You know, I might even consider voting Conservative if their supporters could give me a reason to. It's pretty bad when all you can say about your party is that they aren't as bad as the other guy.
Why I vote Conservative/Liberal/NDP/Green/Bloc
- Thread starter Colpy
- Start date
You know, I might even consider voting Conservative if their supporters could give me a reason to. It's pretty bad when all you can say about your party is that they aren't as bad as the other guy.
Hmm... do you really think transferring debt from Ottawa to the provinces, which is mostly just an accounting action of moving numbers from one general ledger to another, ranks as equal to a moral and/or crime-of-corruption like some of the stuff that Chretien pulled?
I mean, I don't get why Martin did it - it seems regressive, which means I'd expect Albertans to like it, because then they get to feel like they're not covering debt incurred by have-not provinces - but at the end of the day it's the same citizens paying for the same debt, only they're writing cheques to a provincial finance minister instead of a federal finance minister.
(Come to think of it, what would be the sense of Ottawa offloading debt to the provinces while pushing for HST? Ottawa does all the revenue gathering while the provinces get stuck with more debt? That's just weird.)
What's some of the other stuff Martin did that you'd rank as being as reprehensible as Chretien?
What I saw from Martin is he cut revenue and cut spending to as-low-and-yet-balanced a level as anyone could in order to balance the budget, start paying off the debt, yet still keep Canada going with enough of the benefits of being a Canadian to make it a life worth living in a society sharing the benefits of being in what could and would be an unimaginably prosperous place given our low population if people like the Japanese were managing it.
Cut revenue and benefits beyond what Martin did and now you're just pushing the nation down to second-world status.
When I look back on Chretien's time, the only thing I see of merit is he kept Canada out of Iraq.
Harper, on the other hand, was All For sending Canadian troops into Iraq!
Tory supporter facing fraud charge gets plum seat at rally - CTV News
These people are no different than the Lieberals.
These people are no different than the Lieberals.
100 years ago a collection of morons this vast would have been lined up in front of a well limed pit.
Omicron;1406108[B said:
Perhaps the question should be the other way around. While Chretien certainly wasn't squeaky clean, I believe it was Martin who was at the helm during the sponsorship scandal. They are probably both on par.
But, the thing is, Martin was *not* in charge of TBS (Treasury Board Secretariat), which is the ministry that was actually accountable for letting that corrupt spending slip through. Martin was in charge of Finance, which controls revenue and allocation. Once it's allocated, it's up to TBS to make sure the cheques are getting written to the right people.
I don't get it. People somehow have it drilled into their brain that Martin would have had something to do with it, when anyone who knows how the federal government works would know that the details of that corrupt transaction would have been a mile away and on the other side of the city in a completely different Minister's building from what Martin was in charge of.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding that? I just don't get it. It's like blaming the Minister of INAC for some goof-up let through by the Minster of DFO.
Is it because people don't know that Finance and TBS are separate ministries?
If you've ever worked in Ottawa, you'll know that the ministries operate like semi-autonomous kingdoms, such that Ministers have very little knowledge of what the other Ministries are doing.
The only one with a bird's eye view is the PM, so the only people who could have known about that transaction are the PM of the day - Chretien - and the Minister of TBS, which was *not* Martin.
Last edited:
Ahhh...not quite.
Martin may not have been in close contact and control of the government bureaucracy involved in Adscam......but he was in close contact and completely in control of the Liberal Party apparatus in the province of Quebec.
Hard to believe all this went on with out him hearing about it.
Yep, when you spend time in the pig pen you're bound to get some sh*t on you. :smile:
But wasn't that part of what made for such animosity between Martin and Chretien... that Chretien was using rank and French-Canadianess to schmeal behind what was supposed to be Martin's domain?
I have a hunch Martin knew *something* was going on, but he just didn't know what, and it led to nothing but friction between him and Chretien.
In any case, I still don't get the way Canadians would go carte blanche on presuming Martin was guilty without doing a smidgin of fact-checking. I know someone who was in TBS the day the Ad Scandal was announced, and you should have seen the freakout when a big giant french-Canadian woman came storming out of her office like a rhinoceros, screaming something in French that evidently was a call for an all-staff meeting, so the guys he was meeting with said they'd have to postpone, and he never got back with them because they suspended all allocation of contracts for what was supposed to be just six months, but stretched into 1.5 years, during which time government basically ground to a halt because they'd so downsized that they were outsourcing everything. He decided to blow off Ottawa and go back to where he came from to make a living in the marketplace like he used to.
But the other thing that gets me is... if you knew just how huge the federal budget is, you'd know that $250 million is, relatively speaking, a smidgin, yet people acted like someone had run off with the treasury... yet those *same* people now think it's *nothing* to spend $36 billion on a few dozen rococo jets Canada doesn't need when the forces *do* need upgrading in so many other ways that matter.
There was a time when Churchill was on a cruise-liner, doing his usual thing of getting hammered every night and monopolizing the conversation, and he got into a rant about perspective and how too few people have enough of it... and now I agree with him.
Yet Another reason to vote Conservative:
The opposition hurts itself by defending political subsidies - The Globe and Mail
Once again the entire article is worth the read.
The opposition hurts itself by defending political subsidies - The Globe and Mail
Once again the entire article is worth the read.
Martin and Chretein? That's what you guys are worried about in this election? Talk about out of touch, you know neither are running right?
And that pilfering is such a top priority for you, you fail to notice this?
OTTAWA—A Toronto businessman who says he has ties to a Conservative MP and at least two Tory campaigns is facing a criminal charge.
Snover Dhillon is accused of fraud for allegedly withdrawing $10,972 from a woman’s credit and debit cards.
That didn’t prevent him from getting a plum seat directly behind the Harper family at a Conservative rally last week in Brampton, Ont.
Dhillon also appears to have violated the terms of his bail when he met with a Tory MP in India in January, and attended a political event in Halifax a month later.
Dhillon says he is helping with the campaigns of two Toronto-area candidates, and calls himself a friend of MP Patrick Brown, from Barrie, Ont.
One of those candidates denies he is working on the campaign, and Brown hesitates to call him a friend.
Dhillon is the head of the Indo-Canadian Peace Alliance and once sponsored a trip to India with Brown, Brown’s sister, and two other Tory MPs in 2007.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s judgment has been questioned in recent weeks for allowing a man with criminal convictions and a bankruptcy to act as a senior adviser.
Dhillon did not return calls or answer emails Wednesday to answer questions about the fraud charge and bail conditions.
And that pilfering is such a top priority for you, you fail to notice this?
OTTAWA—A Toronto businessman who says he has ties to a Conservative MP and at least two Tory campaigns is facing a criminal charge.
Snover Dhillon is accused of fraud for allegedly withdrawing $10,972 from a woman’s credit and debit cards.
That didn’t prevent him from getting a plum seat directly behind the Harper family at a Conservative rally last week in Brampton, Ont.
Dhillon also appears to have violated the terms of his bail when he met with a Tory MP in India in January, and attended a political event in Halifax a month later.
Dhillon says he is helping with the campaigns of two Toronto-area candidates, and calls himself a friend of MP Patrick Brown, from Barrie, Ont.
One of those candidates denies he is working on the campaign, and Brown hesitates to call him a friend.
Dhillon is the head of the Indo-Canadian Peace Alliance and once sponsored a trip to India with Brown, Brown’s sister, and two other Tory MPs in 2007.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s judgment has been questioned in recent weeks for allowing a man with criminal convictions and a bankruptcy to act as a senior adviser.
Dhillon did not return calls or answer emails Wednesday to answer questions about the fraud charge and bail conditions.
Hmm... so the Reformocons would be the only ones with a budget from their corporate sponsors to launch hate ads?
If you watch this documentary: Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010) - IMDb you'll hear US congress-people saying that scandals like Casino Jack would not have happened if they'd had a system for equalization of campaign funding like Canada has.
Well, you know... keep potential dissidents with photos of themselves standing next to Iggy blocked out in order to save a seat for the crooked insiders.
Ahhh....Corporate donations in Canada are ILLEGAL.
You guys keep spouting off about the Cons removing the tax revenues of parties in the most insane ways..........
1. Contributions by individuals are limited to $1,100 annually.
2. Contributions by Unions, and corporations are ILLEGAL.
3. If you want to aid a party, give off your duff and put your money where your mouth is.....Conservatives do.
Hmm... what stops a corporation or union from doling out money to individuals to make donations?
So far in my local riding I'm leading Green since he does appear to be the most fiscally conservative candidate there. Plus he's an ex-military officer, so he's not likely to screw over our veterans either, unlike my local conservative incumbent who'd voted to cut our veterans' pensions!
As for the Liberal candidate, I don't know him well enough yet but have emailed him some questions and am awaiting an answer. The local Conservative seems shy to give me straightforward answers, and I don't know who my local NDP candidate is yet.
By the way, who is the NDp candidate for Ottawa-Orleans? I've Googled around but it seems they're not running one in this riding.
As for the Liberal candidate, I don't know him well enough yet but have emailed him some questions and am awaiting an answer. The local Conservative seems shy to give me straightforward answers, and I don't know who my local NDP candidate is yet.
By the way, who is the NDp candidate for Ottawa-Orleans? I've Googled around but it seems they're not running one in this riding.
NOT why I voted Conservative.
Better put a stop to this crap Mr. Harper....... I DIDN'T vote for the New Liberal Party.
Chris Selley: Scandal-plagued Tories become the new Liberals | Full Comment | National Post
Better put a stop to this crap Mr. Harper....... I DIDN'T vote for the New Liberal Party.
Chris Selley: Scandal-plagued Tories become the new Liberals | Full Comment | National Post
Actually Adscam was more the work of bureaucrats than politicians if you want to be completely honest! :smile:
This type of thing would happen eventually regardless of which party is in power if they're there long enough. They become complacent eventually and start believing they can do no wrong.