Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Welcome to his nightmare: Jim Flaherty holds nooner conference call to chat with reporters about .. oh, you know. Stuff.

by kadyomalley on Sunday, November 30, 2008 12:22pm - 64 Comments

Since the government has now backed down over public financing for political parties and – as of earlier today – its plan to suspend the right of civil servants to strike, the proposed changes to pay equity could be the third shoe to drop. I guess we’ll find out when this uncharacteristically lively hold music is replaced by the dulcet tone of the Finance Minister.

November 30, 2008

NOTICE TO THE MEDIA

Minister of Finance to Hold Conference Call

Immediate release

Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty will hold a conference call, today, Sunday, November 30, 2008, at 12:15 p.m.

Media representatives wishing to participate in the conference call must dial xxx-xxx-xxxx or toll-free in Canada only xxxxxxxxxx and refer to reservation #xxxxxxx at least 10 minutes before the call is scheduled to begin.

This conference call is for journalists only.

___________________
For further information:

Chisholm Pothier

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Finance

Tags: governmentdownbringingwatch 2008, jim flaherty explains it all

More by kadyomalley

Michael

When postings become personal and insulting it is time to shut them down!!
Gabe

catherine – Nov 30, 2008 14:18
Gabe, Flaherty already said that everything he has been doing for the last couple years has been helping you. Haven’t you noticed and what more do you want?

———————————-
Have to admit I haven’t noticed all that ‘help’ – my bad. Guess I shouldn’t want anything more than more of the same.
John.K

So what happened on the conference call????
catherine

Layton bragged.
Laurie53/BC

Re: Election spending subsidy:

Voters: put your money where your politics are.

If you support the Liberals: give them money.
If you support the Greens: give them money.
If you support the NDP: give them money
If you support the Conservatives: give them money
If you support the Bloc: give them money
If you support the Marijuana Party: give them money
Did I miss anyone???

This is just like an election, but without the taxpayers being $300M in the hole. Be specific: your donation is tax deductible so you are merely focusing where you want that subsidy to go.

Why should a generic taxpayer subsidy support parties that individual voters are not prepared to support with cold hard cash?
Carey

Laurie53/BC — you ask, “Why should a generic taxpayer subsidy support parties that individual voters are not prepared to support with cold hard cash?”

Not everybody has “cold hard cash.” I’ve read many comments from people saying they couldn’t afford to donate so they equated their vote with a donation.
John.K

No, I mean what happened on FLAHERTY’s call – the one that is the topic of this?
Laurie53/BC

Carey: Obama did it……….millions of people gave $5 each
What it basically means is that a cash donor is committed to that party, and isn’t just sitting back and letting someone else make the decision of which political party to support
Wascally Wabbit

Thomas Mulcair just made it very clear that the CPC types that intruded into the private conference call – recorded it and disseminated it to the media will be subject to the full range of the Criminal Code on this.
Deeper and Browner CPC!
Of course – it wasn’t Stephen Harper personally who did this
Should have used the RCMP – as in the good old days!
Poor Ryan sparrow – another shot across his career bow!
Brad Sallows

>The alternative to a Harper minority is a Conservative minority led by somebody else.

No it isn’t, and apparently it may never have been a realistic alternative. It is absolutely immutable that the opposition parties have enough votes to defeat the government.

I think it unlikely that removal of Harper would solve anything. For a significant number of voters, the issue is the social/political ground occupied by the CPC, not who leads it. They don’t want to share alternating periods of power, they want to eliminate the CPC from significant influence forever to ensure their favoured legislative agendas can never be undone – not one step back. And there are those among the Conservatives who harbour the same attitude in the other direction, but realistically their numbers are too few for that to ever be a risk. The problem for Canada with shutting down the 30-35% who vote “rightward” is that they, like the Bloc’s supporters, are regionally concentrated.
catherine

We could eliminate voting altogether, and just pay for our MP.
catherine

Oh… Flaherty’s call? He said he already took care of everything last year.
big Daddy

Really, is today the day to be xing out the numbers for the confrence call?
Ti-Guy

Carey: Obama did it……….millions of people gave $5 each
What it basically means is that a cash donor is committed to that party, and isn’t just sitting back and letting someone else make the decision of which political party to support

You don’t even know what you’re talking about. A huge proportion of Obama’s funding came from Wall Street.