Political parties are entitled to agree with each other from time to time, without being accused of having formed a coalition. For several weeks, the federal Conservatives have been claiming that the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois are in a coalition. A particular convergence of opposition parties on this or that issue is no sign of any such alliance.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
“So let me put this question to ... any member of the Liberal, Bloc or NDP coalition partners: If someone in your riding does not want to complete the 40 pages of personal, private questions about their ancestry or parts of their belief system ... or about state of repairs of their homes, is it the appropriate government response to harass them until they relent and comply?”This is a typical example of the recent Conservative partisan attacks at the wrong time. In the middle of talking about the economy, Jim Flaherty used the same kind of coalition attack. This really needs to stop so that we can have a rational debate instead of yelling our heads off. This starts with the government stopping to use time designated for information for partisan attacks.
According to the Politico poll, if the 2012 presidential election were held today and Palin was the GOP nominee, 42 percent say they would definitely, probably, or maybe vote for the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, with 51 percent saying they would definitely, probably or maybe vote for Obama. Eight percent are undecided.
Fifty-eight percent of those questioned say Palin's actions since stepping down as Alaska governor in the summer of 2008 have made them less likely to vote for her if she runs for president, with 31 percent saying her actions have made them more likely to support her.Read more here
This summer, Michael Ignatieff travelled over 57 000 kilometres — visiting every province and territory — on the Liberal Express.
Now the Liberal Leader, along with MPs, Senators and candidates is continuing to listen to Canadians at “Open mike” town halls across the country, leaving the microphone open so Canadians like you can share your views and ask questions on the issues you care about. Ready to take questions from audience members both live and online, Michael Ignatieff is waiting to hear from you.Read more at Liberal.ca
This summer, Michael Ignatieff travelled 57,000 kilometers -- visiting every province and territory -- on the Liberal Express. Now he's continuing to listen to Canadians at "Open mike" town halls across the country, leaving the microphone open so Canadians like you can share your views and ask questions on the issues you care about. Ready to take questions from audience members both live and online, Michael Ignatieff is waiting to hear from you.RSVP at Liberal.ca
The elites are on a roll these days.
In just the last week, their Toronto chapter foiled the Canadian government's plan to kill the long-gun registry, even as one of their number — a Harvard educated Bay Street executive — was named the Prime Minister's chief of staff.
In Britain, the race to lead the Labour Party boiled down to a nail-biter between two Oxford-educated brothers, David and Ed Miliband.Read more at the National Post.
Within seconds of the long-gun registry vote in the Commons, this being the era of the blog, a conventional wisdom began to congeal that the Conservatives had lost the parliamentary battle but would win the electoral war.
By the next morning, the conventional political wisdom was all over the newspapers and the Web: The Conservatives would turn their narrow Commons defeat into a political victory by targeting those New Democrat and Liberal MPs in rural or semi-rural ridings who had voted to keep the controversial registry. They would be as vulnerable as ducks flying over registry-hating hunters in the fall.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
In an effort to bring ‘sense back to the census,’ the Liberal Party of Canada presented a motion today in the House of Commons to reinstate the mandatory long-form census.
The motion – to be debated next week – also calls on the government to amend the Statistics Act in order to remove the threat of jail time for people who do not fill out the long-form census.Read more at Liberal.ca
The Liberals are strongly criticizing the federal government over expenses incurred during the G8/G20 summits, which, expenditure reports reveal, included $80 million for food and accommodation, $85,000 for snacks and $14,000 for glow sticks.
"This is totally unacceptable," said Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who tabled the expenditure reports in the House of Commons on Thursday.Read more at CBC.
In her two-page letter, she references a report that aired Sept. 13, characterizing it as the CBC seeking “to portray domestic efforts to end the long-gun registry as being influenced by a foreign organization.”
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe had long made it clear that they intended to halt Bill C-391. The Conservatives supported the bill, so the registry's fate lay with the NDP, which allows its MPs to vote as they wish on private member's bills.
Six New Democrats voted with the Conservatives — Nathan Cullen of B.C., Niki Ashton and Jim Maloway of Manitoba, Dennis Bevington from the Northwest Territories and Bruce Hyer and John Rafferty from Northern Ontario.Read more at CBC.
"The Ignatieff-NDP-Bloc Quebecois tax hikes would not only jeopardize our recovery from the global recession. The coalition's policies would also squander our Canadian advantage, and limit our long-term prospects. They would set us on the same downward spiral other countries are now trying desperately to escape."
Flaherty's speech was delivered at a hotel just steps from Parliament Hill. Many of those in attendance were from the business community, although there were some Conservatives, including Guy Giorno, who is Harper's chief of staff.Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.
A U.S. senator has called it "Canada's national treasure." It's been demonized by environmentalists as the "worst project in the world." Maude Barlow likens it to Mordor in Lord of the Rings -- a place where nature goes to die.
It's the Athabasca Sands, the largest single deposit of oil on the planet, and all you have to do it dig it up, wash off the oil, or extract it using underground steam, and then clean up when you leave.Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.
Inspired by public disenchantment with politics, a perception that Question Period lacks substance, and the transformation of MPs into mere partisan cheerleaders mugging for TV, Conservative MP Michael Chong has proposed six changes to the rules regarding Question Period. Some are sensible ways to make Question Period better, but care must be taken to preserve the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate; decorum need not exclude emotion or fiery rhetoric.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
A new poll suggests support for the NDP has dropped to its lowest level this year amid internal divisions over the long-gun registry.
The Harris-Decima survey conducted for The Canadian Press put the Conservatives at 33 per cent support, three points ahead of the Liberals.
The NDP trailed well behind at just 14 per cent – down six points since April and only three points ahead of the Green party.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
Montreal police say they are powerless to take down an online video game where players act as the gunman in the 2006 shooting rampage at Montreal's Dawson College.
Reviews of the game at one online site are mixed, with some defending his right to create a game and commenting on the artistic merits of it. “It's just a game. Just because it's based in reality doesn't mean that is a recreation of the said event,” wrote one poster on Wednesday. “People have the freedom to make whatever they desire, even if their invention is sick and twisted. Don't like it? Don't play it. “Read more at the Globe and Mail.
ALTON, Ill. (AP) - Illinois political leaders say construction now under way on part of a planned high-speed rail line linking St. Louis and Chicago is a job-creating first in the country.
Gov. Pat Quinn told reporters in Alton on Friday that upgrades planned between that Mississippi River city and the central Illinois community of Lincoln are the nation's first involving high-speed rail.Read more here.
Of course, the categorization wasn’t true. Not only does support for gun control exist beyond the boundaries of Toronto, but members of Canada’s elite — including Baird — oppose the registry.
However, his comments weren’t meant to be factually accurate. Rather, they were designed to tap into U.S.-style resentments.
And here, I think Baird blew it.Read more at the Toronto Star.
OTTAWA—The federal government has opened a new front on the war over the long-gun registry, blaming Toronto “elites” for driving support for the registry at the expense of rural Canadian gun owners.
With Parliamentary support for killing the registry slipping away, Conservative House Leader John Baird blamed politicians in Canada’s largest city for pressuring colleagues into changing their positions in advance of a crucial vote in the House of Commons next week.Read more at the Toronto Star.
The former Harper government spin doctor behind a drive to build a right-leaning cable news network in Canada has abruptly quit the project, saying increasingly bitter public controversy over his role has made him a liability to the TV venture.
Kory Teneycke’s decision to fall on his sword raises questions about the future of plans by Quebec billionaire Pierre Karl Péladeau to establish Sun TV as a 24-hour all-news network.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
News tips about the upcoming publication of the ancient flood study in Nature came not from Canada, but from two British universities. An isolated case? Hardly. Environment Canada and Health Canada also control media access to researchers who must have their scripts approved.
It's ominously totalitarian -- hardly the free, open and transparent approach to government that Harper promised.Read more at the Calgary Herald.
The National Rifle Association, a powerful lobbying group in the United States that advocates fewer gun controls, has been actively involved in trying to abolish Canada's long-gun registry for more than a decade, CBC News has learned.Read more at the CBC. Also, the Liberals reveal ties between the Tories and the NRA.
“The majority (of people in his riding) … have said ‘we think at this point we should keep it and we want you to go work on it,’” Allen told the Star.Besides, how about those Conservative MPs representing urban ridings in Ontario and Quebec? Are they voting with the views of the people in their riding? I didn't think so. Unfortunately for the NDP and rural Liberal MPs, the Tories are pretty good at making propaganda-filled attack ads with nonsense as its main subject. On the other hand, most of the country sees right through the right-wing spin and propaganda. In any case, the long gun registry should stay for good as it is an effective way of saving lives.
The embattled long-gun registry received support on Monday from another New Democrat MP.
Malcolm Allen, who represents the Ontario riding of Welland, said Monday he will join three other NDP colleagues in switching their votes when Tory backbencher Candice Hoeppner's private member's bill to repeal the registry comes to a vote in Parliament.Read more at CBC.
You say you have been listening to hunters and you quote them with great enthusiasm. Why have you not been listening as carefully to the women’s organizations, . . . to physicians, the Canadian Labour Congress, police associations and even to your own knowledge of women’s experience of violence involving the rifles and shotguns in their homes? In the past, you and the NDP have demonstrated a good understanding of the complex realities of the violence Canadian women experience in their lives. Where has that knowledge disappeared to over the summer?Read more at the Toronto Star.
The notion of federal funding for a state-of-the-art hockey arena in Quebec City is a textbook case of desperate politics and bad policy. By flirting aggressively with the idea of forking out tens of millions of public dollars to finance the project, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have manoeuvred themselves into a lose-lose position.Read more at the Toronto Star.
For now they’re just a small band of libertarians seeking to replace the sovereigntist-versus-federalist divide in Quebec with a new brand of political confrontation between the right and the left.
They call themselves Réseau Liberté Québec, or the Quebec Freedom Network, and could be considered Quebec’s version of the right-wing populist Tea Party in the United States.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
There has been much ink spilled over the last month, while I was away on special assignment for Silver-Powers, about the conundrum that Jack Layton finds himself in over the gun registry. If, as expected, the Liberal caucus votes unanimously against the "private member's bill" currently before the House (which might as well be a government bill) and Stephen Harper's caucus votes unanimously to gut it, the vote will come down to a divided NDP caucus.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
NDP Leader Jack Layton’s campaign to convince the rural members of his caucus that the federal long-gun registry is worth saving is starting to pay dividends.
One New Democrat MP who originally supported a Conservative private-member’s bill to scrap the registry says he is now convinced the legislation would be a step backward for public safety. And others within the caucus say they could be similarly swayed.Read more at the Globe and Mail.
(CNN) -- Online classified service Craigslist's decision to censor its adult services section is a "good step but a continuing battle has to be fought," a leader in the fight against prostitution ads said on Sunday.
"I'm very pleased by this very solid and significant apparent step in the right direction," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who spearheaded a recent letter from 17 attorneys general urging Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section.Read more here
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve at least $50 billion in long-term spending on the country’s roads, railways and runways in a pre-election effort to show he’s trying to stimulate the sputtering economy.
The infrastructure spending is part of a package of targeted proposals the White House announced on Monday. With November’s elections for control of Congress approaching, Obama planned to discuss the proposal later Monday at an event in Milwaukee marking the U.S. Labor Day holiday.Read more at the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
Thousands of people have attended demonstrations in Paris and other French cities to protest against tough new security measures introduced by the government which they say are being used to target the country's Roma community.
France began clearing large numbers of illegal Roma camps in July, after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced a series of measures to fight crime.Read more here
So, good on Mr. Ignatieff for doing what, for him, doesn’t come with Tobinesque ease and skill. For defying the awkwardness that is inevitably attendant on anyone’s first real efforts at the political game.Read more at the National Post.
ATLANTA — The opening scene was all too familiar. Black smoke rising from a burning oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and workers plucked from the sea. But Thursday's fire on an oil production facility 100 miles off the Louisiana coast appears to have ended without disaster.
None of the 13 workers on board the platform were injured. The Coast Guard found no evidence of an oil leak, and by Thursday afternoon the fire was out.Read more at the Times Colonist.
BADDECK, N.S. — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday he's out to earn a majority government in the next election and is pitching his party — the big red tent — as the clear alternative to Stephen Harper's "politics of meanness."
The Liberal leader, who spent most of his summer on an election-style tour, said he is trying to gain voters' trust and that it's a work in progress to persuade Canadians to ditch their party allegiances and support the Liberals instead.Read more at the Vancouver Sun.
“We as Conservatives are not focused on an election,” he said. “But, friends, when an election does come, Canadians are going to face a pretty stark choice. The next election will be a choice between a Parliament with a majority made up of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois coalition, or it will be a stable majority for our Conservative government.”Read more at the National Post.
The sanctions will hit eight North Korean "entities" and four individuals, targeting the trade in arms, luxury goods and narcotics.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced last month that US sanctions against North Korea would be expanded.
North Korea indicated last year that any attempt to blockade the country would be regarded as an "act of war".http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11132868