- Kelly McParland: Canada to pay the price for Ignatieff's needs
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Read any of the billion or so punditary prognostications about Michael Ignatieff that have appeared since he became Liberal leader (maybe it's 2 billion by now— I quit counting in July) and you may notice a common theme.
For most of his 10 months on the job there's been one overriding question: When will he force an election? Delve a bit further and you'll notice that the answer to that question centres greatly on what's good for Mr. Ignatieff, rather than what's good for Canada. There's rarely, if ever, any suggestion that the country needs another campaign. Indeed, his party has no specific program to offer the country as an alternative to the ruling Conservatives. We don't know his position on a whole range of issues, except that he says whatever the Tories are doing is wrong. We don't know what he'd do instead. He has some big-picture ideas, like building a high-speed railway for $18-billion, or planning a big bash for Canada's 150th birthday in 2017, but he's decidedly foggy about more immediate concerns.
We do know, though, that the Liberals need an election. And Mr. Ignatieff needs an election. For their own benefit.
- Jeff Jedras: Ignatieff breaks the cycle of bluster
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Through nearly four years and two leaders now, the Liberals have been locked into a seemingly unending cycle: talk tough about holding the government to account, and then find some way to back out of risking an election at the last minute. It has become as predictable as the rising of the sun in the East.You can agree with Michael Ignatieff’s declaration Tuesday that the Liberal Party will no longer support the Conservative government when parliament returns this fall (possibly triggering a fall election) or you can disagree with it, but one thing is for sure: going into the fall, the Liberals have succeeded in radically altering the dynamic, putting the other parties on the defensive for the first time in years.
It allowed the Conservatives to refrain from having to take the Liberals seriously or consider offering meaningful concessions to maintain their minority government. And it allowed the NDP and the BQ to have their cake and eat it too. By quickly declaring their intention to vote against throne speeches or budgets they haven’t even read yet they consistently left the Liberals to hold the bag and be the ones to support the government, or not. It allowed them to avoid the election neither of them has wanted (polling numbers don’t bode well for the NDP in particular) while painting themselves as the only true opposition to the Conservative government. Nice work if you can get it.
1 comment:
how is this different than Canada paying the price for Harper's incessant need to be king, even Canadians CLEARLY said no and told him to work with the other parties.
The headline of this post makes your one sidedness, very clear.
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