Harper: The new height of hypocrisy

[lenwick]

Harper: The new height of hypocrisy

editorial cartoons

By Dianne Rinehart

The Hamilton Spectator

More articles by this columnist

(Dec 24, 2005)

* The reason why the Conservative Party is unable to budge the polls may be quite simply found in the electorate's distrust of its leader

When politicians call an election that nobody wanted and that no one really expects will change things, it isn't too surprising that hypocrisy reigns supreme.

Still one comment this week made me howl with disbelief: Stephen Harper saying Canadians would not tolerate a "Liberal opposition" that would not co-operate with a Conservative minority government.

Hello? Like we wanted to tolerate a Conservative party that did not co-operate with a minority Liberal government? Like we wanted an election before the holidays? Like any of the opposing parties are running on anything other than a thirst for power?

Pl-e-e-ease! Nobody gave the electorate a choice, but the Conservatives surely had one. And that was to make Parliament work hard for Canadians -- not for the Tory party. Or Harper.

Call me naive but Harper's hypocrisy left me outraged.

Here is a man who cosied up to the Bloc Quebecois to bring down the government, but says a Conservative minority government would not join forces with the Bloc Quebecois to maintain power. "It's simply unworkable to work with a party that isn't committed to the fundamental institutional structures of the unity and the same basic kind of core values as other federalists," he told The Globe and Mail.

Interesting. Who else would he be joining forces with to maintain power in a minority House? Certainly not the NDP, whose natural coalition partners are the Liberals.

So how disingenuous of him is it to suggest he wouldn't be counting on Bloc votes for support?

And how would that coalition play in the rest of the country?

"Joining with the Bloc to defeat the government is one thing," notes political scientist and McMaster University professor Henry Jacek. "Holding power with the Bloc is another."

No wonder Harper is in denial. His ploys with the Bloc are already costing him votes in B.C., says Jacek.

And what would a Conservative-Bloc coalition achieve for Canada? Decentralization, notes Jacek, power to Quebec which the Conservatives would then have to offer the other provinces -- along with a share of the federal surplus. But it would never be enough for a sovereigntist party, he notes. To maintain power: "They're then going to have to keep offering the Bloc more."

Decentralization is putting it mildly. Harper offered Quebec it's own separate voice on world bodies, such as UNESCO, this week.

Think it doesn't matter that Canada's voice on the world stage might be weakened? Imagine, then, a world where Quebec representatives voice different views than their Canadian counterparts at human rights and economic conferences. For example, would Quebec , perhaps looking out for its own economic interests, have sided with Britain against former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney's insistence of a Commonwealth-wide economic boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era, a stand that helped defeat that former evil empire?

No, it's important that Canadians speak as one to the world.

How far is Harper willing to go to woo Quebec? How about his sinister suggestion that Prime Minister Paul Martin would rather see the Parti Quebecois win power in Quebec so the Liberals can stand up for Canada. Does a comment, as Jacek points out "totally lacking in credibility", help Canadian unity?

So why go there? He's desperate, says Jacek. "They started out with a game plan (daily policy announcements) and it didn't work. ... Now they're really unhinged and unfocused because they're so frustrated."

John Wright, a senior vice-president with the polling firm Ipsos-Reid, says Harper's negative affect on Conservative party fortunes is astonishing and suggests the Conservative's only electoral hope is to reinforce the notion that Harper could be reined in by Parliament in a minority government situation.

Dianne Rinehart is a former magazine editor and news correspondent in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Moscow.

[Canuck E Stan]

Lenwick,

Couldn't wait til after Christmas with the negative Harper campaign could you?

Ontario is slowly turning to Harper, and January 23 will tell the tale.

Desperate Liberals turn to negative,personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters.

It won't work this time.

Change to ineffective government is coming.

[shoop]

Wow. So it is the Conservative`s fault we are in the middle of a Xmas election???

That is right out of the Liberal`s talking points. No one from credible sources is touting this line.

No wonder this hack is stuck in Hamilton.

Still one comment this week made me howl with disbelief: Stephen Harper saying Canadians would not tolerate a "Liberal opposition" that would not co-operate with a Conservative minority government.

Hello? Like we wanted to tolerate a Conservative party that did not co-operate with a minority Liberal government? Like we wanted an election before the holidays? Like any of the opposing parties are running on anything other than a thirst for power?

Pl-e-e-ease! Nobody gave the electorate a choice, but the Conservatives surely had one. And that was to make Parliament work hard for Canadians -- not for the Tory party. Or Harper.

Call me naive but Harper's hypocrisy left me outraged.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[lovecanada]

So, Liberal guns are out already? Shameless piece of Liberal garbage. Maybe Dianne can go back to Moscow, she obviously doesn't like freedom of thinking!

[Rovik]

Hey, I'm no Liberal supporter but the columnists that support the Conservative party have also been doing the same to Paul Martin and his Liberals.

Even today Charles Adler of the Winnipeg Sun and Paul Jackson of the Calgary Sun (which is especially brutal) had columns out attacking Paul Martin and the Liberals.

Therefore, if you say that Dianne Rinehart's column is an example as what Canuck E Stan calls "Desperate Liberals turn to negative,personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters", someone else can turn around and say that Charles Adler and Paul Jackson's columns are an example of desperate Conservatives turing to negative, personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters.

It's a two-way street folks.

[shoop]

How about actually posting something objectionable from Adler and Jackson's columns instead of leaving it up to us to take your word for it?

Besides, Stan didn`t start a thread "Martin: The new height of hypocrisy" did he? Take a look at the title of this thread.

Therefore, if you say that Dianne Rinehart's column is an example as what Canuck E Stan calls "Desperate Liberals turn to negative,personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters", someone else can turn around and say that Charles Adler and Paul Jackson's columns are an example of desperate Conservatives turing to negative, personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters.

It's a two-way street folks.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Biblio Bibuli]

How about actually posting something objectionable from Adler and Jackson's columns instead of leaving it up to us to take your word for it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Here's a good one:

"Paul Martin taking on the mantle of Captain Canada? Give me a break. If he'd been hooked up to a lie detector on that one, Martin would have knocked out all the power on the eastern seaboard. The guy who refused to endorse the Clarity Act. The guy who made Bloc Quebecois founder Jean Lapierre his Quebec lieutenant. The guy who recruited separatists to run for him. Paul Martin, a defender of Canadian unity? Not quite.

My money's on Harper." - Warren Kinsella

Very safe bet, Warren.

And here's a great one:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/st...06-de6cc09bdf7e

Can we start thinking a majority? I certainly think so.

[Rovik]

How about actually posting something objectionable from Adler and Jackson's columns instead of leaving it up to us to take your word for it?

I didn't because these are fairly big columns and I didn't want put it on here because of the size. But because you requested, I shall post Paul Jackson's column's from the Calgary Sun dated December 24, 2005 named "Forces Deserted"

"Forces deserted

Neglect and political games have taken toll on military

By PAUL JACKSON

Shipping tycoon Paul Martin slashed our country's defence budget 25% and chopped the number of our men and women in military uniform by the same percentage.

Now, the man who also razed CFB Calgary to the ground wonders why an American submarine could apparently sweep through Canadian territorial waters in the Arctic without asking his permission.

There's a big shout that Washington and the nuclear-powered attack submarine the USS Charlotte have breached Canadian sovereignty.

Well, the legitimacy of our sovereignty in the high Arctic has been under question for some time, and, as the adage goes, if a country doesn't defend its sovereignty, it loses it.

Way back when Brian Mulroney was our prime minister, his defence minister Perrin Beatty urged we build a fleet of nuclear attack submarines to defend both our coastal areas and assert our sovereignty in the North.

Back then, the Soviet Union was still an aggressive world power, and Beatty, a good friend of mine going back years, felt we simply had to put up a show of force against both the Soviets, who had a huge submarine fleet, and not let our claim to northern sovereignty be nibbled away.

Mulroney felt the same, which is why, while seriously pondering Beatty's request for nuclear subs, he also ordered a batch of topnotch EH-101 search and rescue helicopters.

The EH-101s were the envy of the world, but after Jean Chretien became prime minister in 1993, out of pure spite he scrapped the helicopter contract and forced Canadian taxpayers to cough up $500 million in cancellation fees.

That $500 million was money that was stripped out of an already perilous inadequate defence budget.

Martin's gutting of the overall defence budget, and of CFB Calgary, came at a time when the spectre of Islamic world terrorism was already on the horizon.

American embassies and other facilities had been attacked overseas -- with a frightening loss of life -- and in 1993 came the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Yet the Chretien/Martin duo's response was to cut back our defence budget to a point that within the NATO ranks only the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg spends less of its GNP on defence than does Canada.

On the day Chretien and Martin sabotaged CFB Calgary, I toured the regimental bases and spoke with our men and women in uniform, their husbands, wives and children, and still recall the shock they were in.

For CFB Calgary wasn't shut for budgetary -- and least of all military -- reasons, but to be relocated in Edmonton to prop up Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan's sagging popularity.

Yes, the men, women and children were herded to Edmonton at a cost estimated at $1 billion so McLellan could boast about bringing new activity to her city -- and damn Calgary.

That's $1 billion that could have been spent on new armaments -- but as AdScam showed, when it comes to boosting Liberal party fortunes anything goes.

That Calgary's Marda Loop area was economically devastated by the loss of CFB Calgary meant nothing to the Grit power brokers. Or that we lost some of the most famous regiments in our Armed Forces.

As I recall, not a single Liberal in our city stood up in defence of CFB Calgary and the men and women in it, and our mayor at the time, Al Duerr, simply regarded it as a fait accompli.

Duerr, who was then being touted as a potential high-profile Liberal candidate with a guaranteed cabinet seat, kept his mouth shut.

The rusting out of our military clout -- what little we have of it -- has continued unabated under Martin's term as PM, just as under Chretien's term

Even the recent promise of $12.8 billion for the military is spread over five years and just $1.1 billion is earmarked for the first two years.

The "rehabilitation" process won't even get started until 2008-'09.

Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence, warns our defence spending as a percentage of GNP since 1990-'91 has fallen by a disastrous 63%. and the defence budget of $14 billion in 2005-06 should be at least double that.

Not with the self-serving Martin at the helm.

To me, any Calgarian -- any Albertan -- who votes for this pack of rascals and rogues should be charged with treason."

Imagine telling people to vote a certain way or otherwise they should be charged with Treason.

[newbie]

Imagine telling people to vote a certain way or otherwise they should be charged with Treason.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think that's a right wing maneuver. Bush advocates brand those who don't agree with the president as treasonous.

[I Miss Trudeau]

Harper: The new height of hypocrisy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Telling that all of the responses complain about negative campaigning, but don't bother to dispute the central truth:

Harper continues to claim that it would be unacceptable for anyone else to do what he has done for the last year.

[lenwick]

Lenwick,

Couldn't wait til after Christmas with the negative Harper campaign could you?

Ontario is slowly turning to  Harper, and January 23 will tell the tale.

Desperate Liberals turn to negative,personal attacks when they have nothing substantial to offer the voters.

It won't work this time.

Change to  ineffective government is coming.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What part dont you understand

Still one comment this week made me howl with disbelief: Stephen Harper saying Canadians would not tolerate a "Liberal opposition" that would not co-operate with a Conservative minority government.

Hello? Like we wanted to tolerate a Conservative party that did not co-operate with a minority Liberal government? Like we wanted an election before the holidays? Like any of the opposing parties are running on anything other than a thirst for power?

[PocketRocket]

Like this is anything different than what we have seen before, and will see repeatedly again???

Liberal pundits will continue to trash Conservatives, and Conservative pundits will trash Liberals, every time there is an election to be held, and, for that matter, at most times between elections.

It's what they are paid to do.

It's their stock in trade.

It's their job.

Their livelyhood.

Therefore should be taken with a grain of salt.

Can it be any clearer than that???

[wellandboy]

Like I stated the other day, speaking of hypocrisy, the day Paul Martin and the Liberal Party of Canada write a cheque to the Government of Canada for the money they stole from the Canadian people, they have no credibility, whatsoever.

Politics is one thing but the grand denial of the thievery on their watch is beyond belief.

Where's the money Paul???

[Argus]

Harper: The new height of hypocrisy

Welcome back, Maplesyrup. We'll see how long this incarnation lasts.

As for the height of hyporcisy. I don't think anything could beat Paul Martin's claim that nobody who fails to support same sex marraige had any business running for prime minister. Then defending the fact many of his party's candidates don't believe in same sex marriage.

This on top of the fact he refused to support same sex marriage himself as recently as the last election.

[shoop]

True, but you are missing a key point.

Rinehart is not a *pundit*. Nothing in her bio states a present, or past, affiliation with the Liberal Party of Canada.

Theoretically a member of the *objective* corps of journalists.

Like this is anything different than what we have seen before, and will see repeatedly again???

Liberal pundits will continue to trash Conservatives, and Conservative pundits will trash Liberals, every time there is an election to be held, and, for that matter, at most times between elections.

It's what they are paid to do.

It's their stock in trade.

It's their job.

Their livelyhood.

Therefore should be taken with a grain of salt.

Can it be any clearer than that???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[The Honest Politician]

Welcome back, Maplesyrup. We'll see how long this incarnation lasts.

As for the height of hyporcisy. I don't think anything could beat Paul Martin's claim that nobody who fails to support same sex marraige had any business running for prime minister. Then defending the fact many of his party's candidates don't believe in same sex marriage.

This on top of the fact he refused to support same sex marriage himself as recently as the last election.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do believe Martin said nobody who refuses to support the charter should be running for Prime Minister. SSM is only a right given under a part of the charter.

With all the stupid crap these guys say on their own, there is no excuse for twisting their words. Be it Harper or Martin or Layton.

[Montgomery Burns]

How about actually posting something objectionable from Adler and Jackson's columns instead of leaving it up to us to take your word for it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Here's a good one:

"Paul Martin taking on the mantle of Captain Canada? Give me a break. If he'd been hooked up to a lie detector on that one, Martin would have knocked out all the power on the eastern seaboard. The guy who refused to endorse the Clarity Act. The guy who made Bloc Quebecois founder Jean Lapierre his Quebec lieutenant. The guy who recruited separatists to run for him. Paul Martin, a defender of Canadian unity? Not quite.

My money's on Harper." - Warren Kinsella

Very safe bet, Warren.

And here's a great one:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/st...06-de6cc09bdf7e

Can we start thinking a majority? I certainly think so.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Waaaa? Warren Kinsella is now a conservative? And here I thought that he was a former special assistant to Jean Chretien...

As for Dianne Rinehart, she is quite popular at progressivebloggers.ca. Nuff said!