Liberals Vow to Kill New Refugee Bill

MIA aka Michael Ignatieff  and the Libs are joining forces with their coalition partners to kill a bill that would make it easier to prosecute human smugglers and hold ship owners to account.

The Liberals claim Bill C-49, which would allow people arriving via any ship designated a human smuggling vessel to be detained for up to one year, violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees against unlawful search and detention.

The usual Liberal supportive Globe and Mail is calling upon the Libs to quit the nonsense, work with the government and support Bill C-49.

The Liberals should not oppose Bill C-49 outright, but work with the government to fine-tune the proposed new legislation aimed at combatting human smuggling.
Michael Ignatieff's get-tough rhetoric is meaningless without a demonstration of his party's willingness to work with the government to thwart the threat of mass arrivals of migrants on ships operated by criminal gangs.

Jane Giggles Taber is speculating whether or not it the government will make it a confidence vote.

Mr. Kenney refused, however, to say whether it would be a confidence matter. This is significant because a defeat on a confidence motion would trigger a federal election.
No date has been set for the bill to come to the Commons for the second-reading vote.

I think they should make Bill C-49 a confidence vote. If the coalition partners defeat the government, so be it.   I believe the opposition parties would have a rude awakening if an election were called over this issue.  The coalition would find the public would be on the government's side and I believe you could very well see voters electing a Conservative majority government to bring common sense to our immigration and refugee policy.

 So Jason Kenny, PM Harper, make Bill C-49 a confidence motion and let the chips fall where they may.
I think most Canadians are sick and tired of being treated like the world's door mat! I know I am. Bring on the election!

Canada Continues to Own the Podium

As we all know there is another climate conference that is going on this year in Cancun, Mexico.  Each day fossil awards are handed out to those countries who, in the greenies minds fail to comply with the green agenda the way they think.

.Get ready to wave your flags and sing "Oh Canada" folks!  Yesterday, Canada swept the awards.

Ottawa (30 Nov. 2010) - The Canadian government, led by reincarnated Environment Minister John Baird, has kicked off United Nations (UN) climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, by winning three Fossil of the Day awards - first, second and third place simultaneously!

  We won 1st., 2nd, and 3rd.  Pretty good for day one I would say.

Canada wins first, second, and third place Fossil of the Day Award in Cancun today. The award is given daily to the country who has done the most to disrupt and undermine negotiations.

Let's clean up and win as many fossil awards as possible. Let's continue to "own that  podium"    Way to go John Baird! Make us proud!   Show National Union of Public employees and others that Canada will not buy into the green scam and  that all this is all about is the distribution of wealth.
Go Canada go!

Update: In the meantime Japan will say no to the extension of the Kyoto Protocol    Look for them to receive one of those coveted awards as well.

By-election Wrap Up - Conservatives-2, Coalition-1

Well the by-elections have come and gone now.  First of all I would like to congratulate the winners from last night. Conservatives easily keep their seat in Dauphin, win a Liberal stronghold in Vaughn bringing them closer to a majority, and Winnipeg North, that seat switched from one coalition partner to another (from NDP to Lib).  Conservatives were not expected to win in Winnipeg North anyway so no real loss there for them.

If this is a taste for the next general election, I suspect Liberals in the GTA will be a tad nervous as they are now vulnerable.  Winnipeg North, should Jack Layton be nervous?  Maybe, maybe not but I bet he's and his party are lickin' their wounds today. NDP didn't do that well in any of the ridings.  NDP could very well take it back next time.  Who knows?  Here is one Lib blogger's take on what happened.

As for the Liberals, Kevin Lamoureux's victory was an aberration. Lamoureux won by promising to be tough on crime. In other words, he won by promising to be a Conservative in riding that would never vote for a real Conservative.

 Do by-elections mean anything?  Well it's usually a referendum on the governing party. It's a chance for the electorate to voice a protest against the government. Look what happened just weeks ago in the US in their midterm elections. The governing party got "a shellacking."  In this case, the governing party did well so the voters must be satisfied with the way current Conservative government is governing.

So no matter what the spin doctors on the Lib and Dippers side say, Conservatives should be pleased with these by-elections and prepare for the next round of by-elections and/or the next general election which ever comes first.  It will all depend on how soon the opposition coalition want to defeat the Conservative government. Judging from what happened last night I bet their thinking long and hard if they want to take down the government anytime soon.

In the mean time and off topic  Don Martin will be gracing your television sets every night as the new host of  CTV's Power Play.

Cruel Prank on Military Families

Our brave men and women in uniform are putting their lives on the line fighting the Taliban and trying to help bring about a peaceful and decent life for the Afghan people.  Meanwhile at home here some demented sicko is playing a very cruel prank on military families who are keeping the home fires burning. This lowlife has been calling families in the middle of the night to tell them their loved one is dead.

QUEBEC - Military police are pursuing a prankster preying on families of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan by calling them in the middle of the night to say their loved ones have died.
The relatives of at least three soldiers serving in the war-torn country have been targeted by the prank, said Alex Maillé, a spokesman at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier said Tuesday.
The wife of one soldier filed a complaint with military police after someone called her last week to say her husband had died in a roadside bomb explosion.

How cruel is that? It's sick,demented,deplorable etc. Our military families sacrifice a lot so  their loved ones can serve and it's not easy. They must be constantly on edge all the time their loved one is deployed for fear they receive that dreaded  call.  Then you have some low life that does this kind of despicable act.  Just think about how the troops in Afghanistan are feeling knowing that some sociopath/psychopath is terrorizing their families like that?  It's just something more for them to worry about.

I hope they find who ever is doing this,lock 'em up and throw away the key. 

What's Happened to the Liberal Party?

Things haven't been going to well for the Liberal Party in the few years. They've tried different leaders. Last summer they send the leader on a bus tour that was  supposed to turn things around but that was to not. Today you have three columns that tell of Liberal woes.
Larry Martin traces Liberal problems way back in '93.

To find the reason for their woes, they might look back, strangely enough, at one of their successes – the election of 1993. That campaign, which gutted the Canadian political structure like no other, is known as the one that vanquished the old Progressive Conservative Party. The Tories came away with two seats. But it should also be known as the one that undermined the Liberals, who came away with a majority.
Although they won handily, that campaign effectively reduced the Grits to an Ontario party with a few regional add-ons. Post-1993, the party won successive majorities in 1997 and 2000, but in each it was an all-Ontario show, with the party registering unbelievable sweeps of 100 or so seats in that province.
That represented close to two-thirds of the party’s overall total in those elections. The warning signals were there. These majorities masked the Liberal Party’s geographical isolation.

Hardcore Liberal apologist, Susan Delacourt gives her reasons why the Libs are having a tough time.
Then Warren Kinsella weighs in with his assesment. Liberals were had once counted on painting Stephen Harper and the Reform/Alliance/Conservative parties as scary, but that doesn't work anymore.
Liberals lack strategy 
Five years after they lost power, there’s no change in sight
For starters, Stephen Harper - once the feared Reform Party outsider - is no longer feared so much, if at all. As with all prime ministers,
Harper has become pretty familiar to the rest of us. For a decade, the Liberals kept Harper and his conservative colleagues from power with frightening tales about what the right-wingers would do to social programs, health care and race relations.
But after five years, our social network is mainly what it was; health care is more or less intact; and the party with the most racially diverse caucus in the House of Commons is, well, Harper’s.

All the Libs have done since they lost the election in 2006 is to, with the help from their friends in the media, conjure up faux scandals to embarrass the Conservatives in hopes of finding the big one that would take them back to their right full place. Hasn't worked.

What are Liberals to do?  Well, former chief of staff to Michael Ignatieff, Ian Davey has some advise, offer some conservative ideas.  This coming from from a Liberal? Wow! I guess he sees that voters are sick and tired of the social welfare entitlement programs that spend tons of money and makes the size of government balloon. Oh, well looks like Davey's former boss hasn't taken that advise.   As long as Liberals keep spinning their wheels and navel gaze, the Conservatives can keep working getting things done for the betterment of the country and PM Harper can keep reaping praise like this one.

Stephen Harper earns biblical praise for pro-Israeli stand 

Stephen Harper is being hailed as a modern-day “Abraham” for his defence of Israel in a recent speech to a conference on combating anti-Semitism.

Scott Stinson sums it all up.

Under Mr. Ignatieff, the Liberals seem to want to have it both ways again: on one hand talking up the party’s deficit-slaying efforts under Jean Chrétien, and on the other speaking about the myriad ways they would spend the money saved by cancelling corporate tax cuts.
It’s as though the party can’t quite bring itself to step away from that key part of what it sees as being “Liberal” — the notion that the government will wrap you in its warm embrace — and so the leader’s summer tour included his stories of the floppy-haired kid who was struggling just to be a student and the elderly lady who couldn’t afford to care for her ailing husband. Mr. Ignatieff would thus talk about not just the need to curb the deficit, but also about “three core priorities for a future Liberal government: learning, care, and Canadian leadership in the world.”

 It was put most simply in this line from one of his speeches: “we need to get this deficit under control, and we need to invest in Canadians.”
 

The Conservatives have recently started making noise about the need for austerity and how the next budget will be one of belt-tightening. Voters could be forgiven for snorting at that and asking what took them so long. But here’s what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said this week: “This is not the time for dangerous and risky new spending schemes that will increase deficits and raise taxes.” It sounds like the Tories will stick to that simple message.

It sounds like something Ian Davey might have suggested.