Dion not eager for fall election

Dion may not be eager for a fall election but he is eager to show that he is a bare-faced lier and ready to grovel in the mud before the Conservatives. Either that or he is suffering premature memory loss and maybe bladder control after the THrone speech. Here is one of the four conditions that Dion gave for supporting the throne speech not long ago. The press seems to have a bad memory too:
On Afghanistan, Dion said the Throne Speech must make it clear Canada intends to end its combat role in Afghanistan in 2009
Well let' see. Harper gave his answer. F.... you. And then he set up a panel to look into the issue, a panel your buddy Rae welcomed and headed by a Liberal hawk. There were three other conditions including the re-introduction of an environment bill that will never see the light of day.
Now apparently Dion will not vote against the speech unless it promises to privatise the post office cut the minimum wage and abolish the public school system or other things of that sort!
Harper's trap is not the fall election but the revelation that the emperor has no clothes. The Liberals are revealed for the naked cowering unprincipled pitiful degenerates that they are. That is the meaningless trick that Harper is playing on them but the Liberals are so hapless they cannot even understand that. Meanwhile Dion shows his courage and leadership by promising a bigger corporate tax cut than the Conservatives.
Dion says he will think of the interests of Canadians when he decides to vote for or against the throne speech. Complete garbage. He will think of what he considers the Liberal interest and as he sees it apparently it is to swallow whatever Harper feeds him and wait until better polls --but the prospect is only for worse polls unless Harper really makes a horrible slip but that is not likely. Harper and his managers are light years ahead of the Liberals in strategy and tactics.
Dion better be right that people underestimate him and that he will eventually triumph but the signs don't point in that direction.


Dion not eager for fall election
TheStar.com - Canada - Dion not eager for fall election

Liberal leader says he will `think about interests of Canadians' in throne speech

October 15, 2007
Jim Brown
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA–Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says he's sure Stephen Harper is itching to hit the campaign trail this fall, but that doesn't mean the Grits will give him the excuse he needs to do so.

"It's clear he's looking for an election," Dion said yesterday in an interview on CTV's Question Period.

He signalled he's not eager to help the Prime Minister on his way by voting down the Conservative throne speech that will open a new parliamentary session tomorrow.

"We will look at the throne speech as a whole, as we have always said, and we will think about the interests of Canadians," said Dion.

That could mean the official Opposition will topple the government if its legislative agenda is an "outrageous" one animated by a "very right-wing radical" ideology, said the Liberal leader.

But assuming Harper adopts a more conciliatory tone, Dion said his party would try to "make Parliament work" and let the Tories continue to govern for the time being, even if the Grits don't agree with everything their opponents do.

The Liberals have been licking their wounds since they suffered three by-election losses in Dion's home province of Quebec last month, and opinion polls show the party lagging well behind the ruling Conservatives at the national level.

The effort to recover lost ground wasn't helped by the publication on the weekend of former prime minister Jean Chrétien's memoirs, which lambasted one-time leadership rival Paul Martin.

Dion tried to downplay that development, insisting the divisions that once split the Liberals into warring factions are a thing of the past. Others, however, were only too ready to make political hay from the book.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe accused Chrétien of ``lying" to Quebecers in the 1995 sovereignty referendum by telling them, on the eve of the vote, that the fate of the country was at stake – when in fact, as he wrote in his memoirs, he had no intention of accepting a pro-separatist verdict.

Duceppe also reiterated he won't support Harper's throne speech unless the Tories meet a series of demands that includes a firm commitment to end Canada's combat role in Afghanistan and to abolish the use of federal spending power to create national social programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

The Tories are expected to use the throne speech to outline plans to curtail the spending power, but not to do away with it entirely – a proposal that would be unpalatable in the rest of the country.

Harper has moved to buy time on the Afghanistan issue by appointing a five-member panel, chaired by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, to study the options and report early next year.

That has failed to win over NDP Leader Jack Layton, who like Duceppe has been hinting for weeks that his party is virtually certain to vote against the throne speech.

"Most Canadians think that Mr. Harper is going in the wrong direction," Layton said yesterday in his own interview with CTV. "The NDP is prepared to take him on."

Dion, by contrast, has been waffling in public while Liberal strategists circulate word privately that they're considering ways to show displeasure with the Tories but stop short of bringing them down and forcing an election.

One possibility is that the Liberal front bench will vote against the throne speech but backbenchers will either be absent in sufficient numbers to let it pass, or will accomplish the same goal by abstaining when the roll is called.

Even an effort by Harper to box Dion in on one of his pet issues – the environment – has apparently failed to force his hand.

Conservative sources say the throne speech will declare the greenhouse-gas emission targets in the Kyoto protocol unattainable. The aim is to force Dion either to oppose the speech and precipitate an election, or to back down publicly from his long-standing support for Kyoto.

But David McGuinty, the Liberal environment critic, has already dismissed the tactic as a meaningless trick. "The Liberal Party of Canada isn't going to be goaded into the boxing ring with Stephen Harper," McGuinty said last week.