Ignatieff ready to form coalition.

Only if Harper comes up with a budget full of poison pills would Ignatieff ever go through with the coalition idea. Even a few sharp pain producing pills will be swallowed with great moans and groans. Harper is in control and knows it but perhaps he will overplay his hand given his hubris and arrogance. While offering an olive branch he has planted a whole orchard of Conservative trees in the Senate as his Xmas gift to his flock. No doubt all of these machinations are good for the Canadian people and non-political as of course are Ignatieff's musings about non-partisan co-operation in passing a brave new budget. Maybe these are Canada's new beginnings!

Newly named Liberal Leader Ignatieff ready to form coalition
Harper, Ignatieff expected to speak by phone Wednesday night.
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 1:35 PM MT
CBC News
Michael Ignatieff speaks with the media Wednesday during a news conference in Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
Interim Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday he's prepared to vote out the Conservatives and enter into a governing coalition with the NDP if next month's federal budget isn't in the country's best interest.
"I told caucus I will vote non-confidence in this government. I am prepared to enter into a coalition government if that is what the Governor General asks me to do," he said during an Ottawa news conference shortly after the Liberal party's national executive appointed him to replace Stéphane Dion.
"I also made it clear to the caucus, no party can have the confidence of the country if it decides to vote against a budget it hasn't even read."
The coalition, formed in protest over the Tories' fall economic update, was set to topple the Conservatives in a no-confidence vote scheduled for last Monday and form a new government, with Dion as prime minister and members of the NDP in cabinet, with the support of the Bloc Québécois on all confidence motions.
But the Tories avoided the vote after Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean agreed to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper's request to suspend Parliament until late January, when the Tories will table a budget.
Ignatieff, who was largely silent in the days following the formation of the coalition, blamed Harper for unleashing a "parliamentary crisis" by failing to address the economic slowdown in the fall update.
He said the Liberals will make known in the coming weeks the measures they believe should be in the Jan. 27 budget, but added it is up to Harper to make the first move.
"I'm not entering into negotiations with Harper. He knows where he can find me," said Ignatieff. "If he needs any help … we might oblige."
Later in the afternoon, word emerged that Harper and Ignatieff were to speak by phone Wednesday evening.
Ignatieff said the prime minister must open up the country's books when he and Liberal finance critic Scott Brison attend a pre-arranged meeting with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty next week.
"We believe Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty did not tell … Canadians the truth about the state of the Canadian economy," said Ignatieff. "Unless we start getting the numbers, getting the truth, as a common baseline, we’ve got nothing to talk about."
Olive branch from PM?
Ignatieff also warned the prime minister against governing as if he has a majority in the House of Commons.
"You cannot run a minority Parliament with divisive, spiteful and unproductive policies we saw in that autumn statement. He's got to walk back down the hill," he said. "If he does, my party has never failed to exercise leadership in the national interest."
In an interview with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge on Tuesday, Harper urged the "big national parties" to work together, suggesting that he, too, was looking forward to a better relationship with the Liberals under Dion's replacement.
"I hope the next Liberal leader, the first thing he'll do will be … to sit down with me and have that kind of discussion."
While Harper appeared to extend an olive branch, the Conservative party on Wednesday issued a fundraising letter painting Ignatieff as a parachute leader with no elected legitimacy even within Liberal ranks.

All the Ducks in A Row: Stage Set for Shitting on Hands the Sequel

By the end of today Ignatieff will be crowned as king of the Liberals. The party has displayed for all to see that the kingmakers now choose the leader again as is the natural right of kingmakers. The last episode of democratic drama failed miserably when the cast didn't understand the plot and elected the wrong leader.
Now the ducks are all in a row. Although there may be some anatomical misalignment they are ready for shitting on the hands the sequel. As far as the coalition is concerned Ignatieff has flown the coup.
Harper is now back in co-operation mode in which he will buy Liberal support. With Liberal stock so degraded this will cost little more than a stimulus and slight dilution of his acid remarks about the Liberals.

Ignatieff balks at joining NDP, Bloc..

This is probably a plant by some mischievous National Post imp. In the same paper there is another article that has Ignatieff as the leader of the coalition. The Bloc would not be part of the coalition in any formal sense. Perhaps this article was correct at an earlier stage but now Ignatieff gets the crown he has swallowed his objections! Or maybe the whole motley crew will just decide to return to sitting on their hands.


Monday, December 01, 2008
Presented by

Ignatieff balks at joining NDP, Bloc
John Ivison, National Post Published: Monday, December 01, 2008
in Ottawa
Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff is unlikely to support the coalition deal being negotiated by lame duck leader Stephane Dion -- a decision that would doom the opposition parties' attempt to bring down the government next week in a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons.
A person close to Mr. Ignatieff said that any deal with the Bloc Quebecois and NDP struck by Mr. Dion would be a "poison chalice" for the next leader.
He said that Mr. Ignatieff has the support of more than 50 of the 77 Liberal MPs, so the success or failure of a coalition proposition will depend on how the leadership candidate views any deal.
Although Mr. Ignatieff has publicly maintained the official Liberal line that the government should fall over its handling of the economy, his supporters say any coalition deal with the left-wing NDP and separatist Bloc is fraught with risk. It would only take nine Liberals to be absent from the House next Monday for the government to survive, and the source said he fully expects a number of no-shows.
Liberal attempts to reach a deal with the NDP face a number of hurdles, not least of which is the New Democrats' insistence on a senior economic portfolio such as industry for leader Jack Layton.
The Liberals are equally determined that those economic jobs should be held exclusively by them. But one senior Grit confided that the internal leadership dynamic creates even bigger obstacles to an agreement than negotiations with the New Democrats.
The source in the Ignatieff camp said Mr. Dion is making all the decisions on coalition talks with the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, and is not consulting with leadership candidates, Mr. Ignatieff, Bob Rae or Dominic LeBlanc.
"Dion is like Frankenstein's monster -- he's on the slab and just had a jolt of life injected into him. He's going full tilt ahead with this coalition but his caucus isn't going with him," the source said.
Mr. Ignatieff's supporters are aware that a coalition would be shaky, and probably short-lived. The Conservatives opened their war room yesterday, just in case the country is plunged into an election next week, and are already preparing to hammer the Liberals for striking a deal with the sovereigntist Bloc. "Ignatieff knows he will probably be leader next May, so why not do it cleanly and properly? What's in it for him to be part of this power grab?" asked one Conservative, who said he was also hearing from sources that Mr. Ignatieff does not want to be part of any deal.
Despite the increased likelihood that the government will survive the confidence vote, the coming week is still likely to be full of high drama.
Yesterday, the government continued its attempts to remove the irritants that provoked the crisis. The proposed ban on strikes for the public service was ditched, following the remarkable U-turn on the public funding of political parties issue on Saturday. Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, said yesterday that he will bring down a Budget on Jan. 27, although he stopped short of promising the kind of stimulus package the opposition parties have been demanding.
Scott Brison, the Liberal finance critic, said that the government's moves mean nothing. "We can't trust anything this government says anymore. We have no faith in this Prime Minister," he said.
The Conservatives hope that the focus of media coverage will now shift to the potential coalition partners and what the some Tories have been calling their " coup d'etat."
The allegation that NDP leader Jack Layton and the Bloc Quebecois' Gilles Duceppe held conversations about a coalition long before the current crisis offered the Conservatives the chance to hit back after days of being pounded over the political funding issue. They charged that the confidence vote is not about the handling of the economy or the government's fall update, "[It] is merely a trigger to execute a long-standing secret deal between the NDP and the Quebec separatists."
The Conservatives have alleged that the moves by the opposition parties to offer themselves up to the Governor-General as a viable alternative, should the government fall, are undemocratic. However, the Liberals retaliated by saying that Mr. Harper, Mr. Layton and Mr. Duceppe presented precisely the same proposal to former Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, in 2005.
The only certainty amidst the drama is that Stephen Harper has been wounded by his miscalculation. His reputation for strategic brilliance is in tatters and many Conservatives have started speculating about leadership challenges.
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