Canadian Election 2006

Campaign Chuckles

Columns and Opinions

Time for a change

It’s time for a change. There’s really no other option available to Canadians than to replace the Liberal government that has run Canada for the last 12 years with the Conservatives. If we had our "druthers", we’d prefer an alternative to the Liberals that’s more conservative than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, but the fact remains that it is time for a change.
More,,,

Official Elections Canada ballots being used in classrooms?

Like many Canadians, Canada Free Press hoped that Prime Minister Paul Martin didn’t know something they didn’t when he insisted so adamantly yesterday that he was certain to win Monday’s federal Election.
More,,, Buzz Hargrove has become a true Grit
By Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Thursday, January 19, 2006

While Paul Martin was campaigning with CAW president Buzz Hargrove in Strathroy Ontario, Hargrove urged Canadians to do anything they can to stop "Scary" Stephen Harper from forming the next government. When a reporter asked if that included Quebeckers voting for the separatist Bloc, Hargrove said, "even if that means supporting the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The union leader added, "He’s [Harper] is talking the same language as a separatist".

 The latest commercials targeting Stephen Harper seem to be playing on the anti-American sentiment that has swept across a good deal of our country in the last few years. I must admit, I am still a little mystified as to why so many hate our biggest trading partner and closest physical neighbour. Then again, maybe most do not. Perhaps the representation of such feelings is simply being overstated by a disproportionate number in a certain place, that being Parliament.

Just prior to the Federal election campaign, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams sent a letter to the leaders of the Liberal, Conservative and NDP parties outlining 17 key priorities for the province and requesting each leader to identify their level of support for each.

When it first appeared that the next Parliament might be a Conservative minority, Paul Martin really started to lose it. He seemed to have faced the reality the position that was his birthright was going to be taken away from him. Some of Martin’s actions are reminiscent of those of former Ontario Liberal Premier David Peterson who, in the dying days of the 1990 campaign for an election that no one but him thought was necessary, warned that if the NDP were elected, children would go hungry. Peterson’s strange behaviour helped bring socialism to Ontario for five years, but the streets of the province were devoid of dead and dying babies.

With under one week left until we head to the polls it might be a good time to review the current status of the parties, to take a look at some key promises they’ve made and review their stance on Atlantic Canadian issues.

There are still a few days left before next Monday’s election and anything can happen. But barring some serious revelation or a huge faux pas on the part of the Conservative Party of Canada, "Scary Stephen" will be transformed into the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.

Here’s what the past two weeks of election rhetoric has sounded like to me: "Blah blah blah blah $$ blah blah $ blah $$$$ blah." All the candidates are beginning to sound like the adults in a "Peanuts" cartoon save for the dollar figures they keep throwing around. I really wish there was some way to have an election that dealt with issues realistically, was devoid of demagoguery, talked about policy instead of cash and was conducted with a modicum of dignity.

For all of the confidence that politicians try to muster during election campaigns, none must be harder than the confidence one must project even when the end is inevitable and they know it. Such is the case right now with our prime minister, Paul Martin.

Paul Martin and the Liberal Party of Canada have pulled a lot of fast ones over the past decade or two. They’ve quietly made back room deals equivalent to selling your own mother. .

In a move that is a cynical as anything we've ever seen from Paul Martin and the Liberals, the Prime Minister just now proposes a "Heroes Fund" to support the families of firefighters, police officers and other public-safety workers killed in the line of duty.

They are of course American values. And they should be universal values. But the word "liberty" is hardly ever used in a Canadian context. "Freedom" on the other hand only comes into vogue during the dying days of October and is used quite often up to Remembrance Day. But come November 12^th the word is carefully packed away for another year.

Finally a politician who has the courage to do what is RIGHT.

Why are rural landowners under attack? Why do we need property rights entrenched in our Constitution? Here is the Liberal government’s plan and strategy to attack rural landowners and their economy. TAKING our land-For their use.

for immediate release
Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Issue: During the Leader’s debates and over the last few days, Paul Martin has been commenting on the business practices of his former company, Canada Steamship Lines. At a press conference in Montreal, Mr. Martin also dismissed questions about CSL’s environmental practices, suggesting that CSL does not pollute.

Well folks, the much expected second debate has come and gone. Stephen Harper had the most to loose and he didn’t. He was cool calm, collected, confident and smiling a great deal more than usual.  He held his own and managed a few well placed shots.

Probably not.

There are two weeks left to go before Canadians go to the polls and anything can happen. As much as there can ever be certainty in these matters, it appears that barring some explosive unseen event, the next government will be another minority.

As the unofficial Christmas (or winter for the politically correct) break in the election campaign ends, Paul Martin sees his Liberal Party in a statistical tie with the evil Conservatives. If that isn’t bad enough, the Tories are slightly ahead in Ontario, where Martin so successfully scared many voters into voting for the Liberals in 2004.

When referring to brazen people one of my grandfather’s favorite expressions was that they had "the balls of a canal horse". That’s how I’m seeing Paul Martin with his ever more bizarre promises that he hopes will save his sorry derriere. In an excerpt of a speech to the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Club recently printed in the National Post, Martin lays claim to being Canada’s savior.

So a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Judi McLeod, the boss lady, and telling her how I thought that this election would see Paul Martin go down in flames as a result of the Conservatives forming a minority government. And bang, just like that, the polls come out with evidence that I just might be right.

By Paul Albers
Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Now that the season of peace and goodwill is over, the Liberals are free to launch the negative campaign they’ve been itching to start from the beginning. It might be hard to sink lower than ads that burn the flag and subliminally fire a gun in your face, but I’m sure they are up to that challenge.

Well, here we are, entering phase II of the election of 2006. 

After waiting for what has seemed like a lifetime, Paul Martin is finally unveiling his election platform.

As Canadians were ushering in 2006 and the second half of the federal election campaign it seems like the mainstream media, much of it pro-Liberal Party, is beginning to turn on the party that is commonly referred to as the Natural Governing Party.

While visiting friends and family over the holidays, I've been checking out the political race in Vancouver Centre between Liberal Hedy "Blazing Crosses" Fry and the NDP's Svend "Lord of the Ring" Robinson.

 Yes, I know, I know. It's 'pole', not 'poll', but when you live in Canada, you really have to watch that other one. You all know how I feel about pollsters, and especially the way that the results of polls are manipulated to reflect the desired image. Well, here is yet another story that is so blatantly and obviously skewed, I don't know why it was run. Or perhaps I just can't add, you be the judge.

Some incidents, such as the December 26 shootings on a crowded downtown Toronto street that left a 15-year-old girl dead and six others wounded beg for a response from all levels of government. When one of these governments is in the middle of an election campaign, it is easy to label statements that are made or actions undertaken as simply playing politics for electoral gain. Keeping that caveat in mind, the federal Liberals went way over the top in exploiting what will be forever known in the history of the city, once known as Toronto the Good, as the "Boxing Day shootings".

So far the 2005 federal election campaign bears no resemblance to the one that took place last year. Last year Paul Martin and his Liberals got off to a fast start portraying Stephen Harper and the Conservatives as being right wing ideologues complete with a hidden agenda. If the Conservatives were to from the government, Canadians were told that they would see the end of state run health care, our jails would be filled with women who had sought abortions and every Albertan would be walking around with a concealed 357 Magnum. Concentration camps would be constructed to hold gays and lesbians. If Stephen Harper was elected Canada would have American-style this and American-style that. Life as we have always known it would cease to exist.

Joan Bryden wrote a column that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen earlier this week about former Prime Minister Jean ChrÈtien's unannounced attendance at a Christmas party that was held in an Ottawa pub. As the sub headline so succinctly put it, the reception that ChrÈtien got from some of the bar patrons shows that many people have lost faith in his successor. Some of the people who were interviewed made statements to the effect that they didn't particularly like the job that ChrÈtien did in office, but…

The Liberal Party is nothing if not hypocritical. This stems from the fact that unlike the NDP and the non-Liberal lite faction of the Conservative Party, they have no core beliefs. That’s not entirely true; they have two religious beliefs. One, they believe in God and two, they believe that God’s a Liberal who has ordained them as they only party that is ever fit to govern Canada.

Jean Chrétien was arrogant. But if anyone deserved to be arrogant it was the little guy from Shawinigan. Arriving in English speaking Ottawa as a unilingual francophone in the early 1960s, Chrétien worked hard and won the leadership of the Liberal Party almost 30 years later. He won three consecutive majority governments and would probably still have a majority had he chosen to stay.

You’ve all seen him. He’s the pugnacious little guy that goes around badmouthing the biggest kid in the school, knowing full well that the big guy isn’t going to do anything because the braggart is so insignificant. But put in into a situation where fists might fly, the little hawk turns into a chicken.

Mr. Martin has ceded the fact that a majority of Canadians want change, and Paul Martin says that he is the man to do it. I agree wholeheartedly. I believe that this is one of his most honest statements throughout his tenure as prime minister.

Okay, here’s the bottom line: I am going to support whichever political party that promises me a two-tier health care system in place of the dismal, Soviet-style government health monopoly this country is currently suffering under. I hope that Jack Layton’s assertion that the Liberals and Conservatives are launching a "stealth campaign" to bring in private health care is true, as it gives me hope that things will improve once that happens.

For all of the attention that has been placed on the sponsorship scandal and the subsequent release of Part I of the Gomery Report, the corruption, theft, fraud and money laundering that took place in Quebec hasn’t seemed to hurt the Liberals’ re-election chances.

Bob — "Welcome back to election fans across the Country. Well it’s been an odd game to this point. The Liberals are leading but they’re looking a little tired out there and I have to say they’re definately being a out skated so far in the contest. We’ve got a stoppage underway at the moment as the officials have gone upstairs for a ruling on the last play. It’s difficult to tell from this angle if the last shot made it through so this might take a while."

If you really want to know how the Liberals view the Canadian public, Scott Reid, Paul Martin’s press secretary, captures their attitude perfectly. In criticizing Stephen Harper’s plan to give cash to parents of small children, rather than " daycare spaces", Reid said the plan would result in the cash being frittered away on "beer and popcorn". So it would appear that we finally have an issue that clearly differentiates the Liberals from the Conservatives. The Liberals want to provide cash to the provinces in order to create additional "daycare spaces", while the Conservatives are proposing to give each family with children under the age of six $1,200 per year per child.

Dear Mr. Axworthy,

It was my great privilege, earlier this year, to publish in CFP a letter to your brother Lloyd, scolding him for his asinine open letter to U.S. Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice, published in the Winnipeg Free Press.

I bet this federal election will have a different result from the last one. It will be a minority Conservative government. In fact, I have a toonie riding on the outcome with CFP managing editor, Judi McLeod.

When Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper announced his party’s policy on child-care, he did something that was a long time coming. The Conservative Party actually came up with a conservative policy. Despite the rantings of Prime Minister Paul Martin about Harper’s secret agenda that presumably includes jail for women seeking abortions and concentration camps to house gays and lesbians, the Conservative Party is really Liberal-lite.

By Glen Duerr
Monday, December 12, 2005

This week, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe unveiled his intentions to further the cause of separatism by founding a Quebec national hockey team. He cited the cases of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland participating separately in soccer’s World Cup as a reason why Quebec should be allowed to play international Hockey separate from Canada.

On November 30 the government fell. As inevitable as Paul Martin’s trip to see the Governor General, was the fact that the media would soon begin reporting about how women in politics are nothing more than the poor victims of a white male dominated institution.

It is said that the classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. By that definition, Prime Minister Paul Martin is clearly insane. His most recent idea to curb the rising incidents of gun crime is to ban handguns outright.

Due to the devious, archaic, unfair, undemocratic political system that Canadians are forced to endure, we have two parties competing to form the government federally. Had Canada been a true democracy, there should be only one party deserving of the privilege of forming the government: The Conservative Party of Canada!

Paul Martin has not gotten off to a very good start during the current election campaign. Unlike the 2004 campaign, Stephen Harper quickly began to speak about the issues that face Canadians. During the first week, Harper put out the Conservative Party’s position on the GST, same sex marriage and daycare, robbing the Liberals of one of the main tactics that they so successfully employed last year; that Harper and the Conservatives had a hidden agenda. The first week of the campaign saw Martin playing defense.

The current election is shaping up to be a contest between two guys running for Santa Claus. While many pundits breathless write about the "differences" between the Liberals and Conservatives, I’m having a difficult time finding any.

With Stephen Harper hot on the campaign trail, Paul Martin's only defence so far has been that there is a "marked difference" between himself and Mr. Harper. That, my friend, is exactly what the Conservative Party has been saying for the past 2 years.

In sharp contrast to last year’s election campaign, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were quick off the mark. During the first week of the campaign, Harper announced that a Conservative government would reduce the GST from 7% to 5% with a 1% reduction to be imposed immediately and a second 1% reduction to be made within five years.

We are once again in the midst of an election campaign and still there is no sign of anything really different being talked about. While taxation and health care are obviously important, we have heard it all said before. Perhaps that is why I feel so unenthusiastic. What I would like to see the candidates talk about are changes to the fabric of our government.

When the government fell on Monday and Parliament was dissolved the following day, many Canadians’ worst nightmare had finally come true. We are faced with a campaign and an election in the dead of Canadian winter. To make matters worse, Christmas falls almost smack dab in the middle of the 56 day campaign. Horrors.

As Canadian politicians gird themselves for this winter's election, the Liberals are reverting to their tried and true style of electioneering--buying votes with tax money. The flurry of new spending announcements that preceded the no-confidence vote was unprecedented in size with well over $20 billion pledged for almost everyone capable of voting.

Election-bound politicians of every political stripe could take lessons from MPP Marilyn Churley.

On the morning after the Liberal government fell in the Opposition Parties’ non-confidence vote, Churley’s glossy, full-colour election brochure landed through my mail slot. I got it right away as Kiko, my little Yorkie, waits patiently under the slot for the mailman, who usually brings him a doggie cookie.

As we are moving quickly towards a winter election, the sponsorship scandal will once again be put front and centre before the Canadian electorate. But some recent polls have shown that the scandal that concluded with the release of Justice Gomery’s report earlier this month is fading from public consciousness. When the election campaign reaches full throttle, the Martin Liberals will revert to their "Scary Stephen" tactics in an attempt to make Canadians forget all about Adscam. Unfortunately many Canadians, especially in squeamish Ontario will buy the Liberal line about how a Stephen Harper government will end Canada as we know it, the sponsorship scandal notwithstanding.

In Canada, the term "golddigger" has just undergone a sex change.

The proverbial gold digger image usually comes wrapped in stilettos and lipstick.

Peter MacKay, deputy leader of the Conservative Party, must be Canada’s goofiest gadfly gold digger. When the Tory politician’s love interests were last in headlines, it was last Spring when floor-crossing MP Belinda Stronach was dumping him.

On July 13, 2001, Jean Pelletier, Jean Chrétien’s former chief of staff, was given a five-year appointment as the chair of Via Rail. For reasons that have never been clear, Olympic athlete Myriam Bédard ended up working at the crown corporation. Bédard left her employment on January 18, 2002, claiming that she was forced to resign her position due to the atmosphere that surrounded her and that was contributed to by Pelletier. An arbitrator subsequently found that she had quit her job voluntarily.

I had a deja vu this week. It seems that the press is once again using Mr. Ralph Klein and his Progressive Conservative Party to play a part in the scuttling of the federal Conservative Party. In 2004, much ado was made over the plans of the Alberta Tories to unveil their supplemental health care plan, to assist those who were waiting too long in queue in the national public health system.

With the fall of the federal government thought to be only days away, the spending promises are coming fast and furious now. It reminds me of a movie where the bad guy was being held out of a window on the end of a rope. He will do or say just about anything to try to postpone the inevitable.

When it comes to sheer hypocrisy, nothing can come close to the Liberal Party of Canada. Paul Martin came into office almost two years ago promising to slay the democratic deficit and do other wondrous things to change the way Ottawa had been running under the 10-year reign of Jean Chrétien. Martin, of course, didn’t change the way the government runs one iota, although he did manage to slow it down quite a bit.