[Zipperfish]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The Liberals join the FaceBook page and go to the odd rally, the Tories dispatch aid to Haiti.

Now that sounds like something a Ridenrain would say, not an EyeBrock!

Hats off to Stephen Harper for his quick and effective response. It was nice to be able to explain to my 6 y.o. that Canada helps others in time of need, and I have Mr. Harper to thank for that. But I'd like to think that any Canadian Prime Minister would have reacted similarly. Martin did, in fact, during the Asian Tsunami of 2004.

[kenmore]

Lets not forget that it is the party in power that is responsible for sending aid to Haiti. If the libs were in power they would have done it sooner..
but they are not and lets not lessen the heat on the torys over prorogation and putting their personal, selfish interest ahead of Canadians and the running of the country.. for me I will be attending one of the rallys they are holding across the country to show displeasure with this autoctratic fool.

[FieryVulpine]

kenmore kenmore:

Lets not forget that it is the party in power that is responsible for sending aid to Haiti. If the libs were in power they would have done it sooner..
but they are not and lets not lessen the heat on the torys over prorogation and putting their personal, selfish interest ahead of Canadians and the running of the country.. for me I will be attending one of the rallys they are holding across the country to show displeasure with this autoctratic fool.

If the Liberals were in power, they would have handed the money to friendly aid agencies who'd make substantial donations to the Party shortly thereafter.

[EyeBrock]

Well he's not here so I thought I'd give it a go!

Really this prorogation thing has become a Liberal story.

I'd be all over it if it wasn't parliamentary policy, but it is. It's also a parliamentary procedure that was used a total of 14 times by the two most successful Liberal's in the past fifty years, Trudeau and Chretien.

It's not a 'they did it too' it's highlighting the hypocrisy of it all. This is seen as a Harper ‘trick’ and sold as such. The fact that the two Saint’s of the modern Liberal Party did it the very same when it suited them isn’t even discussed by the party faithful and Harper haters.

This has been made a news issue by a media that is a ‘woman scorned’ and a rudderless Liberal party with no polices or ideas.


Oh and on the reaction to Haiti vs Tsunami.
Aid was en route in C17's within 24 hours. Martin had to wait over two weeks before he could rent Antonov's to take DART to Sri-Lanka. But that was after 10 years of our military being in the 'decade of darkness'.

Nasty prorogue-happy Harper bought four C17's for Air Command in 2006. They turned out to be pretty useful eh?

Paul Martin thought we wouldn't need them:

"The Liberals have said they don't see heavy-lift aircraft as cost-effective, believing instead in "assured access" to such transport aircraft."

The trouble was in 2004, 'assured access' meant waiting over two weeks for them.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... ection2006

[Zipperfish]

It's the people of Canada giving this aid, and it's a lousy thing to use the suffering of millions to push a cheap partisan agenda.

And regarding the "they did it too argument" I like the Economist's response.

Harper goes prorogue

$1:

Parliamentary scrutiny may be tedious, but democracies cannot afford to dispense with it

CANADIAN ministers, it seems, are a bunch of Gerald Fords. Like the American president, who could not walk and chew gum at the same time, they cannot, apparently, cope with Parliament’s deliberations while dealing with the country’s economic troubles and the challenge of hosting the Winter Olympic games. This was the argument put forward by the spokesman for Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, after his boss on December 30th abruptly suspended, or “prorogued”, Canada’s Parliament until March 3rd.

...

The argument that previous prime ministers frequently prorogued Parliament is no more convincing. In almost every case they did so only once the government had got through the bulk of its legislative business. The Parliament that Mr Harper prorogued still had 36 government bills before it, including measures that form part of the prime minister’s much-vaunted crackdown on crime. When it reconvenes, those bills will have to start again from scratch. Past prorogations were typically brief (see article). This time sessions will be separated by a gap of 63 days.

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest...

[EyeBrock]

The people of Canada in 2004 couldn't get the aid or DART out to Sri Lanka until 2 weeks after it hit.

The people of Canada in 2010 can get DART to Haiti in 24 hrs with the C17. That's not cheap or partisan. It's fact.

Having been on disaster relief missions when I was in the military, I know that a well funded and equipped military is key to a flexible response. Now we have that ability to respond.

On the prorogue, I think the Economist needs to study the 14 prorogues of Trudeau and Chretien in more detail before they make further off-the-cuff and unbalanced comments from their British offices on the other side of the Atlantic.

[poquas]

$1:

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest...

No matter how you want to spin it, that's how it appears to anyone looking at it with the slightest degree of objectivity.

[2Cdo]

kenmore kenmore:

Lets not forget that it is the party in power that is responsible for sending aid to Haiti. If the libs were in power they would have done it sooner..

Like Eyebrock said, 2 WEEKS for aid to Sri Lanka in 04, 1 DAY for aid to Haiti. seems like you are completely wrong again, nothing new there.

[Akhenaten]

$1:

It's the people of Canada giving this aid, and it's a lousy thing to use the suffering of millions to push a cheap partisan agenda.

I agree. Like posting that, "Harpers neocon war agenda is doomed to fail", every time there's a death in Afghanistan.

[Zipperfish]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The people of Canada in 2004 couldn't get the aid or DART out to Sri Lanka until 2 weeks after it hit.

The people of Canada in 2010 can get DART to Haiti in 24 hrs with the C17. That's not cheap or partisan. It's fact.

Having been on disaster relief missions when I was in the military, I know that a well funded and equipped military is key to a flexible response. Now we have that ability to respond.

On the prorogue, I think the Economist needs to study the 14 prorogues of Trudeau and Chretien in more detail before they make further off-the-cuff and unbalanced comments from their British offices on the other side of the Atlantic.

Well, I think the Economist references previous prorogues in the article. Do try to keep up!

What's cheap is the insinuation that liberals are somehow indifferent to the suffering in Haiti, because we are concerned wiht the proroguing of Parliament by Harper. I'm concerned with both these situations. Maybe it's true what the Economist says about Canada's Conservatvies though--they can't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

And in Martin's defence--it's easy to beef up the military if you spend like a drunken sailor like the Conservatives have been. Martin actually had a sense of prudence and it was the LIberals under Chretien and Martin that dragged us out of a sorry eocnomic situation brought about by the largesse of previous governments, including Conservative governments. Some tough deciiosn were made, and the military had some wretched years.

But hey, the good times are back now. WE can buy all the military gear we want and shell out millions of taxpayer's dough to fat-cat banks!

[ASLplease]

Lets not forget that it's the Liberal party that repealed prorogation 80 years ago, and my family has enjoyed a nice glass of wine with our meals ever since. For this reason alone, I will always vote Liberal.

[bootlegga]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

But hey, the good times are back now. WE can buy all the military gear we want and shell out millions of taxpayer's dough to fat-cat banks!

Well, that's not quite true.

We have billions for car companies too, but still don't have anything even on the drawing board for Arctic patrol (Harper's 'slushbreakers')or to replace the AORs. This is despite both platforms being key parts of his "Canada First defence plan. Perhaps if we had leased (and based those An-124s from Skylink - a Canadian company), we could have afforded something one or both of them. But instead we spent $3 BILLION on FOUR planes! Yes, they are big and capable and all that, but we probably could have gotten a far better deal if we had leased them (like the Brits did originally), instead of sinking that much money into them. And given their tremendous operating costs ($45,000 per HOUR), we can't afford to use them nearly as much as we want, and therefore are still renting out those totally inadequate AN-124s on occasion. The best argument they had was that Canada is a rich nation and shouldn't lease military items, yet a couple years later, they leased tanks, helos, and UAVs and all sorts of otehr items.

Harper/MacKay still haven't even decided which specs for our new SAR planes are the right ones (the current specs heavily favour planes made in Europe or the US instead of Canadian made planes). We also have fewer Aurora patrol planes than we did while Martin was in office, because MacKay thought it made sense to cancel an upgrade that cost $400m million) and just scrap 8 of the planes without coming up with a plan to replace them. Even their "huge" spending increases aren't all that much bigger than the ones Martin proposed in his 5 year plan in 2005. This dithered and pissed around with leasing Chinooks (because we wanted to buy them instead) for almost 3 years before they finally decided to do that, which was a huge mistake in Afghanistan.

As for the 'lost decade' that's really just a Conservative talking point. The reality is that we had lost decades, ranging from 1967 to 2001 - much of which was admittedly under the Liberal purview - but far from entirely. Mulroney famously promised all sorts of goodies for the CF - nuclear subs, 18 frigates, new tanks, APCs, more personnel, etc but cancelled most of it quietly AFTER he got reelected in 1988. The cynic in me says he refused to spend big on defence for the same reasons that many PMs don't - it simply doesn't translate into votes in peacetime.

Yeah, the Conservatives have done some good things for DND, but they've mucked up a lot too.

[EyeBrock]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The people of Canada in 2004 couldn't get the aid or DART out to Sri Lanka until 2 weeks after it hit.

The people of Canada in 2010 can get DART to Haiti in 24 hrs with the C17. That's not cheap or partisan. It's fact.

Having been on disaster relief missions when I was in the military, I know that a well funded and equipped military is key to a flexible response. Now we have that ability to respond.

On the prorogue, I think the Economist needs to study the 14 prorogues of Trudeau and Chretien in more detail before they make further off-the-cuff and unbalanced comments from their British offices on the other side of the Atlantic.

Well, I think the Economist references previous prorogues in the article. Do try to keep up!

What's cheap is the insinuation that liberals are somehow indifferent to the suffering in Haiti, because we are concerned wiht the proroguing of Parliament by Harper. I'm concerned with both these situations. Maybe it's true what the Economist says about Canada's Conservatvies though--they can't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

And in Martin's defence--it's easy to beef up the military if you spend like a drunken sailor like the Conservatives have been. Martin actually had a sense of prudence and it was the LIberals under Chretien and Martin that dragged us out of a sorry eocnomic situation brought about by the largesse of previous governments, including Conservative governments. Some tough deciiosn were made, and the military had some wretched years.

But hey, the good times are back now. WE can buy all the military gear we want and shell out millions of taxpayer's dough to fat-cat banks!

Zip, if my tone looked like I was dissing the Libs for not caring, I apologise. I know you guys care as we do. It must be an accent thing!

And really, I'm not trying to score points on military purchases. The C17 can be generally agreed on both sides as a good purchase, just as Mulroney selling our Chinooks can be viewed as a bad move.

Really I think the whole prorogue thing has got many of us who generally see eye-to-eye on things digging our collective heels in and the debate has foundered.

I reckon this is well past it's popcorn date too but if anybody else wants to flog this decomposing equine-like beast, feel free!

[romanP]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

On the prorogue, I think the Economist needs to study the 14 prorogues of Trudeau and Chretien in more detail before they make further off-the-cuff and unbalanced comments from their British offices on the other side of the Atlantic.

There you go again, making that argument of which you said you weren't having any.

[EyeBrock]

romanP romanP:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

On the prorogue, I think the Economist needs to study the 14 prorogues of Trudeau and Chretien in more detail before they make further off-the-cuff and unbalanced comments from their British offices on the other side of the Atlantic.

There you go again, making that argument of which you said you weren't having any.

What are you going on about Ice Owl?