Beyond The Commons

 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?

by Aaron Wherry on Monday, May 11, 2009 1:05am - 17 Comments

Late news from Toronto.

Up to 2000 protesters from the Tamil community say they are going to move off the Gardiner Expressway more than five hours after they first marched onto the highway, crippling traffic in the city on a busy Mother’s day Sunday.

Organizers tell CP24 they have spoken with Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff’s office and that he promised to bring up the issue with caucus and look at political and economic sanctions against Sri Lanka.

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  • Lee

    Well done Mikey, way to separate yourself further from the public.

  • Riley Hennessey

    I see, so now we reward protestors who block major highways? What a great message this sends. Well done.

    • http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

      I see, so now we reward protestors who block major highways?

      What planet have you been living on? We’ve always rewarded protesters (ie. aboriginals, truck drivers, Randy Hillier’s pack of wackaloons) who block major highways.

  • Mike T.

    Show willingness to have dialogue, and it gives commuters a practical benefit. Underlies how the Conservatives have a lot to learn about how to handle urban areas. A good political move.

    • William

      That statement demonstrates how much out of touch you and your like are with Canadians.—–tell you what to do—-go over to the nearest workplace or coffee shop and announce that Iggy is willing to have dialogue ( troll for votes) with people who think it`s OK to force women and children up onto the busiest arterial highway in our largest city and then tell them this is a really good political move on Iggy`s part and then come back and tell us what the reaction was.

  • Tom

    If the average canadian or Toronto citizen went and blocked a major highway, they would be arrested and thrown in jail.
    However, Tamils or any other group that comes to Canada from thier home country can do this garbage and get away with it. Apparently it is their right.
    It is time we say if they do not like it here, you have the right to go back home.

    • http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

      I believe the point is not that ”they don’t like it here” but that their friends and family back home are being slaughtered.

    • http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

      If the average canadian or Toronto citizen went and blocked a major highway, they would be arrested and thrown in jail.

      Really?
      Some farmers occupied truck weigh scales on Highway 401 in Bowmanville, Oshawa and Mississauga. More than 300 people brought traffic to a crawl along a stretch of Highway 402 near Sarnia’s Blue Water Bridge border crossing.
      Number of arrests: 0

      Shall I dig up more examples or will you simply concede you know nothing?

    • Mike T.

      Neat! not only did you immediately jump to an idiotic anti-minority diatribe, you did it 40 minutes after the notion was debunked (see R. McClelland, above).

      Sometimes I wonder if the lunatic right aren’t nearly as dangerous as we sometimes think…

    • Ramesh

      These are average canadians or toronto citizens who have been asking their government/country (Canada) to help save their family and loved ones caught in a brutal war. If our government and other canadians hadn’t ignored them for months then they wouldn’t have taken such desparate measure. Add on to this the fact that nearly 400 civilians were killed on saturday night (canadian time) in what the UN called a blood bath. These people a desparate and they don’t want to be ignored anymore.

  • Citizen with a common sense

    Extremist Tamils in T.O gave a glimpse of how their mentality work by blocking a major highway by force and holding Toronto motorists by ransom. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Liberal Party once again caved in to the demands of terrorist hands operating in Canada. Who said Tamil Tigers are not using women & children as Human shields? They just proved they CAN and they WILL when necessary! In my opinion, Children’s Services should track down these parents who endangered their children’s lives by placing them in the front of the Highway blockade and take legal action against them. If these protestors were really genuine 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 Terrorists by waving terrorist flags in a busy Toronto highway!

    - citizen with a common sense

    • DisplacedCanadian

      A citizen with common sense with call themselves just that; not a citizen with a common sense. Your syntax bad!

    • Mike T.

      aye, madam, ’tis common.

  • http://deleted Sandi

    He promised to bring it up in caucus, etc. What’s wrong with that? They feel they are being listened to – what’s wrong with that?

    No promises he can’t deliver – it’s up to Harper.

  • Dieter Sprockets

    It was getting late. They had human shields-women and children. They made their point. Mcguinty and Miller were impotent as usual. Now they have another useful idiot.

  • Michael Morden

    Ignatieff engineered the end of a very disruptive protest by promising to do something that Ottawa should be doing anyways, i.e. discussing responses to THE international crisis of the moment. No abdication of the rule of law, no cowardice, no precedent-setting, no downside.

  • 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….:-)

    - A Citizen with common sense

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