Conservatives lose another top minister ahead of election

[mentalfloss]

Conservatives lose another top minister ahead of election

OTTAWA, June 19 (Reuters) - Canadian Industry Minister James Moore announced on Friday that he would leave politics, the third surprise departure from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet as the ruling Conservatives head for an October election trailing in the opinion polls.

Citing personal reasons, including "some difficult news" about the health of his disabled son, Moore said he would not run for re-election, but believes Harper and his nine-year-old right-leaning government would prevail.

"I have every confidence that Prime Minister Harper and our Conservative government will be re-elected, and I wish I could be part of the next Conservative government," Moore said in a Facebook posting.

"With health challenges in my family, I have concluded it is impossible for me to seek another term in office," Moore said.

Opinion polls show Harper's government has slipped behind the left-leaning New Democratic Party in a tight three-way race just four months before the national vote. The departure of Moore, 39, prompted tweets about rats leaving a sinking ship.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird resigned unexpectedly in February, while Justice Minister Peter MacKay, 49, announced his resignation in May.

"One departure unto itself is not an issue," pollster Nik Nanos said. "But when you see a number of departures of senior cabinet ministers ... it basically raises eyebrows in the electorate, because people wonder, Why are all these senior members of the Harper team not running?"

Liberal Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler said the string of departures will hurt the Conservatives.

"These are not only senior ministers, but they played important roles in political campaigns. They're respected people," Cotler told reporters.

Moore, despite his relatively young age, was considered a Conservative heavyweight and is the senior minister in the Pacific Coast province of British Columbia, where the party is in a tight three-way battle. He was just 24 when he won his seat in 2000, the youngest member of parliament ever elected there.

Moore had also been seen as a potential contender for the leadership of the party once Harper, 56, leaves.

"Losing a key guy who's been part of this thing from the very beginning, in one of the regions that's going to be the most important in deciding the next election, can't be good," Ipsos Public Affairs pollster Darrell Bricker said.

British Columbia is an important battleground in the October vote, and the loss of Harper's lieutenant there could be costly.

"At this point we're really unsure who is going to play that role in B.C. for the Conservatives. There's not really that many candidates," said Rémi Léger, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University.

A spokesman for Harper thanked Moore for his service and said Moore would remain in his cabinet role until the election.

"As the minister's statement makes clear, he has a special-needs son who is facing health issues. We fully understand his need to spend more time with his family and wish the minister, his wife, Courtney, and his son, Spencer, well," the spokesman said.

Moore favored increased energy development in British Columbia, but in 2012 fiercely criticized the environmental record of Enbridge Inc, which is seeking to build an oil pipeline from Alberta's oil sands to the Pacific Coast. (Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Leslie Adler, Grant McCool)

UPDATE 5-Canada Conservatives lose another top minister ahead of election

 

[Walter]

Are there any bottom ministers?

 

[mentalfloss]

Only the prime one.

 

[Walter]

You wish he loved your bottom the way Justine does..

 

[mentalfloss]

Well he is having a little trouble coming out..

 

[petros]

Are there any bottom ministers?

Justin is a bottom.

 

[mentalfloss]

Stephen Harper’s season of discontent

MONTREAL—Stephen Harper’s Conservatives went into the last parliamentary stretch of their majority mandate last January with a breeze in their backs in public opinion and amidst long-awaited signs that Justin Trudeau’s honeymoon with voters was finally at an end.

With a budget replete with tax cuts and a popular piece of anti-terrorism legislation in the making, all seemed to be in place for a timely pre-election realignment of the stars in their favor.

Six months later, the budget has fallen flat. Support for the government’s anti-terrorism legislation has steadily declined. Some of the more able members of the caucus have bowed out — including, as of Friday, Industry Minister James Moore. And while the Liberals have consistently bled support over the first half of the year, their decline has not benefited the Conservatives.

An uptick in party fortunes in Quebec early in the year is increasingly looking like a mirage.

In Ontario and British Columbia, the NDP has been on the move in the polls while Conservative support has stalled or declined. Ditto in Atlantic Canada.

The NDP and the Liberals have long been communicating vessels for opposition votes but there is more than the usual opposition arithmetic at play behind the deficit in support of the Conservatives.

By all indications, a sizeable proportion of the 2011 supporters that they expected to come home as disenchantment with the Liberals set in are keeping their options open and/or are checking out the New Democrats.

That Harper will be campaigning next fall in an environment more hostile than four years ago has always been a given.

Like his predecessors, the Conservative leader has become a more polarizing figure with each passing mandate. Having covered Ontario at the tail end of Pierre Trudeau’s reign in the mid-80s I saw first-hand how rampant fatigue with his ruling party had become by the time he retired.

Now as then, regime change has become an overriding incentive for a record number of voters.

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe has been getting a taste of that since his return to the fore. Some otherwise sovereigntist-friendly voters have been questioning the wisdom of potentially facilitating Harper’s re-election by further dividing the opposition vote.

With the NDP on the rise nationally, back-to-back visits to Atlantic Canada, Alberta and southeastern Ontario over the past month have confirmed that Quebec is no longer an isolated pocket of anti-Conservative opposition.

Those visits elicited a lot of more Harper-phobia than Mulcair-mania.

But perhaps what struck me most was how few people were willing to speak up in defence of the government. As opposition to Harper has become more vocal, support for his re-election has become more discreet.

That stands in stark contrast with the immediate lead-up to the last campaign when even non-Conservative voters would often readily concede that they felt Harper had managed the global economic crisis with competence. That sentiment was omnipresent in Ontario — where he subsequently won his majority.

Four years later, many die-hard Conservatives privately admit that they expected more from their party’s first majority government in almost two decades. They are underwhelmed by the sum of Harper’s third mandate.

More than a few of them find it hard to take pride in a team that has chosen to dumb itself down by making ultra-partisan MPs such as Pierre Poilièvre and Paul Calandra its poster boys in the House of Commons.

Over the past few months Canadians have been more likely to catch a glimpse of some of the more solid members of Harper’s caucus as they take their leave from politics than in action in the House of Commons. Moore’s decision to follow John Baird, Peter MacKay, Christian Paradis and James Rajotte out the door only adds an extra touch to the end-of-reign climate that has attended the last week of the parliamentary sitting.

And then there is the Senate mess and the unwillingness of the prime minister to make it his job to address it.

On that score, the silence of so many otherwise committed Conservatives is eerily reminiscent of the embarrassment that drove many federal Liberals in Quebec to stay home or jump ship to another federalist party in the wake of the sponsorship scandal.

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news...ephen-harpers-season-of-discontent-hbert.html

 

[personal touch]

don't let the door hit your *** as you leave,poor sport!

 

[JLM]

don't let the door hit your *** as you leave,poor sport!

I think Moore has a valid reason for pulling the pin! There is nothing worse for a parent than to have a child who is not well and you're not there to do anything about. I wish the man well but they should reduce his pension to about 1/4 of what it is to be.

 

[personal touch]

I think Moore has a valid reason for pulling the pin! There is nothing worse for a parent than to have a child who is not well and you're not there to do anything about. I wish the man well but they should reduce his pension to about 1/4 of what it is to be.

i take it all back,if his child is ill,let the door hit his *** ever so gently.i take it all back,everything I said.

 

[petros]

Are you two high? 8 years gets an MP a pension. Even those in opposition.

 

[JLM]

Are you two high? 8 years gets an MP a pension. Even those in opposition.

You're are mostly right, but perhaps he should get 8/35 of a full pension - lets say he's earning $100000 a year to keep things simple, so his pension for 35 years (by rights) would be $70,000 so he should be eligible for a pension of 8/35 X $70,000 = $16000 a year. Savvy?

 

[pgs]

You're are mostly right, but perhaps he should get 8/35 of a full pension - lets say he's earning $100000 a year to keep things simple, so his pension for 35 years (by rights) would be $70,000 so he should be eligible for a pension of 8/35 X $70,000 = $16000 a year. Savvy?

Should is the key word hear . But the pension plan was set up by Liberals with the support of all other parties .
And parlimentarians look after themselves first .

 

[Walter]

And parlimentarians look after themselves first.

Doesn't everyone do this?

 

[personal touch]

Are you two high? 8 years gets an MP a pension. Even those in opposition.

Come on Petros,you are not talking to me are you?I hope not.

 

[damngrumpy]

Prominent Ministers should be the word and Petros is right 8 years is a pension.
Not only that if you resign before the writ and you are a cabinet minister you get
even more. If you run and the party loses you get regular pension. Someone is
not confident the Tories are going to win

 

[JLM]

Prominent Ministers should be the word and Petros is right 8 years is a pension.
Not only that if you resign before the writ and you are a cabinet minister you get
even more. If you run and the party loses you get regular pension. Someone is
not confident the Tories are going to win

It used to be six years, they are really starting to get tough.........about time!