Beyond The Commons

Beyond The Commons

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

Michael Ignatieff talks

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 2:53pm - 57 Comments

In a set of new ads, the Liberal leader discusses Conservative attacks, pensions and family care.

The Liberals have also updated a previous ad about Mr. Harper.

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  • OriginalEmily1

    10-9-8-7-6-

    • Horatio

      5-4-3-2-1!

      Nailed it.

      OriginalEmily1 for PM.

    • FVerhoeven

      You've got it, Emily. The Canadian treasury running dry……………..

      • Patchouli

        from harper's humungous deficit. I hear ya!

        Don't worry, FV, the Liberals can set things right again.

        • Buffalo Bill

          Liberals are Iggiot's, your party will become second fiddle to the NDP…………..pathetic.

  • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

    I'm surprised to see the Liberals in part play into the Tories' hands, which is to make Iggy himself the focus. On the other hand, the Liberals might be thinking that, since it's going to happen anyhow, they might as well try to do it on their terms. Nevertheless, a common political tactic is to have a leader appear as part of a team, which the Liberals actually did during Iggy's first stump speech after the election began. They appear to be reverting to making it all about Iggy again. Curious.

  • http://robotducks.blogspot.com corky

    pretty decent ads actually

  • OriginalEmily1

    These are great ads btw….exactly what people want to hear, and in a quiet friendly way.

    • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

      If he were farting on the screen you'd say the same thing, Nola. You've been doing this for more than a decade now.

      • Patchouli

        why are you so awfully rude to Emily? It feels really wrong and personal.

      • burlivespipe

        Dennis<F, could you open the window when you type?

    • Lucky Luke

      Wow Emily…if that is you…you are engaged! Keep it up. So are you an actual Liberal operative or on their pay roll?

      Dennis…just refer back to a couple of days ago on Macleans where pretty much the entire forum tore apart your desperate attempts to justify Harper's hypocrisy over the coalition bogeyman…man up for goodness sake.

      • OriginalEmily1

        LOL no, Dennis does freelance writing for a living…Craig's list follower.

        And Emily is a very common name

      • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

        In other words, people can do anything they want as long as its in the pursuit of your ideology. They can smear opponents. They can distort the truth. And you're great with it. Long live China. Next.

  • FVerhoeven

    These sort of ads will work extremely well during the election campaign if…….

    Ignatieff doesn't have to explain his sentiment further.

    Is he, for instance, suggesting that a professor's wage of let's say of seven thousand plus a month would be paid out by the government, were the professor to care for aging parents? (substitute a professor's wage with any high income earner for other examples)

    And how would long would the government be able to do that sort of thing before the entire national treasury runs dry?

    Yes, Canadians should be responsible to one another but are there no common sense solutions to be found other than government coffers being opened ……once again? Could the professor not afford to take some time off unpaid?

    • Mike T.

      The plan has been released and, in fact costed.

      We wouldn't be having an alection if you coudl say the same for Harper!

      • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

        lol, whatever. Their RESP Passport, or whatever it's called, already has to be changed. How is that fully costed? We needed an election to tell us how incompetent the Iggy Liberals are, did we?

        • bennji1977

          Why does it have to be changed?

    • brooster2

      "And how would long would the government be able to do that sort of thing before the entire national treasury runs dry?"

      It's actually a smaller drain on the public purse to support family caregivers than it is to insitutionalize people with progressive or terminal illnesses before they need that level of support. The lack of such alternatives is a large factor in the overcrowding of long term care beds, in Ontario at least.

      IMO, this kind of program is a potential winner both fiscally and socially.

  • Patchouli

    The ads are actually both well done — we've got the positive Iggy Talks about making Canada better, and the negative one — I wasn't sure they would go there, but I'm kinda glad they did.

  • Lucky Luke

    That's your idea of holding Emily to account !??

    BTW Dennis…didn't see you anywhere yesterday when it was revealed that not only in 2004 was Harper pro-Coalition but apparently was quite game for parties to form coalitions in 1997…curious indeed!

    • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

      Yeah. She's a Liberal operative who formerly went by the name of Nola on other boards and has been engaging in these tactics for many years. People like you don't like to hear that kind of thing, do you? You just like to attack and accuse others, eh?

      And those aren't "revelations". They're efforts by the media to desperately get Harper to stop talking about a coalition they fell head over heels for in 2008. But he won''t stop talking about it. Why should he? Why shouldn't future Parliamentary configurations be discussed, especially given what the coalition tried to pull last time?

      • Lucky Luke

        There's the Dennis I was hoping for!

        Kudos…no one performs misdirection and linguistic contortions as well as you do…you're a walking, living rhetorical pretzel…well done.

        And how did you come to discover that this modern Mata-Hari aka Emily is some nefarious liberal master spy and saboteur?

        • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

          You're more than welcome to justify even one accusation you made against me, instead of engaging in this knee-jerk nonsense.

          Oh, I know Nola. So do others on here. Her style and tactics are unmistakable. In fact, apart from the name change, she doesn't even make much of an effort to conceal herself.

        • Orson Bean

          "And how did you come to discover that this modern Mata-Hari aka Emily is some nefarious liberal master spy and saboteur?"

          Well, not quite that, but definitely on a self-appointed mission from God to destroy Evil Lord Harper:
          http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/

      • OriginalEmily1

        Dennis is a Craigslist follower, that's why.

        Projection is one of his favorite tools.

        • Orson Bean

          So sayeth the pot in reference to the kettle:
          http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/

          • OriginalEmily1

            What does some candidate in Medicine Hat have to do with me?

          • Orson Bean

            umm, that's your blog, Emily. That's kinda the point. You know, the blog in which you talk about it being your personal mission to see that Harper is driven out of office, and in which you talk about what like-minded people like you can do in order to make that happen — like making lots and lots of posts on online discussion boards, letters to the editor and the like.

            Sorta like what that Craig's list ad was looking for Conservatives to do.

            Pot meet kettle.

          • OriginalEmily1

            LOL sorry but I don't have a blog of any kind.

            There's more than one Emily in the country ya know….and probably more than one who doesn't like Harper.

          • Orson Bean

            Emily's computer keyboard: Home of the Whopper.

          • OriginalEmily1

            Sorry, I picked the name Emily entirely at random.

            Wouldn't matter what name I picked though…Mary, Debbie, SusieQ…Fred, Harry, Sam….you Cons would find somebody else in the country to claim is me.

            You aren't the first to try this gimmick you know. LOL

          • burlivespipe

            I gave Orrson a thumb's up on his suggestion of driving Harper out of office — come and join me and Orrson as we rid the nation of the lying dweeb!

          • Orson Bean

            I trust the people of Canada will do the right thing on May 2nd.

          • hosertohoosier

            This ad (and the caregiver support one) is very effective, and helps to present Ignatieff as a likable fellow. My main concern is with Ignatieff's policy. It is not clear how it differs from an RRSP, except the fund would be managed by the government. While Canada's social security system appears to be solvent (at least relative to other countries), I'm still not sure that is much of a plus… Particularly if one believes that there is a chance we'll have a government that cares more about, say, jets and jails than pensions someday. Indeed, I'd think a modest index fund could get the average Canadian a pretty good return, with far lower overhead than a government-run fund.

      • Orson Bean

        "She's a Liberal operative"
        http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/

        • OriginalEmily1

          To Dennis everyone is a 'Liberal operative'….right while he's telling you that Liberals are broke! LOL

          He's the kind of person who seems normal, but walks down the street having conversations with himself out loud….if you get my drift.

          • http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

            That you have to lie about what I write and post on here just further erodes your already diminished credibility, and basically proves my point. Thanks.

          • OriginalEmily1

            LOL you're the one that advertises on the web that you're a freelance writer.

            BAM!

      • Horatio

        "She's a Liberal operative who formerly went by the name of Nola"

        Is that why OriginalEmily1 keeps refusing my urging for her to run for PM? I've been had!

        • burlivespipe

          Now we know why Deniis_F supports harper, that income splitting will be a big boost in the DF household, since freelance writers of his hackney stylings are likely stay-at-home deadbeats living off the milk of mother hen. Ok, probably in the basement of mama…

  • Richard_S_Argent

    Wow, does Ignatieff ever look like his mother.

    Incidentally, that ad really speaks to me – our family went through precisely the same thing. Ignatieff comes across as the most genuine I've ever seen him.

    The early days of the campaign seem to be going very well for the Liberals…I'm guessing that some of those million-odd Liberal votes that stayed home in 2008 are starting to pay attention again.

  • chet

    The Liberals should put away their ad money for another election.

    The macro factors just don't favour the Libs. Canada is doing well again, and doing amazingly well compared to the US and other comparitor countries.

    There is no way,

    no way,

    Canadians are going to change horses in this mid stream.

    This one won't even be close.

    Not even close.

    • Matlock

      "Not even close. "

      Drink!

    • come again

      decent theory with a side of presumption. like it!

  • come again

    link?

  • john g

    While I'm still not a big fan of the "white background" ads (says the guy with the white background avatar), the family one is easily the best ad yet that the Libs have released this campaign. Except why did Iggy transplant so much of his hair into his eyebrows?

  • john g

    Aaron, that's a pretty pithy, uninformative update about the other ad being changed. Is that really the best you can/are allowed to do?

    Can anyone else without such a vested interest like Wherry here explain why they decided to pull the accusations of forgery against Bev Oda and replace them with yet another non-resonating scandal? The Carson story is pretty much dead already.

  • Crit_Reasoning

    They pulled the accusations of "forgery" because the accusations were stupid. They're hoping that the Carson story has legs because of the salacious "old man falls for young escort" angle.

  • tedbetts

    Time, I'm sure. You can only pack so many ethics scandals into one 30 second bit.

    And the Carson one involves the RCMP and doesn't seem to be going away. In fact, there are new revelations about this and how much the PMO knew and how many cabinet ministers he was dealing with every other day.

  • john g

    Thanks CR. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I have to hope that a bunch of (mostly) partisan hack commentators can give me better information than the journalist making the original post.

  • bennji1977

    Plus, I am still waiting for an explanation as to how someone with a past criminal record was able to get such a high level position within government.

    How is it that a convicted felon was able to get a security clearance?

  • Blues Clair

    I didn’t think much about the CPC Carson problem until Red Tory pointed out this video.

  • Patchouli

    Ouch, that was hard to watch. One almost feels sorry for the old fool. Almost. And the whole sorry episode frankly does point to a pm with questionable judgement.

  • Stewart_Smith

    wow

  • Blues Clair

    "Ouch, that was hard to watch. One almost feels sorry for the old fool."

    Absolutely Patchouli, being a bleeding heart Liberal and all, I did feel sorry for him. And did anyone else here him say at one point, I'm going to get in so much sh_t?

    Oh well, we'll see what happens.

  • Patchouli

    I did say "almost." I am compassionate, but fraudulent old men who like to dally with young prosties and peddle their influence aren't really deserving of that compassion.

    He's icky. And he was in the PMO. 'Nuff said.

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