Out of the gate, we find the Liberals actually making some very pointy observations about the CPoC on several issues - most notably the appointment of Darrel Reid as Chief of Staff to Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment:
“The rights of minorities in Canada are fundamental to our common citizenship. Yet the Prime Minister has named Darrel Reid as a key political operator in his administration,” said Liberal Leader Bill Graham. “Mr. Reid, a former Conservative candidate, said and I quote, ‘it's about high time that Muslims show the world that theirs is a religion of peace rather than a religion based on threat, intimidation and terrorism.’
“Mr. Reid has also compared MPs who voted to protect Canadian citizens who happen to be gay or lesbian against gay crimes as being similar to Adolph Hitler and his bunch.
“These comments do not stop with gays and lesbians. Mr. Reid has also criticized Quebec society, and by saying ‘The rest of Canada, it seems to me, seems to be following Quebec’s example when it comes to marriage, sex habits and so on.’ These comments are hardly reassuring,” Mr. Graham said.
The Liberal Leader slammed Mr. Reid’s appointment as an “affront to our democracy”.
Quebec MP Pablo Rodriguez pointed out that Mr. Reid’s appointment as Chief of Staff to Environment Minister Rona Ambrose must have been based on his ideology, as is completely unqualified to deal with environmental issues.
Picking up on something that I have been hammering at in this space, the Liberals are finally starting to call the Harper government on their hypocrisy:
PEI MP Wayne Easter pointed out that despite the fact that the Conservatives ran on a platform that promised these types of patronage appointments would not occur, they have gone ahead and feverishly stacked political appointments with political friends.
“After promising Canadians they would be squeaky clean, this government has been anything but. Why does PEI have no representation at the federal cabinet table, but provincial Conservative operatives are free to belly up to the patronage trough?” he asked.
Interestingly, Ms. Ambrose chose not to respond to the charges against her chief of staff, and instead did a classic Conservative response of whining about flaws in the former Liberal Governments environment policy. How utterly unsurprising. The deflection tactic is something that the CPoC is notorious for using - it's sort of like talking about the price of tea in China, and someone asks "what is the temperature of spit on a rock?". Coming from a sitting government, it's pretty sad.
The NDP chose to pick up on the short sightedness of the CPoC government's arbitrary spending cuts last week:
“Everyone but the Tories knows volunteers are core to our communities and our country. The non-profit and voluntary sector makes an enormous contribution to Canada’s economy and job market -- 6.8 percent of the nation’s GDP, more than the mining, oil and gas sector combined!” said Martin.
“Only Conservatives in their right ideological minds would do this. Canadians value the importance of the non-profit and voluntary sector in providing social, cultural, and recreational benefits.”
The Canada Volunteerism Initiative, serving 161,000 non-profit agencies, was axed as part of $200 million in the $1 billion Conservative cuts.
The highly respected Muttart Foundation from the Prime Minister’s home province of Alberta says the cuts hurt the vulnerable and create social deficits that will cost more than $1 billion to repair.
It's about time that our opposition parties stopped acting shell-shocked, and started slapping this government around.
5 comments:
What would the Liberals know about ethics?
Call me wacky, but if you're handing out rewards to political hacks, maybe a sexual predator shouldn't be on your A-list.
Oh I see, another classical neo-con line of argument. Because the Liberals have been accused of not knowing anything about ethics then they have no business calling the CPoC on any issues involving ethics.
Three points if I may:
1) Assuming that the Liberals are as unethical as they have been painted to be then who better to spot unethical behaviour than those who themselves are apparently well versed in that mode of behaviour?
2) The Conservatives in various guises have also been implicated in numerous scandals themselves, both when they were in power and when they were running as Opposition.
3) And exactly what does your second point have to do with the posted topic? (Just to remind you, the original post was addressing the patronage appointment, by the CPoC, of Daryl Reid to the position of _Chief of Staff_ to Rona Ambrose)
SB
What would the Liberals know about ethics?
Nice try - I see you've been taking lessons from the Rona Ambrose school of debate - majoring in "deflection".
Sadly, I wasn't talking about Liberal Ethics now, was I? I was talking about the "ethics" of a party that ran on a platform where they cried out long and loud about 'open, honest and accountable' government, and it's taken them less than 6 months to turn out to be sleazy, secretive and dishonest.
turns out bill graham slandered the wrong guy. how's that for a joke... only i'm guessing his victim isn't laughing.
you call a man a homophobe and a racist in the national media and call for his firing and then, wait for it... you think you should get credit for offering an apology after someone points out you were completely mistaken.
yup... it's a liberal thing.
I see - one misattributed comment exonerates everything else that Reid has said/done? _I_ don't think so.
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