News at Angry in the Great White North. Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto workers union, has thrown his support behind Paul Martin and the Liberals, abandoning Jack Layton and the NDP.
This despite the fact that the NDP is making support for an auto industry aid package a non-negotiable part of any deal for NDP support in another minority government.
Jack Layton is learning the difference between liking people and trusting people. Is this announcement going to lead to a more visible alignment between Stephen Harper and the Conservatives on the one hand, and Jack Layton and the NDP on the other, providing Canadians with a viable anti-Liberal choice?
Layton might not like Harper, but I think he is thinking he can trust Harper, more than he can trust “friends” like Buzz Hargrove.
Ford is looking down the tube after GM: “Ford may close Windsor: WSJ”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051202.wford1202/BNStory/Business/
Mark
Ottawa
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but didn;t PMPM give Daimler Chrysler a few million dollars to upgrade their Ontario plants? Buzz is just going where he thinks the money is.
I’m disappointed that Hargrove is from my home town. What business has any union involving themselves in politics anyway? Especially since many union members are forced to pay dues against their will. Now those dues are used to help a corrupt political party. It’s a double slap in the face.
I’m definitely voting for Harper.
So Buzz Hargove was the guy yanking hackey sack’s chain to cut a deal with PM this past spring. And now he’s going to join the LP?
How many votes will the LP lose to the CP over that? I almost feel sorry for Layton – almost. Expect a massive bailout of GM and Ford promise fro the liberals real soon if this is in fact true.
Below is something I posted on Daimnation as few weeks back when GM announced the plant closings the has some relevance here:
Firstly…
This is certainly not a surprise to those who have been watching this company over the past two decades. Even before Roger Smith (of Roger and Me infamy) this company has been in decline and since about 1992 it has been in a sort super-slow motion recievership.
The company saw its talent go elsewhere – frustrated by the bean-counters and inbred management structure and the give-aways to the unionized workforce (and management) on wages, pensions and benefits steadily bled away the company’s free-cashflow. Now that the pensions and other big money movers have all gradually disposed of their holdings, the final collapse of the company can begin. Like a bull in the ring of commerce with blood running freely down its back and mucus hanging in thick strands out its nose, it awaits the hedger matador to plunge his sword into the base of its neck – severing its managerial spinal cord.
Secondly…
The aftermath will be relatively quiet if messy -lots of blood in the sand – but the factories will keep running, for now, if only because it is cheaper than the alternative in the short-term. This continued production will wreak havoc in the marketplace particularly for Ford which is itself on the brink and could succumb to the slashed price sales of the defunct GM producing under the protection and unaccountabilty of chapter 11. (Remember, practically all of the american airline industry save Southwest is currently in chapter eleven). ….
Thirdly…
The big losers are not the investors or arguably the employees – the US stock market seems to be doing quite well and the job market is on fire thanks in large part to the last Bush tax-cut. No, the big losers are the Unions – GM and the others formerly known as the big three are the last great white elephants for the trade unions (“Big Steel’s” companys were the greatest of them all). Once they are gone, the CAW et al will lose their greatest cash cow and thus almost all of their strength. The Airlines are already in the process of shedding the union shackles and the auto industry will soon be doing the same. Employees will be happier, as will shareholders and customers or rather, clients (much like the renaissance the Wales has seen since Margaret thatcher had the hopelessly uncompetitive coal industry put to death).
And Lastly…
This will be a great victory for the conservative movement on both sides of the border. The far-left unionized wings of the democratic party and the NDP will be far weaker than they are now. The friends of medicare will lose their sugar daddy and the Democratic party will be able to move back to the centre-left. The NDP, if it can come to its senses, will be able to take a crack at re-forming itself into the Canadian version of Tony Blair’s Labour party.
(Buzz Hargrove only recently said that the reason why GM was struggling was because they were discounting their vehicles so much – if only they sold them for full price they would be fine. I can think of no better an example to demonstrate how clueless and how destructive this man is to the futures of the very people he purports to represent.)
One person that needs to step up and really get vocal is Colin Carrie. He is the current MP for Oshawa. He has spoken out about the coming job slashes at GM, but he needs to step this up given that riding’s history. In the last 20 years it has been held by Ed Broadbent for the NDP, then Ivan Grosse (the Liberal that had a criminal record for robbery if I remember correctly). Colin is the first Conservative to hold the seat in a VERY long time, so he must fight hard to keep it.
About Basil “Buzz” Hargrove, someone needs to remind the auto workers that this is the man that did not support them and went to the MSM in opposition to the wildcat strike a few years ago. He is also the person that charged the lead in the last negotiation, consistently denying that the claims of financial dire straits were only corporate bargaining tools to limit the CBA for the membership. Really, when are the CAW going to get rid of this man. I know a lot of people that work at GM, and amongst the unionized members no one respects or trusts that man. Hopefully, they will remember this when listening to his voting advice.
Buzz hasn’t recognized that a reduction in the GST will up the sale of cars, even if it is just a psychological boost. When I was in the pub today, people were already calculating how much less their lunch/brewskie will cost them once this is implemented. Wake up Buzz. Oh, and BTW, haven’t heard you admit to using a private MRI clinic as was posted on SDA earlier. Layton must be furious. Odd to me that nobody is tallying this week and last of layoffs: GM, Ford, CIBC, Dofasco, Domtar. And the economy is booming, is it Paulie?
Listening to Dosanjh on Don Newman’s “Politics”. He hasn’t forgotten the best trick the No discernable Prospect Party has, which is to talk and keep talking, even when your told to shut-up.
Hargrove is a truncoat, but he probably has a deal in his pocket from PMPM to spend a truckload of OUR money supporting the uncompetitive manufacturers.
I just hope that Jack doesn’t make the same mistakes he made in the last election, and that is to attack Stephen Harper and the Conservatives alongside the Martin and the Liberals.
I never understood this strategy of Jack’s.
Who exactly is he appealing to by employing it?
Are there voters out there saying to themselves, “Hmmm, who should I vote for? The Conservatives or the NDP?”
By attacking Harper and reinforcing the fear factor, Layton played right into the hands of the Liberals by driving disanfranchised Liberals who thought about voting NDP back into the arms of the Liberals.
Some pundits in the last election said that the NDP could do as well as winning up to 40 seats.
But Jack, playing into the Liberals divide and conquer strategy in their attempt to polarize the electorate, killed any chances of the NDP gaining any more seats than the 19 they managed to win.
In the province I live in, Ontario, a similar thing happened in the 2003 election.
NDP leader Howard Hampton spent almost as much time attacking the incumbent Tories as he did the Liberals, who were poised to win that election – and of course did – by making gains at the NDP’s expense.
On the final day of that election campaign, it was Hampton who said that he felt that he ran the best camapign, and that only his party had room for growth, and that everyone was going to be surprised by the results and how well the NDP was going to do.
And what was the result on voting day? The NDP went from 15 seats to just 7 in the 103 seat legislature – not even enough seats for official party status.
Keep your mouth shut, Jack, and focus on Martin and the Liberals ONLY! They are the ones that can take seats from you, not the NDP (with the exception of some battles in Saskatchewan).
Don’t forget Magna has shares in Daimler in Europe. Buzz is just a bit of fluff anyway. He thinks he speaks for autoworkers, but I suspect there are a lot of them who don’t vote NDP no matter what Buzz likes to believe. Yesterday, he was on side with the NDP. What he does not want is a Tory government. Guess he sees Bombardier and its endless handouts, figures autoworkers are entitled to the same. Some MSM type who will probably be unemployed after today, actually mentioned the PM’s sudden embrace of labour when he continues to ignore Canadian shipyards and has his fleet built offshore. No response, of course.
LOOKS LIKE JACK GOT [THINGS] DONE
I predict a conservative majority is just around the corner..
After the comming election, we will see the decimated liberals (whats left) merge with the NDP…
This uniting of the left should have happened years ago…the liberals have been playing both sides of the fence for to long.
Finally, we will have a party of the right, (conservative)and a party of the left (NDP/liberal)…
It’s been a long time comming..!
A Liberal/NDP Alliance. After all the garbage about the Reform/Conservative alliance. The MSM are certainly more subdued and even finding good things to say about Harper, or asking pertinent questions. I actually heard Don Newman challenge somebody NDP/Libs (too much tv) about Harper’s healthcare plan saying it seemed quite reasonable and sounded very much like what the Libs had been proposing. But then CBC dissed the Tories tonight because Alan Riddel says he was asked to step aside for Allan Cutler. He thinks it might have had something to do with him dressed up as a Nazi in his high school days. The media would have been all over that, overlooking Pierre Trudeau’s ride through Montreal on the back of a Harley wearing a Nazi helmet toward the end of the war.
When the camera passed across that CAW meeting and I saw that sea of faces, and then returned to show PM embracing Buzz Hargrove, my blood ran cold.
I immediately thought, “a deal with the devil”, in that PM must have sold his soul to Buzz in order to gain this bizarre TV coup.
I’m going to be going over my modest portfolio of Canadian equities tonight to see whether it’s time to ‘re-allocate’ – to anywhere but Canada.
As I have opined many times, this election is a litmus test. We have a regime which has existed through massive corruption, insider patronage and profiteering and criminal activity…in short, they are crooks…unapprehended crooks, but crooks all the same in action and intent.
…the only people crooks attract are other crooks…horribly compromised individuals who have no ethical guide lines where their enrichment or advancement are concerned and who have no rules nor obey any except the primary one…make all compromises neccessary and don’t get caught.
This election only yhe criminal cartel who have profited from a decade of Liberal malfeasance will support them. It’s like a “outing” of crooks supporting the head crook in his hour of need.
So far those who have exposed themselves as crooks by their association with the Martin camp are The usual suspects in the Canadian MSM, and all the past political wash outs from all paries trying top torpedo Harper with negative spin and of course now we see corrupt labor bosses jumping on the patronage boat.
Given this, I can see Hargrove coming on line as a Martin butt weasel…a good match…crooks attract crooks.
Two Words
Senator Hargrove
Why has no one asked the QUESTION: What happened in that seedy hotel room when Buzzzzz, paulie and laydown ‘made a deal’? Do the nation’s people have no business in the politician’s bedrooms??
Maybe we should ask Buzz, with the layoffs coming in the auto sector if it would not be more beneficial to reduce the GST, making vehicles more affordable, creating more work, more sales, more jobs�������
But we all know it isn�t really the workers buzz is concerned about, other than leetching his livelihood from the union dues so he can run around spend their money preaching the virtues of sodomy.
Truly Union business……….isn’t it?
What are Union members getting for their money, other than a dingbat taking their money and using it to pollute society and their kids with his kind of disgusting imorallity.
I suppose Buzz thinks its okay to take taxpayers money for adscam too?
Prediction, PMPM will make “Buzz” a senator before Jan.23, 2006. That wll be his reward for being a Lie-beral muothpiece.
I’m a die hard fan of Ford. I just love its new models.