Michael Ignatieff's opening statements - Liberal infrastructure announcement
18 September 2008
Good morning. Bonjour.
We're here to talk about the Liberal plan to invest in infrastructure and rebuild the ties that bind our country together.
We're here to talk about leadership in tough economic times.
Nous sommes ici pour parler du leadership quand le climat économique s'annonce orageux.
We cannot allow Stephen Harper to define what strong leadership is in this country.
Look at his record.
Harper is the man who broke his promise to millions of Canadian investors when he wiped out income trust.
This isn't leadership – it's vandalism.
Harper is the man who has spent this country to the edge of deficit.
This isn’t leadership – it's irresponsibility.
Harper c'est l'homme qui nous a mené au bord du deficit.
C'est du leadership. C'est l'irresponsable.
Harper runs a government which told the world not to invest in Ontario.
This isn't leadership - it's an assault on Canadian workers.
Harper is the man who watched the auto sector struggling and shrugged his shoulders.
This isn't leadership - this is callousness.
Harper is the man who says everything is fine with the Canadian economy.
This isn't leadership – it's denial.
This is a man who thinks he can run Canada single-handed.
This isn't leadership – it is arrogant self-delusion.
Harper est un homme qui veut vous faire croire qu'il peut diriger le gouvernement du Canada tout seul.
C'est pas du leadership.
C'est la folie de grandeur.
This is a man whose Finance Minister was asked to invest in Canada's roads and bridges, and said: "we don't do potholes".
This isn't leadership – it is incompetence.
At a time when Canadians are getting sick of listeriosis, and food safety is in question, we have a cabinet minister making cheap jokes. That's not leadership.
That's mean-spirited incompetence.
We know that Stephen Harper loves power.
But a real leader would fire Gerry Ritz.
The problem is he doesn't like government.
In tough economic times, Canadians want their government to make sure mortgage markets are safe, our pensions and savings are secure, and our jobs won't disappear.
In tough economic times, Canadians don't need one-man rule. They need a team.
They need experienced men and women ready to practice the economics of partnership, not the politics of divide-and-rule; men and women who want to work with the provinces, not against them, to rebuild our infrastructure and get our economy going again. Le chef de cette équipe est un homme de courage et conviction.
The leader of this team is a man with guts, a man who knows who he is and what he wants, a man with a decade of experience in cabinet, a man who is ready to lead this country.
Le chef du parti liberal du Canada, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada – Stephane Dion.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Ignatieff introduction of Dion
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5 comments:
Harpo and his CONS don't like experienced and intelligent people with book learnin'. He calls them 'elitists'.
Harpo likes 'dumb asses' and prefers a voting public with the same 'qualities'.
What's that Stevie? What did you say?
"Now watch as shoot them thar possums over thar"
Now we're talkin'
Apropos, Randy. Here's the 'beloved' Jack Mintz (and others) commenting on carbon pricing, GHG reductions and economic effects.
It's so much easier to just copy and paste, than to type.
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A carbon-tax-fuelled recession: Nothing but hot air.
STEVEN CHASE
September 20, 2008
OTTAWA -- Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has tried to gain the upper hand in the debate on climate change this election campaign by charging that the Liberal solution to this problem - a carbon tax - would push Canada into a recession.
Mr. Harper never produced any research to support this assertion, but his accusation raises the question of what kind of an impact the Tory and Liberal plans would have on Canada and how effective they'd be.
Climate scientists say Canada should be prepared to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions - caused by burning fossil fuels - by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. This goes partway toward a 2050 goal of stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions, which are believed to cause climate instability.
Experts say the key to effectively cutting emissions is to force as broad a group as possible of greenhouse-gas emitters to embrace cleaner technology. This means both industry - which is responsible for only half of emissions - and consumers. And, they say, this can only be ensured if Ottawa makes it sufficiently costly for both these groups to emit greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's Green Shift proposal to drive Canadians to cleaner technology imposes a carbon tax on fossil fuels, but exempts gasoline. [There already exists a federal excise tax on gasoline equivalent to about $42 per tonne of GHG emissions.] This levy would rise over four years to $40 per tonne of emissions.
Mr. Harper has made attacking this levy a cornerstone of his election campaign, warning it would tip Canada into recession by raising fuel prices.
"It [would] wreak havoc on Canada's economy, destroy jobs, weaken business at a time of global uncertainty," Mr. Harper told a Montreal crowd during the first week of the campaign.
But University of Calgary tax economist Jack Mintz, whose expertise the Harper government has previously praised, says he can't see the Liberal plan leading to a recession.
Of the $15.4-billion that a $40-per-tonne carbon tax would collect, according to the Liberal plan, roughly $10.5-billion would be funneled to individuals and corporations in tax cuts. These are breaks that would surely spur economic growth, Dr. Mintz says. (Another $3.7-billion would be redistributed as support to low- and middle-income families.)
In fact, Simon Fraser University economist Marc Jaccard, an energy expert, says he doubts that either the Liberal proposal or the Conservative plan, entitled Turning the Page, would inflict significant economic pain on Canada.
He said colleagues in the international climate change policy community who construct economic models of various measures don't foresee a negative impact from a tax at the level the Liberals propose.
As well, Dr. Jaccard says his preliminary analysis shows that the Liberal plan would outperform the Conservative one when it comes to achieving emissions reductions. He said that's because there's a number of structural flaws that would render the Tory plan ineffective.
The Conservative plan calls for a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, but only for large industrial emitters. And the plan's regulated reductions target the intensity of emissions rather than absolute cuts, Dr. Jaccard notes. This means a big expansion in these industrial sectors - such as the oil sands - could offset any reductions in the intensity of emissions, he says.
He also criticized what he calls a loophole in the Tory plan, one he says allows emitters to avoid reducing emissions themselves but instead paying others for questionable reduction actions.
The Liberals say their plan would cut emissions to at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The Sierra Club says the Conservative plan would only cut emissions to 3 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, but the Tory proposal aims for much deeper cuts by 2050.
For some amusement, see these two cartoons of Harpo:
http://corrigan.ca/nov4-07.htm
http://corrigan.ca/aug9-07.htm
About time the Liberals started to emphasize the team.
They are strong & ready to govern.
The Harper crew is a crew of one--the Harpster himself--he has no team, just a weak bunch of incompetents who cannot decide which foot to shoot off first.
Take a look at the Finance Minister--an ambulance chasing fellow with no economic training other than his stint in Ontario gov`t where he left a trail of destruction that took several years to rectify.
And from what I have heard , Flaherty was the elite of Harper`s crew.
Yikes.
Time to bring on the new team.
This last group actually made my Toronto Maple Leafs look good.
Dr Mike Popovich
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