The 2008 Canadian Election- Merged Thread

[TCBF]

The knives will be out in the Conservative Party if Harper gets another minority-his personality would perhaps be more tolerated if he had a majority, but he does not, and in the process he has made a lot of enemies within his own party.  Harper is under more pressure than Dion.  Dion is expected to lose this election and will be allowed another chance to win.  Harper is supposed to win big.  If he does not do well this election, anything short of a majority, he will not get another chance.  Thus, I am already listing possible successors to Harper: John Baird, Maxime Bernier,  Peter Mackay and even Rona Ambrose.  Perhaps, Dion will outlast Harper-never underestimate the enemy. 

- In politics, a 'C' is a 'P'.  A minority under difficult circumstances will not necessarily lead to a change in leadership any more than three consecutive majorities will garuntee a knife-free back.  Remember: The Conservatives not only have to fight the opposition, but the left-leaning public service, supreme court and quasi-communist provincial governments.  For example, the civil situation in Kandahar is being exacerbated by CIDAs incompetence (border-line sabotage, actually, considering we are at war).  Who do you think is behind that?

 

[sgf]

You fail to mention that Mulroney donated the 2.1 million to charity. You also fail to mention that it was not taxpayers money that Mulroney got from Schreiber, it was a business deal, after Mulroney left politics. How about the 40 million the Liberals still owe the taxpayers for adscam, money they took from us, the taxpayer? The appearance of scandal is a witchhunt by the opposition, why did Pablo ask unrelated questions of a former PM, fed to him by a CBC reporter? Why did Szabo, the Liberal chair, allow the questions, actually cutting Mulroney off when he objected to the line of questioning? Why did Thibault and Szabo meet with Schreiber's lawyer? Why did Thibault visit Schreiber in jail way before this became news? Why was Thibault seen at a restaurant with Schreiber during Christmas break pouring over documents? This all gives the appearance of scandal as far as I'm concerned, but you don't hear about it in the media.

it was tax papers money that mulroney got from the govt  and it was obtained under false pretences. it doesnt matter one whit that he donated it to charity.
a business deal? right.. lets not forget that mulroney was a prime minister of this country and for him to be accepting envelopes full of cash by a person with the reputation that schrieber has is not acceptable for a man in his position.
you are complete right about abscam, and the liberals paid a heavy price for that.  but this discussion is on mulroney and his scandal.. seems there are scandals enough to go around to all the political parties, including the tories.
interesting harper doesnt seem to think that mulroney is the party's elder statesman these day.. i wonder if lyin brian will be making any speeches for the tories in the next election.. somehow i think not.

 

[George Wallace]

..........you are complete right about abscam, and the liberals paid a heavy price for that.  but this discussion is on mulroney and his scandal.. seems there are scandals enough to go around to all the political parties, including the tories.
interesting harper doesnt seem to think that mulroney is the party's elder statesman these day.. i wonder if lyin brian will be making any speeches for the tories in the next election.. somehow i think not.

WRONG!  This topic is not about mulroney and his scandal; it is about the Manley Report and its affects on the political situation in the country.  The diversion to other aspects must remain balanced, and that means the Liberals are just as fair game as Harper and Lyin Brian.

 

[armyvern]

i wonder if lyin brian will be making any speeches for the tories in the next election.. somehow i think not.

The tories won't need him too ...

not while it's Stephane Dion making speaches for the Lieberals.

 

[sgf]

The tories won't need him too ...

not while it's Stephane Dion making speaches for the Lieberals.

i agree about dion, he will have some issues getting his message across... i do have to wonder tho why the polls arent any higher for the tories

 

[a_majoor]

One can only hope that the Liberal party will see the light after they lose the next election, remove Dion and elect Ignatieff as leader.  Then Canada stands the chance of having an effective opposition party.

To be honest, I don't think most Canadians trust Harper sufficiently to give him a majority but no one has enough faith in Dion's abilities to give him power.  I suspect the next election will result in another minority Conservative government until the Liberals have a leader that can galvanize Canadians.  Right or wrong, the majority of Canadians just don't trust (or even like/respect) Harper.

Too bad for Iggy many Liberals seem to believe young(ish) Justin Trudeau is that man. Having sat through one of his speeches, I don't understand what the attraction is (the speech was full of airy platitudes and had no challenging questions for the audience, no well thought out positions to think about, and was delivered with the smug assurance from the presenter that he was above doing all that for an audience. What a winning combination...... :rage:.). Add Trudeau's CV to the mix and Mr Dion comes across as a political giant in comparison.

Prediction: there will be oceans of ink and streams of rhetorical blood spilled in the next election, as each party predicts a Canadian Götterdämmerung and universal child care unless THEY are elected. When the smoke clears we will have a Conservative minority government, any Ontario CPC seats will have been won through vote splitting by the Left. Prime Minister Harper, by far the most skilled tactician in the house, will be able to play pinball with the other three (or maybe four) parties for two more years when we go through the same sad exercise again in 2010.

No offense against Prime Minister Harper, but what we need as a nation is not a tactician, but a strategist as the head of Government.

 

[Hunteroffortune]

it was tax papers money that mulroney got from the govt  and it was obtained under false pretences. it doesnt matter one whit that he donated it to charity.
a business deal? right.. lets not forget that mulroney was a prime minister of this country and for him to be accepting envelopes full of cash by a person with the reputation that schrieber has is not acceptable for a man in his position.
you are complete right about abscam, and the liberals paid a heavy price for that.  but this discussion is on mulroney and his scandal.. seems there are scandals enough to go around to all the political parties, including the tories.
interesting harper doesnt seem to think that mulroney is the party's elder statesman these day.. i wonder if lyin brian will be making any speeches for the tories in the next election.. somehow i think not.

Why did the Liberals pay that money out, they wrote a slanderous statement about Mulroney, that is still slanderous today, even with all this "new" (15 year old) information.

Mulroney accepted no money while he was PM, this is a witch hunt, and if we are going to have witch hunts, lets look at Chretien and golf courses, also Martin and his cocaine carrying steamship lines, let's get the dirt on all parties.

The Liberals paid a heavy price for adscam? Like the Conservatives being reduced to 2 seats by their own members? I think not. They still have members from Quebec, like Dion, who were in the Cabinet at the time, and could have been the winners of the brown bag lotto. Why is Chretien taking Gomery to court for blaming him for adscam? Where is that missing 40 million taxpayers dollars? Only Liberal know!

Harper ran AGAINST the PC party, Mulroney has never been a part (elder statesman) of the Conservative party we have now, no matter how hard you try to frame it that way. No mud will stick on PM Harper. It sure is sticking to Pablo, Thibault, Szabo, and the ethics committee. Asking questions from the CBC, seems a little unethical to me. The CBC receives over $1 billion from taxpayers, seems the Liberals are still up to their old steal from taxpayers tricks, even when they aren't in power.

Getting back to the Manley report, why can't the Liberals understand that guns without bullets are more dangerous than guns with them? Maybe they should BAN the Taliban? But, when your defence critic marches with the Hezbollah, I guess it's easy to understand why they don't. How can they even propose that development can happen without combat troops? Their position last week makes no sense, we will see what their position is this week.

 

[sgf]

Why did the Liberals pay that money out, they wrote a slanderous statement about Mulroney, that is still slanderous today, even with all this "new" (15 year old) information.

Mulroney accepted no money while he was PM, this is a witch hunt, and if we are going to have witch hunts, lets look at Chretien and golf courses, also Martin and his cocaine carrying steamship lines, let's get the dirt on all parties.

The Liberals paid a heavy price for adscam? Like the Conservatives being reduced to 2 seats by their own members? I think not. They still have members from Quebec, like Dion, who were in the Cabinet at the time, and could have been the winners of the brown bag lotto. Why is Chretien taking Gomery to court for blaming him for adscam? Where is that missing 40 million taxpayers dollars? Only Liberal know!

Harper ran AGAINST the PC party, Mulroney has never been a part (elder statesman) of the Conservative party we have now, no matter how hard you try to frame it that way. No mud will stick on PM Harper. It sure is sticking to Pablo, Thibault, Szabo, and the ethics committee. Asking questions from the CBC, seems a little unethical to me. The CBC receives over $1 billion from taxpayers, seems the Liberals are still up to their old steal from taxpayers tricks, even when they aren't in power.

Getting back to the Manley report, why can't the Liberals understand that guns without bullets are more dangerous than guns with them? Maybe they should BAN the Taliban? But, when your defence critic marches with the Hezbollah, I guess it's easy to understand why they don't. How can they even propose that development can happen without combat troops? Their position last week makes no sense, we will see what their position is this week.

Harper indeed ran against the PC party and when he realized that he had no chance of winning any election, he quickly changed his tune. His party, embraced Mulroney and Harper himself consulted him often. This is a quote from the National Post

There's a strange symmetry to watching the world's biggest jetliner, the Airbus 380, make its first touchdown Monday in Montreal just as turbulence from an Airbus scandal puts a former prime minister's reputation on course for a crash landing.

Brian Mulroney was declared a parliamentary pariah last week by a Conservative government that had hailed him as its mentor and elder statesman.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Story.html?id=93773
now you can drag all the red herrings you care too, into this debate but at the end of the day Brian Mulroney is what he is.. a PM who took cash in envelopes, not once, but three times. You said the liberals are the only ones to know where the adscam money is, well let me suggest Mulroney is the only one that knows where this cash he received is.. (a good guess would be a Swiss bank account). He compounded this by sueing the Liberal govt and taking money he was not entitled too..

 

[George Wallace]

.............now you can drag all the red herrings you care too, into this debate but at the end of the day Brian Mulroney is what he is.. a PM who took cash in envelopes, not once, but three times. You said the liberals are the only ones to know where the adscam money is, well let me suggest Mulroney is the only one that knows where this cash he received is.. (a good guess would be a Swiss bank account). He compounded this by sueing the Liberal govt and taking money he was not entitled too..

A Liberal government lead by a crooked lawyer who had his fortunes made and covered up by a golf course and several other deals; but enough of that - the topic is still not about Mulroney, but about the Manley Report and its affect on current politics. 

Let's stay on topic, or it will be locked and cleaned up so that we do.

 

[stegner]

Will the Harper government fall?

If so, do you think it will fall on:

A) Afghanistan
B) Crime Bill
C) Budget

I vote c) 

 

[TCBF]

...Jane Stewart's HRDC boondoggle ...
Rant over.

- Hey, we forgot all about her!  She was described as having the effect of a walking, talking, six foot tall blonde ATM machine stuck on send ( Pity she couldn't have boondogled as MND - those were lean years for us).

- Frankly, I think she may have taken the hit for the team.

 

[Brad Sallows]

If you're going to swear off political parties, it helps to remember that Mulroney is a single man and that the number of people involved in Adscam who were Liberal party members is certainly greater than 1.  I assume you will be voting NDP or Green or for an independent or fringe candidate.

The real scandal is that, based on recent historical evidence, Canadian voters will tolerate much worse from the Liberal party than from the Conservative party.  The Liberal party has yet to be sent packing in the way the Conservatives were, despite the breaches of trust, number of people involved, and amounts of money all being much larger.

 

[retiredgrunt45]

The crime bill passeed this afternoon and it seems both parties are coming together on the afghanistan issue so I can't see Dion triggering an election over the budget, not after the compromises both parties made on the afghan issue. The budget will be a watered down version of the one in the throne speach, besides there isn't that much money left to spend and parliment will go on as usual.

 

[sgf]

as much as i would love to see Harper defeated, I also feel that if there was an election this spring, it would end up with just another minority govt. Dion doesnt want an election neither does Harper, because if he can only get another minority, his job could be on the line. If Dion loses, his job could be on the line. I am glad to see compromise being reached, so why not muddle along for a bit. In the last few weeks, all political parties have been playing politics. lets hope they get down to the business of running the country.

 

[TCBF]

... as much as i would love to see Harper defeated, ...

- And replaced by whom?

 

[sgf]

well seeing as i am a Liberal,  of course I would like to see them form the government...

 

[a_majoor]

well seeing as i am a Liberal,  of course I would like to see them form the government...

Given their performance in the House over the last two years, I will only offer the caution: "be careful what you wish for."

 

[sgf]

how a party perform in opposition is entirely different when they form the government.  i am sure that combined with their many years actually forming the govt, plus this short term in oppositon will give the libs more than enough experience in running the country... 

 

[geo]

Dion does not want to campaign over Afghanistan.
The house will not fall over the Cdn participation in Afghanistan... Accordingly, Mr Dion has watered down his party's stand accordingly - he figures he can always modify same said stand if and when he gets into the driver's seat.

But - prediction here - unless NDO or BQ are willing to support Conservatives on Budget vote, the gov't will fall and we will be going to the polls.  It is said in MsM that Without having seen the budget, Dion has already told his troops to vote it down...... BRILLIANT!

 

[geo]

BTW, anyone watch MARKETPLACE last night.  They did a investigation on how merchants handled the 1% GST/HST reduction......
Easy - they just increased their revenues / profits by same said 1%................ PRICELESS!!!