Mr. Harper… do you do anything?
Posted on 5 March 2010 | No responses
So, Steve… it takes you three months to come up with what I can say is one salient new point in your agenda… just one.
And you back off of it three days later? Not that I necessarily agreed with it.
But now you’re left with legitimately the same tired platform you had before Christmas. No changes whatsoever.
Seriously, what do we pay you for?
Recalibrate my ass… More like run away scared.
Time for a new government folks.
Good “surge” Tim.
Posted on 5 March 2010 | 5 responses
So we’ve had 4 byelections in Ontario over the past few months. 3 previously held by the Liberals, 1 previously held by the PCs.
The PCs, and specifically their spindoctor leader Tim Hudak, has been essentially treating these byelections as referendums on the HST.
Now, personally I argue that the HST is a good thing. Check out the link there to understand why, but I wrote on this back in December, and I still vehemently agree with that blog post. But his is not the point of this blog.
So, Hudak has treated these byelections as a referendum on the HST, denouncing it as a “tax grab” which is untrue, and saying that there is going to be a surge of votes towards the PC party because of Ontarians being fed up with the Liberal tax plan.
Well Tim, the results are in… and guess what, we have no change. We still sit with 3 Liberal ridings and 1 PC riding.
So I must ask Mr. Hudak, where is the surge? I don’t see it.
Oh yea, there isn’t one. Ontarians aren’t dumb enough to fall for your untrue and misleading spin. They look at the facts. This move hasn’t changed voting patterns over any form or outrage.
Move on Hudak – the HST is a good thing for Ontario. If you were in power you would’ve implemented it too. You are just trying to cling to an issue to try to gain traction against a popular and well managed government. Move on, it isn’t working.
Or better yet, stick to it. I’m ok with you running a failed campaign.
Conservative Smoke and Mirrors
Posted on 4 March 2010 | No responses
How do you distract the entire country from the fact that you took the last three months off to “recalibrate” and returned with the same old tired platform?
Oh I know – make a controversial proposal to make the lyrics of O Canada more gender neutral.
Now, I still haven’t decided if I’m for or against this, I see both sides, but that isn’t even close to the point.
Here is the thing – what was dominating almost every news show last night? What is the top story in the National Post, Toronto Star, and Ottawa Citizen1 this morning? What story is dominating Canadian morning shows today?
Of course it’s the proposal to change the lyric “all thy sons command” in O Canada. Not the fact that Stephen Harper decided to take three months off in order to change the direction of his government, and returned to present a regurgitation of old policies. No no… everyone is covering the change to the anthem.
For Harper this was brilliant. He’s pulled the toque over Canada’s eyes. People are talking about the anthem instead of what actually matters.
Good work Steve… I just hope you don’t have any more fun tricks like this with the budget this afternoon so Canadians can see your plan just as it is – an old, recycled, tired platform that for some reason took three months to come up with…
I think Harper just proved that he didn’t prorogue to “recalibrate” because he could have come up with that set of priorities over a weekend. He was clearly running away because the heat from the Afghan detainee scandal was becoming too much and he wanted to change the discourse. Shame on you Stephen Harper. Shame on you for lying to your country and running for away from your responsibilities.
1 – I have not seen the print versions, so I am referring to the top story on their websites, assuming this is the front page story.
Clearly they needed to recalibrate.
Posted on 3 March 2010 | 2 responses
Yes… Today the Harper government proved it truly needed three months off to recalibrate their agenda.
The Speech from the Throne today was a complete 180 in direction for the Harper government. It was obviously 100% necessary for them to have taken off so much time to help change this direction.
Wait… No it wasn’t.
I think Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff put it best in his response to the Speech from the Throne this evening when he said that this speech was “not a recalibration, [but] a regurgitation.” Because this is exactly what it was.
Really, what was “new” about this speech? About this new direction? Nothing at all. Well, except for wanting to change the lyrics to O Canada, but I’ll get to that later. The reality is that the Conservative government took the last 3 months off of work in order to “recalibrate” and presented us the same old tired vision for Canada.
The only things in this speech that can be seen as “tangible” change are in reality anything but that. I am speaking of three things that specifically stood out to me: the creation of a Senior’s Day, changing the lyrics of O Canada in order to be more gender neutral, and the freezing of MPs salary’s.
On the surface I agree with all of these things, but I have to agree with Michael Ignatieff, who when asked about these three specific proposals after the Speech from the Throne responded “every time this government is asked to do something real it does something symbolic.” This is a very on point response, because these three initiatives are indeed very symbolic responses, not tangible responses, to significant problems in the country.
The reality is a Senior’s Day is a great idea to pay tribute to deserving citizens, but what does this do to actually address the significant problem of changing demographics in Canada? Changing the anthem’s lyrics is a nice gesture towards gender equality, but what is this government going to actually do to help us move in the right direction and implement reasonable child care and equal salaries? Lastly, freezing your own salary is a good idea when many people across the country have been asked to do the same, but how are you going to actually start to pay down the deficit? This certainly is not going to be enough.
The reality is that symbolism, while nice, is not a plan or strategy. It is just that, symbolism. We have had enough of that, now it is time for action. Enough symbolism smoke and mirrors, and lets move forward with tangible action.
This Throne Speech neglected to mention any strategy on the environment or energy use. It didn’t touch on how they would create green jobs either, even though it is apparently one of their goals.
The speech barely touched on unemployment either, beyond simply mentioning it. They gave no clues around their strategy for job creation. They say job creation is a priority, but didn’t give any clues as to how they would do this. The speech also didn’t touch on the specific but dire issue of overwhelming unemployment for recent graduates, who have an unemployment rate of double the country as a whole. They provided absolutely no plan on how to address this. Also, there was no mention of improving Employment Insurance benefits, which are running out soon for thousands of Canadians across the country. I hope this will be addressed in the budget tomorrow, but from the lack of mentions in today’s speech I have low expectations that they will.
From the language used in today’s speech you can tell cuts are coming. The speech mentions an end to stimulus spending, fiscal restraint, and dropping the deficit. The question now is where are the cuts coming from to accomplish this? Obviously we will know more about this tomorrow, but we know they are coming and I fear for many of our vital programs. I won’t speculate on what may be cut, but I know there are many programs that need more funding (EI, retraining, etc.) and not less. I hope Harper’s budget keeps these needs in mind.
So the question I have to ask of any Conservative out there is this – what is it about this speech (and moreover, tomorrow’s budget) that required shutting down our democratic process for the last three months? The Conservative government presented us the same old tired Conservative ideology in this speech, and nothing more. Why did this warrant prorogation? Well, it didn’t.
We knew the Conservatives weren’t working during this period already, so I really shouldn’t be shocked… but as always I am incredibly disappointed with this government. They lied to us about why they wanted to prorogue (Afghanistan anyone?) and now present us the same old tired policy points once again.
It’s time for a new government – clearly Harper doesn’t want to govern anymore. If he did he would actually be innovative and creative in his programs… instead he gives us the same old broken system.
Obviously we need to wait until tomorrow’s budget presentation to judge this government entirely, but right now it is not looking promising. The impression I am getting is that Harper is not going to give this country what it needs, and instead stick to his partisan ideology, which is quickly sinking us as a country.
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