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

Ignatieff clears the Gardiner? (II)

by Aaron Wherry on Monday, May 11, 2009 12:44pm - 53 Comments

And now the official statement from the Liberal leader’s office.

Yesterday, in collaboration with police and out of concern for public safety, Liberal Party officials intervened to help end the demonstration by Tamils on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. The protest had blocked the highway and put the safety of the protesters and innocent bystanders — including women and small children — at risk.

At no point did Liberal Members of Parliament or staff participate in yesterday’s protest.

Our Party has raised, and will continue to raise, the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka in the House of Commons. We will continue to demand action by the Canadian government to address the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. But the Liberal Party of Canada stands firmly against terrorism, and I restate our unequivocal condemnation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

I urge Canadian Tamils to continue raising this issue publicly, and to give it the attention it deserves. But I implore them to do so legally and safely, by working with their elected representatives and through legal means of protest, and not through demonstrations that put public safety at risk.

Tags: Gardiner, Gardiner Expressway, Michael Ignatieff, Sri Lanka, Tamil, Tamil Eelam, Tamil Tigers, Toronto

More by Aaron Wherry

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

So the Libs are against terrorism but for people who support terrorists?

Sounds like we are all going to have to become kremlinologists to know what Libs think.

Blues Clair

Igantieff’s statement seems reasonable, no?

sf

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to determine who is telling the truth and who are the good guys in this conflict. It is relatively certain that the Tigers have targeted civilians in the past. And additionally, if Canada intends to take a decision to oppose a foreign government’s actions, they need more than third-hand accounts. Even if the shelling of hospitals occurred, it may not have been deliberate, it may not have been done by the government, the hospitals may have been occupied by Tamil Tigers, and so on.

Ignatieff is in no position to be taking sides, especially when he is taking sides here.

Zeph

“Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE) is the terrorist organization. “Tamils” are just an ethnic group.

Keeping this in mind:
No jwl, you just need an IQ above a room temperature to understand the press release above… Unless of course you think that the Tamils population are all terrorists… which is ludicrous. Even the Nationalpost doesn’t spin Ignatieff as a LTTE lover:
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=33735357-4816-4bfd-8b62-7bdc03a354bf&p=2

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

I don’t think all Tamils are terrorists but I do believe if there are dozens of people waving flags of LTTE at a protest, I assume they support LTTE goals/aims/objectives. And I think pols who are in contact with LTTE supporters, and promise to bring up their grievances in Parliament the next day, implies some support for group that is pro-terrorist.

But I guess I am not as ‘smart’ as you.

Ted

So, because some people who support Tamils also support what the Tamil Tigers have done on their behalf, NO Tamils should be supported. Nor should they be asked to get off of a highway where they are putting people at risk. Gotcha.

JMD

What would clear the Gardiner, University Avenue and would have pre-empted the blocking of Ottawa’s Wellington Street is a Sri Lankan victory. For pete’s sake, Sri Lanka, get on with and finish off the Tamil fighters and terrorist Tigers. Your country will be a much better place if 20 years of war ends and Canada will be done with these stupid protests about a situation where we have zero control, no influence and, might I add, precious little interest. Iggy and the Liberals can then resume their more traditional methods of ethnic pandering.

Jean Proulx

JMD – Yeah kill ‘em all. That’ll ensure peace and quiet for sure.

JMD

Yup, that’s right Jean. When you kill a lot of enemies and force the rest to surrender, you get peace and quiet for sure. History has lots of examples — you can look them up if you don’t believe me. Here’s a clue to get you started: Goggle “Nazi Germany” and “Empire of Japan”.

Jean Proulx

I counter your Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan with Israel/Palestine, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Kashmir, Chechnya…shall I go on? World War II was a war between states. Sri Lanka, like most conflicts these days, is a dirty little guerrilla war. And you don’t win dirty little guerrilla wars with brute force.

Even if the Sinhalese massacre the remaining Tamil rebels trapped in that hellhole, do you seriously think it will end the conflict? You’ll still have millions of desperate, angry Tamils in Sri Lanka who do not recognize the legitimacy of Colombo to rule over them.

JMD

The war in Sri Lanka is a civil war. The Tamils tried to take control of a portion of the country. They will fail and the Tamils will have to live with the result of their failure just as citizens of the Ameircan south lived with theirs 150 years ago.

Guerilla warfare is just a tactic. Eventually, if guerillas want to control territory, they have to seize that territory and then defend it. The Tamil Tigers tried and are about to fail. When they fail, this war will be over and the elected government of Sri Lanka will once again control all of the island. The Tamils can then decide if they want to be productive citizens of a democratic state or stew in their resentments and try to find a sponsor to help them re-start the conflict. (Canada must ensure the sizeable Tamil community in this country is not that sponsor). Either way the current war will be over.

The best way to end any war is for one side to win decisively. Negotiated truces and ceasefires just set the stage for the next round — the Middle East being a prime example. Israel has never been allowed to decisively crush any of its enemies, despite being of the verge of doing so many times, so the whole dreary thing just drags on and on.

World War One ended with an armistice and treaty that set the stage for a resurgent Germany to go on the attack once more. After a decisive defeat in 1945, Germany has been a model world citizen. Ditto for Japan.

After a series of failed truces and ceasefires, the Vietnam War ended when a worn-down US withdrew and the North Vietnamese forces seized the south from a dispirited South Vietnamese government through conventional warfare. There has been no internal warfare in Vietnam since.

avr

Only Iggy can intervene to call off the mob. Yes, this sets an excellent precedent.
madeyoulook

The protest had blocked the highway and put the safety of the protesters and innocent bystanders — including women and small children — at risk.

Who are these “innocents” in danger up on the Gardner, if not the protesters themselves? Were there some human shields brought up there against their will? I am almost positive there is something in the Criminal Code about that. Any children brought up there at all? Hello, Children’s Aid…

And what is it about the innocent adult male (and in this statement, bigger children) that seems incapable of inspiring some sympathy?

And what do lawbreaking creeps have to do around here to get arrested and charged? A propos of nothing, how are things out Caledonia way?

cam

anytime you have stalled traffice on highways built to handle 14o-180km speeds, you risk serious accidents.

As well, I expect emergency vehicles were not able to get through.

madeyoulook

Well, fine, but police had to close the expressway. So the average speed dropped by 110-130km/hr, to zero.

The emergency vehicles tie-up is why I wanted the Ottawa hooligans charged, too. Apparently it’s ok to victimize nameless 68-year-old males with severe chest pains as they die en route to hospital. At least he’s not an innocent woman or small child. He’s expendable. No harm, no foul.

Man, this stinks. Is it too much for the “governed” to expect the laws of this country to be enforced? Apparently the answer is yes.

Ted

He got hundreds of Canadian citizens and residents who were protesting and putting themselves, their children and others at risk to move their protest to a safer area while the government did nothing. So yes, he did indeed set a good precedent.

madeyoulook

The kids belong with social workers. The grown-ups belong in jail. Anything else?

http://bcinto.blogspot.com BCer in Toronto

So then I guess running for the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party would be out of the question?
Mike T.

Even if you are going to call for jail for people engaging in disruptive but peaceful protest, it would still look better on you if you didn’t take so cavalier an attitute towards the role our valuable child and family service workers play.

madeyoulook

Wow, Mike T, don’t bother ducking; that point sailed so high over your noggin anyways.

A mob blocking a major urban highway, and forcing its closure, is a “peaceful protest” only inside a very sick mind.

And — feels wierd having to explain this to a presumed adult — there was no cavalier attitude towards “our valuable child and family service workers.” Just the opposite; they have a job to do here, when the adults around these kids would bring them up to play in traffic on a busy highway.

Hope that helps.

Mike T.

If you were trying to portray their actions as something where child services should be involved you were way off base.
Mike T.

I think we should just point out that MYL knows very little about the circumstances where CFS gets involved, or is trying to deliberately demonize the protestors, and just leave it at that.
madeyoulook

If you think dragging your kids up to blockade a major highway does NOT deserve an evaluation of your parenting skills, I sure hope you don’t have kids.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Let us know your opinion when your relatives are being shelled half a world away, MYL. Until then your parenting skills are a bit moot.
madeyoulook

Where does it even begin to make sense that a parent would endanger the lives and safety of his or her own kids in favour of a spectacularly impotent gesture lamenting the fate of more distant relatives? Up on a busy urban expressway, apparently.

Dudes! You made it! You got out! You got your kids out! Presumably you opted for self-preservation for your family over fighting and dying in a futile war. Welcome to Canada, you are (well, you should be) safe here.

The intimidating shake-down some families are suffering to “support” the LTTE is disgusting and illegal. As a Canadian I wish authorities would do a better job stamping that out.

But to those willing to break the law and endanger their now-safe families over idiotic, dangerous blockades: The war isn’t here, you turkeys. The war’s over there. If you want to fight in that war, what are you doing here? If you don’t want to fight in that war, protest legally and peacefully all you like; this is Canada, you have that right. Protest illegally and dangerously, and you lose me completely; in fact, you raise my sympathy for the other side — smooth.
sf

Jack is letting us know the civil war is over thanks to the great work our fellow Canadians did blocking our own expressway along with their little children. It takes a lot of courage to put your own kids in danger while a conflict rages a mere 8000 miles away.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

All I’m saying, my dear MYL, is that the protesters are not trying to make you happy-happy and may be behaving a little irrationally, owing to the rather brutal dénouement over in Tigerland, so excoriating them for their lack of PR-savvy, or parenting skills, is a bit silly. As you may have noticed from the Serbs and the Jews and the Palestinians and the Armenians and the everybody else, people tend to lose it a bit when their kinsmen are being attacked somewhere on Planet Earth.

sf

No he didn’t. He did nothing of the sort. He did not persuade them to do anything. They persuaded him to take the side of the Tamil Tigers. In return they stopped breaking the law.

The police could have and should have done their jobs.

It’s like a shop-lifter saying I wouldn’t have to steal this item if you had let me have it for free.

Canadian government policy is being dictated by blackmail, thanks to Iggy and his spineless manoeuvres.

Zeph

Yeah yeah what would a discussion be without the conservatives making fools of themselves. Sf you’re clueless, you weren’t there and now you invent stuff and believe in your own spin. Grow up a little and stop being an ass.

sf

How stupidly naive are you? Even an infant knows Iggy is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Ted

Hunh?

How is “the Liberal Party of Canada stands firmly against terrorism, and I restate our unequivocal condemnation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” supporting the Tamil Tigers?

Unless you are stupidly asserting that any support for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka means you support the Tamil Tigers, which is not only preposterous but not supported even by the Conservatives or the Conservative supporting media.

And I am glad that the police have more smarts than you do about how to handle confrontation and protest. The result of them trying to arrest hundreds of protesters would have been worse and tied up the highway for far far far longer.

This is why the country needs to be run by pragmatists instead of ideologues, especially hard on criminals/soft on crime conservative ideologues like SF.

madeyoulook

A question from below, that I will now throw at Ted:

Ted, are you not at all curious what the Leader (or perhaps the Office of the Leader) of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the party that presents itself as the alternative choice for government, said or offered in order to satisfy the leadership of this collection of protesters? Because this voter is very curious.

Mike T.

I doubt this very much.
madeyoulook

Mike T must have meant this reply to be elsewhere. Because to go to the trouble of incorrectly stating what amounts to “I don’t believe you” without even saying why, well, like I said, Mike T must have meant for this reply to be elsewhere.
Mike T.

I doubt you have any real curiosity as to what Iggy may have said to have protesting citizens. I suspect you, like most, take the terms of the announcement at face value but wish to try to create the impression of sinister backroom dealing.
Ted

I’m not curious because he told us: raise the issue in caucus for discussion and in Parliament.

Are we so accustomed to Harper’s style of governance that we have to be suspicious about even the most obvious and transparent actions of our government?
madeyoulook

Sir, I am very deeply curious what Iggy or his office might have told the protesters. I am seriously considering voting Liberal next election, and this event has made me suspicious about the “reward” he offered a mob of hooligans, simply for being a mob of hooligans. That troubles me. And the public statement leaves me, well, unconvinced.

But go ahead and make unfair assumptions as to the motives of others. It helps me understand your contributions to the debate.

sf

This precedent is flabbergasting.

From now on, it will be known that occupying a highway can deliver results. The natives in Caledonia proved it and now the Tamils in Toronto proved it. In neither case do I believe that they should have been allowed to break the law, yet not only were they let off the hook, but in fact the illegal occupations were proven to deliver results.

Ignatieff clearly has no principles.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

“it will be known that occupying a highway can deliver results.”

What results? All Iggy has done is reaffirm his existing position, while condemning the Tamils’ Gardiner tactic. Try reading the post.

http://iheartmusic.net/serendipity matthew

You’re asking an awful lot of him, Jack. I mean, “reading”? Next thing you know, you’ll be asking him to think critically. And who knows where that could lead.

sf

Heck, reading your brainless response was a waste of time, no doubt.. If you had spent any time following this issue rather than acting like one of Wherry’s mindless drones then you might actually learn something.
madeyoulook

Jack & matthew, are you not at all curious what the Leader (or perhaps the Office of the Leader) of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the party that presents itself as the alternative choice for government, said or offered in order to satisfy the leadership of this collection of protesters? Because this voter is very curious.

I would be thrilled if it was a one-sided conversation: “You know, folks, this is illegal, you’re hurting your cause, you should be arrested, and you may not realize this so let me help by pointing out that you’re endangering your children. You should stop this immediately.” Sufficiently persuasive that the protesters would then be struck by the epiphany of the error of their ways.

I would sink serious money on the conversation being vastly different.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

You know, folks, this is illegal, you’re hurting your cause, you should be arrested, and you may not realize this so let me help by pointing out that you’re endangering your children. You should stop this immediately.

It’s almost like your Iggy’s speechwriter, MYL. Cf. “I implore them to do so legally and safely, by working with their elected representatives and through legal means of protest, and not through demonstrations that put public safety at risk.”
madeyoulook

Jack, I want to know what the mob heard, not the PPG.

sf

The post was Iggy’s second response, following the negative reaction to the first response.

sf

Iggy’s like that. He twists in the wind like a windsock. He does one stupid thing, and waits to see the reaction, then he decides if he will switch positions.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

You’re replying to yourself again.
sf

Are you an ass most of the time or all of the time?
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Only with you, sf. You’re contagious.

http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

Randy Hillier set the precedent a long time ago, it seems to me.

Zeph

sf is in “conservative fake outrage mode”, don’t interrupt his incoherent rambling otherwise he won’t sleep like a baby tonight.

sf

Does Iggy program you by remote control or do you need to drop in to his office for new programming?

A Citizen with common sense

By the way, is anyone keeping a tab of the losses Canadian economy suffers due to disruptions caused by these terrorist-aligning protestors? I mean, in addition to the Welfare benefits they pocket from the tax-paying Canadians to protest all day outside. Here’s what Mr Ignatieff had to say to Tamil Tiger backers in his recent correspondence (April 2009);

“Today we are calling on the Canadian government to examine the feasibility of fast-tracking existing visa applications, under a special assisted relative class, for those wishing to escape the violence and join their immediate family members in Canada. New applications should also be dealt with as quickly as possible and processing fees should be waived for those who have been personally affected by the escalating violence”

Only in Canada..:-)

If these protestors were genuinely interested about the welfare of their brethren in Sri Lanka, their most logical option would be to ask their Tamil Tiger terrorists to release the innocent Tamil civilians held in hostage and surrender – not to demand a soverign Government to stop their offensive against a banned terrorist group by waving terrorist flags in a busy Toronto highway!

- A Citizen with Common Sense