104 Replies to “SWTE: Morning In Canada”

  1. Kate:
    As usual, you nailed it. Now that the election is over, when do you think your stuff will disappear?
    Would the CBC consider continuing the forum under a different title?
    If not, you should at least add all your CBC “Forum” commentary to the “Best of SDA”.

  2. They tell us it”ll be archived, so I’ll provide a link then. I’ve saved the code on several of the better posts, just in case.

  3. Well done, Kate. We now have the un-enviable task of reversing 30 years of socialist/liberal destruction on our country. The world is watching. When was the last time a Canuck election garnered this much attention in the States and the world?

  4. Oh. One other point. The CBC needs to be completely cut-off from the government tit. Only dictatorships run media outlets under the guise of “identity” or “nationalism” or “values”

  5. Kate, if you were a leftie you would be running the CBC by now, or Governor General (or both). Instead you just run the best Blog in Canada. I just hope more Canadians will hear more from you in the future. Great election coverage! Thanks.

  6. Brilliant insight. I agree whole-heartedly with your comments about the media, the CRTC and the CBC.
    Also I would like to extend a public thank you to Kate for all she has done in the name of freedom of speech and the ability of the “common folk” to be heard.

  7. Actually, we want to keep the CBC. It is an intact distribution channel that just needs to be “re-calibrated” to represent a different messaage set.
    New management, fresh reporters and get it the hell out of Toronto. Toronto should be a regional office only . .

  8. I also will second that motion. Did anyone see a 200 plus itemized list of the Libranos scams and frauds in the MSM?
    Several such lists are posted on many blogsites.
    Without any summary lists, the voting public is allowed to assume there is only a scam here or a theft there.
    Many may have no concept of the string of rip – offs stretching in a string from 1993. TG

  10. You nailed it again kate, thanks for all the fun here during the election. Keep up the great work…

  11. Who is this other Fred anyway?
    I have a cheap suggestion:
    Since the Federal bureaucracy can be presumed to be, let’s say, less than thrilled with the conservatives. They quietly? loathed Brian M. and I presume will be waiting with the flensing knives for the new ministers.
    I have a suggestion. There are 30 or so ministries. Somehow a large country to our south, that shall remain nameless, manages with 12 or so cabinet level positions.
    Announce that there will be 10 cabinet positions henceforth in Ottawa: Watch as the upper levels of the civil service murder one another, rather than the government, as all those deputy assitant whoseits realize that they will be redundant and start to brown nose.

  13. Excellent post.
    The control of the MSM by 3 Liberal friendly businesses, as well as the Liberal controlled CBC means that the majority of Canadians were woefully uninformed on the issues. In the last week of the election, I just got tired of Liberals voting for “Canadian Values” and “Right to Choose” without any idea of what the issues in this election actually were. Most had no idea of:
    the Valeri house flip;
    the packing of Liberal contributors in the judiciary and the senate;
    the lobbying contracts given to Liberal organizers;
    the out and out Liberal flip flops on EVERY policy issue;
    the laughing stock that Canada has become in foreign policy circles.
    Nothing made a dent in the uninformed voter demographic. Apparently ignorance is the most important “Canadian Value”. The MSM played their part as usual.

  14. Kate – I started reading this blog during the American elections and have not missed a day since. Thanks for the education on my neighbors to the north. Your insight, and that of your commentators, has been amazing.
    Good luck to the new government, they certainly have their work cut out for them.
    God Bless Canada!

  15. The latest from Beryl Wajsman from Montreal:
    �Paul Martin claimed during the campaign that Stephen Harper would change the face of Canada as we knew it. Canadians were finally ready for that change. It could only be for the better. For in this campaign the true face of Paul Martin�s Canada was unmasked. And it proved to be nothing more than a debased and degraded portrait of privilege and preference having perverted the public trust.�
    ~
    The Natural Governing Party finally stopped being able to fool all the people all the time.
    Canadians finally got tired of being bamboozled. The first kink in the Liberal armor actually resulted from what Martin thought would protect him. The narrow mandate of the Gomery Inquiry. Nobody bought into his �exoneration�. In the face of $167,000,000 in contracts to CSL and the off-shore tax havens and the mound of evidence that Martin operatives asked for sponsorship money, Canadians finally got it. If Martin knew nothing, then he had planned to know nothing. He planned his own �credible� deniability. He planned to push the RCMP aside because it was getting too close to his centre. He planned guilt by innuendo and insinuation against the Chr�tien wing of the party to save his own skin. Canadians finally saw the Gomery Inquiry for the transparent deflection from Martin�s own conflicts of interest and party settling of accounts that it was. Martin�s earnest false piety just didn�t sell anymore.
    Finance Minister Goodale�s mishandling of the income trust file spotlighted Martin�s own arrogant culture of �entitlement�. Canadians finally saw that Martinites talked to only some of the people, some of the time. The release by the RCMP of the letter to NDP MP Judy Wasylieca-Leis confirming a criminal investigation, was payback for Jean Lapierre�s bullying of them before the last election when he used it as an agency of the party demanding that charges be laid quickly to help the Liberals in the campaign and then pushed them aside to protect the Martin centre.
    Stephen Harper did a great job focusing Canadians minds on the fact that a man who made retroactive changes to tax-haven rules as Finance Minister, and benefited from them to the tune of $300,000,000 in avoided Canadian taxes, had no business dictating Canadian �values�. It was Harry Truman 1948 resonating through the decades. �One per cent of the population has the means to reach an elected representative. The job of a chief executive of a nation is to represent the 99% who can�t.�
    The blowback against the Liberals from the disastrous attack ads was bad enough. But it was made all the worse through Paul Martin�s pushing the hysteria button in the last week of the campaign charging Harper with everything short of the Lizzie Borden murders.
    Martin claimed the mantle of champion of Canadian federalism saying a vote for Harper would weaken Ottawa�s powers and aid Quebec sovereignists. But the nearly flawless Tory campaign made it clear to voters that it was Martin who signed an unconditional health-care accord with the provinces allowing them to spend federal health-care dollars as they wished with no accountability. That it was Martin who brought Bloc Qu�becois co-founder Jean Lapierre into the federal Liberals and made him his Qu�bec lieutenant. And the Tories got even more ammunition when Martin�s new-found buddy, CAW President Buzz Hargrove, told voters that the separatists were a preferable option in Quebec than the Tories at the same time that the Liberal candidate in Jonqui�re was conceding to defeat and urging supporters to vote for Conservative Jean-Pierre Blackburn and deny the Bloc another seat. Canadians saw all that and more.
    Martin claimed that Harper was a regressive social conservative who would compromise anti-abortion laws, prejudice Charter rights and politicize the judiciary.
    Yet Harper had been clear on abortion. His government would not touch existing laws. In fact the only MP in the past ten years who had called for legislation rolling back a woman�s right to choose was Liberal junior defense Minister Albina Guarnieri. The Tories drove that message home too.
    On Charter rights Harper succeeded in making the Tory image resonate. He successfully portrayed the new Tories for what they were. Populists who want to roll back big government and protect the sovereignty of individual choice and privacy. And he reminded voters that it was Martin who had pushed through several pieces of legislation, just before this election, that would overturn the presumption of innocence in certain cases; allow for random search and seizure of private property without probable cause; demand that personal e-mail and internet telephony records be handed over to state security authorities on simple demand; and mark uncharged and unindicted individuals as enemies of the state subject to �preventive control measures� such as electronic security anklets on simple Ministerial dictate. He succeeded in making Canadians see that this was business as usual for an administration that ordered the ransacking of reporter Juliet O�Neill�s home when she refused to give up a source.
    Martin attacked Harper for a statement of the obvious, that the Canadian judiciary is overwhelmingly filled with Liberal appointees. He claimed that this statement was evidence that Harper would politicize the courts in order to get �absolute power�. Harper�s calm and reasoned response was that the only administration in twenty years that had appointed judges to the Supreme Court of the land for a political purpose was Martin�s when he brought Justices Abella and Charron to the bench to assure success in the same-sex marriage reference. Canadians were listening.
    Martin tried to be all things to all people as usual. But at the same time that he was calling on all �progressives� to rally to his banner, he agreed with Harper on a free debate on same-sex marriage in the House. What could he have been thinking? He was fighting the last election because he had no real vision, agenda or focus.
    Martin droned on about �good government and accountability�. But Canadians were finally beginning to �get it�. Thanks to a media elite that stopped being the Liberal party at prayer, they finally learned that during his tenure as Finance Minister, 90% of the tax cuts he made benefited the top 7% of the population. They saw the placards of organized labour condemning Martin for ripping the UIC surpluses out of the hands of working men and women and into the general accounts. They heard that Democracy Watch filed dozens of ethics complaints involving his PMO�s breaches of the Ethics Code and its incestuous interference with the Office of the Ethics Commissioner. They listened to that same Ethics Commissioner, appointed by Martin, openly admitting that he either would not, or could not, apply the Ethics Code to elected officials. So much for �good government and accountability.�
    And finally it was the Liberals who blundered in the waning moments of this election. Unlike the Tory Randy White debacle of 2004, the last ten days of this campaign saw dirty tricks by Liberal candidates that smacked of what Nixon�s White House Counsel Charles Colson once called �rat-fucking�. From attempting to bribe an NDP candidate to pull out of a race in B.C.; to false charges of sexual aggression against a Tory candidate in Saskatchewan; to rigging voters� lists in Alberta, the Liberals spent the last week of the campaign apologizing and backtracking again and again. The rats were finally fucking themselves.
    Paul Martin claimed during the campaign that Stephen Harper would change the face of Canada as we knew it. Canadians were finally ready for that change. It could only be for the better. For in this campaign the true face of Paul Martin�s Canada was unmasked. And it proved to be nothing more than a debased and degraded portrait of privilege and preference having perverted the public trust.
    Beryl P. Wajsman
    President
    Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal
    http://www.iapm.ca

  16. You are the only disappointed one as far as I know, KBR.
    Brilliant commentary Kate! Up to your usual high quality 🙂 Errr…. so when will YOU run for office? You know the headhunters will be ’round soon 😉

  17. Face the facts…..
    The press moved to the tories this time because they need fresh fodder for their edutainment machine.
    A small scandal was blown up by Martin thinking he could join with the Montreal elite (of any party) and quash a country bumpkin who is a true hero,
    The Martin liberals governed abysmally and campainged worse
    Then …
    The united right got …. 36% of the vote – the rest went to center and leftie parties.
    That is what you are celebrating today????

  20. yep… celebrating getting a foot in the door to hopefully let the rest see the damage done by the “culture of entitlement”. Read the post put up by Hans.I think many if not most people have just given up hope of change. The most common comment I hear on the street is: “does it matter??? they’re all the same, they’re all F*cking thieves!” Sound like someone who has run out of hope? If you keep telling someone something long enough, the intended target will start to believe it. If you don’t believe me, just ask a formerly abused spouse, or someone who has been brainwashed. The MSM has been hammering the message into people’s ears for far too many years. You bet yer *ss it worked… but hopefully not for much longer! Divide and conquer. Keep the west out, but take their wealth, keep the Maritimes happy, and look after the main powerbase, making sure they get their daily ration of propaganda and treats. Right now, I think I can really understand how many in Quebec must feel, or have felt for a long time. FRUSTRATED!

  23. “Oh ya …. Harper disguised himself as a centrist too… 36% he he he
    Posted by Leftie at January 24, 2006 04:41 PM ”
    that and a new address . . 24 Sussex Drive.
    tee hee tee hee tee hee tee hee
    Enjoy life in the wilderness Leftie.

  24. Thanks, Kate, for all your CBC posts – but especially for this one. As a social conservative, I can say the one thing I most desire changed in Canada is the ability to fight for what I believe in, to not have the machinations of government quash ordinary Canadians trying to improve their country. A level playing field is all we ask for – if we can’t effect change through suasion, then our issues really aren’t that relevant. If the other side cannot uphold its views without the force of power, then they are just as irrelevant.

  25. The Tories have to hold themselves to a high ethical standard now, they have raised the bar during the election and it is up to them to reach and surpass it. Mr. Harper has to ensure that this happens, because actions will speak louder than words come next election.

  26. Shame on the CBC for its unrelenting left wing socialist pinko propaganda broadcasts that turned Alberta into a federal Liberal stronghold.

  27. Given the results of a minority Conservative government we now move from an 8 week election campaign to somewhere between an 80 to 120 week campaign. Kate’s insight underscores the critical and pivotal nature of the msm beast. I doubt there will be time to reverse those cultural and structural issues berfore this government falls.
    Continuing and increased vigilence from the Blogosphere may be all we can hope for.
    Please keep up the excellent work!

  28. Kate: Outstanding column!
    And SO important to all Canadians,particularly our new government.
    Glad to see you mention that Canada has no voice such as Fox News or the likes of a Rush Limbaugh.
    And it is high time we did!

  29. The national newspaper, The Goble and Mail, endorsed the Tories. My local paper, the Regina Leader Post is pro-Conservative. Our provincial radio prime time talk show is hosted by a former Tory MP, who is unapologetic in his right wing views.
    The CPC is getting more than its fair share of favourable media in Saskatchewan.

  30. Rush Limbaugh??? What a horrible thing to wish on any country. If we’re so in need of someone to spout pure BS why not Anne Coulter.

  33. Very good post. Good enough to cause this usual reader and lurker to post a comment as this is something that hits close to home for me. I am a french canadian living in Montreal originally from Quebec City and i’m moving back there in 3 months, i’ll be happy to live in the conservative part of Quebec.
    The good news about the subject of reforms for the CRTC is that it was actually promised by Harper and the conservatives. The event that caused this promise to be made is the CRTC order to close down CHOI, the number one radio station in Quebec City, this is currently awaiting a supreme court decision on if they will hear their case and the conservatives promised to do everything they could to reverse that decision. I believe that this whole mess with the CRTC is what helped cause the huge wins in the region. 8 of the conservative elected in Quebec are in areas covered by that radio station, they even defeated Richard Marceau one of the big pillars of the bloc. The support that the bloc gave to the CRTC because it was a very anti-syndicalist , federalist and right of center radio station, sealed their fate there.
    And since this is one of the major issue that made the conservatives win in Quebec, they will need to act on their promise or lose this support during the next election. Most of those who voted for them are now watching them very closely and I don’t think they will be re-elected if they go back on this promise.
    Anyway I hope so, since it’s the only right of center voice left broadcasting in the province, and a damn good radio station too. At least the last voice that was silenced by the CRTC, Andre Arthur, is now the token Independant of this new canadian governement, he should be interesting to watch.

  34. Kate is right about the punditry describing this victory as a failure. Glenn Clark-ite Penny Priddy on CTV was among those who kept reiterating ad nauseum — “and again, I can’t say it strongly enough” — that Harper is really going to be tested, that it’s going to be really hard, that he’s really got his work cut out for him, that he doesn’t have a blank check, blah blah blah. Their point is well taken, but their refusal to put it away came across as an sideways assertion that Canadians as a whole don’t like Conservatives, and will continue to hound them.
    In a side note to the coverage, when someone on CBC referred to Stockwell Day as a possible Foreign Affairs Minister, the studio, including Mansbridge, erupted into barking laughter, as if the very consideration was a joke. It was really offensive. Day has been a superb and effective critic of foreign policy. It would take twelve Bill Grahams to equal one Stockwell day. Maybe the panel thought it was 1998.

  35. Please don’t ever run for politics Kate. I wouldn’t be able to handle seeing or hearing people attack you as they surely would.
    I think you can do more good from the outside.
    Although, it would be nice to see you get some dough from somewhere. Your time has great value. It’s not fair in that respect.
    You are fast becoming a Canadian treasure.
    Duke

  36. Kate you have proved yourself to be an excellent writer and communicator.
    It wouldn’t surprise me if the MSM came knocking at your door with offers of a weekly column.
    I have become quite a fan of yours good luck with any future endeavours.
    Note to Knight of the Blue Revolution
    SWTE = Sleeping With The Enemy

  38. A delicious argument. It’s hard to get through to the MSM that they are biased – I’ve tried but they are in denial. Kate’s article elegantly proves it.

  39. Nice piece by Beryl, but he gives too much credit to voters. I think Harper will justify their trust, but there’s no denying much of this was a protest vote. Puffmeister just discussed Harper’s decision to open up SSM to reach into the ethnic communities, for whom this is apparently a very divisive issue. Guess what? Those same communities still parked with the Liberals, according to CTV ?polls/data whatever it was they used. And that’s why the Tories were shut out of the major cities yet again. It’s the Tories one and only time to shine within the next 2 years. God willing, Belinda Stronach will be heading the Liberals by then, so there will be no contest. Next time, it’ll be a Tory majority.

  40. One of your best entries for the Roundtable crowd! Thank you.
    It is the ***pith*** of what happened in the last week or so – lies told were not properly challenged.
    In fact, the media headlines played off what Martin said about Harper, not the truth of what Harper said.
    Challenging the CRTC to allow actual freedom of speech, and viewing, sounds like a good energy booster.
    Through the blogs like this one, we now have a voice and a means to collect data on the ‘other guys’.
    Our guard is not let down now, but rather, it has been heightened.
    We have a lot of slow steady work ahead of us and I bet we are up to it;)

  41. Talking To Canadians. Or perhaps, Talking To Torontonians
    Step one, bring up the subject of abortion.
    Step two, ask them if the laws should be changed.
    Step three, ask them if they actually know what the laws are, and what partial birth abortion is.
    Step four, make a funny face for the camera.

  43. Yes, Mary, there is.
    And I’m a Crawling Amphibian in that sea. Don’t believe me? Go see my blog, left side, bottom.
    And to think…I’m gonna be coming up there soon. Mwahahahaha.

  44. Brilliantly stated, classy, and the best possible choice of topic for your final post. Of course, as a fan of The Mighty Ottawa Senators – elected Senators – I’m used to such seeing such displays of talent and class on a regular basis, but it’s still always a pleasure to see… 😉

  45. Well said Kate. The lack of any sort of debate on these issues is a key element of the “democratic deficit”.

  46. Greenmamba,
    That’s exactly the same here in the US. And, from my too-many-hours-per-day of reading the MSM in the whole global Anglosphere, media left-wing bias is prevalent in all the English-speaking democracies.
    But to comment on your remark on the MSM’s denial of it’s bias: Part and parcel of the mindset of Leftists (from the UK to North America all the way to Australia) is a subconscious assumption of intellectual and moral superiority. “We get it.”
    They really, truly believe their rigid orthdoxy of thought is the norm, the reality of the world. Anyone not seeing that oh-so-obvious “truth” is therefore, by definition, intellectually and morally inferior.
    (And “diversity” is another leffty phony-baloney fallacy. They laud superficial diversity-gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. BUT, real diversity, diversity of thought, is forbidden under their secular dogma. To be a leftist, one must be in 100% lock-step with their secular dogma.
    Just look at the hysteria prompted whenever any politician brings up abortion. (Or doesn’t bring it up in Harper’s case. The Left brings it up anyway and creates a shrill argument from a non-argument.)
    I didn’t mean to ramble on here…Like you and a lot of people I get REALLY tired of the MSM’s BS protestations of objectivity and non-bias when in fact they are Ministries of Propaganda for leftist collectivism.

  47. Re:Glenn Clark-ite Penny Priddy on CTV
    If memory serves me, Ms. Priddy served as Health Minister in a previous NDP BC government.
    She will be the heir to “Screechin Annie”
    As they say in Texas…”big hat no cows”…

  48. Looking forward to your visit, Sailor Republica.
    Rent a couple of jet-skis and wet suits and bring Stockwell Day with you.

  50. yes, penny was health minister out here. she’s a joy to watch because she gets all pink and outraged and jowly when she gets upset. ujjal and penny, two shining lefties from b.c.’s stellar roster of pinko lunatics, a party they both had a hand in decimating when they were in power here. let’s hope their records hold.

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