Category: Canada

E minus 5 days and counting.

Hang in there. Just five more days. Must… keep… brain from… falling… out…

The scramble for votes in London North Centre is starting to look like a game of full-contact musical chairs. Even high school kids aren’t immune, it seems. Say what you want about the Canadian Action Party’s Will Arlow, but he sure seems to know how to talk to kids:

Another cynical note was struck by Will Arlow of the Canadian Action Party, who advised his listeners “Politicians lie their faces off to get elected.” He urged students to press into service their “bullshit detectors” when measuring promises.

-Willy to an audience of about 700 students at Catholic Central high school

Nice going, Willy; real classy. Even a trashmouth like me at least tries to watch his language around kids. About those detectors, Willy: I think you already fried ’em. 🙄

The great Talker To Americans, Rick Mercer, popped up — fully clothed, thank God — to “endorse” Tory Dianne Haskett on his blog. Hey, Rick; a little hint for ya: you’re only the kiss of death when you actually endorse somebody. But nice try, anyway. 😉

Green leader/candidate Liz May-or-may-not, on the other hand, took a break from the campaign to appoint Adriane Carr and Claude William Genest as deputy leaders to her party. At least she wasn’t banging on my door.

In an interesting bit of turnabout-is-fair-play, the Haskett crew has fired one across Pearson’s bow over his silence on just who he thinks should lead the Librano$ into their next electoral defeat. Kind of odd, considering:

“Why is Pearson afraid to share his leadership choice with the people of London?” taunts a news release issued yesterday by the Haskett campaign. Pearson’s sudden vow of silence is rather odd, however, given that earlier in the campaign, he readily acknowledged his candidate was Stephane Dion.

The televised all-candidates debate at the London City Press Club (broadcast on Rogers) somehow evolved into one hell of a game of Go Fish:

Conservative Dianne Haskett played the tough-on-crime card, Liberal Glen Pearson the we-can-make-Canadians-proud-again card, Green Party leader Elizabeth May the make-history-with-me card and New Democrat Megan Walker the we-can-stand-up-to-Stephen-Harper card.

Fringe candidates Will Arlow of the Canadian Action Party, Steve Hunter of the Progressive Canadian Party and independent Robert Ede played the we-deserve-a- chance card, arguing all major parties are doing a poor job.

And when the hell did Stronach become a brunette, anyway? 😕

The Freeps
Debate draws best cards
CCH students get their fill of political baloney
New-look Belinda boosts Pearson
Campaign notebook

Catholic World News
cat got your tongue?

E minus 6 days and counting.

The election machine grinds along in London North Centre and Repentigny. After what seems a long and distinguished absence from the Repentigny race, BQ leader has finally popped out of his hole. Legend has it that, if he sees his shadow, we will have six more years of grumblymooching before the next referendum.

Back in London, Freeps columnist Rory the Tory Leishman sounded off today with 7 damned good reasons why Haskett isn’t just the best choice in the riding; if you think about it, she’s the only choice in the riding. Meanwhile, Haskett herself stuck a pin in the “she’s a religious fanatic” baloon by being the only one of seven candidates to decline to answer a series of morality-based questions from the Christian group Citizen Impact London. As Jack Baribeau, president of Citizen Impact, put it:

Baribeau said he engaged in “a little bit of arm-twisting,” but it did no good.

“Dianne has never done things in an orthodox way . . . I had to respect her approach.”

So much for the canard of Haskett being some sort of blindly obedient zealot. 🙄

The Librano$’ Barbie Girl also slid through town, stopping long enough to stump for Grit Glen Pearson, but couldn’t even seem to impress the hopeless Lefties of Richmond Row:

“So they come in here and the photographers climb on chairs. Whoop-de-doo. I’ve got friends who support the Green Party, so if I did vote, I’d probably vote Green anyway.”

She also served as one helluva handy reminder of just who it is that really is the candidate to beat in this race:

Stronach didn’t dodge any questions, using most as a launching pad to attack the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Time for the links:

The Ministry of What You Should Think
Duceppe defends priest candidate in Repentigny byelection

The Freeps
Haskett only choice in London byelection
Haskett refuses group’s queries
Stronach stumps on behalf of Glen Pearson

No, I’m not talking about Iraq, or even Americans in general. Stuff that.

What I am talking about is that the House of Commons has voted unanimously in favour granting a full state funeral to the last surviving veteran of the Great War. This has been a while in the making, but definitely worth it. I don’t have time to go too deep into this yet, so here’s just a few links:

MPs support state funeral for last surviving WWI veteran

State funeral for last war vet wins approval

Petitioners Win

House approves state funeral for last WWI vet

Damned good news, no matter how you slice it. More will come later in the day.

E minus 7 days and counting.

Well, this makes for an interesting, if hardly surprising, turn in the London North Centre race: it seems that longtime NDP bedbuddy, the CAW, won’t be getting in line behind Dipper Megan Walker after all. Yup, the biggest union in the city is hopping on the Librano$’ Glen Pearson’s bandwagon. This really shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise to anybody though, considering that it’s been obvious for a while that the unions, one by one, are writing off Smirkin’ Jack! and Co. as a lost cause.

Two reasons can be speculated for this: 1) the Dippers, while they may have their roots in down-to-earth types such as Joe Lunchbox and Farmer Bob, have been abandoning that base for years as they shift more and more to the elitist Looney Left and 2) unions have jumped on the “Anybody But Harper” boogeyman bandwagon and have come to the conclusion that Grits have a better chance of winning than Dippers and have chosen to go with a “strategic voting” strategy accordingly.

Isn’t it interesting, though, that in spite of all the hairballs hacked up by the MSM about Haskett being “too far to the Right” to win, every other campaign seems to be targeting her like she’s the candidate to beat (which she is, of course 😉 )…

Meanwhile, in Repentigny, Raymond Gravel seems to have gotten the hang of politics; he’s learned how to waffle.

Read more in the links du jour:

The Freeps
Blog furor drags byelection battle into gutter
CAW local plans to back Pearson
Still chance to sway voters
Campaign notebook

Canada.com
Bloc candidate vows to abstain on issues contrary to Catholic ideology

Opinions have been flying fast and thick lately over HMPM Stephen Harper’s decision to take a harder line with the communist Chinese regime’s human rights record than previous Liberal governments have. For those of you that have been in a cave and haven’t heard yet, the PM has declared that he will pursue a policy of “constructive engagement” with China, rather than the fawning appeasement displayed by previous governments. Lefties in the MSM, naturally, are flummoxed. Some of the more honest, however, are willing to suck it up and say otherwise.

Harper said that, while trade with China may be important, Canadians have values and a fundamental, deep-rooted sense of right and wrong and ” they don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.” Previous HypoGrit governments have insisted that trade with China is somehow vital to our economy but as one of my favourite loudmouths, Ezra Levant, put it in his Calgary Sun column today:

If the idea was that being China’s moral apologist would help Canadian businessmen sell to China, that idea failed.

China-Canada trade has increased during the past decade, but it has been China selling their goods to us, not the other way around. Canada buys about triple from China what they buy from us. And what China covets most is our energy and other natural resources — global commodities Canada would sell on the world market.

Silence about Chinese fascism has not made Canada rich from China — though both Paul Martin’s sons’ business, Canada Steamship Lines, and Jean Chretien’s son-in-law’s business, Power Corp., have thrived there.

How very convenient. China’s economy grows, the balance of trade shifts away from our favour, but at least 2 former PMs’ kin get filthy rich in the deal. Nice. So, will a sour relationship with China hurt our economy? Not a chance.

We run a massive trade deficit with China. The fact of the matter is that neglecting human rights hasn’t opened a lot of doors either. So obviously, we don’t think you get anywhere by shortchanging your values.

– Prime Minister Stephen Harper

In the short run, it could be a bother because we’ve gotten used to cheap Chinese goods. In the long run, however, it is China that would be on the short end of the stick in any trade fracas. The name of the game is “raw materials and natural resources: we have ’em and they need ’em; it’s just a question of price.” While cheap manufacturing jobs can easily pack up and move to a democratic India and not end up costing much more than they do now, natural resources have a bothersome habit of staying put. And we aren’t going to run out of people to sell our oil to anytime soon.

China has a long history of ignoring our interests, our principles and even our sovereignty. Harper has decided that he isn’t going to sit still for that kind of crap. The Prime Minister’s decision to stand up to this Asian bully has returned us to our rightful place on the world stage as a nation that holds true to its beliefs and is cause for us to take pride, not to be second guessing.

China’s president, Hu Jintao, had requested to meet with Harper at the conference. But Hu refused to allow Harper to raise specific issues, demanding the meeting be “strategic” only — abstract generalities and pleasantries, precisely the kind of thing at which Chretien and Martin excelled.

Avoiding specific issues meant China would never have to answer for specific actions, ranging from detaining a Canadian citizen in a Chinese jail, to violating Canadian trademarks and other intellectual property, as China so brazenly does, such as with their “Redberry” rip-off of Canada’s BlackBerry.

When Harper’s diplomats pressed for a meeting about substantive matters, the Chinese reneged.

Had it been Chretien or Martin who were snubbed, they’d have panicked and gone into appeasement mode.

They probably would have groveled, promised not to raise prickly issues, and perhaps even raised Canada’s absurd annual gift of $65 million a year to China in foreign aid, the largest amount we give to any country.

Harper dug in. Then an amazing thing happened. After Harper’s statement on human rights, his declaration of his plans to speak openly about China, Beijing called Ottawa, and asked for the meeting again. They blinked. There are a few lessons here.

Indeed there are.

E minus 8 days and counting.

Moving into the home stretch now, ladies and gents. With the byelections in London North Centre and Repentigny barely more than a week away now, we can finally start to think that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and not worry so much that it might just be the lamp on an oncoming choochoo.

And now, on to the links:

Da Freeps
Down the stretch they come

CTV
London, Ont. an important political test market

Ottawa Citizen
Front-runners in Ont. byelection fight for left-wing votes