Your daily dose of Canadian-made punditry for all of your Canadian Kossacks out there.
James Royson is sick of all of the lies and spin.
One of the most successfully maddening tactics of political parties is to confuse the people with facts.
So it is with current claims by the Conservative Party of Canada that it is a friend of cities and, stupendously, a party that's "getting things done for Toronto."
The imagery and words fired up in this climate of an election is enough to make believers out of skeptics. So beguiling is the spin and obfuscation that the unsuspecting voter has little chance of separating truth from fiction.
Kevin Libin starts with an interesting commentary on the various nutbars Canadian parties have had to deal with over the years, emphasizing the anti-Israel ones from the Reform and Greens, while completely ignoring recent Conservative Party nutbars candidates like Rob Anders. Eventually, he decides that the Green Party members don't dress "mainstream" enough (read: some supporters dress like hippies). Therefore, they cannot add to the national political discourse. Yes, they can't because they dress funny.
James Travers
None of that would be looming now if Liberals had learned the lessons of the last election. Instead of recognizing their deserved defeat as an omen of worse to come, instead of thoroughly reconsidering what it means to be a 21st-century progressive party, they misread the outcome as a timeout, a brief recess before an almost automatic return to power.
Results of that miscalculation are self-evident. Liberal campaign wheels are wobbly because they were never really on. Dion failed to fully grasp that Job 1 for a minority opposition leader is election readiness.
Joseph Quesnel
The first time I met Dion was during my undergraduate days at McGill University in Montreal. Dion was invited to debate Daniel Turp, a politician with the Parti Quebecois, on the issue of Quebec sovereignty.
Dion systematically tore apart the sovereigntist case for separation logically, but with passion. Turp was an intelligent opponent, but he was no match for Dion's rigorous mind.
"Why is it that you sovereigntists believe a vote for yes means forever, but a no vote means until next time?" he asked of Turp, referring to the 1995 Quebec Referendum. Turp did not respond to the question.
That is the Dion I remember and wish would show himself in this election.
Diane Francis discusses the myriad of problems preventing smooth flow between the Canadian and American borders, and then explains how she believes making it even more difficult to traverse through the borders will clearly resolve these problems. At very least, it will solve them for the big corporations, their management and trade goods.
What would Harper do with a majority? The Toronto Star attempts to answer this all important question.
On the lighter side of news -- Kathy English and the variety of funny mistakes a newspaper makes in editing.
George Jonas launches into a confused diatribe about how humanitarianism (ie. trying to help people) is bad and that a "New World Order" is just around the corner ready to destroy us all and clearly Iggy and the Liberals will be the foundation of it.
David Frum loves Stephen Harper and thinks that McCain should be jealous of just how amazing Harper is and how open and transparent and truthful Harper's government has been under Harper and that Harper has made Canada amazing and that Harper's poop smells like a fresh Spring morning. Oh yeah, did he forget to mention he thinks that Harper is awesome and can do no wrong? (Or which planet Frum has been living on for the last two years?)
Don Martin asks where all of the supposed Liberal Party supporters are at Dion events. He doesn't provide numbers for the Conservative events from the week though. It would be interesting to see if there is a big difference.