Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Situational thinking

by Paul Wells on Friday, April 3, 2009 11:17am - 36 Comments

A colleague who has been increasingly frustrated with Michael Ignatieff’s refusal to take substantive positions sent me an email on Tuesday. Look!, the email said. Michael Ignatieff took a position! He’s against asbestos exports. The email was based on this statement Ignatieff made on the weekend on Vancouver Island. If the first clause of the quote seems ominous, then you’re getting to know our man:

“I’m probably walking right off the cliff into some unexpected public policy bog of which I’m unaware, but if asbestos is bad for Parliamentarians in the Parliament of Canada, it just has to be bad for everybody else,” he said. “Our export of this dangerous product overseas has got to stop.”

Various environmental groups mistook “Our export of this dangerous product overseas has got to stop” for a statement of settled opinion, and welcomed it. So on Wednesday Ignatieff cleared everything up.

“We have had 60 years of experience with this product. What I said in answer to a question is that we have an obligation to international agreements to the countries that we export to, to make them aware of the risks. That is all I said.”

This amount of flexibility upsets some who are less agile. Chantal Hébert’s column today is instructive. The next election is shaping up as a duel between two men, each of whom desperately hopes you will concentrate on the other guy.

Tags: Michael Ignatieff, that is all I said

More by Paul Wells

sf

“Michael Ignatieff’s refusal to take substantive positions”

What’s surprising? He’s a Liberal. Liberals don’t take positions. By definition, in a debate, a Liberal will try to figure exactly where a compromising middle position exists. At that moment he will assume that position, which is really not a position, it is a shifting and impermanent temporary stance that is not based on any principle and can shift each time the surrounding crowd shifts.
Mulletaur

‘les Cons’ must be very frustrated. I mean, what will they spend all their money on in the pre-writ period ? Any attack advertising would be, as the French say, “un coup d’épée dans l’eau”.
Wayne

To take a position would imply that he actually has one to begin with. Which as far as i can determine as of yet he has none, except ‘ I am not Dion ‘ which allowed him to grease the chute as it were as he threw him under the bus. Now once he actually becomes the leader of his party and gets to shed the current interim title then I am reasonably certain he will start running on ‘ I am not Harper ‘
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

We had no shape
Because he never took sides,
And no sides
Because he never allowed them to take shape.

WLMK, FR Scott

I agree with sf that Libs have been not taking a position for years but it has served them well. This ‘on the one hand, but on the other … ‘ nonsense makes my blood boil but the electorate doesn’t seem to mind or else the Libs wouldn’t be the Natural Governing Party.

However, I wonder if Iggy is not quite doing it right because he takes positions but then retreats from them. I think what Iggy needs to do is stop taking positions entirely while taking credit for being ‘brave’ or somesuch.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Strange. It can’t be because they hope to win Thetford Mines: that’s Christian Paradis’ seat and the Liberals won all of 14% of the vote last time. What’s the Bloc’s position on asbestos? Perhaps Ignatieff is worried they would spin any anti-asbestos rhetoric of his as an attack upon Quebec.

herringchoker

The Bloc’s position is that asbestos are so great you should sprinkle them on your wheaties each morning. In the Rest O’ Canada that is.

On the other hand, you’d never be able to stop your car without the stuff, so take the good with the bad.

John.K

Asbestos hasn’t been used in brake linings for many years.
herringchoker

No…its still used in the pads.

Additionally it can be used as a binding agent in certain high stength concretes, which is probably a very good use for it as its only dangerous when its friable.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Well, that is pretty awful. The Tories are really no better, but that particular example from Ignatieff is so bad that it hardly seems worth getting in to that in this context.

What’s funniest about that example is that the first sentence really does seem to indicate that he KNEW, deep down, that he should keep his mouth shut because he wasn’t familiar with the subtleties of the issue, and yet he made a pretty definitive statement anyway.

How he can possibly try to spin that when he said “Our export of this dangerous product overseas has got to stop” what he meant was “We have to keep following the rules as we continue to export this dangerous product overseas” is completely beyond me.

Personally, I liked his first answer better, but these may not be the economic times to take down a sizable export market. Still, this whole idea that we need to make the importing countries aware of the risks seems kinda silly to me. These are poor countries for the most part, who need cheap fireproof insulation. Suggesting it’s all right to traffic in asbestos as long as we tell our customers about the risks feels to me almost like saying it’s OK to traffic in heroine, as long as you tell your customers that it’s dangerous.

Critical Reasoning

It’s never OK to traffic in heroines. The worst part is that the heroines keep finding ingenious ways to escape their cages and outwit your evil henchmen.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

LOL,

Of course, I meant Diacetylmorphine, but as you point out, my point remains valid nonetheless.

It’d be silly to suggest that it would be “OK” to sell Buffy to a clan of vampires with nothing more than a simple “Careful, she might be dangerous”.

Dot

if asbestos is bad for Parliamentarians in the Parliament of Canada, it just has to be bad for everybody else

I’m no expert on asbestos, but in the example he cited, he was probably referring to asbestos in insulation (in walls, around heating pipes etc.) which is no longer allowed.

If one is to believe the pro asbestos people, the exported asbestos is used primarily in cement, which probably has a different risk profile once installed. The critical issue to avoid lung related disease is probably its handling when mixed into concrete.

One observation on the issue of imposing our environmental standards on other countries, independent of product. Isn’t this what most environmentalists claim as a significant problem with agreements like NAFTA – the loss of OUR sovereignty over environmental issues? (a position I don’t agree with). Yet these same activists seem freely content to tell other countries what they can/cannot do.

Reminds me of when the former head of the Sierra Club sued the Gov’t of Canada to try and force China to do an environmental assessment before going ahead with a CANDU nuke. NIYBY

herringchoker

Actually Maude Barlow’s raisin d’etre is to save us all from those dastardly US environmental standards.

Which is laughable if you know anything about clean water or emission standards.

Critical Reasoning

Maude Barlow’s raison d’etre is to safeguard our precious bodily fluids… oops, our precious bodies of water.
Dot

Yeah, Maude constantly squawks about NAFTA and bulk water exports to the US (\you can’t turn off the taps once started) yet isn’t she leading the UN effort on ensuring clean water is a human right of every person on earth ( I suppose so long as the water doesn’t come from Canada).?

And I thought that the Harper gov’t wouldn’t sign onto the UN agreement for fear that it would create a precedent to force bulk water exports. Seems like a switcheroo on Maude’s part.

I find most environmental activists inconsistent on a number of fronts once you get past the rhetoric and look into specifically what they are claiming.

Ya gotta Think Twice.

tobyornotoby

By that standard of ethics Canadian companies could sell almost anything because it’s not illegal in Zimbabwe. And why should China care about whether there is melamine in baby food produced there as long as there is a market where melamine is allowed?

When it comes to asbestos, we’re not talking about imposing Canadian standards in other countries, we’re talking imposing Canadian standards on Canadian companies that operate HERE.

Dot

If the Canadian asbestos mines are not operating to Canadian standards, then they should be shut down. That is the standard to which lies within our borders.

You know that Tillsonburg, Ontario produces tobacco used in cigarettes. If this tobacco ends up in cigarettes that are allowed to be smoked in the US indoors, at work, in the car etc where second hand smoke can cause cancers (ie where environmental standards are more lax than Canada’s) should they be shut down?

How about coal produced in BC/Alta exported to China to fuel their dirty power plants (increased demand for coal aguably because they have been denied nuke technology). Shouldn’t they be shut down as well?

Alex Keys

Imposing our environmental standards on other countries is not the issue. Did we impose our moral standards on India when we ratified the land mine treaty?

India still buys, stores and uses landlines. We should get Thetford Mines to change from mining asbestos to manufacturing land mines and then and sell them to India… they kill far less people!

The Ottawa Treaty was easy for politicians… they had no votes to loose.

Dot

Why don’t you start closer to home, and first ban asbestos use in Canada and the US? According to the US EPA it is still used in some products in the US.

http://www.epa.gov/oppt/asbestos/pubs/ban.html

I think Canada is in the same situation acording to this Sierra Club press release.
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/health-environment/toxics/campaign.shtml?x=584

This is typical of what most environmental activists try to do. They can’t have products banned through the front door (regulation or the courts), so they try to do it through the backdoor by eliminating supply.

Same with uranium. Some activists don’t like nuclear energy ( a decreasing number), so they try to eliminate the supply and export of uranium, and tell what other countries what they should do (not use nukes). Rather arrogant and condescending, in my opinion.

Blues Clair

Masterstroke.
Michael

Ignatieff is a neophyte to the political arena, and he has to learn how to fudge and obfuscate with greater ease.
Stephen Harper is good at it, but he has the advantage of – a) a lifetime of being a lobbyist or politician, and b) allowing extremely limited access to him where he would have to take or explain a stand on a given issue.
Ignatieff is at least taking questions and giving answers.
But he has to learn how to walk that very fine line of giving some substantive answers but not committing to anything that may not be in the best longer term interests (politically and policy-wise).
seaandthemountains

I love the demand to make everything black and white; where are positions are to be taken once and for evermore regardless of what new information may come to the fore or be clarified. Because given humankind’s infinite wisdom and knowledge, that would be a particularly insightful means of proceeding on most issues.

Paul Wells

So wise.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

“where are positions are to be taken once and for evermore”

I agree that people can change their minds over time but I am curious to know what ‘new information’ about asbestos was discovered in the twenty four hours between Iggy’s two entirely different comments.

sf

If I had refreshed my page I would have seen that you beat me to this thought by 11 minutes.

sf

Maybe you could clarify how mankind’s exciting discoveries about asbestos has caused Iggy to change his mind.

DR

Flip-flopping over the course of a few days? That’s nothing. He’ll need to really working on his dithering SkillZ to beat Hillary Clinton taking both sides of an issue in the same sentence.
http://coyne kc

Sigh…he said he might be walking over a cliff, that doesn’t he had to go and do it. His first statement was fine – this is what our position should be, but i might be

http://coyne kc

sigh…be less than fully informed. Then he gets clued in by someone who does know. In stead of saying: i told you so, unfortunately it’s a litte more complicated. Well i suppose that’s naivete on my part, but the obfuscation and backtracking is far more damaging. Ideally he should know what he’s talking about before he spouts off.

William

The most telling part of his speech to the faithful at the fundraiser the other night in Toronto was when he said that the Liberal Party would never give up the center position in Canadian politics. In an attempt to be all things to all people inconsistency is often the end result——–probably caused by listening to Kinsellian advice.
http://challengingthecommonplace.blogspot.com/ Chrystal Ocean

“The next election is shaping up as a duel between two men, each of whom desperately hopes you will concentrate on the other guy.”

Those would be the two men occupying the body of Michael Ignatieff, yes?

John.K

Any evidence they’re both men? One may be his inner child.
Critical Reasoning

Those would be the two men occupying the body of Michael Ignatieff, yes?

Hey, that sounds kinky.

LeenieJ (imho)

this is a reason to vote for the cons? um, NOT. talk about desperation. i guess all the other parties have to do is show the “where’s Stephen?” G20 pic (ala “Where’s Waldo”) in the next election. because a picture’s worth 1000 words; and this is exactly what we’ve had for the last three yrs: an “empty” seat in the PM’s chair.
Wascally Wabbit

Stephane Dion took a position – called it Green Shift – and found the Canadian people were more moved by childish misrepresentations of him and his policy than the truth.
Maybe Obama’s approach – hope and trust is the answer – but we Canadians don’t have an Obama – certainly – Michael Ignatieff hasn’t convinced me that he’s in the same league!
http://www.wordhunter.com Dennis

Two things that I think might be a source of concern for Liberals.

First, just how easy it was for Iggy to lie — and to lie pretty badly at that.

Second, his failure to connect the dots, as per Hebert’s column.

Politically speaking, I don’t have much of a problem with opposition leaders holding policy cards close to their vests before a campaign kicks off. We’ve seen what happens when the opposition reveals policy well in advance of writ drops. Preston Manning gave Paul Martin a fiscal framework that shaped the 90′s. Stephane Dion was shafted by his own green shift.

However, what Iggy seems to be doing is reacting to events in a hap-hazard manner. The end-result might well be conflicting policies or flip-flops that make for easy targets during an election campaign.

Add to that Iggy’s penchant for foot-in-mouth disease, and I don’t think you quite have the marvellous leader-in-waiting that some in the media are making him out to be.

As always, should be fun.