Tories blast Elections Canada
Posted on 30 April 2008 by Jack
OTTAWA–Conservatives have launched an all-out assault on Elections Canada’s credibility, voting against a motion to express confidence in the independent agency.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday charged that the agency “broke its own rules” with a raid two weeks ago on his party’s headquarters, but was absent hours later when the entire Conservative caucus voted against a Bloc Québécois motion of confidence in Elections Canada – a move deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff denounced as “shameful.”
The motion passed, supported by Liberal, Bloc and New Democrat MPs, 152 to 117.
“We have confidence in the Elections Canada Act,” said Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister, stressing “act.”
“We don’t have confidence in the interpretation Elections Canada has given” to rules governing election advertising spending by the Conservative party, Soudas said, referring to the “in and out” affair.
Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, Harper’s political minister for Quebec, characterized the government’s decision to vote against the Bloc motion as refusing to play “political games” with a controversy and with “this institution.”
The motion is symbolic, meant to highlight the Tories’ difficulties.
Popularity: 29% [?]
April 30th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Stunts, posturing, grandstanding, catcalls, childish playground type behavior, don’t they all realize they have a country to run. A country that is facing some serious challenges; economic, foreign policy, issues about fundamental freedoms, environmental high- jackers who would ruin our country for no gain except that of lining their own pockets. The opposition needs to seriously become more responsible, maybe even grow up.
mid island mike
April 30th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I have no faith in Elections Canada after the Ontario provincial election. All votes and referendum ballots counted WITHIN 50 MINUTES. An election worker out west described the time fram involved in counting a relatively smaller communities returns and it confirmed for me the ballot count couldn’t have been done in the time frame involved in Ontario in riding after riding.
Question Period past Sunday was interesting because Craig Oliver stated to the effect that the Tories would likely be found not to have had serious problems with the in and out scheme. It was gratifying to hear the old codger say so. We should bring up the episode and have a listen to it presuming the texts are not altered after taping.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Visitors to this site may want to wish our Prime Minister “Happy Birthday” today.
Jack: I’ve had problems commenting because word press alerts to enable Java Script and try again later. I know I have java script on this computer, but don’t know how to activate it. This has only occurred twice. Maybe other commenters are experiencing this difficulty.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Good, the Conseratives have been playing rope-a-dope with Elections Canada for long enough. Time to strike back in a big way.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Re: Anna - “Trouble Commenting”.
In Internet Explorer go to “Tools > Intenet Options”. A new window will open. Click the ‘Advanced tab” and scroll down on the options to “Java (Sun)” and check your settings.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Off topic. Garnering attention to high gas prices and supporting UV’s suggestion they be regulated at 90 cents/litre. There’s an article by Canadian Press headed by Petro Canada CEO: Rising oilpatch profits have little to do with high gas prices. Tried to enter it under Canada Category JNW but was prevented by word press java script and enable cookies alert.
Suggest everybody read it. It’s in the western papers this morning.
A reminder sentiment for oilpatch execs below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBr_HIhtaN0&feature=related
Added to that, he may greatly help the issue if all Canadian bloggers of all political persuasions add to their signatures for the time ahead, “I’ve got to go see a man about a horse.”
These gas prices along with inflated mortgages have the motoring public in a vice grip. It’s now their call.
Hope Java doesn’t interrupt this message.
Today as well at Jerusalem Post Hamas is talking about have 200,000 suicide bombers ready to attack Israel on its 60th anniversary celebrations. There’s an absence of international political outrage. Geographical factoid: Israel occupies 1 percent of the entire Arab dominated land mass. Still, terrorist orgs deny the nation’s ‘right to exist’ yet believe they are ready to rule the region.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Checked settings Jack. It’s marked “automatically.” Should I change that to one of the others?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Jack, I had the same problem as Anna but in Firefox. Was able to post out of Internet Explorer.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Having problems as well. I am prompted to enable cookies (which are enabled, but for the originating domain only). Problems both in Firefox and Opera.
That aside, I find the response of the Liberals loathesome and reprehensible given they don’t have the fortitude to vote their convictions in the House.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Re: all — Java settings. Don’t change anything until Cynapse sees the comments here. It can get “complicated”. It would be helpful to know from where I sit when the problems started.
That would tell me if the problem is being caused by the code in the main template or something I added later.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/onthehill/archive/2008/04/30/new-poll-is-out.aspx
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The good news for the Conservatives is that they not only rival the Bloc Québécois in popularity across the province among francophones, they are far ahead in the Quebec City region and are starting to show strength among the soccer mom and minivan crowd in the suburbs north and south of Montreal. Confidence in the government is down but Prime Minister Stephen Harper is still considered the best choice for prime minister.
If an election were held this spring, the Conservative caucus could find itself with a lot more Quebec MPs.
For Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, the news is bleak.
Not only does the NDP continue its inexorable rise in Quebec, it is now more popular than the Liberals among francophones. While the Liberals continue to be the most popular with non-francophones and on the island of Montreal, they are so low in Quebec City and in the regions that many candidates could be lucky to get the 10 per cent you need to get election expenses reimbursed.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Have a look at the PM’s website where experts have weighed in on Dion’s economic plan. Not looking good on them.
I’ve encountered five episodes of word press blocking comments since early morning hours. Just tried to enter a comment here about an hour ago and my whole system froze. Had to reboot.
It takes me five minutes even to load internet explorer. This is unacceptable. Going to phone Rogers. But since we discussed John Tory yesterday in constructive criticism mode, now we encounter commenting problems. Can John Tory handle this at Rogers.
testing entering comments…
April 30th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Jack…experienced the same Word Press warning about enabling Java last evening on both IE and Firefox.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
and it happened again two minutes ago….hope this gets through
April 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
The problem “might be” memory. My Firefox (v3.0b5) “as installed”, was caching many pages AND doing link prefetching. I cut it back to 3 pages with NO prefetching and am happy again.
OK - TechTime - For Firefox install the extension “ConfigurationMania” and look at Browser > Browser Cache settings.
Let’s see if the comment “takes” …
April 30th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Hey it did work! Jack, Cynapse is THE MAN (?) - ’cause I had to bounce out to a different (Konqueror) browser to post earlier today.