Stephen Harper shows his true colours

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Ouch - check this out:

Harper, wife on different pages: Laureen joins literacy crusade; on Monday, Tories cut reading program

OTTAWA—Literacy — it's all about reading, writing and getting your story straight.

Or so it seemed this week in Ottawa.

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government axed $17.7 million from the human resources department's Adult Learning and Literacy Skills Program as part of a wave of spending cuts.

Yesterday, Harper's wife Laureen was on the streets of Ottawa, promoting literacy.

Clad in a yellow T-shirt and handing out newspapers in the drizzle as part of a CanWest media company promotion of child literacy, it seemed that perhaps Laureen Harper hadn't seen the memo about the literacy cuts earlier in the week.

Ditto for Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, who coughed up a $20 literacy donation when he came across his boss's wife on the street in front of the Parliament buildings.

Treasury Board President John Baird, who announced the cuts on Monday, was also part of the CanWest street campaign.

"It appears that the Prime Minister and his wife are reading from different pages these days," Bonnie Brown, the Liberal MP from Oakville, said yesterday in the Commons.

"Now that the Prime Minister's wife has publicly demonstrated the error of her husband's government's ways, will the Prime Minister immediately restore funding to literacy programs?"

The CanWest promotion is called "Raise a Reader" and is aimed at improving literacy in children.

The Conservative cuts are directed at adult-literacy efforts. So the difference, it seems, revolves around when the government should pay for people to learn to read and write.

This appeared to be the distinction that Baird was making yesterday, as he performed the simultaneous feat of explaining literacy cuts and campaigning for literacy at the same time — outdoors, on the street, no less.

"I think if we're spending $20 million and we have one out of seven folks in the country that are functionally illiterate, we've got to fix the ground floor problem and not be trying to do repair work after the fact," Baird said as he handed out newspapers alongside Laureen Harper.

In the House of Commons yesterday, meanwhile, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley showed how well she reads her talking points, saying that Liberals did the true damage to literacy, freezing programs during the deficit-cutting budget of 1995.

"Hypocrisy has a new spelling. It is L-i-b-e-r-a-l," Finley said.

Finley also argued that if Liberals were in favour of literacy, they shouldn't have voted against this year's budget, which contained $307 million for such programs.

[Birdy]

perhaps Mrs. Harper agrees with Mr. Harper about tightening spending, and is campaigning on the streets as she believes in a more grass-roots do it yourself to helping others, not relying on government expenditure.

[The Chameleon]

perhaps Mrs. Harper agrees with Mr. Harper about tightening spending, and is campaigning on the streets as she believes in a more grass-roots do it yourself to helping others, not relying on government expenditure.

Birdy this is a streach even for you. Anyway you tart it up, his cuts are hurting his wife's aims.

[Birdy]

What are you talking about? She very well could be a libertarian.

And I don't normally "stretch" anything, moreso the exact bloody opposite.

now this, is what i would call "stretching it":

or how about this:

I feel like I'm being held hostage in my own country with this stooge at the healm. Egads!

Edited September 29, 2006 by Guest

[SmoothedShredder]

This from the Toronto Sun today, from someone from... Toronto?!

HEY SID, PASS THE REMOTE

In "Time to change channel" (Oct. 6), Sid Ryan claims the federal Conservatives have "ripped into the fabric of this country's social programs." Gee, if cutting one-half of 1% of program spending is such a grave rip in the fabric of the nation, can I ask the government to pay for the pinhole-sized rip in my t-shirt?

Ryan argues that the national debt is at its lowest in 30 years. It still rests at $484 billion. Governments have to pay interest on monies owed, so any effort to reduce the outstanding principal reduces the amount paid, allowing the debt to be cleared that much faster, and freeing up more money for nice-to-have social programs.

When I finish university, I will be using my 6-month interest-free grace period to pay down as much principal on my student loan as I can, to (1) save myself money, and (2) save the government (read taxpayers) money, who is/are now, and will be covering the interest payments.

Ryan also brings up the cuts that the Mike Harris government made in the mid-1990s.

Well, when did they take over? 1995. Who was in power before that? Bob Rae's NDP. What was the state of the economy? Government spending was out of control.

Without coherent focus, including responsible budgets, no progress could be made with social programs.

Did the cuts to welfare make it impossible for people to get it? No. And by the time Harris left, more money was being spent on health care than when they had taken over in 1995.

Ryan is right about one thing, though, we won't recognize Canada if the Conservatives are elected with a majority -- Canada will be much better off.

IAN HANCOCK, SCARBOROUGH

(Wow, that's the most sensible argument we've seen come out of a university in a long time)

[Hux]

Conservative majority? Unless we annex Oklahoma I wonder where they're gonna win seats?

Why Bloc likely itching for Spring election

The Toronto Star

Friday, October 6, 2006

Page: A17

Section: Opinion

Byline: Chantal Hebert

Source: Toronto Star

The Bloc Quebecois clearly wants an election sooner rather than later, a wish that makes an election campaign in the first half of next year a near-certainty.

By tracing an early line in the sand on the amount he wants to see transferred to Quebec next year as part of a deal on the fiscal imbalance, Gilles Duceppe has just about locked himself into a plan to vote against the 2007 budget.

While a spring election probably suits Stephen Harper's planning, you have to wonder why Duceppe wants one so badly. It has never been his style to paint himself into a corner.

If he is acting out of character, it is because, with every passing week, his MPs are getting more heat for keeping the Conservatives in power.

Only last spring, Duceppe had reason to fear that the Tories would overtake the Bloc in the next election. But now he is more concerned that a backlash against Conservative policies will send his supporters straight into the embrace of the next Liberal leader.

This fall, Michael Ignatieff, Stephane Dion and Bob Rae all have more presence in Quebec than Harper's ministers. None of the Quebec members of the Conservative cabinet has emerged as a strong voice. On the contrary, there are reasons to question their influence.

If they had any of the latter, they would have stopped the minority government from proceeding with some of the cuts announced last week. If the Conservatives wanted a lot of bang for the relatively few bucks saved in the process, they certainly achieved their purpose. In Quebec, that bang was overwhelmingly negative.

A government that had solid intelligence on Quebec would have known that literacy has been a big deal in the province since Jacques Demers, the last coach that brought the Stanley Cup to the Montreal Canadiens, wrote a book about life without basic reading and writing skills.

It would have thought long and hard before eliminating the federal Courts Challenge Program that has allowed francophone minorities across Canada to assert their constitutional rights.

Not so long ago, the program financed an Ontario legal battle to keep Montfort, the only French-language university hospital west of Quebec, open. It has not escaped attention in Quebec that the federal ministers who killed the program last week used to be part of the Ontario government that tried and failed to close down Montfort.

More than six months into his tenure in the Senate, Michael Fortier has yet to select a riding to run in.

It is not for lack of trying; for weeks, the party has been looking for a good riding for the government-appointed public works minister.

The search is taking a long time because none of the ridings in and around Montreal looks promising for a Tory candidate. If Fortier had to run in one of the seats on his short list tomorrow, his career in federal politics would come to an end.

As Harper's former campaign co-chair and as someone who was offered a shortcut into the cabinet, Fortier has no option other than to follow through on his commitment to run in the next campaign. But the high-profile Quebecers the Conservatives are courting for the next election are under no obligation to sign on as sacrificial lambs.

It will be hard for anyone of stature in Quebec to go into an uphill election under the triple burdens of the extended Afghan mission, the abandoned Kyoto Protocol and the plan to scrap the long gun registry. But it will be even harder to find successful Quebecers who want to run for a party that caters to a social conservative wing.

If there is one mix that tends to repel Quebec voters, it is that of religion and government. Talk of a "Defence of Religions Act" will do even more damage to the Conservatives in Quebec than their opposition to same-sex marriage itself.

These days, it is easier to list the ridings that the Liberals will likely hold or take in Quebec in the next election than to find the seats that would make up the difference between a minority and a majority for the Conservatives.

Duceppe is worried that Harper's Quebec window may turn into a Liberal back door - and the Prime Minister should be too.

Chantal Hebert's national affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday

[SmoothedShredder]

Yeah, looks like Canada won't be much better off. :crazy: Conservative Majority won't happen anytime soon. It's funny, if the Conservatives are that deplorable as many suggest... then just how bad did the freedom fighters, er I mean, Liberals have to get to open the door to this in the first place. Though I personally don't like to hold that 'choosing the lesser of two evils point of view', in the classic 'race to the bottom' framework... rather I hold both parties in high esteem, and the history, and relationship between the two, three, or dozens of parties that have and do comprise the Government of Canada. I'd be very happy if the Liberals were to espouse the very traits that put the conservatives in a mutually exclusive category for so many Canadians that did ultimately decide that they were the best choice to govern our nation... unfortunately i've yet to see either that happen, or any of the boogeymen that they warned us would show up actaully apear.

Oh and to answer your (probably meant to be rhetorical) question... They would try to win seats where they a) already have seats, and where they don't. The article you provided talks about how the seats in Quebec might change hands. No doubt the Liberals could win... what scares me is the brand of Liberal Faschism you try to cloak it in (I'm also scared of the brand of Conservative Faschism that is painted here, but not really cause I know that it doesn't have much weight in reality)! I know you really believe that there's NO CHANCE that the Conservatives will be able to persuade people to choose Conservative, but I would think that such a confident assumption would be risky, and perhaps garner a certain sympathy from people much like how many people like to see it when the Yankee's lose in Baseball... in Fact, I really think that it was that very attitude which lead people AWAY from the Liberals in the first place, and right into the Conservatives lap ... My guess then, to stop repelling people, the Liberals are going to have to stop with that attitude. But I digress,

Still, I like the Minority thing... lets keep the Government on it's toe's for a few more cycles... maybe give the NDP a 2 year run and see what happens after a few more Liberal/Conservative runs... and then we can probably jack up the quality of our government by weeding out the 'rule by divine right' attitude that seems to have infected it... still it really begins with more people actually getting out and participating in democracy, voting, and sharing and respecting opinions! Man, I wish I could of said that all in a clever one-liner, and an article which clearly supported my POV over anyone elses.