Former Triad chief executive officer Mark Tonnesen, who spearheaded his company's aborted push into Canada, said the proliferation of high-risk mortgages could have been mitigated if Ottawa had been more watchful.
Yeah -- or if all those trustworthy, mature, serious, self-regulating, responsible mortgage companies hadn't been so stupid and irresponsible and greedy! Of course, everything that goes wrong is always the government's fault, isn't it, because private business is practically perfect in every way and all those dumb civil servants can't manage their way out of a paper bag and nobody ever would have believed.... Oh, I guess I need another cup of coffee...
From a springtime of committee chaos to a summer of ultimatums to a fall election, a December crisis, a tasty prorogue-y holiday feast, and the near certainty of another New Year psychodrama. I could swear there was a pattern in there. Blame the opposition if you like, but what olive branch did the PM hold out that they refused? Stephen Harper spent his whole adult life complaining that the state was no good for anything. Now, under him, it is so. Consistency at last.
Emphasis mine. And are we finally seeing the end of the media myth about how smart, disciplined and competent Stephen Harper is?
Heavily bundled mourners, some waving flags and some wearing red hats, scarves or coats, lined both sides of the street outside the base. "I wanted to play `Going Home' but the pipes froze. I couldn't even feel my fingers on the holes," said Dan Irvine, 49, a former military man from Napanee who took his bagpipes to the procession . . . The convoy reached Cobourg at about 4:15 p.m. There, on the Ontario St. bridge, stood a shivering crowd of perhaps 200, including 73-year-old Korean War veteran Dave Galbraith, who arrived with five friends. . . . As the hearses passed, some people took their hats off despite the wind and heavy snow. The motorcade passed Oshawa around 5 p.m. People had begun arriving on local bridges more three hours earlier. Korea veteran Danny Mann, 74, wore medals and a Royal Canadian Dragoons beret. . . . "The public response to the casualties, I think, has been quite extraordinary," said Canadian military historian Jack Granatstein. "I have never seen anything in my life like the crowds that line Highway 401," he said.
So now the National Post is trying to smear Ignatieff by describing his nomination as interim leader as an "unseemly lunge at power". Oh, isn't it just so wonderful to see the folks at the National Post so damned concerned for the purity of the Liberal party? The way I see it, we Liberals have a choice -- at the end of January, when Parliament resumes, we can have in place to deal with Harper either a caretaker leader without authority or stature, or a fresh and highly respected leader who is committed to revitalizing the party. Which do you think the National Post would prefer?
This doesn't make sense: Last week, we didn't want a vote. We were in favour of the Coalition being named as the government without a general election, because the rules of Parliament said that this could be done. This week, some do want a vote. Some now seem to be opposed to Michael Ignatieff being named as interim leader without an election by the whole membership, even though the rules of the Party apparently do not even allow for such a vote to be held. Basically, I think it comes down to this -- if the rules have been followed, then the result is legitimate. Or am I describing this wrong?
I'm tired of hearing about how awful it would be for the Liberal party to make Michael Ignatieff its interim leader "behind closed doors". OK, so open the doors. Let the Liberal executive and the Liberal caucus meet on Wednesday in public -- there are lots of large meeting rooms in Ottawa that are easily set up for TV and radio broadcast, with translation facilities. Let Ignatieff and Rae both speak, then hold a vote by ballot. The networks would love it and so would the public.
Today in CTV's Question Period, Michael Ignatieff provided a sensible -- ie, Liberal! - - frame for the next several weeks, a path between belligerence and withdrawal. I don't have a transcript of what he said, but here's a few of my notes:
"Coalition if necessary but not necessarily coalition" . . . "it is important to have the option . . . to spare us another national election" . . . but "Canadians would not forgive a party" which would not even look at the budget before declaring it would defeat the government.
He stressed where the responsibility for the crisis lies -- with Harper:
"We're in a crisis caused by a prime minister behaving irresponsibly"
But he also talked about the importance of Liberals working to re-build the national unity which Harper has destroyed:
"We need to bridge some of the gaps . . . the key issue is the national interest, the economic interest of Canadians . . . we need to read the budget brief but if [Harper] fails to produce a budget in the national interest, he will go down"
The country is going to need a national unity message -- reading Devo's description of the Halifax Conservative rally yesterday it is upsetting to realize how divisive this has become:
* Conservatives are spitting mad and absolutely hate Liberals, New Democrats and, especially, "the separatists". . . . . . * I am a communist and a sore loser, not to mention any number of other things that I would prefer not to repeat here...maybe it was my 'STOP HARPER' button; * irate well-dressed middle-aged gentleman . . . between expletives and name calling, told me that Bloc MPs are not legitimate members of the House of Commons and, therefore, incapable of forming a coalition; . . . * Canada is more divided today than it has ever been at any time in my life.
There has to be a message of unity for the country to grasp, and the country will respond, I think, if this message comes from Ignatieff. Jeff highlights today's Toronto Star poll showing how people would vote with a change of Liberal leadership:
Now -- with Rae -- with Ignatieff Conservatives: 42% -- 41% -- 38% Liberals: 22% -- 26% -- 33% NDP: 18% -- 15% -- 13% Bloc: 10% -- 10% -- 10% Green: 7% -- 6% -- 6%
I think it is striking that only with Ignatieff are the Liberals even close to the Conservative numbers -- close enough to fight an election on, I think, if that's what we need to do at the end of January.
You know what's funny? One of the things Canadians have now found out about is that for at least the last nine years, the Alliance and the Conservatives and the Liberals have been happily making deals with Jack Layton and Giles Duceppe. Its like the temperance ladies sneaking the occasional shot of rum -- sorta undermines all this demonizing of the "socialists" and the "separatists", doesn't it? Its not funny ha ha, I guess, but at least its funny oh boy.
Thank you so much Andrew Coyne and Robert Silver for letting us all know how pristine your standards are for the leadership of the Liberal party. Apparently the Liberals now MUST pick as their next leader ONLY someone who not only does not support the coalition this week, but also did not support it last week and who at that time betrayed his fellow Liberals and the whole coalition initiative by announcing this loudly and proudly at the time. And that person would be . . . (crickets) . . . The only people who did not support the coalition last week were, um, Harper's Conservatives. This week, the situation will be completely different, as both these trolls know very well. UPDATE: The plot sickens.
Mr. Sinister and Calgary Grit suggest that when Harper presents his budget at the end of January, the NDP and the Liberals should vote against it and the Bloc should vote for it. Works for me.
During the past week, while the nation wondered if the government would fall, junior Conservative staffers were ordered to be outside 24 Sussex Dr. by 6:15 in the morning. Their job was to stand there in the dark with the temperature well below zero and wait for the PM to appear. Their instructions were to applaud, wave and sing O Canada loudly as the motorcade pulled out of the gates and drove Stephen Harper to work. Mr. Harper, by all accounts, actually believed that the young people were there of their own accord and represented a groundswell of love and support for his actions. Staffers in the Prime Minister's Office know that he is easier to handle when being applauded and not questioned.
Isn't this just sad? Next he'll be talking to Mackenzie King's mother.
Canadians have every right to expect that the politicians they elected so recently would be entirely focused on the issues threatening our economic security and well-being. Instead, they have been subjected to a sordid display of arrogance, hyperbole and incompetence that can only make voters wish a pox on all their houses. This is too serious a time for games. . . . [for the Conservatives] to have created a totally avoidable political crisis when the economy was the task at hand was highly irresponsible. This has only become worse in the past week as a government desperate to hold on to power showed itself willing to be reckless on the national unity file. That is one sleeping dog that should be left alone. . . . The Liberal Party, with its worst result in percentage of vote in its long and proud history, was also given a message on election night. Namely, that since losing power, the party, its leader and its caucus had failed to regain the confidence of the people.. . . Confronted by a political crisis that was not of his making, Mr. Dion became an obstacle to his party, and to the opposition, in dealing with it . . . in agreeing to the terms of the coalition with the NDP and the Bloc, Mr. Dion bound his successor to a controversial arrangement without even consulting any of the candidates to succeed him in the process, leaving them no option but to endorse it or break with him as party leader. The government must be prevented from running roughshod over the opposition at all times, but especially when the voters have denied them a majority. The best way to do that is for the Liberal executive and caucus to choose a new leader immediately . . . the first task should be to work collaboratively with all other parties to restore the confidence of Canadians in their Parliament. The government needs to drop the ugly rhetoric that it reverted to so quickly and easily so soon after the election. It's not just about winning confidence votes. The confidence of the House of Commons needs to be earned on a daily basis, by being consultative, trustworthy and respectful. Unfortunately, Mr. Harper has put quite a dollop of poison into the well.
I do see a certain logic in a long-term relationship or merger or marriage or whatever between the Liberals and the NDP. However, we're not there yet. We're not even at the spin-the-bottle stage in this romance. Right now, the rationale for our coalition is economic urgency -- without the economic crisis, the coalition would not, and likely should not, be able to persuade Canadians that its authority for taking over leadership of the government without another election is legitimate. This makes it premature, I believe, for Liberals to continue to promote a coalition government takeover until we see whether the January 27 budget turns out to be as inadequate and ideological as the economic statement was. And its abundantly clear now also that Canadians will not support Stephane Dion as their prime minister under any circumstances, regardless of how badly Harper is bungling the economy. Whether we hang together or hang separately, Dion must go.
So the camera was broken and nobody had 20 minutes to spare to buy a new one, I guess. And they didn't follow the disk format the networks wanted. And then they didn't get the disks to the right network studio. So the words of Dion were lost because they were so poorly delivered. It was beyond slapdash, and it may have cost us a government.
