cuts will help working families during a challenging economic era, the Liberals say the rollback is ill-advised and will do little to stimulate the economy.

"If the permanent tax cuts were very large, we would be very concerned, partly because it would saddle future generations with a big debt and a permanent deficit," Liberal finance critic John McCallum told CTV's Question Period Sunday.

McCallum added that the tax reductions will be an ineffectual stimulus because people are more likely to save extra money during recessionary periods.

And if the Tory budget fails to deliver what's best for Canada, McCallum said the Liberals will have little option than to vote it down.

Good luck with that message. "Hey Canadians, you wouldn't spend your money like we want you too, so we are going to take the tax cuts off the table. " Not a very good piece of an election platform. Sounds like a bluff to me.

Hat tip to Strack Attack. Who also mentions that heroic Obama is giving lower and middle class tax cuts in the US, why is it so bad when Harper does it?

Polls: Who Knows?

I've been saying how clueless and bumbling Iggy has been coming across since he took the helm. Maybe I jinxed it. Apparantly the Canadian public have been more generous in their assesment. A Nanos Poll has the Liberals and Conservatives in a virtual tie. (Here)

They have both at about 33%.

We'll see. I was in corporate communications for a while and we used polling companies. I think the margin of error is a lot more than they state. And I'm not even sure what they state here:

Between January 3rd and January 7th, 2009,Nanos Research conducted a randomtelephone survey of 1,003 Canadians 18 years and older. A random telephone survey of 1,003 Canadians is accurate plus or minus 3.1%, 19 times out of 20. Margins of accuracy are wider for subgroup samples. Readers should note that the data was weighted for gender and age to match the Canadian census results. Results should be considered representative of the Canadian population.
Results may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Call me a peasant, but that sounds like trickery.

Intrigue In Ottawa

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois have supposedly agreed to shoot-down a confidence vote on Monday.

Canada's opposition parties said Thursday they will vote against the Conservative government's fiscal update, sparking speculation the country could face another election in the midst of a global economic crisis.

I'm not going to get too excited about this because I simply don't believe it. The Liberals are leaderless and party funds are exhuasted. Canadians will be angry if they have to go to the polls again. It's all just bluster.

I welcome the Dippers and Liberals forming a coalition. Combined, they have 114 seats to the Tories 143. That means they'll have to join up with the Bloc, and no self respecting Liberal or NDP MP would want to be in government with separatists.

He might be sweating a little, but I think Harper is mostly sitting back and enjoying this.

UPDATE: Strack Attack wrote in the comments:

I'm starting to doubt my original thinking on this matter and maybe just maaaybe, the opposition is serious and will bring down the gov't. They have tabled a non-confidence motion and plan to put it in motion on Monday. Still this could merely be optics of playing tough this time around. The Tories can also avert this or postpone it with procedural tactics. Still, there seems to be some sort of agreement among the Dippers, Libs and Bloc and it appears Dion will lead it which in theory makes it all that much more plausible. Contrary to my own thinking the Libs must feel there is some sort of long term gain in doing this. I can't see them doing this for the good of the country. Who wants a flimsy coalition government lead by a guy who very few Canadians have confidence in to run our country through some of the craziest times we've had in decades? Did we not send a message saying just this a little more than a month ago??

UPDATE II: The Globe lists the opposition's gripes. This one has me hoping Harper hangs tough.

But it is the lack of movement on the economic front that both New Democrats and Liberals cited as the real impetus behind the decision to hold coalition talks. And neither party, they said, would be willing to back down unless the Conservatives do something dramatic in terms of economic stimulus — specifically help for the auto sector — over the next few days.

UPDATE III: Harper delaying the vote until December 8