Liberalism and The Census

I really have to say, I don’t understand why we are getting ourselves all wound up about changes being made to the census. Sure, we get to hammer the government over it. Always fun. But as Liberals wouldn’t we actually support the changes that are being made?

I know I do. And here’s why:

Liberalism is about the ideal of individual liberty. If some Canadians don’t want to fill out the longer version with more questions, shouldn’t they be allowed to make that choice? And shouldn’t we, as Liberals, support their right to make that choice? From what I gather, more people will actually be receiving the longer version than the last time we had a census and the basic short form version is still mandatory for everybody.

I know if I receive the longer version I’m going to fill it out. But if my neighbour doesn’t want to, why should I care?

Maybe my neighbour is too busy. Maybe she hates forms. Maybe, just maybe, she isn’t comfortable giving out certain information. Either way, I think it should be up to her to decide without some pencil-pusher threatening her with punishment if she doesn’t. It’s her decision.

A lot has been made lately about how we as a party have to regain the trust of Canadians before we can think about beating Harper in an election. How about we start with trusting Canadians to decide if they want to fill out a form or not?

UPDATE:

Warren Kinsella agrees!

Sound the alarm it’s worse than Dion now

Support for the federal Liberal party has sunk to its lowest level in more than a year with the Conservatives taking a 10-point lead over their political rivals, a new EKOS opinion poll suggests.

I’m starting to reconsider my support for Michael’s leadership after seeing numbers like this. Starting to. If he keeps us mired down like this much longer I’m going to join the growing chorus of Liberals who want to see our party restored to its rightful place in control of this country.

Dion only reached the lows we’re at now once or twice. Most of the time, he had us neck and neck with Harper in the low thirties. With Michael, the mid twenties seem to be the new normal.

Ignatieff’s Poor Choice Of Words

I’m a little upset at our leader’s behaviour the last couple of days.

He’s been trying to score a few political points (that’s fine) at the expense of women’s equality (not fine). I’m talking about Guergis-gate specifically. I don’t really have a problem with him dragging the Conservatives over the coals on this, I just think he should have been smarter about he went about it.

By calling Guergis “Mrs. Jaffer” he is deliberately cheapening her decision to continue to use her maiden name. And I’m told by friends on the Hill that Zsuzsanna was not very happy with this decision.

Personally, I suspect Communications Guru Peter Donolo is behind this wordplay.

Warren Kinsella was right to drop this issue. We got our fun out of it, now that it’s descending into a circus of the absurd we should get back onto issues that people vote on.

We need to get Kinsella back up on the team in Ottawa. We’re not doing any better without him and all last spring we were consistently ahead of the Conservatives in the polls when Kinsella was calling the plays.

At least the leader won’t make that mistake again. After all, you don’t want to cross Zsuzsanna Zsohar…

Donolo’s one man show?

I understand Peter Donolo is holding a media briefing this morning for the Canada 150 conference.

Wow. I’m a little surprised at this. We’ve heard that Donolo has an ego, but this is getting outta hand.

First he gets rid of Warren Kinsella, something we couldn’t afford.

Now he’s pushed the communications team aside and is doing his own briefings.

What’s next, pushing our elected Caucus meetings out of the way?  Oh wait, thats already happened. They’re not invited to Canada 150.

A critical eye needs to be kept on Mr. Donolo these days.

What happened to Warren?

It is just me, or is he not promoting our leader anymore?

I know his blog is the go-to source for the best lines of attack on the Reformatories, and he surgically dismantles his opponent’s arguments on Power Play, but it doesn’t seem like he’s involved like he used to be.

If he was turfed from the Ignatieff team by Peter Donolo that will turn out to be a critical error in judgment.

We cannot let personal ego and dirty infighting deprive our Leader of one of the best, brightest and hardest working Liberals in Canada.

We cannot let personal ego and dirty infighting deprive our Leader of one of the best, brightest and hardest working Liberals in Canada.

Dosanjh loose cannon alert!

Our leader delivered a strong message on the Haitian tragedy and appeared prime ministerial-like, and what does Ujjal go and do?  He goes out and does this.

Something no one from any other party, including our own, has done. Thankfully the media won’t get too upset about Harper bashing.

But this isn’t the first time he’s gotten us into trouble with Twitter. Donolo and the team need to rein him in quick before he says something on there that the media won’t forgive us for.

Why are we playing hide the leader on this tour?

Like everybody else, I’m really happy to see us going on the offensive (finally). New ads and a cross-country tour are just what we needed; so this should be an excellent week for us!

However, I have to say, avoiding the media is probably not the best idea for this tour.

Ignatieff has turned down repeated invitations to appear on the News 95.7 talk shows and Friday, CTV’s Steve Murphy pointed out Ignatieff has rebuffed his requests for a sit-down interview on the supper hour news.  What’s up with that?  If he wants to get to know Canadians, what better opportunities?  Word is, Iggy’s handlers have him a tight leash and don’t want him to stray far from the party message. The federal Liberals have decided to take a page out of Stephen Harper’s playbook.

From what I gather, the tour is only going to be hitting college and university campuses. I think we need a bit more coverage than just student newspapers here, guys. If the idea is to present our ideas and Michael to Canadians, we’re going to need the mainstream media to help get our message out. Avoiding the media isn’t going to do the trick. We’ve all seen how they savaged Harper for this. The story will become about us avoiding questions and not our positive agenda for Canada.

After all, if we’re running ads saying Harper and the Conservatives are trying to hide from answering the tough questions, why in the world would we be hiding our leader from the media?

Watch out for Ignatieff!

I think this is fantastic. And just one more example of why Michael will make a great Prime Minister.

After decades in Britain and the U.S., the professional intellectual returned to his native Canada and became head of the Liberal party. If a federal election is called in 2010, he could become the next prime minister, and the Canadian head of state with the biggest international profile since Pierre Trudeau.

Why is it that esteemed international publications like Forbes get it; but Canadian ones don’t? Michael Ignatieff is an accomplished international intellectual. I’d rather that for my Prime Minister than some rube, faux-economist who claims to be writing a book about hockey.

Enough with the assassination jokes

I agree with BigCityLib on this one. We all may want Harper gone, but we need to stop stooping down to their level with jokes about killing him.

The Liberal leader took his road show to St. Catharines last night, where another small furor erupted this week over a joke inserted in a Liberal leaflet distributed to voters. The joke contained a reference to Harper being a casualty of “friendly fire” and Conservatives slammed the Liberals for making light of the prospect of assassination.

Hopefully this will be the last of the amateur-hour tactics we’ll see now that Peter Donolo is steering the ship.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/457653

Good on David Akin for calling it like it is

I’m no fan of the Harpies. But I was also a little offended at the Chinese Premier’s finger wagging as well. We might want to try and make partisan hay about it… but he was rebuking us, our diplomats, bureaucracy and former governments just as much as he was Harper. I’d say more, but David Akin sums it up perfectly:

There is a great deal of hand-wringing in the business press that Chinese Premier Wei Jiabao’s very public and very rare rebuke of Prime Minister Stephen Harper today has been bad for business or that it will cost us business.

Globe and Mail columnist Brian Milner writes, for example, that the rebuke “serves as a stark reminder that in the post-global-meltdown world, China, more than ever, rules the economic roost. And that there is a price to pay for ignoring that fact, however much we might abhor the wretched human rights record of the thin-skinned Communist leadership.”

Really?

Here are the stats on the value of Canada-China trade. In 2007, two-way trade between the two countries was up 13 per cent. In 2008, two-way trade was up 11 per cent. In the first six months of this year, two-way trade is up by about 3 per cent — despite a recession. Those are good numbers no matter what way you slice it. Ignoring China, if you look at those numbers, has certainly not been bad for business. Could it be better? Sure. But it ain’t been headed for the dumper.

The tourism industry, one must concede, has to reason to moan because while 134 other countries in the world have “approved destination status” from China — which makes it super-easy for Chinese tourists to travel to those destinations and, without which, it makes it illegal for Canadian tour operators to even advertise in China – Canada is just getting its ADS now. But wait: It was Liberal governments of a decade ago that first negotiated ADS. Why here’s David Emerson, then the LIberal international trade minister in Paul Martin’s government, celebrating such a deal — in 2005. And Harper gets criticized by the Chinese for not getting things done? With all due respect, Premier Wen, when you rebuke our prime minister, you rebuke all 30 million of us – Liberal, Conservative, or NDP — whether we voted for Harper or not.

By falling into the Chinese trap of jumping all over Harper, we let them get away with hiding their human rights record behind a little tongue lashing.