Right there pandering to separatist votes.

Jack’s recklessness now includes imposing the hated Bill 101 on all Federal employees. This is a Bill that was deemed unconstitutional – against the law – by both Quebec’s Superior Court and Canada’s Supreme Court.

Jack ignored his principles by helping to kill National Childcare, the Kelowna Accord, the Kyoto Accord and almost the Gun Registry.

Now he has gone beyond anything even I would expect from him. In order to win votes in Quebec, Jack is pandering to separatists with a promise that threatens the nation.

With Jack it is all about getting votes. He doesn’t care who he has to throw under the bus.

Don’t let it be you.

If Jack has any moral courage and is a true leader he will do everything within his power to protect the gun registry.

This is yet another example of political opportunism by Jack Layton.

I supported Bill C-68 which gave us our gun registry and I still do. It is typical of the Conservatives to want to give up on a good idea because of early bureaucratic mismanagement. The fact is Bill C-68 didn’t go far enough.

Ban hand guns in Canada.

There are only two reasons to own a hand gun, one is to shoot at a target and the other is to shoot at a person. The Liberal Party is committed to banning hand guns in Canada and I will make sure they stick to that commitment. For the target shooters that are serious about owning a hand gun, I will ask for legislation that permits ownership under strict guidelines and keeps the guns under lock and key at the accredited range of their choice. Transporting the gun would require a security service to take it from one approved location to another.

His act of political opportunism killed Child Care.

In 1997 and 1998, I was fortunate to have been involved in Dalton McGuinty’s Task Force investigating Children at Risk. The key finding was that for every dollar spent on a child before the age of seven, we save exponentially down the road.

There is a dire need for day care spaces across the country. Harper’s $25 a month will not inspire anyone to invest in the construction of new early-learning facilities, so I propose incentives to build these facilities and funding to enable every child to attend them.

A Liberal government will invest in early learning & day care strategies created by the provinces. We know that in the long term, children who have adequate learning save our system money in health and education costs and become more productive in our economy.

Instead, Jack chose to side with Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. This coalition between the NDP and the Conservatives brought down the Liberal government and killed both Kyoto and Kelowna.

Jack Layton’s only principle is the principle of self-promotion.

If you don’t stand by your principles it means you don’t have any.

Does Anyone Know Where Jack’s Been?

Since the collapse of the coalition idea, NDP Leader Jack Layton has basically limited his political activities to mourning the death of his dream.

By Angelo Persichilli

TORONTO—Does anyone know where Jack Layton’s been? While federal Liberals and Conservatives are elbowing for positioning in the next federal election, it appears the NDP leader has fallen off the federal political radar screen. Since the collapse of his initiative of a centre-left coalition with the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois, Layton has basically limited his political activities to mourning the death of his dream.

There’s no doubt that the manoeuvering for the creative and daring coalition didn’t just start after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s controversial presentation in November of the economic update. That event was the spark that provided life to an initiative Layton was already working on.

There is also no doubt that putting together a political coalition with federalists and separatists showed Layton’s skills in negotiations and diplomacy. He skillfully preyed on the ambition and/or desperation of the about-to-be-finished Liberal leader like Stéphane Dion and the overconfidence of Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe who incidentally escaped from a political near-death-experience and tried to deliver a final blow to Prime Minister Stephen Harper knowing that Dion and Layton would never be contenders in Quebec.

The trio thus became the darlings among Quebec voters but they completely misread the reaction of the rest of the country.

Moreover, Dion, blinded by his ambitions, didn’t realize that the pieces of his leadership in the Liberal Party were kept together by a glow that had nothing to do with his crazy ambitions.

So this combined potpourri of creativity, desperation, and combined leaders’ ambitions was saved by the decision of Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament. It was a decision that definitely saved Harper’s government whose leadership would have been in danger had he lost 24 Sussex Dr. residence, but also saved Canada from a political chaos during the worst recession since the Great Depression of the Thirties.

At the end of the day, along with most Canadians, the winners have been Harper, new Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, and the Liberals who were finally able to get rid of a leader elected two years earlier during two weeks of collective craziness in Montreal.

The losers have been Dion, who had nothing to lose at that point anyway, and Layton.

The problem for Layton is that he put all his eggs into one basket, without taking into consideration the possibility of a failure of the project and he didn’t have a ‘plan B.’

This became painfully clear after the Gov.-Gen. Jean decided to prorogue Parliament into the new year.

Layton didn’t read the signals coming from the new leader of the Liberal Party who had no appetite for the coalition and was clearly taking the party in a different direction.

Layton had to know that the only influential Liberal still pushing for the coalition was Bob Rae, but when Rae decided to give up and support Ignatieff, Layton had to understand the coalition was over.

Unfortunately, he kept promoting it and, in January, he made the last strategically deadly mistake: he announced to vote against Flaherty’s upcoming budget before reading it.

Let’s face it: the NDP has always voted against Conservative budgets, but Canadians didn’t like this behaviour for two reasons.

First, it’s a matter of correctness and respect for the institutions. If you decide before you read it, people can interpret the action as a lack of respect for the institution.

Second, we were, and still are, in the middle of a deep recession and Canadians want more cooperation from our political leaders. Furthermore, there is always the possibility that the government might do something that you might like.

In fact, the budget presented by Flaherty, was considered by many as the most socialist budget ever presented by a Canadian government.

Even Rae, in a story on the National Post, joked that Harper went even beyond his budget when he was the NDP premier of Ontario.

Of course, you can find many things you don’t like in every budget and you can always resort to the magic words used by the oppositions like “too little, too late,” or “we want more,” or “the budget doesn’t do enough for my neighbour Pasquale.”

But at that point, Layton was in a corner. He kept opposing the government, but was unable to articulate an alternative. In a time of crisis, it’s not enough to remind people what the problems are; they know them, they want solutions instead.

The Liberals, meanwhile, kept criticizing the budget saying that “this is not our budget,” at the same time while recognizing that there was “something good” in it and supported it.

This tactic will not help them in the future because, eventually, they have to come up with something alternative to the Harper’s budget, but nonetheless their position helped them to gain time and to put their house in order, so to speak.

In the meantime the government, with the help of the Liberals, is working hard to help Canadians to go through these difficult times with the NDP present only through an empty rhetoric in the House.

That’s why the NDP and Layton have become irrelevant and their absence in the daily news is the first concerning symptom. And, more concerning than Layton’s absence, is the fact that nobody notices it.

I hope the leader of the NDP has used this Parliamentary break to prepare a strategy that goes beyond the rhetoric of criticism. Canadians know the problems, they have had enough of political games and they want solutions.

news@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

It got me thinking about political advertising, and it reminded me of a couple of odd things that I had seen recently.

The first is this screen-shot I took of Jack Layton advertising on the Drudge Report.  The Drudge Report, of course, is a right-wing American gossip blog and Republican smear-machine.  It was responsible for leaking the Monica Lewinsky news, and earlier this year for posting a photo of Hillary Clinton looking wrinkled and asking whether America should have to watch their President become an elderly woman.  Right under Jack’s ad, it says “Support the Drudge Report.  Visit our Advertisers.”  Support the Drudge Report?  Thanks Jack.

Then I remembered a clip I saw of Jack Layton on CNN: he was doing a chummy interview with, of all people, Lou Dobbs!!  The same Lou Dobbs who is an anti-immigrant, xenophobic protectionist, and who harbours conspiracy theories about NAFTA super-highways and currency unions.  Anyway, he and Jack get along swimmingly:

They even stole my line about it being a “most-candidates debate.”  Oh well.  Imitation as flattery…

http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/10/09/eh-canada-its-jack-laytons-debate-and-hell-skip-it-if-he-wants-to/

FOOT-IN-MOUTH SYNDROME

NDP Leader Jack Layton was scathing when asked during a campaign stop in Courtenay, B.C., this week what he thought of candidates who skip debates.

“I’d heard that it’s a malady that seems to be sweeping across the Conservative candidates across the country,” he said.

“I think that the best way to deal with it is to replace them in government so they can go back and get some bed rest, or whatever is required.”

That evening, one candidate failed to show for a debate in the far-off riding of Toronto Danforth.

The absentee? Jack Layton.