“the west has always been french, never forget that”

Not to be confused with Quebec…

“Canada has to be out of the asbestos business. We should not export it and we should not produce it”.

(Plus a “he was quick to add” bonus link!)

“Not to be outdone, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Toronto Centre MP Bob Rae walked the parade route alongside a Liberal float, from which a drag queen in a lime green dress swivelled her hips.”

“Mr. Ignatieff’s reinterpretation of the Pauchay story wouldn’t be worth a second thought if he weren’t leader of the Liberal Party and possibly Canada’s next prime minister.”

h/t Bourque

“You know what made me a partisan? The Liberals.” – Mike Duffy
h/t Bourque

And that’s why Liberals get their offices for free!

Take notice that Satgur Investments Ltd hereby terminates and forfeits the Lease date 1st day November, 2008, between Satgur Investments Ltd as Landlord, Dr Ruby Dhalla, in capacity as Member of Parliament as Tenant, by reason of contractual default in the Tenant’s leasehold improvement maintenance and repair requirements.
And further take notice that Satgur Investments Ltd reserves all rights to claim all rents remaining unpaid by the Tenant pursuant to the said Lease, and the rights to claim damages as compensation for its loss of benefits during the unexpired term of the said Lease.
Dated at Brampton, this 26th day of May 2009

The good old days when a Liberal could count on Public Works to pay the bills seem so long ago now…
Update – commentors point out, quite rightly, that this may not be a case of unpaid rent, but of those Filipino cleaning ladies falling down on the job….
Update 2 – Steve Janke indicates the matter has been “resolved”, in a post that is tellingly devoid of any explanation from Dhalla.

When I ran across this quote last evening in the comments, I cringed a little, assuming it came from some quasi-supremacist twit that the Liberals were attempting to link to the Conservatives…

“We created the country you live in. Never forget it.”

Turns out it’s just the same old “we’re Canadian and you’re not” Liberal campaign rhetoric. The more things change, eh western Canada?
Sounds funny, though, coming from the lips of an American.
Ignatieff translated;

When I was 17 I knocked on doors for Lester Pearson, even though he gave us a flag that looks like a “poor imitation of a Beer label”
In 1968 I campaigned for Pierre Trudeau. They I buggered off for 34 years.
Now I need your votes so you can have me stay in Canada. If I am not elected, I will go back to teach at Harvard. Hey it’s your loss.

Canada: not worth living in unless they’ll make you prime minister.

“If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to let me back”

h/t

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
May 11th – “Our Party has raised, and will continue to raise, the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka in the House of Commons. We will continue to demand action by the Canadian government to address the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka.”
May 23rd – “A suspicious overnight fire that gutted a Sri Lankan restaurant is evidence that the Tamil Tigers are “on the rampage in Toronto,” charged Sri Lanka’s consul general, who said the Sinhalese eatery had been previously targeted and harassed by Tiger flag-waving motorists.”
h/t Maz2

Monte Solberg is furious at his party;

Of course it was absolutely fair when the Liberals ran attack ads against Stephen Harper when he became the leader of the Conservative Party.
I mean it was clear at the time that a smart, ambitious resident of Canada like Harper could potentially be the prime minister, and therefore his past views could be relevant.
Apply the same brilliant logic to the case of Ignatieff and you instantly see that it is unfair to hold him to the same standards.
Unfair because who could ever have expected that a Canadian who lived in the U.S. for eons and spoke of the United States as his country could ever hope to be prime minister?

Oh, dear. Look what we started. “Dhalla faces new allegations from Ont. senior”

Villanueva says Dhalla called and asked her to retract her May 13th retraction. She refused. “They took advantage of my age. They thought I’m not going to fight back. I am fighting back.”

I’ll pay $10 for a photo of Ruby Dhalla with her hands wrapped around a granny’s throat.
Previous

Paul Wells revisits Ignatieff’s “pronoun problem”, saying in several paragraphs what I’ve been saying in a subject line over the past few months.

There’s been grumbling in Liberal ranks about what some call Ignatieff’s “pronoun problem” ever since he moved to Toronto in 2005. His pronoun problem is his tendency to use the first person plural — we, our — when discussing a country that isn’t Canada.

(Then again, I don’t get paid by the word).

Can you imagine somebody getting elected president of the United States whose 30-year stint outside the United States had ended less than three years earlier? Can you imagine a president of France who’d lived for 30 years in San Francisco or Seoul?

And even then, he pulls up just short of the finish line.
It’s not just that Ignatieff has lived more than 30 years out of Canada (though that alone should disqualify him), Mr. Wells. It’s that the only reason he’s back is to add another line to his resume. And therein lies Iggy’s real “pronoun problem”.
Canada – not worth living in unless they’ll make you Prime Minister.

From Ignatieff’s first scrum;

Question: So you take [Ruby Dhalla] at her word but not the nannies? You can’t have both.
Michael Ignatieff: Merci

Heh.

How do you say “Not worth living in unless they’ll make you Prime Minister” in Latin?

“I ain’t the heavy, it’s my brother…”

Facing new allegations she mistreated nannies, Dhalla, in a statement released to the Star through a lawyer, said she has “no knowledge of the details regarding the live-in caregivers for her family” and had “no involvement in the selection, interviewing, hiring, supervising, sponsoring or any financial transactions whatsoever with a live-in caregiver for my family.”
[…]
In the interview, Ruby Dhalla said nannies at the home work for her family, not her.
She said she spends four days a week in Ottawa. Gordo and Tongson said Dhalla arrived at the home every Thursday and left for Ottawa on Monday. They said she occupies the biggest suite in the four-bedroom house.
Dhalla said all queries should be directed to her brother.

(Youtube)
More – Ruby and the Slumdogs
WAIT! There’s more!

Bahrain has requested an Ethics Commissioner look into troubling allegations of slavery … developing….
Intensely and excruciatingly related: He’s no Tommy Wynette! – “Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff did not speak to reporters again Thursday and has not taken questions since the accusations surfaced.”
Repeat after me, tattered Liberals – Leadership!

Never get between a Liberal and his pork.

I bet you thought this made no sense at all when he said it, didn’t you?

He spoke directly to Stephen Harper, condemning him for failing to unite Canadians by setting province against province, group against group, region against region, individual against individual.

Now, watch this…

“Do you speak French?” inquired Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez. “Don’t you think someone who has responsibility such as yours should be bilingual?”
Toews — who speaks English and Spanish as well as his first language, German — was incensed. “I should feel free to be able to speak the official language of my choice and for you to even ask that question is an insult,” he raged.
But Jean-Claude D’Amours, another Liberal MP, pursued the matter. “It seems to me that when we talk about official languages and bilingualism in Canada, you should be a bilingual person to better be able to serve the people,” D’Amours said.

Make no mistake about one thing. This was a deliberate and cynical maneuver by Michael Ignatieff to stir up the unity file.
In a real world, with real grown up politics, the Canadian media would be camped outside Ignatieff’s office, demanding he explain what his MP’s are up to. But they won’t because they’re not real journalists, and haven’t been for a very long time.

Colour Charles Adler unimpressed with the “accidental tourist” leading the Liberal Party of Canada;

Let’s talk about the episode in recent history where you accuse the prime minister of not understanding Canada, an interesting statement coming from a man who spent ninety percent of his adult life outside Canada, which I suppose is why you blow that windy stuff around about how the Liberal party is representative of every part of Canadian society. When you were a child living in Canada, you might have been able to say that without drawing gales of laughter. I am not clashing with your long term memory. Like a lot of aging men, it’s still intact. It’s your short term memory that appears a little foggy and so I go back to your statement at the end of your speech where you are attempting to, as they say in the country that you know much better than Canada, and that would be the USA, as they say in the USA, in that final portion of your speech where you are trying to hit for the fences you accuse Stephen Harper of threatening a national unity crisis by proroguing Parliament. Since you claim to be a public intellectual I know you can handle my depositing of context in the public airing of your failed home run swing.

(Allow me to add – the reference to Saddam Hussein was nothing short of inspired!)
Heh – “Unfortunately these same reports very rudely pointed out that actually some 7,000 delegates were eligible to attend, proving that Michael Ignatieff-mania is going viral especially in the sense that the other 5,500 were apparently not feeling well enough to show up.”

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Only name on the ballot, May 2, 2009 – “Ignatieff won 97 per cent of the votes of the 2000-odd delegates at the party’s three-day convention. “
Only name on the ballot, Oct.16, 2002 – “Iraqi officials say President Saddam Hussein has won 100% backing in a referendum on whether he should rule for another seven years. “
h/t Phil