05.10.2011 07:54 AM

In today’s Sun: Rae day

Now, neither left nor right, the once-great Grits are at a crossroads. Lots of big decisions loom. One of them: With Ignatieff now back to academe, who will replace him, short or long-term?

For an interim leader, the job description is pretty straightforward: Bilingual, to keep the Libs relevant in Quebec (for the inevitable NDP caucus stumbles). Good on their feet in the House (which is where all the action will be for the next four years). And will focus on keeping the Liberal brand alive (because the brand still has value — and, in fact, Liberals still govern in our three largest provinces).

Rae carries steamer trunks of baggage from his time as Ontario’s NDP premier. Tory strategists would be giddy to have him in their sights in the next election.

But if Rae promises, in blood, to be only an interim leader, and not run for the top job when the leadership race commences? Then he’d be fine.

69 Comments

  1. Dr.J says:

    Read what you wrote in the SUN about Rae and to say that he has “steamer trunks of baggage” is frankly a little light. The real question will be is he going to sign on for the agreement not to run for fulltime leader? I still think Scot Brison is the right guy for the job..he isn’t part of the Toronto Liberals plus he heads up the Liberal Atlantic Caucus where the Libs got mostly all of their seats…why would the Libs want a Toronto leader again,especially Rae is beyond me? Saying all of that it should be interesting to watch in the following days. One question though and maybe someone can answer it for me – Why can upper management of the Liberal party veto the caucus decision for short term leader? That doesn’t sound fair to me, it sounds like the old boys club trying to control things once again.

    • Ted says:

      They are taking it to the caucus tomorrow for the caucus to decide. What are you referring to when you say “veto the caucus decision”?

    • Talking about baggage, on CBC’s Power & Politics former Liberal Minister of Finance and deputy prime minister John Manley just said as plain as day that he wants to see Canadians pay for their healthcare bills directly.

      Ok, most folks watching won’t consider what he said as being “plain as day” and sure, he used code language – paraphrased “I never want to see Canadians denied health care who can’t afford it” which followed a comment on catastrophic illness.

      But what he really means is no more medicare premiums paid by government or business or even individuals – direct billing of health care costs to Canadians (or their own personal insurance companies).

      As chair of the Council of Canadian Business, this would be a boon for his friends in high (or low) places. Insurance agents, roaming our streets. Canadian streets. This horror film coming to a Canada near you.

  2. Pedro says:

    Yeah, that’d be a great leader in the Liberal tradition.
    A gelding leader.

  3. Paul R Martin says:

    Are there any MP’s from Quebec who would be interested in being the interim leader? As a person who remembers Rae’s days as Premier, I do not like him at all. He would turn off a lot of Ontario voters.

  4. Patrick Hamilton says:

    If youre talking about the BC Liberals, Mr Kinsella, a gentle reminder that the BC Liberals are a Liberal party really in name only….they are a coalition of Fed Liberals, Provincial Liberals, Federal Conservatives, old Social Crediters, and just about anybody else who opposes the NDP…..While it is true that the current Premiere is a Federal Liberal, the party still is a somewhat loosely bound coalition of strange bedfellows(the recent re-emergence of the provincial Conservative party is an indication of this)

    • james curran says:

      I’m pretty sure the Premier of BC is a Liberal.

      • The Doctor says:

        Christy Clark is a populist, first and foremost. That cancellation of parking fees in provincial parks, that’s pure Christy Clark.

        • Patrick Hamilton says:

          Beg to differ: Yes she did cancel parking fees, but she is also partly to blame for the defunding of BC’s provincial parks…

          http://www.straight.com/article-378370/vancouver/rob-fleming-bc-liberal-cuts-nothing-celebrate-bc-parks-centenary

          I happen to like Christy Clark but she is not above being a little to the right of Atilla the Hun when it comes to cost cutting….

        • allegra fortissima says:

          I don’t give a damn whether Christy Clark is a so called “populist” or not. All I know is that she has done a great job so far, parking fees in provincial parks included. It’s a hell of a job to clean up the mess her predecessor left behind. I hope BC Ferries will be next on her agenda – this time don’t take a broom, but a rake, Ms. Clark!

          • Patrick Hamilton says:

            I have no complaints currently with Ms. Clark either, I was only indicating that she can (and will) wield a hatchet with the best of them……….and as the article states, she was there when provincial parks were defunded…….hopefully she has seen the error of her ways.
            Parks in my book are as necessary as schools and hospitals, and they should not have been defunded to the extent they were.
            Toilet paper notwithstanding, when structures in parks are failing, and there arent enough rangers to patrol parks properly, they need to start increasing funding, imho…….

      • Patrick Hamilton says:

        yes, my above post stated that…..

  5. Lance says:

    But if Rae promises, in blood, to be only an interim leader……

    Why would he bother with that kind of caveat?

    • If Rae knows he’s never going to be leader but has a shot at being a cabmin sometime, then he certainly could do it out of service. It’d be more challenging and fun than being just another back bench MP in the third party of Parliament tucked off way in the corner.

      Rae doesn’t scare British Columbians, probably doesn’t scare anyone but Ontarioans and likely would appeal much more to Quebeckers than Goodale would.

      If I have to listen to Rae or Goodale for the next 12 – 24 months I’d much rather listen to Rae. He’s much more adept at making an issue sound interesting and can do it in both languages.

      Rae gets a chance at directly helping to safe a political party; lots of face time; earns a cabinet position in the unlikely event Liberals get back to power before he wants to retire; and gets to have fun and potentially repair his name some in front of Ontarioans in the process. Seems like a good deal for him and for Liberals. In B.C. and Quebec, and probably Atlantic Canada too, Rae could be helpful in pulling soft NDP support to the Liberals or at least setting the stage for that. Goodale? Not so much.

  6. VH says:

    You too? Geez Louise.

    Warren, the *easy* Reformatory strategy would be to engineer another parliamentary crisis in 18 months by writing legislation that’s more and more outrageous until something pops. Either Rae and the Libs would stand by silent and look like weenies, which would be great for the Reformatories in destroying any remaining Lib credibility on issues with specific groups like 905 immigrants OR they’d finally pipe up and say something. At which point Harper & co would then force the LPC to go to the polls prematurely with Rae as the leader.

    If Rae’s the leader during an election, this would put the final nail in the coffin. I must be mistaking you for the fella who said he wanted to rebuild a once great thing into something great again.

    • JamesF says:

      ??

      The Harper Part has a majority. To engineer another parliamentary crisis in 18 months by writing legislation would mean that the legislation was so odious that you get 20ish defections from your own party + a united opposition… I fail to see why the Tories would adapt a strategy that involves having their own members abandoning them. Seriously legislation that bad would probably cause the Conservatives to lose everything but Alberta and rural Sask/BC Ridings.

    • Uh, no.

      Apparently you haven’t fully grasped what “majority” means to parliament and to Harper.

      If Harper were to try to engineer his own defeat by putting forward something so outrageous as to precipitate an election, it would have to be so outrageous that not only would the Liberals and Official Opposition – the NDP – have to vote against it but Conservatives would have to vote against the measure of confidence as well.

      The only way an early election is going to be called is if Harper breaks his own fixed-date election law, again, which will be much harder if not impossible to justify than it was with a minority parliament in place, and much harder to sell in an election to the people of Canada.

      • VH says:

        *sigh*

        “Harder if not possible to justify” is not the same as impossible, especially if the rewards for the Cons are the permanent destruction of the Liberal party.

        These opportunities come but once every 145 years or so…can’t anybody here play this game?

        • That game is the one my sons used to play when they were much younger. It was called the “what-if?” game, and goes like this:

          “what if we kept on driving west, could we get to Japan?”
          (you can’t, there is an ocean – a really big ocean – in the way)
          “but what if we had balloon tires and could drive under water?”
          (balloon tires would probably make us float, and car engines need oxygen to run and so do we!)
          “but what if we had a pedal-car?”
          (we’d get tired going all the way to Japan, wouldn’t we?)
          “but what if we slept at night and kept pedaling?”
          … etc.

          What-if is a fun game for a 5 year old and can be fun for the adults involved if the premise is outlandish enough to be funny, yet in the end you know the game gets to no solid conclusion. What-if just gets wilder and wilder.

          That’s where you are headed and thus my response.

          Sure, Harper could call an election and break his own law, again, but the situation has changed since he last did this – he has a majority. People expect him to use it or shut up.

          More to the point, the premise of your concern is based on an assumption that the Liberal Party of Canada would even matter if an early snap election is called. At present there is no reason to make that assumption, is there? Putting Rae in as interim leader of the *third party* is hardly a reason for Harper to head to the polls early, is it?

          Nope.

          • VH says:

            Uh Michael, sometimes the problem with people being this utterly condescending is the haste at which assumptions are made. “the game” refers not to “what-ifs” but Game Theory as it applies to politics. If you weren’t in such a haste to be condescending you might have recognized the reference to a famous Casey Stengel quote.

            In this game Harper’s wanted to kill the LPC for a while and create a two-party dynamic and if you know that your opponent has an objective that would be disastrous for you, there’s no reason to give them an opportunity to enact on it and give them the power over you…it’s an unnecessary risk. Putting Rae in charge does that. I can think of plenty scenarios and dynamics in which a short election can be justified. Your lack of creativity in that regard or insufficient depth of cynicism of and respect for your opponent does not alter the level of unnecessary risk.

  7. Bill M. says:

    No thanks. Rae is not the face for the LPC even on an interim basis. The dude is poison to a key electorate and they don’t need any reminders.

    I’d put Ralph Goodale as interim leader.

    And the go about having a true grass roots policy convention that solicits ideas from the ground up. As it stands now, the party is beholden to nobody and has a chance to make a difference.

    As an LPC supporter in Quebec, the truly bad things I took from last week is that we still have people like Rae and Coderre who are not known for their collegiality. Those elements have to be neutered.

    Jack the juggler is already going to have start explaining to his minority non Quebec MP’s his stance on this.

    A little-noticed private member’s bill that died a quiet death when the federal election was called has found new life as the NDP’s blueprint for the delicate task of legislating language rights in Quebec.

    NDP Leader Jack Layton told a popular Quebec talk show last weekend that his priorities for the next parliamentary session include tabling legislation that protects French-speaking employees in federally regulated industries.

    He was applauded by the studio audience as he declared, “It’s a very, very important law,” during an appearance on Tout le monde en parle that was broadcast Sunday.

    Mr. Layton spoke openly during the campaign of applying elements of Bill 101 – the backbone of Quebec’s controversial language charter – to federally regulated industries.

    Now that the NDP finds itself as the Official Opposition, many are wondering how it plans to turn the campaign pledge into a reality.

    The party has occasionally likened its plan to Bill 101 but, in reality, it’s not nearly as strict because it has no French-only provisions.

    Some political observers warn that its plan would actually change little in Quebec – and would serve only to open the Pandora’s Box of language disputes.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-set-to-wade-into-quebec-language-debates/article2016001/print/

    Jack of all charades should leave well enough alone.

    • Tony Kondaks says:

      Bill M. writes:

      “Mr. Layton spoke openly during the campaign of applying elements of Bill 101 – the backbone of Quebec’s controversial language charter – to federally regulated industries.

      “Now that the NDP finds itself as the Official Opposition, many are wondering how it plans to turn the campaign pledge into a reality.

      “The party has occasionally likened its plan to Bill 101 but, in reality, it’s not nearly as strict because it has no French-only provisions.”

      Actually, if Layton wants to extent elements of Bill 101 to anything that is done in Quebec that is either performed by the federal government or the provincial government on behalf of the federal government he’ll have to first have the Official Languages Act amended because its provisions require official bilingualism for federal services AND any organisation (including the provincial government) that acts on its behalf.

      Your comment is confusing a bit, Bill M., when you write that Layton’s plan “has no French-only provisions”. Well, it is ONLY those sections of Bill 101 that impose unilingual French that are at issue when it comes to federal institutions or services, unless you are talking about signage and “marked predominance”. But that’s not gonna happen because that provision of Bill 101 is there due to a Supreme Court decision and no federal party in power (well, at least not either the Conservatives or Liberals) is gonna use the “notwithstanding” clause to override a Supreme Court decision in such a case.

  8. Jay S says:

    Sorry Warren, I don’t bite. We’ve got a capable and effective guy with the credentials to do what the party needs now, but our criteria for allowing him to take the helm is that he has to declare up front he doesn’t really want the job? Rae has baggage in Ontario, but so do Baird, Flaherty and Clement. Didn’t seem to stop the Tory wave. And besides, if we ever want to get serious about dancing with the dippers, we have to stop treating them like pariahs when they show interest in our team. Let the grassroots pick who they want to lead the show, but let’s not write the rules to exclude a serious contender upfront.

  9. David Law says:

    I’m afraid your logic eats its own tail here. If Bob Rae is such a ripe target because of what happened 20 years ago, why would he be suitable for the job of re-building the party? He wouldn’t. But what happened in the early 90s is actually the story of why Liberalism can work – because the NDP doesn’t work, and Bob Rae knows it.

    Remember, unlike many, Bob Rae didn’t grow up with a big fat sense of Liberal entitlement. He joined the party as an adult. Adults have baggage, but they also sometimes have learned a few things in their travels. People forget that Rae really converted to Liberalism while still in the Premier’s office – and it was this conversion to fiscal sanity which destroyed his support within the NDP, long before the 1995 election. Rae is a responsible progressive and a professional politician. He is also a real patriot. There was nobody in the Liberal caucus to match him in 2006 or 2008, and the competition isn’t getting better.

    You’re a smart guy and, unlike many in the Liberal Party, less in love with your last opinion than trying to do the right thing (witness your earnest efforts to support Iggy). That’s why I can smile when you say Stephane Dion is ideal for the job, and suggest you re-think this. Your description of the next interim leader is Bob Rae: bilingual, credible in Quebec, with miles of Parliamentary experience and in many respects, the perfect story to keep the Liberal brand alive.

  10. Ottawacon says:

    Why do you think all the action will be in the House over the next 4 years? I tend to think of the House as being less relevant under the condition of a majority government.

    • JamesF says:

      Because really the only “action” other then in the house is on the hustings and we won’t have any hustings until 2015ish?

      • Ottawacon says:

        In terms of what the Liberals need to do, I don’t think being second banana to Layton is going to be that important or relevant. While another Rat Pack kind of phenomenon might be needed to capture some attention, it just seems to me that the project of renewal is going to be central to Liberal chances of survival, and see the House as being pretty much irrelevant to that. The ‘action’ will be in things like policy conferences and the duller tasks of fundraising and party-building. If you thought the PMO ignored the House from 2006-2011, wait until you see the next iteration of Parliamentary democracy.

  11. MA says:

    I think appointing Bob Rae as interim leader, if it happened, would be a signal to B.C. and Ontario that Liberals do not really value their seats. Glen Clark and Bob Rae regimes in the 1990s will take a little longer to forget . . .

    • WJM says:

      They seem to have forgotten all about the Mike Harris-Jim Flaherty-John Baird government which followed.

    • With respect to B.C., that’s just so… 90’s.

      And you are completely wrong. Where do you live?

      Newsflash: it’s 2011, 12 years after Clark and Clark isn’t on the political scene and isn’t running. Besides, he’s making a comfortable living working for arch-capitalist Jimmy Patton. People in B.C. do not equate today’s NDP with Glen Clark and haven’t for years. That dog won’t hunt.

      Clearly you are unaware that the NDP is a fixture here, not an aberration. Provincially the NDP is the government in waiting in B.C. and has been for decades. Federally the NDP is more often than not the second-choice party and is the only party that picked up seats in B.C. in the recent federal election.

      Since the 2001 election which brought Campbell in, the NDP have climbed steadily back from 2 sear near oblivion. Before Gordon Campbell resigned, the NDP had a huge lead in popular support and likely would have handily won government if an election had been called with Campbell still in place. Like her or not, the recently departed leader Carole James had succeeded in moderating the image of the NDP and bringing it closer to the centre than it had been for a long time. With new leader Adrian Dix in place it remains to be seen where he’ll take the NDP.

      Given the NDP and provincial BC Liberals are in a state of change, having someone like Rae be tasked with bringing support to Liberals would seem to be a wise move not a foolish one. He can speak to swing voters in both parties, and in B.C., swing voters are at times a very large percentage of the population.

      Whether Rae is effective behind the scenes in the Liberal party is another matter; but from the perspective of a face to put out in front, I can’t see any downside as a British Columbian.

      • sorry, typo, Clark is enjoying life working for ^^ arch-capitalist Jimmy Pattison ^^, not a dead football player.

      • MA says:

        I am from Vancouver, B.C. and well aware of the NDP vs Latest Free Market Enterprise Party du Jour (ie. Socreds, Liberals that Bill Bennett supports) in B.C. politics. It’s interesting that the B.C. politica paradigm has finally arrived in Ottawa.

        Glen Clark’s NDP is so 90’s and so is Bob Rae.

        The bad governance that their regimes represent are good for only one thing in B.C. That is to depress real estate values, so that you can get a good deal in metro-Vancouver real estate market.

    • I never read WK’s pieces in the Sun before throwing out my opinion; now that I have, I stand by what I wrote earlier — if its a choice between Goodale or Rae I’d rather see Rae’s face more, notwithstanding other requirements of the leader including actual hard work of rebuilding. Whoever the front face is, it’d better be someone that can help draw in donations because increasingly over the next four years the LPC is going to need them as the vote subsidy is scaled out into extinction. Whoever the front face is, there’s a party to rebuild – you don’t want to be handing off a wounded party to the new elected leader in 1 or 2 years time but a healing or healed party.

      I’m not overlooking what Rae and Iggy did in supporting Harper on Afghanistan. While I can’t remember what I felt at the time of Rae and Iggy’s Afghanistan move other than being incredulous that they were supporting Harper in such a way, I’ve been opposed to deepening our involvement there for a long time. Unfortunately in the transition from Chretien to Martin and internecine LPC wars, big issues like Afghanistan just meandered. Better would have been to pull out our support when the “police action” component of the mission was complete. Why didn’t that happen? The second the U.S. stopped actively hunting Bin Laden is when we should have left or scaled back. We didn’t, and neither Rae nor Iggy were at the helm back when that should have happened.

      Democratizing a backward state by force isn’t going well and isn’t likely to, given we are fighting what is largely the indigenous population. The Taliban aren’t interlopers, they are home boys. Misguided, yes, but they are mostly locals. How do you win against that?

      Layton had it right — negotiation with the Taliban was the right thing to do but when he championed the idea the Conservatives and not a few Liberals labelled as “Taliban Jack” in payment for being insightful. We can debate whether his reasoning was thoughtful or autonomous but Layton is at least consistent on those matters. The NDP own the anti-war space and largely always have.

      Layton would eventually find that leaders of other states with actual armies in the country would back him up. Even Hillary Clinton is now suggesting the Taliban will be more willing to negotiate with with bin Laden gone, but less openly the U.S. has been engaging in talks with Taliban for more than two years. The Brits were pushing for substantive negotiations more than a year ago. Not so whacko, that Jacko.

      Layton 1, Iggy and Rae 0, Harper wins either way.

      My wife doesn’t know what to think. She like most mothers hates war and conflict and fighting with a passion. But she worries about women and girls in Taliban-land and rightly so and because of that empathy wonders if we should continue to play a part in the country. Propaganda and some truth mixed together keep her from wishing we’d all pull out.

      I worry that you can’t bring an egalitarian democracy to a land like Afghanistan, if anywhere, at the point of a gun. Unfortunately women and female children will likely continue to pay a disproportionate price in that land until they join modernity. My good wife grimaces at that thought and thus the conundrum. Aren’t many troubled by the same choices?

      Maybe “Sgt Rae” and Captain Iggy’s move cost votes in Quebec, but did Rae joining Iggy on this really cost more than was going to be lost anyway? Wasn’t Iggy already saddled with heavy baggage given his history of writing and support for Bush in Iraq? Iggy was always a harder sell to Quebeckers and other anti-war blocs of voters.

      But for others – like my wife for example – who are having a hard time reconciling the stay or go choice – what do they do? Probably they ignore that one troubling question since it can’t be answered in their minds and look at other factors and platform planks. The LPC probably lost just as many voters to the Conservatives as they did to the NDP, a perfect storm.

  12. Cath says:

    “Rae carries steamer trunks of baggage from his time as Ontario’s NDP premier. Tory strategists would be giddy to have him in their sights in the next election.”

    I’m thinking that Ontario opposition strategists would be pretty happy even with Rae as interim LPOC leader too. That liberal kinship between the LPOC and Ontario Liberals might work in favour of both the provincial PCs and NDP for that matter.

    There’s a terrific column opposite yours today in the London Free Press that conveys how angry folks in southwestern Ontario are STILL at anything resembling an “incumbent” these days. It’s not going away either

    http://www.lfpress.com/comment/2011/05/10/18127296.html

    • Kevin says:

      Yeah, so angry at incumbents they re-elected a whole turnip-truck load full of utterly useless CRAP Party incumbent MPs.

  13. Reader says:

    Warren, I’d be interested to know what you make of the rallying for Wayne Easter. Beyond the obvious language issue (which should be an automatic disqualification), I can’t immediately see the appeal. One of the more surprising suggestions…

    • JH says:

      Whiney Wayne? – forget it! That idea arrived still-born. All of PEI cringes in embarassment when he rises in the House now, as do his fellow Liberal MPs. Will never happen, but Harper & co. would love for him to be the face of the Liberal Party.
      I still say Garneau.

      • Reader says:

        Yeah. Thanks JH. I really wasn’t fishing for vitriol. I’m just curious what arguments have been put forward for choosing him. I’m not advocating for him or even supporting him for interim leader, but I’d like to know why others thought he’d be a good choice. Especially considering that apparently his entire home province cringes when he speaks (surprising then that he managed to get reelected, despite an early and strong challenge from Tim Ogilvie and having Malpeque generally targeted by the Conservatives due to his flip-flop on the gun registry.)

        Perhaps it is a mix of two factors: he has been an incumbent for a long time, and nobody would want him to be the actual leader (important as most don’t seem comfortable with the interim running for actual leader, which would leave the race open to all of the less cringe-inducing Grits like Garneau and Rae).

      • Kevin says:

        And yet they re-elected him.

        JH, how much time have you spent in PEI lately?

  14. Attack! says:

    Slight typo in your piece, WK, in:

    “I am not a blogger; I am a diarist.”

    It’s: “direst”

    • Ed says:

      No it isn’t. A diarist is someone who writes a diary. Direst means the most dire. I can’t believe of all the comments on this diary entry I chose this to reply to.

    • Africon says:

      WK, the Samuel Pepys of our time.

      Some would say that the Libs now find themselves in the direst of states.

      “Attacks” paucity of the English language – another example of the state of Canada’s educational system ??

      • Attack! says:

        Hmm: iatrogenic pun agnosia. Evidently that stick up your private school ass lobotimized your capacity to parse sarcasm.

        ”Sarcasm’ brain areas discovered’
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4566319.stm

        • Africon says:

          Pretty poor attempt at sarcasm, kiddo but Hey – points for trying to extricate from this one – fooled Ed too.

          Try harder next time.

          • Attack! says:

            I hardly needed to “extricate” myself from your not understanding a joke about WK’s, er, consistently making the direst predictions about both the Libs’ misfortunes & the country’s miseries to follow from the ensuing CPC majority.

            But you’ve confirmed you’re a pompous, condescending ass, “eldero.” (As you did the other day when you dismissed a female commenter with a “dear”).

  15. MA says:

    LPC may want to work on how they can neutralize the Adscam legacy so they can reconcile with francophone voters in Quebec.

    A good start would be to pull Chretien off the airwaves and don’t go public about his alleged back-room machinations to promote Bob Rae. Chretien just reminds the center-right of the the perception of LPC’s former arrogance of power and see him as a just trying to boss Harper on political fund-raising issue even though LPC is a 3rd place party now. Chretien also reminds the Quebeckers of Adscam. Then, when Chretien promotes Bob Rae it just antagonizes BC and Ontario voters that were victims of bad NDP regimes in 1990s.

    LPC needs a clean break. Even Dion would be a better interim leader than Bob Rae, as long as Dion does not go around quoting Chretien all over Quebec where Adscam still causes issues.

  16. Phil in London says:

    Not sure where the Liberal brand is so strong as referenced in your article.
    Quebec and BC are two of the three largest provinces you reference as being Liberal. However, Gordon Campbell would always take great pains to explain there was no affiliation with the federal party and the Quebec Liberals have done the same thing for decades. In Quebec Liberal meant federalist not Liberal as we in TROC know it.

    That leaves only the Fiberal Party of Ontario and I think the smell test is suggesting a stale date here as well. Nice how they are already pulling out the hidden agenda card with the PCs – Warren, didn’t you tell them to notice how well that worked federally?

    The brand is not so well received these days. It needs that four year makeover and Bob Rae is the perfect idiot to see it doesn’t get done.

    You also still don’t seem to want to accept the math. The Liberal losses have not been exclusively to the NDP. Since 2000 these losses have been to the Conservatives as well. You must have written these off when you decided the Liberals needed to lurch left. Libs in the 1990s polled 10 points above the combined PC and Reform. Now they trail distantly while CPC has received about the same share of the vote as the Libs used to get. The NDP gains are as much from the Bloc as they are from the Rump party no longer dominant in Toronto.

    • Patrick Hamilton says:

      Thank-you for your post, re Liberal Party of BC. We here in BC often get tired of having to explain that to TROC.

    • Ron says:

      @Phil
      “Not sure where the Liberal brand is so strong as referenced in your article.”

      Warren is currently working to get the Ontario Liberals re-elected so consider it some MASSIVE spin on his part…the man is always on the job

  17. Harvey Mushman says:

    I guess Johnny called Warren too….

  18. Steve T says:

    More scandal the NDP in Quebec:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/10/pol-ndp-brosseau.html

    This is where the Liberals can gain ground. Demonstrate the ridiculous results you get when people vote based on the latest craze, rather than an indepth analysis of the candidate and his/her party.

    • MA says:

      Ouch!! Lie on your resume for a private sector job and you will get fired. Lie about your academic credentials for an immigration application to a country like the USA and you will get denied.

      This may be a bonafide scandal . . .

      • Attack! says:

        ah, but lie about your mail-order graduate degree(s: incl. one not even attained, yet) and a mythical million-dollar business, and, whammo, you’re a CPC MP (with only an occasional raised eyebrow) :

        http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Mysterious+Lethbridge+candidate+Hillyer+centre+controversy/4695365/story.html

      • Ottawacon says:

        I find it hard to give a damn whether or not she finished a program at St.Lawrence College or not, and given the high rate of high school dropouts in Quebec (especially outside Montreal and Quebec City), I doubt her constituents will care much either. The explanation for the error/lie is reasonably plausible too.

        She is going to get some time to establish herself, regardless of how hard Liberals try – they would be better off getting out of the weeds and letting the NDP fail on its own merit.

    • Joey Rapaport says:

      Who cares, Brosseau is a hottie yo!

      • allegra fortissima says:

        She took off to the store half an hour ago to pile up on peroxide…lol RuthEllenNDP on twitter will keep you guys entertained 🙂

      • The Doctor says:

        yeah, even if she flames out in Parliament, there might be a reality TV show in her future

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