Tag Archives: Michael Ignatieff

It helps to be holding cards when you bluff

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From the National Post:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to make a choice: cash for Quebec or an election, says Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

“I am now challenging Stephen Harper to respond to Quebec’s expectations,” a pumped Mr. Duceppe said Sunday in a speech closing a party general council meeting. “We are asking for simple fairness, elementary justice.

“Mr. Harper has a choice. He can respond to Quebec’s expectations or he can spark elections. For our part, we will not fold. We are going to stand up for Quebec. We are not going to give up, we are not going to be quiet.”

Apart from being pathetic losers, the Quebec nationalist movement — led by Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois — is forgetting one important fact: You need to have something the Conservative Party needs before you can start giving ultimatums. The Bloc is in a similar boat to the New Democratic Party: They will always be ready for an election because the outcome of said election doesn’t matter to them. As perpetual opposition parties, they don’t need to play the numbers to figure out when the time is right for an election, they’re ready to go whenever. As such, those two parties have very little bearing on votes in the House of Commons given that they’re diametrically opposed to any Conservative bill.

That being said, it’s not unlikely that they will attempt (yet again) to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party of Canada after the next election comes. For them, that’s their only hope of being anywhere close to governance, so sooner is rather than later. Duceppe can threaten the government all he wants, but the decision lies with Ignatieff. Scary, huh?

Is Harper headed for a majority?

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Former National Citizens Coalition vice-president Gerry Nicholls seems to think so, and I’d have to agree given how much in disarray the Canadian Liberal Party is:

After much pondering, I have come to the conclusion that if we do have a federal election this spring, the result will be a Conservative majority.

Now I realize this forecast goes against conventional political wisdom.

Many pundits, using current public opinion polls as evidence, are arguing no party currently has enough voter support to win a majority.

Columnist Lorne Gunter has written, “Party standings would probably end the campaign at more or less their current levels. There is almost certainly no majority available to any party.”

And former Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella has declared, “Harper is still far from a majority.”

Really?

Gunter and Kinsella are forgetting one simple fact: Canadians are not yet politically engaged.

The Liberals recently released a poll, for instance, which showed only 15 per cent of Canadians are even paying attention to federal politics. (By the way, that’s completely normal. The average person rarely cares about the goings on in Ottawa. They would rather watch American Idol than The National. And who can blame them?)

But once an election is actually called Canadians will get focused on politics. They will start paying attention.

And what will these focused Canadians see when they start paying attention?

Well for one thing they will see a Prime Minister in Stephen Harper who is at the peak of his political powers.

A battle-hardened veteran of three national election campaigns and two leadership races, Harper is a wily political tactician who leads a united, well-disciplined and wealthy party.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are in a sorry state.

Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, is intelligent but a rookie when it comes to running a national campaign. He has only one national race under his belt, a Liberal leadership contest, which he lost.

Nor has he shown any evidence that he is a good campaigner or that he possesses good political instincts or that he can come up with a message that will resonate with Canadians.

His party is also demoralized and cash-poor.

[...]

However, all things being equal, we should expect 2011 to mark the true beginning of the Harper dynasty.

Why we need to fact-check liberals

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Time to do something we haven’t done in a little while here on Strictly Right, mock Canadian liberals. Keep in mind that no matter where in the world you are, liberals are idiots (except Australia…but they’re kinda backwards.)

Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (our American readers may remember him as the one who lived there for 30 years before returning to Canada to be Prime Minister) has put his party affiliation aside to go on a national Canadian book tour to promote his book that attempts to prove he’s patriotic, aptly titled True Patriot Love.

Anyone who’s read this book already (oh, so you’re the one?) would note that it came out a year ago. This tour is promoting the release of the paperback version, which conveniently features quotes from reviews of the hardcover version. However, Ignatieff seems to be slightly misrepresenting the quotes from the reviews.

Take this one from the National Post for example. Ignatieff quoted them as saying:

“Plenty of scope for a rich story…some wonderful anecdotes, particularly about George P. Grant…Well-written.” – National Post

What they actually said:

“True Patriot Love offers little that is new on the Grants save some wonderful anecdotes, particularly about George P. Grant…True Patriot Love is a well-written disappointment.” (National Post, May 9, 2009)

I can understand him wanting to leave out the part of the Globe and Mail review, however, which said his book had:

“evolved instead into a slim and disappointing brochure intended to advertise the author’s apparently incontestable Canadian pedigree.” (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2009)

Of course this is Canada, so the team of 11 fact-checkers sent by the Associated Press to discredit Sarah Palin aren’t to be expected on Ignatieff’s book, but perhaps one or two wouldn’t hurt?