All eyes on Ignatieff

[a_majoor]

The company you keep:

http://ezralevant.com/2009/02/ignatieff-campaign-files-5mill.html

Ignatieff campaign files $5-million lawsuit to cover up Adscam involvement
By Ezra Levant on February 23, 2009 2:52 AM

A senior aide to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has filed a $5,000,000 defamation lawsuit against me for discussing his involvement with Adscam, the corruption scandal that brought down the Liberal Party.

The suit was filed by Warren Kinsella, a Liberal lobbyist and the head of Ignatieff’s war-room. It’s clearly a nuisance suit, designed with two goals in mind:

1.    Cost me time, money and hassle; and

2.    Scare other journalists away from writing about the Adscam connections in Ignatieff’s team. It’s called libel chill, and it’s a warning to other political reporters that if they ask the wrong questions about the Liberal Party, they’ll be hit with a lawsuit, too.

You can see the lawsuit here.

It's going to fail spectacularly, and hurt the Liberal Party.

It’s just the latest erratic move by Kinsella, who has had an awful month as the Liberal war room boss. From having to issue a groveling apology for his anti-Chinese slur that Chinese restaurants serve cat meat, to his failed attempt to bully TVO into cancelling an on-air guest, it’s been a gong show over there.

Filing a $5-million lawsuit to try to silence questions about his Adscam involvement probably isn’t Kinsella’s smartest move. I’m not sure why someone who wants to stop people talking about Adscam would create a conversation-starter like a massive lawsuit. And then there’s the prickly matter of Kinsella subjecting himself (and his private documents) to unlimited cross-examination by me – I mean days or weeks, not the brief appearance he made before Justice John Gomery’s Inquiry.

I think that, like Kinsella’s awful judgment calls on Catscam and TVOscam, he is clouded by his own emotions. He’s not acting professionally – if he were advising a client other than himself, I’m sure he’d tell them just to ignore my little blog, rather than draw attention to it. But he’s giving himself advice – and, as the old adage goes, he’s got a fool for a client. He’s acting out of pride and vengeance. And it’s hurting Ignatieff.

One should always take a lawsuit seriously, but I can’t help chuckling at this one. It’s just so over-the-top, so legally baseless and so exaggerated it’s laughable.

First: the largest defamation judgment ever given by a Canadian court was less than a third as big, $1.6 million, to Casey Hill.

Hill was a top prosecutor in Toronto, with a sterling national and international reputation. He was defamed by the Church of Scientology, whose lawyer stood on the steps of a Toronto courthouse, in a lawyer’s gown, and accused Hill of illegal conduct – a stunning accusation that received massive coverage on TV and the newspapers. Literally hundreds of thousands of people heard the defamation. It was part of an ongoing vendetta by the Scientologists against Hill – they actually had a file on him marked “Enemy Canada”.

Compare Hill’s reputation to Kinsella’s. Kinsella is a professional mudslinger whose career highlight – by his own admission – was going on national TV to mock those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. He’s so foul-mouthed that he even calls his own punk band Sh*t From Hell (I can testify first-hand that is an accurate appellation). I suppose like Casey Hill, Kinsella has an international reputation – Kinsella made huge headlines in China for his cat meat remarks, and then again for his equally embarrassing “ironic apology” that blamed everyone else for getting so upset about it.

Kinsella thinks his reputation is worth more than the biggest defamation award in history, and that my blog has hurt him more than anyone has ever been defamed in Canadian history.

Does he not see how this suit makes him look? It’s a combination of bad judgment, thin-skin, and a brazen abuse of legal process.

And all for a blog entry in which I accurately quote Justice John Gomery’s judicial findings that Kinsella had conducted himself in a “highly inappropriate” manner.

The suit is legal suicide – especially after the Supreme Court’s revolutionary ruling on “fair comment” in the WIC Radio case.

We know Kinsella hates it when people mention his involvement in Adscam. He threatened to sue the National Post’s Andrew Coyne over it. He threatened to sue the Globe’s Normal Spector over it. He once called Justice Gomery’s inquiry a “pile of judicial garbage” – classy, coming from a lawyer. But for some reason Kinsella never did the one thing you’d expect someone to do who actually believed that Justice Gomery was wrong: he never appealed his findings. So they stand: Kinsella’s conduct was “highly inappropriate”. Kinsella had sent a memo telling public servants to channel advertising and polling money through Chuck Guite – who was later convicted of fraud.

Warren Kinsella ain’t Casey Hill. And I’m not a Scientologist making things up. Kinsella has a poor reputation – one that he has earned.

So why would Kinsella sue me for $5 million? As loyal readers know, Kinsella already sued me last year because I criticized his meeting with the anti-Semitic Canadian Islamic Congress.  That was laughable, too, because he did in fact meet with the CIC and gave them advice and assistance. How do I know about this? Because Kinsella boasted about it on his own website.

That lawsuit was bizarre, but it was only for $50,000 – clearly designed to be a nuisance suit, probably unlikely to make it to trial, just enough to cause me to have to spend time and money to lawyer up.

But by adding two more zeroes to his claim, Kinsella does a few things that will come back to bite him – and Ignatieff – in the tush.

First and most obviously, he attracts attention to something Ignatieff doesn’t want to talk about: Adscam, and the Liberal reputation for corruption. Ignatieff was living in the U.S. until 2006, so he probably doesn’t know that Kinsella actually publicly declared his belief in the character of Chuck Guite – the man at the centre of the Adscam scandal -- before Guite was convicted of defrauding Canadian taxpayers. How much of this did Ignatieff know when he asked Kinsella to join his campaign?

Second, by suing me for more than $50,000, Kinsella takes his action out of “simplified procedure”, and into regular rules of court – so he is now subject to examinations for discovery. That means he must answer potentially endless questions about his role in Adscam, under oath. And the answer “that’s confidential” just doesn’t hold up. All of his documents, notes, e-mails and other memos must be disclosed to me.

Third, Kinsella opens himself up to real cost consequences when he loses, which he will. Judges don’t like nuisance suits at the best of times – they’re not interested in being a prop for Kinsella’s war-room. A $5-million nuisance suit opens Kinsella up to paying much more of my own legal costs.

Kinsella and I have been trading political barbs for ten years. We have appeared opposite each other on radio and TV, even on Lloyd Robertson’s CTV election night desk in 2000. Political sparring is what we do – I always assumed it was in good humour.

But about a year ago, something snapped with Kinsella – he just couldn’t countenance my battle against the censorship of Canada’s human rights commissions. He particularly hated my criticisms of Richard Warman, the former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who has been the complainant in the majority of censorship hearings prosecuted by the CHRC. Kinsella lost his cool over the subject. Instead of acting like a professional pundit or party activist, he started fighting personally.

I have to admit, I’m still half-expecting him to say “just kidding!” at any moment, because what he’s doing is just so spectacularly bizarre and ineffective. Far from marginalizing me and other free speech advocates over the past year, he has brought attention to our campaign for free speech. And far from grinding me into submission, as he has done with other people he has targeted with libel chill in the past, he has galvanized my convictions. That, along with the generous support of my website’s readers, has allowed me to parry the two dozen human rights complaints, defamation suits and law society complaints filed by Kinsella, Warman and their allies.

I haven’t asked for any help with my legal funds in two months, but I regret that Kinsella’s new lawsuit does require me to incur more expenses – a statement of defence right away, likely some preliminary motions, and then the meticulous work of discoveries. Discoveries themselves could top $20,000 and a trial – which could take the better part of a week – could add $50,000 more.

I’ve got one of Toronto’s best lawyers working on this case – Chris Ashby, who won one of the largest defamation cases in the past decade. I’m sure Mr. Ashby will see me through to victory, as he did for Dr. Myers. I just need to pay his bills until the court orders Kinsella to pay them for me, as they ordered the CBC to do for Dr. Myers.

Would you please help me out?

I think it’s important to beat Kinsella’s suit for four reasons:

1.    It’s the right thing to do, to stand up to bullies who would try to silence political debate through libel chill.

2.    If Kinsella sues over his involvement with the Canadian Islamic Congress, and Adscam, then it’s an important opportunity to properly grill him on his conduct, for the public record.

3.    If I don’t fight him, Ignatieff’s Liberal campaign will be one step closer to silencing other journalists’ questions out of fear, just like Kinsella has threatened bloggers into silence before.

4.    Kinsella jumped into this fight because of his opposition to our campaign for freedom of expression, and his disagreements with me over everything from radical Islam to Adscam. He is using this lawsuit to pre-empt and foreclose on those substantive debates, by trying to gag me instead. That’s just not the Canadian way.

We’ve already beaten Kinsella in the court of public opinion. Now let’s beat him in the court of law. If you can help me, please do.

If you can chip in by PayPal, please click on the button below. If you’d prefer to send in a cheque by snail mail, that’s fine. Please make cheques payable to:

“Christopher Ashby in Trust”
Attn: Ezra Levant defence fund
Suite 1013
8 King Street East
Toronto ON M5C 1B5

Thank you very much. With your help, I promise to fight this battle all the way to the end.

"I am not a registered non-profit organization.  Donations are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes."

 

[George Wallace]

Am I the only one left who hasn't sued Ezra Levant?

 

[ModlrMike]

There's at least two of us.

 

[a_majoor]

Well, at least we will not have to talk about ADSCAM anymore; an entertaining new scandal for us to contemplate:

http://stevejanke.com/archives/283856.php

Michael Ignatieff opens the door to future scandals
Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 08:54 PM
Comments: 13

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff is a man of ideas.  I'm just not certain they're all good ideas.

The latest one is obligating Liberal MPs to maintain a certain level of dues-paying membership in his riding or be forced to fight a fresh nomination battle before the next election.

And with that, Michael Ignatieff has rendered donation limits meaningless.
Main Story

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff is going to force MPs to sell the Liberal Party.  If an MP doesn't maintain a certain monthly minimum of members and donors each month, he or she is going to be forced to fight a nomination battle:

    Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has put his MPs on notice that they will have to meet new membership and donor targets in their ridings or face the prospect of an internal challenge to their right to carry the party banner.

    In a move aimed at rebuilding the party's membership base and fundraising abilities, the Liberal Leader is insisting that sitting MPs maintain a roster of 400 party members and a minimum of 40 monthly 'Victory Fund' donors, those signed up to shell out at least $10 or more per month.

    MPs who received fewer than 20,000 votes in the last election will be allowed to have a lower membership threshold, based on a formula.

    In return, Mr. Ignatieff would not allow nomination battles in the ridings of individuals who successfully meet the targets. One source said the number of Liberal-held ridings with 400 or more members can be measured in the dozens. There are currently 77 Liberal MPs and 308 ridings across the country. The move is one in a series that Mr. Ignatieff is making to rebuild a party whose fundraising and organization has come under criticism.

What a great idea!  Now MPs will be motivated to sign up donors.

Did I say motivated?  I really meant desperate.

And therein lies the problem.

Imagine I'm a Liberal MP.  I'm at 30 Victory Fund donors under my name, and I've hit a plateau.  I've called and called, and I can't seem to make that number budge.  And when I close my eyes, I can imagine seeing Michael Ignatieff tearing up my nomination papers, because simply delivering a riding is not good enough anymore.

Then someone comes knocking at the door, promising to deliver a dozen donors.

I'm saved!

But at what price?

You see the problem now?  The whole point of donation limits is to render everyone equally worthless.  I mean, at a limit of $1100 per year, a bank executive can't help much more than a waitress at a coffee shop.  That's not a bad thing.

Now Michael Ignatieff has undermined that principle, but just within the Liberal Party.  Those last five or ten donors could be worth thousands.

Literally.

Take my riding of Cambridge, for example.  The allowed limit for a nomination fight is just over $17,000.  Now nomination fights don't usually spend the maximum, but that doesn't mean nomination battles are cheap.  Joyce Murray spent over $6000 to secure her nomination in Vancouver Quadra, while her opponent Cindy Grauer spent over $8000 just to come in second.

For a sitting MP, those last donors afford protection against a nomination fight that would cost thousands, and even worse, might end with the MP becoming the former MP of the riding (and still stuck with the cost of the nomination fight).

How much is that worth?  What promises would be made to secure those last few donors?

Or turn it around.  Someone wants to break into politics.  Thanks to Michael Ignatieff's new rule, that person has a way to shake loose a sitting Liberal MP.  All that person has to do is convince potential donors to wait before bringing out the cheques.

Controlling donors (whether delivering them to an MP trying to make his quota, or holding them back) might not be all that hard to do.  In many ridings, and especially in Liberal ridings, there are blocks of voters.  Who can forget how Navdeep Bains delivered 250 Indo-Canadian votes to Gerard Kennedy, and ultimately to Stephane Dion, in the 2006 leadership race?

If Michael Ignatieff is lucky, his plan will result in a small bump of donations, and a lot of stressed out and angry MPs.  If he's unlucky, there will be donors-for-favours scandal in the Liberal Party future, and someone will be on TV saying this was bound to happen, and why didn't anyone see it coming.

Hey, I did.

 

[a_majoor]

If you can't get new donors, just find a loophole so existing donors can flout the law....

http://stevejanke.com/archives/284767.php

Michael Ignatieff uses leadership fund surplus to do end-run around donation limits
Monday, March 23, 2009 at 06:36 PM

Here are excerpts from an email from incoming Liberal Party president Alfred Apps:

    As you may know, we are doing the annual Leader's Dinner for 1,000 people at the Royal York in 10 days, on April 1. Purdy Crawford, Frank McKenna, Belinda Stronach, David Peterson and Jean Augustine are the Honourary co-chairs. I think the event is going to be sold out.

    Those who pay $1,100 per seat are entitled to (a) a premiere table location, (b) admission to the VIP Reception preceding the Dinner and (c) an automatic Laurier Club membership (which includes the ability to attend the upcoming Vancouver convention for free).

    Those who pay only $500 per seat are able to attend the dinner only.

    Each donor/purchaser can donate up to $2,200, paying up to $1,100 by cheque or credit card to the Liberal Party of Canada and $1,100 to the "Liberal Party of Canada (Michael Ignatieff)".  The Ignatieff Campaign account is in surplus and any surplus automatically reverts to LPC under the Elections Act.

Here is the relevant portion of the legislation:

    435.45 (1) If the Chief Electoral Officer estimates that a leadership contestant has a surplus of leadership campaign funds, the Chief Electoral Officer shall issue a notice of the estimated amount of the surplus to the contestant's financial agent.

    (2) The financial agent of a leadership contestant who has a surplus of leadership campaign funds but has not received a notice of estimated surplus under subsection (1) shall dispose of that estimated surplus within 60 days after the provision of the contestant's leadership campaign return. S.C. 2003, c. 19, s. 40.

    435.46 (1) The financial agent of a leadership contestant shall dispose of a surplus of leadership campaign funds within 60 days after receiving the notice of estimated surplus.

    (2) Surplus leadership campaign funds must be transferred to the registered party that is holding the leadership contest or a registered association of that party.

So within 60 days of either (a) submitting the leadership campaign return or (b) getting a notice of a surplus in the leadership campaign fund, the surplus is supposed to be transferred to the party.

So within 60 days of Michael Ignatieff's acclamation as Liberal Party leader, and the official closure of the bogus Liberal Party leadership campaign, all this money will be transferred to the Liberal Party.

Now does this mean that every leadership candidate's campaign fund can be used as a donation doubler?  I can't think that this is what was intended.  Gee, if only Bob Rae hadn't officially dropped out.  Then they could use his campaign fund for the same purpose.  Nothing in the rules says someone can't contribute to two leadership campaign funds.  That could triple the donations going to the Liberal Party, since neither leadership fund would actually be using the money donated.

Gee, why not get ten bogus candidates up and running?  What?  Too much?

But to make it clear, Alfred Apps is encouraging people to donate to Michael Ignatieff's leadership campaign fund.  But the leadership campaign is just a fiction.  He knows the fund is already in surplus now that all the debts from the 2006 campaign have been paid off.  He knows that the fund needs no more money since there is no active leadership campaign underway, and Michael Ignatieff will be acclaimed as leader.  But he is telling these donors to donate anyway, to contribute money to a fund for a fictional campaign that will incur no debts, for the express purpose of transferring that money to the party.

Money goes IN.

Money comes OUT.

IN. OUT.

All very familiar, eh?

If the fund is in surplus...?  If the leadership fund is in surplus, as Alfred Apps makes clear in his email, then why does Michael Ignatieff make it sound like he needs the money?

    Thank you for considering a donation to Michael's Leadership Campaign.

    We need your financial contribution to make Michael's campaign possible. Michael is committed to running a campaign that is financed by a broad-base of Canadians contributing small amounts. Federal tax credits make it easier to give. Donations are eligible for a tax credit of up to 75%. If all of us pitch in, we can make this happen - for Michael and for Canada.

No where does he mention that the fund is full up and that any money coming it is just going to be funneled to the Liberal Party.  Instead, Michael Ignatieff needs to contribution to make his campaign possible.  Well, that's just a load of bunk, isn't it?  I mean, Alfred Apps said as much.

Milk it for what it's worth: I suppose that when Michael Ignatieff is acclaimed leader, the leadership campaign fund will have to close and no more donation doubling will take place.  I wonder how aggressive the Liberals will play this donation doubling game until then?

 

[a_majoor]

More on the reality vs the rhetoric:

http://russ-campbell.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-not-in-power-liberals-show-disdain.html

When not in power, Liberals show disdain for parliament

The so-called “natural governing party” of Canada, those duplicitous Liberals, have little interest in and respect for the House of Commons, except, of course, when  they are the ones calling the shots. Long has this been obvious, but seldom are we able to see such clear proof of their casual disregard for our parliament.

Notwithstanding Michael Ignatieff ’s vow that his party would no longer avoid votes in Parliament, Grits missed three times as many votes in the House so far this year as have Tory members.

Their record is nothing short of shameful: Liberal MPs did not participate in about 12 per cent of the recorded votes on bills and motions in the House of Commons during the current parliamentary session that began in January. In comparison, Tory MPs skipped 4 per cent.

The Grits have posted the worst record for voting in the House of the four parties represented there. They voted fewer times on average than Bloc Québécois MPs, whose members have nothing but disdain for anything Canadian. As a small measure of consolation, when Grits did vote, at least, they voted the right way, supporting the governing Tories 79 per cent of the time. By contrast, Bloc MPs supported the government on only 14 per cent of votes.

When Stéphane Dion was their leader, the Liberals repeatedly opposed government legislation when talking to the press, but failed to attend the House in numbers sufficient to defeat the very bills or motions they claimed to oppose. Their MPs managed to participate, on average, in only 64 per cent of recorded votes. Asked last fall whether he would continue the strategy, Mr. Ignatieff said that his party was “tired of sitting down.”

Apparently, like so much of what Mr. Ignatieff says these days, his words did not convey his intentions—the record speaks for itself.

[Source: Ottawa Citizen]

 

[pbi]

Since I read Blood and Belonging a few years back, I've respected Ignatieff as a thinker. He hasn't hesitated to take a far more realpolitik view of the world than the Liberals have generally been known for. Now, despite the naysayers, he's got the helm of the Liberals. I certainly don't want an electionright now, but if there were to be one, and the Liberals were to win, I think I could be OK with him as PM (and I've voted Tory all my life)

Cheers

 

[Journeyman]

I certainly don't want an election right now, but if there were to be one, and the Liberals were to win, I think I could be OK with him as PM (and I've voted Tory all my life)

That sounded like the political version of an AA meeting  ;D

 

[c_canuk]

I wouldn't feel comfortable with him in power, he's too easily lied to by activits, case in point Bill C-301 is about abolishing the long gun registry and combining the Authority to Transport certificate for restricted weapons into a restricted weapons licence since the ATT grants you 24/7 transport authority to the range, which is the only place you can legally take it anyway. the ATT is redundant since the rules don't change without it.

when questioned by a citizen writing to him requesting he support the bill, he responded that that bill c-301 will allow restricteds and prohibiteds to be carried freely when that is not the case, and that he couldn't support it on a matter of public safety when it's been proven that people who have take the time to:

take the classes
write the tests
fill out several different forms
provide personal information about their personal lives
provided a character reference from any Ex in the last 6 months
legally purchased a weapon
completed the registry forms
waited a month to recieve permission to transport the weapon to their home
gave notice of officially joining a gun club
waited another month for the authority to take it to a range

rather than pay a 100 bucks to a shady dude in a back alley, aren't a danger to the public.

that kind of BS makes me doubt his mental capacity and ability to look beyond the title page of anything he's given to read.

 

[ModlrMike]

Considering they're still going on about universal child care when they promised to implement it 15 years ago... they're not likely to get my vote any time soon. Of course there's also "we will eliminate the GST" to fall back on.

All hail the king.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Now that Michael Ignatieff is formally confirmed in his job he faces several challenges:

• The Liberal Party of Canada, despite Mr. Ignatieff’s policy ambiguity, remains deeply divided;

• The Liberal Party of Canada still has huge financial problems;

• The Liberal Party of Canada is, essentially, a large metropolitan organization – only loosely “connected’ to the suburbs and smaller towns where about half of Canadians live.

The internal divisions in the Liberal Party go back to around 1946. Until then, until 1967, in fact, there was little to choose between Laurier, King, St Laurent and Pearson: all were believers in the utility and even efficacy of government. The fact that Laurier and St Laurent were internationalists while King was, by inclination, an isolationist made no difference; on the fundamentals – capitalism and a George W Bush like attachment to “big government conservatism” – they were as one.

The change came in the wake of the 2nd Word War. Québec, which was the Liberals’ firm base, had been on the wrong side of history – badly offside. Québec’s “resistance” to military service was perceived, internally and across Canada, to have been rooted in some institutionalized sympathy for European fascism and anti-Semitism. Québec’s “leadership” (social, religious and political) understood that they had to rewrite the “narrative” to excuse a profound socio-political error. The new narrative, which persists to this day, is that Québec was not against fighting the Nazis, etc; rather it was against being compelled to go abroad and fight. That decision, the Québec leadership circa 1946 suggested, could only be made by Québecers, themselves, for themselves. They were, in other words, a colonized, even oppressed minority.

Despite some reservations, here and there, most Canadians, Conservatives and Liberals alike, accepted this new narrative – which, directly, gave birth to modern separatism by creating a false grievance where none existed.

The change in Québec’s “narrative” led to a left/right split in the Liberal Party. Until the late 1940s there was no economic “left wing” in the Liberal Party. The Party was, firmly, in the centre – it was the party of BIG: big business, big labour, big cities, big banks, big projects and, above all, big government. As late as Walter Gordon, the “split” was between the “nationalists” and the “internationalists” in the party. But, despite King’s reference to the socialist CCFers as “Liberals in a hurry” the party was united in its (and, broadly, Canadians’) faith in regulated capitalism. The arrival of Marchand, Pelletier and Trudeau, the “three wise men,” changed all that. They were Québec “nationalists,” amongst the creators of the post war “narrative” and decidedly “left of centre” in political and economic terms – far, far removed from the Liberals’ paymasters in Montreal’s Victoria Square and Toronto’s Bay Street. Increasingly Québec Liberals were both also “nationalistic” and quite economically “left” of centre. This was, I think, the result of two factors:

1. The socio-educational system; and

2. The “new narrative.”

For most people of a certain age, educated in the Anglo-American tradition, the Paris commune of 1871 was nothing more than a historical footnote. But, I have been told by several Franco colleagues, it was a mainstay of he Québec (and French) educational system. The “ideas” of the commune – economic equality, etc – were force fed to at least a couple of generations of French speaking school children.

The “new narrative” – aimed at excusing Québec’s socio-political attitudes in the first half of the 20th century – incorporated a socialist face, to further distinguish itself from Canada and the big, powerful Anglo-American world.

The nationalization of Hydro Québec in 1944 and, again, circa 1960 resonated with Québecers. It was both nationalistic, making Québecers ”maîtres chez nous” – as Québec Liberal premier Jean Lesage put it when he completed the nationalization of Québec’s remaining private hydro companies – and socialistic, notwithstanding that Ontario established its own public hydroelectric monopoly in 1906!

This heady mix of emerging Franco-Québec nationalism and socialist economics drove Marchand, Pelletier and Trudeau. That same mix would also drive Canada in the 1970s.

Trudeau brought one more thing (back) to the table: isolationism. If there was one hing that animated Trudeau it was “anti-nationalism.” It appears to me that the lesson he drew from the 1930s and ‘40s was that nationalism was entirely destructive – even the emerging Franco-Québec nationalism he had embraced as an undergraduate.

Thus the Liberal civil war: Prior to 1967 there was a “debate” between the “internationalists” (Laurier and St Laurent) and the “isolationists” (King). The debate was then pushed to a full scale battle when Trudeau institutionalized the “isolationist” principle in the incredibly inept 1970 White Paper, A Foreign Policy for Canadians. This amounted to a complete repudiation of Laurier, St Laurent and Pearson and, indeed, even of King’s legacy. To make matters worse, for most traditional Liberals, Trudeau also implemented a left of centre socio-economic agenda. The battle lines were drawn.

The insiders’ expectation was that Liberals would undergo a series of left/right “swings” – which they did – that would result in a chance for Canadians to decide which brand of Liberalism they preferred, but that did not happen. There was a left/right “swing” but it was Trudeau/Mulroney (with Turner as something of a footnote) and Chrétien/Harper (with Martin as the footnote). The “right wing” Liberals never got a chance to govern; both Trudeau and Chrétien were of an insular mind, preferring to spend any and all available monies on domestic social programmes – the difference being hat Chrétien actually understood that money had to be taken from productive taxpayers before it could be spent on the Liberal Party of Canada’s client base.

This is the situation Ignatieff has inherited; he may be able to paper over the cracks but there is no way that the real battle is over. The “soul” of the Liberal Party of Canada is, still, very much up for grabs.

The Liberals have doubled their fundraising over this time last year but they still remain at about 15% of the Conservatives’ level when party member donors are measured. This is a major problem that Ignatieff must address because if (when) Harper gets a majority government funding of political parties is gone – never to return.

The Liberal Party of Canada is no longer a “national” party – but nor are any of the others. The Conservatives are the party of rural, small town and suburban Canada; the NDP is the party of the hip, green urbanites; the BQ is the party of the hip, green Franco urbanites and the Québec nationalists; the Liberals are the party of the not so hip, modestly green, urban middle classes and of big business, big labour, and big governments. But “sub-national” parties cannot win substantial majority governments in a “balanced” political system. (Chrétien racked up successive majorities because here was a split in the normal opposition; that has changed and we now have three, maybe four, “balanced” Canadian parties and one regional party, the BQ.) But the Liberals must break through in the prairies or they, too, will risk being a regional rump: “Old Canada” plus the big cities.

Ignatieff has plenty of challenges. We’ll see if he has the “right stuff” to meet hem.

 

[Rifleman62]

From: small dead animals, a very good blog site and an award winner.

http://smalldeadanimals.com/

The First American Prime Minister In Waiting

 

[Biggoals2bdone]

Sorry E.R Campbell I don't believe that malarky, you as an anglo-canadian, living in the here and now, cannot, I repeat cannot tell me how thousands upon thousands of franco-canadians, felt about heeding the call of the British Empire for World War 1.

Now I'm not trying to say that they all felt the same way, which we know all know would be inacurrate.

You can't tell me how they felt, and therefore I can't believe everything you just said, because:
1) I don't see any factual evidence on your part, just hearsay
2) You're not in their situation (minority, colonized and marginalized by other cultural group)


Obviously the more important of the 2 points, is the factual evidence.

 

[Kirkhill]

BG2BD

Malarky is hardly a useful characterization if wishing to pursue a civil discussion.

As to knowing how Quebecers felt about WW2 - how about reading books by Quebecers about how they felt about WW2 (not 1 - Mr. Campbell's reference is to the change in polity as a result of WW2)?

A good starting point is Pierre Trudeau: The Early Years.

One area in which I think Edward soft-peddles is the role of the Church, in particular the Papacy which as a result of a series of misfortunes launched an assault against democratizing institutions and liberal, free-thinking education.

The Church, defender of the old order, blamed Capitalism, democracy, the Masons and Britain for its demise. It had been fighting these institutions in the open since at least the 1730's when it started taking swipes at the Masons because they allowed anybody to join, allowed anything to be read and allowed people to believe anything they wanted.



The misfortunes I refer to were the loss of the Papal states, guaranteed by French kings from the original donation of Pepin in 756 to the last of the Bourbons in 1848. Over a thousand years of protection and mutual support.  The French fought for the Pope.  The Pope legitimated the French King.  That loss was a major psychological blow.

Between 1848 and 1870 it found a new, temporary, Guarantor in the form of Napoleon III of France but when he lost the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and was deposed by the Paris Commune the Pope was left with no support.

That left the road open for Victor Emmanuel of Savoy and Garibaldi to occupy the Papal States, Rome, Vatican City and the Vatican itself.  The Pope suddenly found himself not the dictator but the one doing the listening.

From that point on the Popes fought a campaign to control education, to separate Catholics from Protestant ideas and re-establish the old order.  The only thing the Popes considered a greater threat than democracy was communism.  Together with looking for a new secular patron (more of a body guard) to replace the Bourbons the Popes were lead towards corporatism - and Mussolini, Franco, Salazar and de Valera, as a compromise.  Ultimately they found themselves trapped in a bargain with the devil himself - Hitler

Canada's first foreign service crisis occurred in 1868 when a group of Quebec volunteers left Quebec to fight for the Pope against the Italians.  Despite their efforts the Pope lost the struggle.  (Aside: I wonder how many Quebecers went to fight for Franco against the Mac-Paps who illegally fought for the Communists?)

That loss happened despite the Pope taking the radical step of having himself declared infallible on matters of Church doctrine.

In my opinion - and note it is only an opinion - it is not possible to look at post-confederation Canadian history (Fenian Raids, Metis Rebellions, Papal Zouaves, Quebec Education and Manitoba Schools decision, Jesuit Lands, Conscription Crises (1917 and 1944) amongst many others, without taking into account the antipathy of the Papacy to the style of government that Canada represented.

That association can also be seen in the rise of the Liberal Party as an association of Scots, English, Irish and French Catholics opposed to the Scots, English, Irish and French Democrats - an early example of Lasky at work: the Bleu- the Authoritarian Quebecers including the Church and the Seigneurie became Rouge as the only route to effectively opposing the democratizing tendency exhibited by both MacDonald's Conservatives and Laurier's Liberals.  The alliance of the Bleus with the Liberals happened under the auspices of MacKenzie and propelled him to power and sustained him there.

The book on Trudeau contains two relevant and pithy anecdotes:

In one instance one of Trudeau's teachers tells the students that Quebec owns nothing to France and the Tricolour.  Ever since France severed the ties with the Church in 1907 then good Catholics owed nothing to France. It got what it deserved in WW1 and WW2 for turning its back on the Church.  Quebecers owed nothing to the Tricoleur of France. Their loyalty should be to the old flag of the Bourbons (actually the Quebec Flag is the Flag of Calais, which became the flag of the Merchant Marine under the Bourbons wih the Fleur de Lys of the Ile de France imposed on it).

In another reference in the same book it is pointed out that while all Protestants had access to any book in up to 400 libraries in Ontario when Trudeau went to school, in Quebec there were about a dozen libraries and the most of those were to serve the Protestant community.

The Priesthood controlled who got an education, for how long, what they learned and what they were to do with it.  Trudeau, the great free-thinking liberal, was picked by that system, trained by that system and, all the way into his University years only read books approved by that system.

Quebec as a society is acclimated to being told what to do and expects the Seigneur to provide.

Unfortunately the Quebecois have company in that belief amongst the recent immigrant community in Canada - many of whom come from authoritarian regimes and/or have a great faith in inherently authoritarian religions.

When the Quiet Revolution occured, after John Paul XXIII renounced papal infallibility, instituted Vatican II and the Americans elected a Catholic President (JFK), the Quebec threw off the priestly garb - but it couldn't throw off it sense that Someone will provide.  The Government replaced God, the King and the Church.

Attitudes were perpetuated by the fact that many of the old clerical workers continued doing their same jobs in health, welfare, education and culture, that they did before the Parent Report commissioned by the Lesage government.  They secularized in that they traded in their habits and cassocks for civilian clothes, and they swapped paymasters, but they continued to believe that the world was better ordered from the top down.  That democracy, an Anglo-Saxon invention, was too dangerous.  Likewise with capitalism.

The split in the Liberal Party is the split between the party of Laurier (the radical Rouge that were anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian, supported Laicete, democracy and capitalism) and the party of MacKenzie King (the conservative Bleu that werepro-clergy, authoritarian, denounced Laicete, democracy and capitalism).  The common ground that was found was the desire to strip power from the latitudinarian Protestant capitalists who dominated Canadian politics.

 

[a_majoor]

Looking at Edward's post from a different angle; how can the CPC, NDP and Greens exploit the split in the Liberal Party in order to clear the deck and break the political deadlock that has paralyzed Canadian Government? The CPC has obvious reasons to want to eliminate the Liberals, but the NDP and Greens can certainly see the Liberals effectively prevent the growth and evolution of their parties as well.

From Ignatieff's side of the fence, the question is the mirror image; how to rebuild the Liberal Party. To my uneducated mind, the simple solution might just be to "purge" the opposing wing of the party, but that is only about 1/3 of the problem; finding and articulating a philosophy that resonates with all Canadians should be job one (for every party), and building the resource base of funds and party members to do the work is also badly needed.

Certainly a "purge" would allow the creation of a unifying philosophy and platform to take place (how it resonates with all Canadians is another matter), and I suspect the unveiling of a real, sound and coherent platform based on an underlying philosophy will do wonders in terms of attracting members, money and resources.

Jack Layton, Steven Harper and Elizabeth May might want to take note as well.......

 

[RangerRay]

The CPC has obvious reasons to want to eliminate the Liberals, but the NDP and Greens can certainly see the Liberals effectively prevent the growth and evolution of their parties as well.

However, during the last election and the ensuing "coalition" mess, the Greens and NDP were solidly in the Liberal camp.

The Green/Liberal footsy during the election cost the Greens from making any serious gains.

The NDP/Liberal coalition that Layton sucked Dion into made absolutely no sense, from the NDP point of view.  Harper gave Layton a gift with the proposal to ban public funding of political parties (the NDP, like the Tories, get most of their funding from donors) and instead, Layton jumped into bed with Dion and the seperatists!

Had Layton supported Harper, they could have financially destroyed the Liberals, and the NDP would become the credible party of the centre-left.

I still can't figure out why May and Layton were so easily duped by the Liberals, when it makes more sense for them to help destroy the Liberals.

 

[c_canuk]

the NDP, and Green are made up of the fringe who wanted and still want to paint Harper as Bush 2.0 (they like to just state "harper is evil!" and can't back it up with anything other than "Well he scares me because he's bush's best friend!!!") so they couldn't side with the CPC without biting the hand that feeds them.

They probably figured it was better for them to attempt to overthrow the CPC than to alienate their voter base, especially since more liberal voters would probably switch to CPC or not vote rather than vote for the Green or NDP.

 

[a_majoor]

Irony isn't dead at all...........

http://www.stephentaylor.ca/2009/05/iggy-cuts-the-pork-and-the-line/

Never get between a Liberal and his pork

We get letters! From a Conservative staffer on the Hill today…

    Today, Canadian Pork Producers held a free BBQ on Parliament Hill to demonstrate to Canadians that Canadian pork is safe.

    Hundreds of MP’s, Senators, and staffers from all parties waited in long lineups to express their support for Canadian pork producers and enjoy a delicious pork sandwich.

    Unfortunately, Michael Ignatieff proved to be the exception. Instead of waiting like everyone else, he decided to cut in front of hundreds of people who were patiently waiting in line.

    It’s obvious that, in his 34 years outside the country, he forgot that Canadians are usually courteous enough to wait in line with everyone else.

Pork chop sandwiches!

(headline inspired by Murray the Hun in the comments)

UPDATE: Another witness on the scene writes to inform that when staffers were grumbling that Ignatieff was cutting the line to go up front he remarked “Don’t worry, I won’t eat any pork”. Of course, the event was to support pork producers and demonstrate that Canadian pork is safe. A staffer quickly corrected Ignatieff and the Liberal leader proceeded to grab a sandwich.

UPDATE: A former Liberal staffer (and current pork lobbyist) who is a friend writes to say that MPs from other parties were also allowed to cut the line for photo-op purposes and insists that some in fact did. (Interpolation: OK, where are the pictures?)

 

[a_majoor]

Without further comment:

http://kitchenerconservative.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/charles-adler-calls-count-iggy-on-his-fake-it-until-you-make-it-patriotism/

Charles Adler calls Count Iggy on his ‘Fake it Until You Make it Patriotism’

Fake it Until You Make it Patriotism

By Charles Adler

May 4, 2009

Dear Michael,

I don’t want you to mistake me for an admirer. But I do admire a good speech no matter who it comes from, no matter the circumstances. The speech on Saturday night left me colder than a Prairie January. You have been promoted by the candy cane salesman of the Liberal Party as a man of ideas, Canada’s answer to Obama, a public intellectual, the second coming of Trudeau. There were no ideas in the speech, except that you think it’s a hell of an idea to have 3000 Liberals gathered at a convention. In the days of Trudeau, you could get tens of thousands. What’s the difference between you and Trudeau? It’s like asking what’s the difference between night and day. Trudeau’s eyes sparkled and his wit cut like a knife. His speeches, especially in the early days, made Liberals turn to each other and have trouble seeing each other because they had tears in their eyes. On Saturday night, the small gathering of Liberals weren’t looking into each other’s eyes with that, “Oh my goodness, have we just witnessed the risen God?” They were looking at their watches to see if you could be done by 3pm west coast time so they could get up to their hotel rooms and get ready for a hockey game.

Now Barack Obama, as you may know, didn’t just scribble his speech over the course of a few hours and hand it to his wife for a quick edit job. A team of skilled speech writers worked on it, and worked on it, and refined it, and before it went into the prompter it was filled with poetry and prose and patriotism. Obama connected with American voters in a way that few people in our time have. My strongest hunch tells me that if you had stayed in the USA and gotten involved in public life as you were thinking of doing, that you too would have engaged in a process similar to Obama’s. Something more sophisticated than the cheap pizza you delivered on Saturday, old cheese, moldy crust and a sauce that tastes like it was cooked in the backside of a cat. Would I be wrong in presuming that you felt that these three thousand Canadian rubes gathered in Vancouver were not good enough for your best efforts? These three thousand desperate rubes who have been out of power for more than 3 years now, and have gone with two duds in a row for prime minister. There was Paul Martin, the steam ship owner who ran out of steam five years before the battleship Chretien was finally mothballed. And of course, there was Stephane Dion, whose main job at this convention was to show up and speak for half an hour on Friday night and remind the three thousand desperate rubes just how bad things were when they were forced to swallow the idea they were being led by a guy sporting black eyes from the punches he was taking from the Tories and stab wounds all over his torso from the knives you and Bob Rae were sticking in him from the shadows. There was the wounded Stephane Dion who still walks around like one of those Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific thirty years after the end of the war, still looking for the enemy because he never got the word that the war was over. There is the old Liberal soldier Stephane Dion wandering around Vancouver with a tin cup, wondering whether any Liberals who are flush will help pay off the 150 thousand dollars he still owes from his so-called winning leadership campaign.

And why did he win Michael? It is a question that wasn’t waiting for historians to weigh on it. Liberal voters were asking the question from the minute that last convention was over. Why did this loser win? And the answer was simple. It was because you and your old Bob Rae couldn’t make a deal. They couldn’t get both of your egos into a room to cut a deal to support each other, and so you pretended to be ok with Stephane Dion being the de facto interim leader of the Liberal party. And while he floundered around like fish out of water, like a fish on the deck of a boat, you and your friend Bob Rae allowed your political opponents to beat that fish with their paddles and once he was dead and just lying there on the boat, you and Bob told your friends in media that this fish was really stinking out the joint. Now that is my generous way of reading your actions in the months after the green scarf convention that choked the life out of the post Jean Chretien - Paul Martin Liberal party. I do have a less generous and as you know more accurate reading of what went on. And I think the public deserves the real story, not the grimm’s fairy tale that you offered on Saturday night. First a quote from your Fairy Tale:

“I want to speak directly to Stephen Harper.

For three years, you have played province against province, group against group, region against region, individual against individual.

When your power was threatened last November, you unleashed a national unity crisis and you saved yourself only by sending Parliament home.

Mr. Harper, you do not understand Canada.

You have failed to understand that a Prime Minister has only one job: to unite Canadians.

Mr. Harper, you have failed us.

If you can’t unite Canadians, if you can’t appeal to the best in us, we can.”

Actually, in the spirit of generosity, because you are a newly-anointed, sorry-elected leader, kind of like an old Saddam Hussein election, you got 97 percent of the vote on Saturday night because all the contenders were told by Liberal party bosses to get lost. Democracy had produced Stephane Dion and they didn’t want a repeat of that mistake. So you did get 97 percent of the vote. No word on who got the remaining three percent. Perhaps John Gomery can investigate where the three percent went.

Let’s talk about the episode in recent history where you accuse the prime minister of not understanding Canada, an interesting statement coming from a man who spent ninety percent of his adult life outside Canada, which I suppose is why you blow that windy stuff around about how the Liberal party is representative of every part of Canadian society. When you were a child living in Canada, you might have been able to say that without drawing gales of laughter. I am not clashing with your long term memory. Like a lot of aging men, it’s still intact. It’s your short term memory that appears a little foggy and so I go back to your statement at the end of your speech where you are attempting to, as they say in the country that you know much better than Canada, and that would be the USA, as they say in the USA, in that final portion of your speech where you are trying to hit for the fences you accuse Stephen Harper of threatening a national unity crisis by proroguing Parliament. Since you claim to be a public intellectual I know you can handle my depositing of context in the public airing of your failed home run swing.

There was no wood in your bat Michael, because the public sitting in the bleachers knows that the reason Stephen Harper sent the parliament home was because of that wretched piece of political theatre that your former leader set up with the help of Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe. That piece of theatre called coalition coup, a political move that was designed to hijack the will of the Canadian people by entrenching a new unelected government for two years that would have put Stephane Dion in the prime minister’s office and Jack Layton with a seat at the table and with Gilles Duceppe just outside the room, but with a veto pen in his hands. This disgusting contraption called a coalition is what triggered the national unity crisis which Stephen Harper solved by getting the Governor General to send all the thugs home and start all over again in a few months. In those few months you and your back room lads had the chance to stick the final nails into your leader’s coffin. If you thought the coalition idea was what Canada really wanted, than you clearly don’t understand Canada, and so to accuse the PM of that is a bit rich as they say in your circle of influence. A bit rich. Now there is an even less generous narration of what went on in that period of recent Canadian history and it is simply that you and Bob Rae set up Stephane Dion for the final fall. The man had already said he was leaving. But it wasn’t happening soon enough. So you and Bob convinced Dion that going public with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe and trying to seize the levers of government without an election was just something that would really hang Dion out to dry and force him to exit sooner than he wanted to.

But Michael, no matter which scenario one chooses to believe, it’s impossible to believe that Stephen Harper is the one who is dividing region against region and that the Liberal Party is the all-knowing, all-feeling, all-Canadian party. If the Liberals connected with Canadians the way you believe they do, why would you have been left with this pity potty of a convention in Vancouver which almost nobody attended and almost nobody watched on TV. Adding insult to injury for all the optimism about the Liberal Party having become this force that unified the regions, how is it that the leader of the BC Liberal party didn’t want to be seen at the convention, didn’t want to be seen with you. Is it because he was out of the province at the time? Or, is it because he is involved in an election campaign and being seen with a federal Liberal in BC is considered politically dangerous.

Michael, I do wish you well in your new life as an accidental tourist in Canada with your new gig, the newest caretaker leader of the Liberal Party. The polls which Liberals keep pointing to with some sense of optimism still say that Stephen Harper is the most trusted choice for Prime Minister. Why is that Michael? And if your clumsy attempt at saying that he doesn’t understand Canada was on point, don’t you think that in a tough economy he would be doing a lot worse on that all important ballot question? Well I will let you go now. I know that you are scratching for an issue to bring the government down with. The sooner, the better, from the perspective of most of your advisors. After all, two things may happen in the next six months that will cement Stephen Harper’s chances of getting a third mandate: 1) The economy will get better; 2) The Canadian public will get to know you better.

Neither would be good news for the Liberals.

 

[Rifleman62]

A good read. But who will read it? The LPC still has the CBC, CTV, G & M, and the Star wrapped up.

Speaking of polls I see that good old Quebec is at it again favouring the LPC, with the CPC in the basement. Too bad Quebec controls (with Ontario) Canada's destiny, even though lots do not want anything to do with Canada other than our handouts and bribes to get their votes.