Rae Walks To Ignatieff (Or Doesn’t)

184 Replies to “Rae Walks To Ignatieff (Or Doesn’t)”

1. Congratulations, Stephane. Before you go much further, your English makes Belinda’s French sound like Voltaire–needs some work (no offense). Also, please re-iterate how your beloved Kyoto is un-reachable (as you admitted 3 months ago). Also remind us how you received the dreaded ‘fossil’ award last year. Oh yeah, do you and Gerard share the bed at Stornaway or do you take turns on the couch? Kennedy might be PM in 2011; you, however, will preside over the opposition for Harper’s four year majority (with a fixed election date). Seriously, you are an honest guy (for a liberal crony) and certainly the least toxic of the Liberals realistic choices. You are the right man at the very wrong time (where were you in 1990?).

2. Congratulations, Stephane. Before you go much further, your English makes Belinda’s French sound like Voltaire–needs some work (no offense). Also, please re-iterate how your beloved Kyoto is un-reachable (as you admitted 3 months ago). Also remind us how you received the dreaded ‘fossil’ award last year. Oh yeah, do you and Gerard share the bed at Stornaway or do you take turns on the couch? Kennedy might be PM in 2011; you, however, will preside over the opposition for Harper’s four year majority (with a fixed election date). Seriously, you are an honest guy (for a liberal crony) and certainly the least toxic of the Liberals realistic choices. You are the right man at the very wrong time (where were you in 1990?).

3. “When asked what made a good leader, Chrétien offered”: “Somebody who wins.”
   http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/02/chretien-liberal.html
   Dion won’t win the PM mother ship, but I’m glad to see the Liberal: “the party before the people” ethic is alive and well.

4. So Dion won. Just like I predicted yesterday. Its been more than a year since we had a quebecker as PM! Its their turn again. At least it looks like Harper stands a chance, but he does have a minority government, so unless we have a referendum to vote quebec out of Canada we could be in for more of the same.
   mbaron

5. the Liberals have a guy with a mandate, hardly any baggage at all
   Being a citizen of another country when aspiring to be PM is a little more than baggage – it’s insurmountable.
   Were he to become PM and some difficulty arose between Canada and France, where would his loyalty lie? He can say Canada all he wants, but that French passport says otherwise. He simply can’t be trusted to put Canada’s interest first.
   WTH is wrong with the Liberals? Ignatieff, who couldn’t be bothered actually living in Canada, was a serious candidate and now they select Dion with his divided loyalties. Are Liberals that ashamed of Canada and being Canadian?

6. Dion’s the type that picked upon, every leftie in canada will feel sorry for and vote for. Be careful of this one! Nobody thought Harper could do what he did.

7. Yes, Anybody but “X” won; “Dionne”, as sadliberal says….
   “X” was stopped by STOPIGGY, aka Librano$. …-
   sadliberal said…
   I’m a bigot because I believe Dionne[sic] can’t speak English very well???????
   That’s just sad.
   We’re going to take “political correctness gone wild” all the way to our graves.
   I’m sorry, but there’s a reason why only fourteen percent of us wanted Dionne[sic] in the first ballot.
   He’s really not very good.
   Us vs. them, “anybody but x” dynamics led to this. …-
   cerberus blog said Dion was his 2nd choice, ab initio; from the beginning. (LOL)

8. Environmentalism is a diversion tactic by those who don’t want to face real problems (i.e. pacifists and leftist politicians), and the misplaced locus of existential angst for those who see the real problems (i.e. Islamic nutterism) with their eyes, but can’t emotionally come to terms with dealing with them.
   Not a word all weekend from a Lib about Islamic nutterism. Maybe Mohammed Elmasry warned them not to insult the prophet.

9. I heard on the CBC radio some Liberal comentator (can’t remember her name) comment that maybe now the CBC would be able to survive. Implying that the Libs would not shut down the CBC as the Conservatives would. Wish i could remember what her name was. She had a gravelly voice though.
   Anyone else here it?

10. CPC Website
    OTTAWA – Today, the Conservative Party of Canada responded to the selection of Stéphane Dion as leader of the Liberal Party.
    “Last election, Canadians voted for change,” said Conservative Senate Leader Marjory LeBreton. “With the selection of Mr. Dion, Liberals have ignored the Canadian people and have reached into their past to plot their future.”
    “Mr. Dion was part of the Chrétien Cabinet during the sponsorship scandal and was in Cabinet as successive Liberal governments presided over the multi-billion dollar HRDC and gun registry boondoggles”, commented President of the Treasury Board, John Baird.
    Mr. Dion was a failure as Environment Minister. During his time in office, he presided over a 34.6% increase in greenhouse gas emissions along with a precipitous decline in overall air quality, with Canada dropping to 27th out of 29 nations in the OECD. Dion’s record was so bad, he earned a sharp rebuke from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. The Auditor General said that, under Dion, “the federal government (was) not organized to manage its climate change initiatives effectively.”
    “Mr. Dion’s lack of respect for provincial jurisdictions will make him a very hard sell in Quebec, where Liberals are no longer the federalist option,” said Public Works Minister Michael Fortier. Mr. Dion also marks a return to the old Liberal way of directionless government, admitting candidly during the leadership campaign, “do you think it’s easy to make priorities?”

11. “With all due respect, fc, Dion’s still a Liberal.”
    And always will be, as Bray will always be a Dipper. And we sure don’t want either of them as PM. I’m just saying, don’t underestimate him, just because he comes across as a bit of a milquetoast.
    Posted by: felis corpulentis at December 2, 2006 09:37 PM”
    There are countless examples of those who have underestimated their opponents, using pre-conceived assumptions, which later turned out to be completely erroneous. To their ultimate peril.
    Dion survived all odds and made it to the top in his party. That HAS to count for something.
    He may look and sound like a milquetoast. So be it. He has demonstrated that he does, in fact, have sufficient fire in his belly to make it to the top of probably one of the most machiavellian parties in the Canadian political scene.
    Give him credit for that, and potentially woe to those who underestimates him.
    That’s all I’m saying…

12. Here’s a nice bit from Mercer on his G&M blog:
    At the end of the day though, watching Dion on stage, I couldn’t help but be amazed at his physical presence. The Liberals went into this convention with a host of choices. They could have gone with a battle-tested politician, a former athlete, a world famous academic or a food bank founder from the West; at the end of the day they choose the nerd.
    That’s pretty Canadian

13. garhane
    In his stupid rambling made this comment
    “Do we have enough, or any equipment that is Canadian that is available for sure to get out of there quickly? I was wondering if the Cons government might attend to that”
    They will if given the chance, but if your bunch of lying, thieving wankers get back in the contracts no doubt will be cancelled. Just like the Cretin did with helicopters costing Canadians more millions of dollars for nothing.
    Then of course the money can be given to that industrial welfare bum Bumbardier.
    By the way the Brits, French and Dutch might have something to say about your typical Lieberal lie that Canadians are the only ones dieing in Afstan.
    I would suggest you get your facts right before putting your stupidity into writing in public.

14. we get all up in arms when Mlle Jean the GG possesses french citizenship.
    so she graciously relinquishes it.
    the GG is solely ceremonial office. but we gets all up in arms about it.
    now we have some possibility whatever, a FRENCH citizen running our country.
    thats politics !!! thats lieberalism !!!
    come OOOONNNNNNN canada !! wakey wakey !!! beware lieberals they are going to screw you unbelieveably and you are going to worship them as the do it.
    a friggin FRENCHMAN running the country. un friggin lieberal believable. a freakin real macoy FRENCHMAN.

15. CANADA:
    STEPHANE DION: NEWLY ELECTED LIBERAL PARTY LEADER,
    FOSSIL AWARD WINNER,
    AND CITIZEN OF FRANCE TO CAMPAIGN ON ENVIRONMENT.
    The fact that M. Dion is a French citizen is not well known in Canada. This fact will now be widely made public by the MSM.
    The fact that Stephane Dion was awarded Fossil of the Day from the enviro-wackos will now be widely made public by the MSM/CBC/CTV,CanPress, etc.
    …-
    Dion looks forward to election
    Globe and Mail – 8 hours ago
    MONTREAL – Stéphane Dion’s victory at this weekend’s Liberal convention sets the stage for the next election, with the new leader signalling
    he will campaign against the minority Conservative
    government on the environment issue.
    cnews
    …-
    More from canoenews archives:
    RE: The Fossil of the day award
    Message:
    Stephen Taylor has updated the fossil awards details. In the 2001-2006 period, the LIEberals proudly earned FIVE of these prestigious awards!
    11/17/2006 22:06:15
    RE: The
    Message:
    Ooops, it’s worse!
    The LIEberals earned six fossil of the day awards,
    garnering four stories in the MSM. Minister Ambrose just received two similar awards, garnering 193 stories in the MSM. But remember, the MSM offers only fair and balanced reporting. There is no such thing as media bias!…-
    …-
    Kyoto says: OOOWooooo, oowwoowowo….

16. better a canadian citizen with dual citizenship who stands up for canada, than a canadian citizen who governs for america.
    the tories aint ever going to get a majority, dion or rae or ignatieff. canada has too many canadians for a couple of americans on teh wrong side of the border to turn us into the 51st state.
    now now go on. follow the smell of money. u kno u like it. tories care about money. liberals about everything else. can u tell me what tories care about apart from money? gay marriage? sheesh, two dudes getting married is a big deal? wrong country folks..
    dions gonna win it back from steve for one reason – steve didnt win the elections – the liberals lost it. and they sure aint gonna do it agian. so go on, go to america, join the army fight in iraq.
    dions honest intelligent and canadian. harper is bush’s boy steve..aww…he called him steve.. rightwing whackos unite

17. A typical America-obessed dionista writes: “better a canadian citizen with dual citizenship who stands up for canada, than a canadian citizen who governs for america.”
    Lame, lame, lame. Paul Martin wanted to send Canadian troops to Iraq but Stephen Harper stopped him from doing so. Even George Bush did a better job on climate change than Dion.
    “now now go on. follow the smell of money. u kno u like it. tories care about money. liberals about everything else”
    Which of course explains the brown envelopes of cash so typical of the Liberal MO.
    “dions gonna win it back from steve for one reason – steve didnt win the elections – the liberals lost it. ”
    The Liberals haven’t won a majority against a united right since 1980. Suck long and hard on this one: the left is divided into 3 parties now. It’s Harper time, baby!
    “dions honest intelligent and canadian”
    Only children, teenage girls, and Scott “Income Trust Leaker” Brison don’t capitalize letters when appropriate. How old are you? 15 I’m guessing….

18. The LPC has shed its 2 Powercor candidates for a barely literate francophonie with socialist intent and the backing of the party’s left fringe.
    They have now entered a period of political irrelevance unlike anything they have done before and they will be fighting with the NDP for left fringe votes….I suggest they adopt the favored symbol of this LPC freak fest and call themselves the “condom” party…very fitting in both their nature and actions

19. mbaron, good call Thursday. I’ve been saying Dion all along. The only thing that matters is that the leader alternates between Anglo and Franco, which meant that the convention was just hype.
    Didn’t even watch any of it. The outcome was pre-ordained.

20. Why is it that lefties can never find the shift key?

21. to bollocks and pissedoff
    can you use a “spellcheck??” please do because you are god awful spellers…..thank you

22. Don’t underestimate Dion. He’s a strategist.
    He won this leadership by a strategy of linking himself with the fourth place candidate, Kennedy. The strategy was planned in advance; the third and fourth place candidates would merge and take their delegates to each other. That’s what happened and that moved him to first place.
    He now has another strategy – whitewashing the image of the Liberal Party and switching it from its current image of a corrupt gang of thieves, to a Pure, Holy, group of Crusaders. What?? How?
    He’s doing that by aligning the Liberals with the Pure Air of a Clean Environment. That’s a strategical tactic. It has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with redefining the popular image of the Liberal Party.
    Don’t underestimate Dion.
    The environment is a huge emotional issue. It has been moved far away from factual empirical science – for scientists assert that they do NOT know the causes of climate change. There is no proof that CO2 emissions cause climate change. But, the Environmental Utopians aren’t in this cause for factual reality; they are in it for the utopian idealism of it.
    Dion is using this agenda as a cynical tactic. He is whitewashing the Liberal Party image. Moving it out of the corrupt set of images of a gang of thieves and into a set of images of an innocent, earnest young idealistic bunch of people focused on Purity, Cleanliness and Hope For the Future when All is Clean.
    That’s why he is focusing the Liberal Party around the env’t. It’s a cynical political strategy. Beyond facts, based in popular emotion.
    Don’t underestimate him. He works by such manipulative tactics.
    How to deal with this?
    First- it’s important. Expose it as a political strategy of whitewashing. Make that very important.
    Second – show that he has no environmental plan and that his previous plan actually increased CO2 emissions.
    Third – the CPC must explain their plan in easy-to-understand charts, that show the year by year, task by task, agenda.
    Then – the NDP will be worried that he is taking their long held focus on the environment away from them; he’ll be bleeding seats from the NDP. And, I’d suggest that the NDP focus on the environment is at least genuine, if naive. But, their focus is not the cynical strategy of Dion.

23. If the CPC makes national security, law & order, and lower taxes the defining issues, they’ll slaughter Dion’s Libs. But if they get sucked into the dialogue of overwraught environmentalist whackos and leftist whiners like the SOWs who had their funding cut, they’ll be vulnerable. They have to take the environmentalist blows from the Dionistas, keep their chins up, and say “is that all you’ve got?”

24. How about some blog images of Dion handing out soap buckets to whitewash the Liberals? How about showing that no matter how hard you scrub, the rot remains underneath?
    Don’t underestimate Dion. Just as he had a long term plan of how to win the leadership (by merging the 3rd and 4th place candidates) – he has a long term, well-thought out plan to get the Liberals back in power.
    His first task is obvious from his immediate act of taking possession of the topic of a Clean Environment. The first task he long ago selected, was to change the image of the Liberal party from a corrupt gang of thieves to a Holy Crusade of peaceful hippies for Purity, Peace and Cleanliness. It’s a crusade – and extremely attractive to the mindless leftists who will hop on the bandwagon. And attractive to the young, who see it as their Hope of the Future.
    The fact that they are all being manipulated in a cynical strategy for political power – well, these types never realize they’ve been defined as sheep.

25. I agree with you, NCF TO that Harper must focus on this agenda – of point by point specific actions on national security, law and order, taxes etc – but Dion is a strategist. His agenda is to put the Liberals back in power.
    The focus on the environment will only be the first step in a set of tactics. The environment is a tactic used to immediately redefine the image of the Liberals from corrupt thieves to noble crusaders for purity. That’s its agenda.
    Expose this as a cynical manipulative strategy; expose that it’s whitewashing and the rot underneath continues. Expose that the Liberals have no real plan.
    But- it’s an excellent immediate strategy – setting Dion up riding into Ottawa on a pure white charger.
    But- there will be other tactics after this first whitewashing. That is, I don’t think Dion will move too heavily into this; it has a simple agenda of changing the public image of the Liberals. That’s all. He won’t get into the ‘meat’ of it – for it’s too difficult. The environment is not something that humans can control; the science isn’t there, we can’t predict it – so, the Liberals won’t go there. They are using it as a political tactic.
    The agenda of the Liberals is always about winning. I’d suggest that the CPC show, repeatedly, clips of Chretien’s comments on Winning. That all that matters is ‘winning’.
    Not the people. Not good legislation. Just winning.
    Dion will then move on to other tactics, after he’s whitewashed the party…
    A key weakness of the Liberals, however, is their centralism. They are still in the 1950s and 1960s, and think that the centre of Canada is Ontario-Quebec when their population base was equal. They don’t admit that the population and economic base has shifted. Quebec is at a dead-end. Ontario has grown twice that of Quebec, and the West is now more than Quebec. The Liberals won’t admit that and don’t know how to deal with it.

26. Rather than being a cynical ploy, I think the environmentalism fetish is more an example of the intellectual bankruptcy of liberalism and the Liberal Party. It’s all they’ve got! They can’t touch fiscal responsibility, integrity, national security, law enforcement, immigration control, US-Canada relations – they’ve failed on them all. There’s nothing left but hug-a-tree.
    I would advise the CPC not to work too hard on this file – it’s a losing proposition. The environment is the one stick remaining that the left has to smack the Conservatives with. Let them use that twig. Harper can talk beyond it on a host of more important issues that the Libs can’t answer to.

27. RGT, Martin is no Anglo. He’s also heavily connected to Power Corps, just like every Quebec PM, including Mulroney, since at least Trudeau. And, if Rae or Iggy had won, Anglo or not, they too are simply Power Corps’ puppets. (John Rae, Bob’s brother, is a major Power Corps CEO. That weasel, Mo Strong’s, also one of the key Power Corps players.)
    And, as batb notes, at the recent Liberal love-in, a Desmarais daughter publicly threw her support to Dion, a Chretien partisan.
    Canadians need to wake up from their torpor and find out what’s really going on here.
    From the Star article: “All in the family; Liberals, Conservatives for the Desmarais business family, it doesn’t really matter who is in power. The Montreal-based clan has been plugged into Ottawa for decades, reports Peter Hadekel
    The Toronto Star
    Saturday, February 11, 2006
    Page: F1
    Section: National Report
    Byline: Peter Hadekel
    Dateline: MONTREAL
    Source: Special to the Star”
    Google “Peter Hadekel, Desmarais Family” for the full text.
    Then tell all your friends: if they’re Canadian, they’ll probably learn something new here. Then I hope they’ll be bloody angry at being made such dupes by the reigning monarchs–what supreme irony–in Quebec. (I don’t exactly hold my breath.)

28. Dion is a placeholder, and will not be the Prime Minister. His job will be to rebuild the Liberal party. Iggy is being groomed to lead the country, not a fractured opposition.

29. HALP US DIONISTA WEE R STUC ‘N IRAK

30. Well I’ve already heard “not another Frenchman” on my travels this morning, and I’ll bet in the rest of rural Ontario it is a popular statement.
    Since the libs seem to now carry red and green signs why not change their color to brown? A much more fitting color for what they have to offer Canadians.

31. Lord have mercy on the Libs if, as Krydor alleges, “Iggy is being groomed to lead the country, not a fractured opposition.”
    My take on Iggy is that he’s going to exit stage left just as soon as he can gracefully leave the riding he hijacked from the duly-elected Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
    I don’t sense any fire in his belly at all for this job but, rather, between the lines he’s asking, “What the H*ll am I doing here?”
    I think he’ll be heading back to Haaavaad Yaad as soon as his term is up. That speech on Friday night, despite Jeffrey Simpson’s saying it was “passionate” and “nicely-crafted” (what was HE on when he wrote that?), was not a winner’s speech, it was not a future leader’s speech.
    It’s almost as though Iggy deliberately delivered a stinker to make sure he wouldn’t be chosen as leader–otherwise I can’t for the life of me think what he was doing. My daughter, when she was in grade five, gave better public speaking speeches than that.

32. Kate: Is there any way you can mark certain comments, like garhanes above, to be reposted after Harper wins his majority, and hopefully Dion pulls a Kim Campbell. Also, publish a receipe for crow pie whan that happens. Thanks

33. Mary, should Kate mark your comment, too, just in case?
    Nobody know how the next election will go, but I think the Liberals made the right choice. In the next campaign, Rae would have been called a commie, Ignatieff a hired gun, and Kennedy not yet ready. Dion will obviously be attacked too, but it will be harder to sell using tactics that are based on mob-think…. my $.02.

34. Several comments have asserted a dim environmental performance by Dion as Minister of Environment in the minority government of Martin. The fact is that Dion spent more than 7 years of his 10 years in Parliament fighting for the country as Chretien’s point man on the separation fuss. He not only led in that, he absorbed a great deal of personal attack in representing, persuading, and leading the Federal Cause. When Martin finally pushed Chretien out, Dion was dumped as Intergovernment Affairs, by Martin and so he was out of Cabinet until Martin needed help, and then was put back in as Envirn. Minister at June 20, 2004 and then we had an election where the cons. succeeded just after the end of 2005. So his effective time as Minister was about 18 months.
    How did he conduct himself in that? Listen to Elizabeth May, who said he was easily the best Envir. Min of either Chretien or Martin and “:…he did a magnificent job…” at the UN climate change conference in Montreal (December of 2005). And you will remember that the Liberal government fell on the day that Conference opened. And you can read the accounts of his public reports on the net as to the Vancouver Board of Trade at Sept. 2005 where he lists many programs launched and his plan to spend $5 billion to match or at least close the gap on our Kyoto performance.
    So the posters who refer to a poor Liberal performance on Kyoto are correct, but I think their comments need to be adjusted somewhat when the question is what did Dion do.
    One commenter criticizes one remark about who is still in serious combat for the USA policy in Afganistan, and that person correctly notes that the Brits are also still there, but one must recognize that the the UK population does not support the policy any longer and doing so in the past has destroyed the career of their previously successful leader.
    As for some commenters who say that Dion is “not well liked” in Quebec, how often have we seen pols who are described as not well regarded in the west, or having trouble with their English, doing very well for themselves and their party west of Manitoba? A fellow with the initials Jean Chretien comes to mind. Dion has earned deep respect for the courage and tenacity he has shown and the final success on the Clarity bill in French Canada; now he brings honour to the distinct society, the nation within,…whatever. Its an issue, I guess, but I think he will do just fine in Quebec. In fact if he continues as he has in Parliament up to now, I think he will do just fine in Alberta.
    Quite a few of the comments on the convention result were fair minded and reasonable.