Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

BTC: While you slept

by Aaron Wherry on Monday, September 8, 2008 11:48am - 31 Comments

Approximate head count from this morning’s Tory briefing.

Employees of the Conservative Party of Canada: 9
Conservative Party of Canada cabinet ministers: 2
Attack ads: 5
Journalists: 7

That about says it all. But a couple other points of emphasis.

First, the press gallery doesn’t seem interested in playing along. Canwest’s David Akin put on his Helen Thomas mask and went after the Conservative environmental plan. Another reporter, from the CBC I believe, asked about the apparent muzzling of Conservative candidates. And this was a day without a major gaffe or controversy for the Conservatives to explain.

Second, the two French ads shown today mocked the Liberal leader as “Professeur Dion.” Apparently anti-intellectualism plays well in Quebec. In one, the narrator at one point mocks Dion with what sounds like “coo-coo.” Jason Kenney and Lawrence Cannon seemed to find these ads particularly funny.

Tags: Election Watch, Helen Thomas, Jason Kenney, lawrence cannon, Stéphane Dion, Stephen Harper

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Calgary Junkie

To those clamoring for Tory policies …

I repeat, this is day 2 of a 36 day campaign !

You can keep second-guessing Harper’s strategy about what he does, when he does it, how he does it, which cities he visits in what order, whether journalists should report it, how it gets reported, and so on.

But it will all play out in due course. Sheesh, talk about impatience. And like I said, nitpicking taken to ridiculous extremes.

I’m not clamoring for Dion to release attack ads. Or put out a fully costed four year projection of revenue and expenses under his Greenshift. I’m sure that will all come out when he is ready to do so.
T. Thwim

Indeed, I encourage all voters to look at Harper’s actions over the last few years. Take a look at arctic sovereignty and the fleet of ~~ice-breaking defence ships~~ ~~coastal patrol boats~~ an icebreaker to be ~~cancelled~~ delivered in 2009.

Take a look at how he’s concentrated the federal government on looking after Canadian Safety by running pilot programs at the Maple-Leaf factory to let industry self-police itself, and the resulting investigation he has said will be started in which “Investigators will not express any conclusion or recommendation about civil or criminal liability of individuals or organizations.”

Let us focus on his actions in protecting the Canadian softwood lumber industry by ensuring that they will not comprise more than 34% of the american lumber market, no matter how efficient they are, and by having them pay a billion dollars to their american competition to compensate the American lumber industry for deciding to sue us.

Also, look at his actions in cabinet choices. Bernier as foreign minister making our troops lives harder by forcing the Afghani government to save face by keeping a corrupt official in power. Unelected/Unelectable Fortier as Minister of Public Works, putting a friend into the position most known for its ability to shuffle hundreds of millions of dollars around to friends.

Oh heck, just look at Mr. Harper’s record in following the law. Bribery, Election cash-grabs, election timing, etc. Perhaps a better look at his record would be found by examining the 10 percenters, where MP’s from Alberta have mailings going out to people in Ontario on the tax-payer dime.

If there’s one thing these conservatives are hoping for, it’s that people do *not* look at their record.
Style

We can’t give Harper all the credit for the softwood lumber deal – Emerson negotiated most of it while he was still a Liberal. Hey, isn’t Emerson a former lumber industry executive? Does he just live to sell people out?

The food safety action plan (over $100M over the next three years, announced in the Budget) does seem to include the potential for more self-policing. But this is the first time I’ve heard that pilot programs were in place at Maple Leaf. I’ve only briefly looked at google but it would be great if someone shared a reference for this.

I agree looking at Harper’s policy record is a great way to figure out his beliefs. I don’t know that gaffes, political tactics and Liberal policies are the very relevant though. Although they are entertaining.
Dije

Tories have policies? I thought policies were the work of out-of-touch latte swilling BMW driving elitists from Toronto who shun hard work and hate America.

Policies are best left to those aristocratic lefties and their culture-funding anti-Canadian professors, academics, economists and others.

What the Conservatives will give everyone are solid solutions to all of the countries problems.

What are these solutions? Good honest hard Western work and remembering;

Family is everything.
T. Thwim

From the Globe & Mail:

A leaked cabinet document that outlined plans for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to give the food industry a greater role in the inspection process raised the ire of opposition politicians last week.

However, some of the plans have been in place since March 31, according to a CFIA manager and an official from the union that represents the federal inspectors.

At the Maple Leaf plant behind the listeria outbreak, a single federal inspector was relegated to auditing company paperwork and had to deal with several other plants, the manager and the union official said, contradicting the impression that officials had left last week that full-time watchdogs were on-site.

Under the new system, federal inspectors do random product tests only three or four times a year at any given plant. And meat packers are required to test each type of product only once a month.
Style

Thanks, the article goes on to clearly confirm what you said earlier too: The Maple Leaf Toronto plant was one of the plants where the CFIA began testing the new inspection system a year ago.

It also says that Canada failed to adopt the tougher measures the US implemented in 1998. Which I haven’t really tried to confirm but would suggest a long-standing need to update Canada’s system.