Who will cross the finish line first? While a Justin Trudeau cakewalk in the Liberal leadership race doesn’t seem quite as inevitable as it did two weeks ago, most pundits still regard his win as inevitable. However, while discussing the relative strengths of the Coyne and Takach campaigns over drinks
Continue readingTag: Marc Garneau
BigCityLib Strikes Back: Trudeau and Garneau On Guns
I have been pondering the recent policy reverals on the long-gun registry from LPoC leadership candidates Justin Trudeau and, now, Marc Garneau. I actually don’t find Justin’s response that hard to parse: if there was a registry left to defend, he would defend it, but now that its gone resurrecting
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Bring on the Astronaut Puns
The moment headline writers have been waiting for all summer has finally arrived, with Marc Garneau set to formally launch his Liberal leadership candidacy this week. Despite having a lengthy string of post-nominal letters after his name, and the most impressive CV of any Member of Parliament, Garneau enters this leadership race as a heavy underdog. Ironically, the astronaut simply lacks the star power to compete with Justin Trudeau. Despite being a genuine Canadian hero and an experienced parliamentarian, Garneau … →
Continue readingThe Equivocator: Joyce Murray Will Be A Formidable Liberal Leadership Candidate
The cutoff date for candidates to enter the Federal Liberal Leadership race is in mid-November. So far, only 2 candidates are officially in the race (Justin Trudeau and Deborah Coyne.) The media coverage has been almost completely about Trudeau since he announced on October 2nd. The Liberal Party needs a
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Time To Return Those “Dalton4Leader” T-Shirts
I can’t imagine anyone seriously thought he would run, but Dalton McGuinty has made it official that he will not be entering the Federal Liberal Leadership Race. While the race will not officially kick off for another 3 weeks, with each passing day it becomes more and more clear that
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Justin Scores A Point
…in my book anyway: On the issue now dominating B.C. politics, Mr. Trudeau said he did not support the proposed $6-billion Northern Gateway project to pipe Alberta oil-sands bitumen to the B.C. coast for shipment to Asia.By the way, WK says: A narrative is forming: Trudeau’s young and vital, but
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Rise Teenage Jesus…Or Fall!
WK says Justin Trudeau is going to run! Great news? Potentially. If the guy can perform long-term. But Justin’s fucked a few things up in his time as MP, in ways that have made folks (me included) question his maturity and readiness. I won’t get into specifics, but history may
Continue readingCalgary Grit: After Sleepy Summer, Liberal Leadership Race Should Heat Up
Bob Rae’s fateful decision to sit out the Liberal Leadership Race was expected to sound the starting pistol for a busy summer of campaigning from a crowded field of candidates. I don’t want to discount the dozens of Liberals who have spent August feeling the effects of Merner-mania, but it’s
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics blog: ndp and liberals searching for a pulse on the prairies.
Tweet You can be forgiven if you missed it. Hundreds of Liberals from across Alberta gathered in Edmonton last weekend for the biennial meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta. Bob Rae Speakers and guests at the weekend conference included interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, Scarborough-Agincourt MP Jim
Continue readingIn defence of 14-year-old girls
So it was that MP Charlie Angus, the NDP’s self-appointed guardian of civility, has declared that Twitter has “turned us all into 14-year-olds in a cafeteria” where “[e]verybody gets to be a Grade 9 girl.” Yesterday’s context, of course, was Patrick Brazeau’s calling reporter Jen Ditchburn a “bitch” because she
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: May Another Man Win
The Libs have decided to let Bob Rae run for the LPoC leadership. Which is OK by me because I basically think he’s served the party well, is not some kind of 5th columnist and etc., and really ought to be treated fairly and with respect. I also don’t think
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joan Bryden reports on the Cons’ latest abuses of majority government power, this time in allocating and shuffling around the few opposition days already available in Parliament for their own purposes. But it’s worth noting the difference between the responses of the affected
Continue readingCalgary Grit: An update on all the people MAYBE running for Liberal leadership
The expectation is that rules for the Liberal leadership race will come down in June, setting the stage for a summer of getting to know the men and women wanting to lead Canada’s third party. But while we won’t know the rules of the race for another month or two,
Continue readingCalgary Grit: The Race for Third
Back in February I asked readers of this blog who they thought would run for Liberal leader, and who they’d consider voting for. Admittedly, this is as far from a scientific poll as you’ll ever get, and I won’t pretend that the 500+ voters in this straw poll are all
Continue readingThe Equivocator: Vigilantes and Mercenaries: The Harper Government and the Abdication of Responsibility
With the revelation that Minister Peter MacKay failed to ask many of the obvious/necessary questions when working on the F-35 procurement, the subject of basic ministerial/government responsibility has been weighing heavily on my mind as of late. When I listen to/discuss politics with my friends who are more libertarian-leaning conservatives,
Continue readingNEW MEDIA AND POLITICS CANADA: More Hash April 11, 2012
So the real costs of the F-35 program continues to make news, while from the opposition we hear calls for the resignation and/or firing of the Defense Minister who is described by Liberal House leader Marc Garneau as being, “…either incompetent or not too bright!” I don’t see why it’s
Continue readingNEW MEDIA AND POLITICS CANADA: More Hash April 11, 2012
So the real costs of the F-35 program continues to make news, while from the opposition we hear calls for the resignation and/or firing of the Defense Minister who is described by Liberal House leader Marc Garneau as being, “…either incompetent or not too bright!” I don’t see why it’s an either/or situation. It could be both. I’ll admit it also could be neither. Perhaps the Minister simply lied. Those numbers are pretty much the same as the ones the PBO announced them back in March of 2012.
So where are the media at currently on the issue of the over-priced F-35 First Strike Fighter Jets replacing the soon to be mothballed CF-18’s? Well, over at Canada’s National Newspaper, J.L. Granastein makes a really poor argument that these jets aren’t just shiny new toys for the military by… talking about all the neat gadgets we get if we buy the F-35:
We might be involved in coalition air operations, and the F-35 could fill that role, both as a strike aircraft and as an interceptor. Its stealth technology – and a host of additional high-tech wonders – make it potentially the best fighter available anywhere for the next quarter-century, and that explains why so many countries want to purchase it.
There’s a lot wrong with his argument for procurement of these first strike weapons, number one of which is (aside from spending exorbitant amounts of Canadian taxpayers money) the idea of always being at the ready to join the Americans in bringing war and destruction to the Middle-East instead of doing something useful like say, peace-keeping. Also the Canadian press is doing its standard crappy job of informing Canadians about the Tory wish list of other toys for the military over the next 6 years. That’s gonna’ cost upwards of $115 Billion. Health care anyone?
Vroooom Baby, Vroooom!
So yesterday I’m having sport at the Tories expense about their lack of a jobs for youths strategy, which they’ve gone and made worse during the current economic downturn by cutting funding for Katimavik. So I open the morning’s local fish-wrap and behold the Conservatives are announcing $27 million dollars worth of spending on… yeah, a youth jobs program. Well good, I think to myself. It’s something anyhow. Right? Wrong!
The $26.7-million, a mix of previously committed and new money, is earmarked for eight projects. The biggest beneficiary is the YMCA of Greater Toronto, awarded 90 per cent of the money. Nearly $9-million of this will be used over the next three fiscal years to bankroll and administer the Y’s youth exchanges program.
So most of this money (90 %) is going to be spent in Toronto. Students looking for a leg up in finding a job in other parts of Canada are on their own.Canada’s Tories are nothing if not short-sighted.
Speaking of which, guess what government department is getting hit hardest by Harper’s budget cuts: …the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Agriculture Canada will be among the hardest-hit departments as Ottawa rolls out where it will cut 19,200 jobs across the country. What could go wrong with that?
David Suzuki writes about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, its importance to our Canadian identity and the legislative changes made by the governing Tories that will have serious repercussions for the health of marine environments in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. (i.e. ‘…gutting the Fisheries Act by stripping down habitat protection provisions, and it plans to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in a way that would make it easier for mining and oil companies, for example, to jump through regulatory hoops and get projects up and running faster than the time required to evaluate all their impacts on nature.’)
And wrapping this up this wee post, here in Quebec, students are holding rolling protests today in their latest salvo against planned tuition hikes. They hope to finish the day having held 12 different demonstrations in various parts of Montreal. I wonder who blinks first, the premier or the students?
Cheers!
Continue readingNEW MEDIA AND POLITICS CANADA: More Hash April 11, 2012
So the real costs of the F-35 program continues to make news, while from the opposition we hear calls for the resignation and/or firing of the Defense Minister who is described by Liberal House leader Marc Garneau as being, “…either incompetent or not too bright!” I don’t see why it’s
Continue reading