Standing Out from the Crowd

The Conservatives' politicization of the distribution of infrastructure funds and government websites is a story that is hitting them hard on one of their biggest weaknesses. But it is not yet a story that is highlighting why the public should trust Liberals to be better. While Canadians across the board will cringe at images like these, many will unfortunately think "a pox on all their houses, I can't trust any of them." Liberals need to reach these people and convince them that they are the only party that will truly put a stop to the nonsense in Ottawa and restore faith in government again. And in fact the Liberals have put the ideas out there to do just that.

Liberals proposed expanding the Gas Tax Transfer program to distribute infrastructure funds. This would have allowed the stimulus funds to be distributed faster and under an already established system of audit, administration and evaluation. Instead, the infrastructure program was completely politicized and the money is distributed with virtually no oversight by comparison.

Conservatives have spent tens of millions on partisan government advertising, while the Liberals have proposed to end the practice by having an independent advisory committee vet all ads.

Conservatives want to spend money recklessly with no one to watch over them, while the Liberals would strengthen the Parliamentary Budget Office's watchdog ability by making it independent.

But the media stories about the Conservative cheque fiasco don't mention any of the Liberal proposals. In fact some lazy reporting has claimed Liberals did the exact same thing (not true) or haven't proposed how they'd do different (also not true). That needs to be changed.

Every time Liberals are hammering the Conservatives for inaction, mismanagement or excessive partisanship they need to also get the message out of what they'd do different.

When they are talking Conservative stonewalling investigations and appalling secrecy, they can highlight the pledge to improve access to information laws.

When they are talking about Conservatives abandoning Canadians abroad they can mention how Liberals have promised to pass legislation ensuring that what happened to Suaad Mohamud would never happen to another Canadian and that, unlike the Conservatives, Liberals don't support having a Canadian child solider in Guantanamo Bay.

When Liberals are criticizing the Conservatives on the environment they should point to the party's plans on clean energy and a cap and trade system with hard caps. How real leadership would benefit Canadians economically and Conservative inaction costs us.

You get the point. But it would great to see in the future any article talking about the latest Conservative scandal having at least a couple lines saying "The Liberals have said if they are elected to government they would....". The Liberals put the ideas out there in many cases, but the bulkk of the media aren't biting. That isn't necessarily the Liberals' fault, but they need to do what they can to address this perhaps by talking up their own proposals more forcefully in press conferences, speeches, or press releases, alongside the sharp critiques of the Conservatives.

Now there are many parts of the next platform that the party doesn't want to reveal before a campaign and that's perfectly understandable (and I agree with that), but in those cases where Liberals slam Conservatives for something and want their counter-proposal(s) kept under wraps, even just a quick sound bite from Michael Ignatieff saying something along the lines of "rest assured, this would never be allowed to happen under our watch!" is worth a lot and would find its way into the media coverage.

When Liberals are just critical it might help to shake votes loose from the Conservatives, but not necessarily driving them back to the Liberals. Pure negativity also risks feeding the narratives spread about the Liberals being a party that opposes, but that has no ideas or identity of its own to distinguish itself from the government.

I know it's tough to get the media and public to pay attention to your ideas when you are in opposition, but Liberals succeeded with this before in the early 90s and I know the party can again.

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The Case for Change

As Parliament returned today, so does this blog. And as the Harper government returned to Question Period for another round of evasive non-answers, ask yourself do we really need more of this? What does Stephen Harper have to show for his almost four years in office? Deficits, Debt, Division, Deception and Disarray.

Stephen Harper was so obsessed with banishing "surprise Liberal surpluses" and yet now he wants us to cut him slack for ever rising surprise new Conservative deficits.

Stephen Harper boasted about how much debt he was going to pay down, only to pile up more than had been paid in the last decade.

Stephen Harper said when he was first elected that his he would "govern for all Canadians" only to be the worst wedge politician Canada's ever seen as he writes off 60% of the population completely.

Stephen Harper said he would bring open, honest and accountable government, only to give us the opposite.
He promised us no recession and no deficit and we got the worst of both.
He tried to take credit for the lowest unemployment rate in 33 years, only to blame everyone else but him when he faces the highest.
He railed against Liberal patronage and cronyism and felt compelled to top it.
He promised sincere cooperation on EI this past summer and turned the whole thing into a charade.
He accused the opposition of wanting to raise payroll taxes on EI (which we were told would be a "job killer"), only to do so himself.
That kind of deception is tough to top.

And he's left our country in complete disarray with no vision or long-term domestic or foreign policy goals. Can someone point to anything Stephen Harper has planned for even next year? As every other major industrialized country makes targeted investments and restructures to compete in the global economy, Stephen Harper just puts his head in the sand. Does anyone still listen to Canada with Stephen Harper in power? When Stephen Harper says Canada is "back" under his leadership he must mean back of the pack.

It's really quite the legacy to leave behind and that's just the short list!
Well we needn't let him add to it any longer.

Canadians deserve better.

We face the toughest times in a generation with a Parliament Stephen Harper refuses to make work (Overdue EI Reforms still don't make the grade).

If you give Stephen Harper your hand, rest assured he will do everything he can to tie it behind your back (Jack Layton take note...).

Every day more Harper is in office our potential as a country is further squandered as he obsesses over crushing his opponents instead of governing the nation.

There is little positive to be gained by keeping this government in office any longer. We can do better.

We need a government willing to actually govern and make Parliament work rather than one focused entirely on electioneering and trying to come up with the best "plausible" lies about their opposition.

We need a government willing to lead on the world stage, rather than one that's happy to be a bit player.

We need a government with a team of strong capable ministers, rather than a one-man show who forces the rest into hiding.

We need a government that listens to research and science instead of one driven only be ideology.

We need a government willing to stand up for women's and minority rights and the disabled, instead of one that sees them as "left-wing fringe groups".

We need a government that protects Canadians abroad instead of abandons them.

We need a government that believes in our institutions, from public broadcasting, to the courts, to Elections Canada, rather than a government trying to tear them down.

We need a government that knows we must invest more in post-secondary education, instead of one who mocks those with a university education.

We need a government willing to show real environmental leadership at the largest ever Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, instead of one that would go with the goal of being the biggest holdout.

We need a government that knows that good child care policy is good economic policy, instead of one that is seemingly proud not to have created a single child care space.

We need a government willing to level with Canadians and give straight answers instead of one that stonewalls and deceives at every turn.

We need a government that's fiscally responsible and has a social conscience to replace one that's neither.

We need a government that's focused on building the Canada of the future to take over from one that can't see beyond the next election.

We need a Prime Minister that unites Canadians rather than divides them.

Only Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party can provide this kind of government to Canadians. A Prime Minister and government that provides real vision and leadership we can all be proud of.

A majority of Canadians may say they don't want an election now, but that's because they are not yet convinced an election would change much or that there's no single defining issue. But an election can give us the real debate about our future we didn't get in the last and that we really need as economies restructure across the globe.

Liberals will present a truly alternative compelling vision for this country and Canadians will see we can be so much more than we are.

Stephen Harper was given another chance by Canadians almost a year ago and in every way, he's blown it. The stakes are too high to grant him another reprieve. These tough times demand better.

When Canadians are faced with a choice of positive change and more of the same, the choice will be clear.

Canada needs a new direction and it can't come soon enough.

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For more on why we need an election, see here

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Stephen Harper Doesn't Get It, Never Will

If Stephen Harper really wanted to be as "Mr. Hope" or a Canadian Obama imitation, perhaps he should have actually looked at Obama's most famous speeches. He might then have realized that Obama's best speeches resonated because they were unifying, not divisive, and were considered post-partisan, rather than partisan speeches.

If Stephen Harper really wants to reach out to supporters of other parties, perhaps he could just actually act like a Prime Minister for once and stand above the fray, rather than give yet another completely partisan speech, especially when his partisan arguments are so incredibly flimsy (as David Akin so easily points out - h/t to Jeff).

Mr. Harper, Canadians didn't give you a blank cheque in the last election, they gave you a minority. In case you don't yet understand our system that means Canadians wanted you to work with other parties to get things done.

Canadians want Parliamentarians to work together, but instead confrontation is what Harper has on his mind. He's the only one talking about causing an election over his unwillingness to have even a shred of accountability for $3 billion in new spending.

Mr. Harper likes to talk about other parties "not heeding the lessons of the last election," well look in the mirror Mr. Harper or break out a calculator because a clear majority of Canadians voted against you and the last thing they want is to give you unfettered spending power with no strings attached. And you talk about Canada coming out of this recession stronger than before but your budget did nothing to achieve that goal.

The irony is that if Stephen Harper actually acted like a Prime Minister and reached out his hand to the members of the opposition and ran his government in a more collaborative fashion, he'd actually be more popular with Canadians (I fail to see how his flimsy partisan attacks win over Liberal voters to his side), but he just can't help himself. The fact that he personally wrote today's speech really says it all.

It's just so clear now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Stephen Harper doesn't get it.

He didn't get that a recession was coming, so instead encouraged everyone to buy stocks just before they monumentally crashed.

He didn't realize he had a minority, so instead his first order of business after the election was to try to destroy the opposition while doing nothing about the economy and then delaying a budget by two months he now says must be passed immediately.

And now he doesn't realize that Canadians want more than anything to see politicians put partisan squabbles aside to address the economic crisis, so instead his "defining speech" about the recession is more about scoring partisan points than actually helping Canadians.

Stephen Harper is a Conservative partisan first and a Prime Minister second and in this economic climate that combination is toxic (especially when compared with the President across the border) and it's only a matter of time before it ends his career one way or another.

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Obama's Budget Plan Shows He and Harper Really are Ideological Twins

Because a "pronounced move to redistribute wealth" is a Conservative idea right? Darryl Wolk - one of the few Conservatives that actually supported Obama before he was elected President - has tried to argue that Harper and Obama are so alike and that Canadians will see this and give Harper a majority as a result. Well I think if Canadians actually looked at the actions of these two governments they just might come to a different conclusion. Let's take a look at what Obama's $3.55 trillion Budget Plan proposes:
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"Mr. Obama's proposal signals a radical change of course by redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies.... The Obama administration will attempt to close the large fiscal gap even while starting a major health-care initiative meant to substantially extend coverage; to do so, it foresees increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and using revenues from a new program: selling carbon credits (read: taxing carbon) to manufacturers as part of a cap-and-trade plan meant to slow climate change....The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Mr. Obama's existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers. "
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Sounds just like what Harper ran on in the last election doesn't it? Carbon taxes (coupled with cutting taxes for the low and middle income earners as the Green Shift did), raising taxes on the rich and corporations, redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, true blue Conservative policies.

Oh wait those are the sorts of policies Harper said would destroy the economy!

To be honest I think some of Obama's proposed policies go even a bit too far for my tastes, I don't support increasing corporate tax rates for instance, but I'm interested to see how the Blogging Tories portray this budget as in sync with the budget they put forth here in Canada.

I think they'll have a pretty tough time.

On the environment Canadians saw a budget here in Canada that completely ignored the issue, whereas in the U.S. it's seen as one of the central issues to address.

On human rights Canadians see a government still defending the "process" at Guantanamo Bay, whereas in the U.S. the government is shutting it down and banning torture.

On poverty Canadians see a government here that can't even bring itself to mention the word, whereas in the U.S. the government is taking major efforts to help the most vulnerable.

On post-secondary education Canadians see a government that treats it as an after thought (it received ZERO mention in their last election platform), whereas Obama is placing making his country a world leader on this issue a top priority of his first term.

On partisan co-operation, Stephen Harper can’t help but constantly pick fights wtih the opposition, while across the border Obama reaches out to his rivals for consensus.

On transparency and accountability Canadians see a government that becomes more and more secretive versus one in the U.S. that is opening more windows on how government is operating by the day.

And I could go on. So Conservatives can try to latch themselves to Obama all they can, but their actions (or lack of actions) speak far louder than their words and I don't think Canadians will be fooled.

If Conservatives like Darryl wish we were actually taking the kinds of bold of approaches in Canada as Obama is, I'd strongly encourage them to join them to join the Liberal Party to help make that happen :).

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(h/t CanPolitico for the NY Times link)
For more info on Obama's Budget Plan for the 2010 Fiscal Year see here and here.

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Restoring Faith in Canadian Politics

While I have the most FUN doing posts like my last one (thanks to all for the links! Over 2000 hits for that post and counting!) and teasing the CPC for their never ending failings, I've been meaning for awhile to get to some posts about what I'd like to see in the near future from my own party.

Canadians today are not impressed with what they've seen in Ottawa. They don't expect their governments to be perfect, they know governments make mistakes, they know not EVERY promise can be kept - it is politics after all. But at the same time, they expect a certain level of honesty, integrity and accountability. I'm very proud of many Liberal accomplishments from our time in government and believe we left behind a great legacy, but many Canadians came to believe (rightly or wrongly) that in 13 years of Liberal rule that we became too arrogant and out of touch. Yet in just 3 years, Conservatives have become worse than what they claimed to hate. Their only defenses today are "the Liberals did it too!" or "it's not much worse than what the Liberals did!".

Well in many cases it has been MUCH worse, I don't recall outright lies in the House of Commons from a sitting Prime Minister, and I don't recall the level of character assassination that was launched against Stéphane Dion (and soon I expect Michael Ignatieff) by a PM either. And I don't recall a party running on platform of being "holier than thou" and going and doing the exact opposite (and yet somehow seem proud of this complete reversal).

It's because of this negative trend that Canadians more and more are seeing politics as a dirty profession, where self-interest and dishonesty are necessary traits for getting ahead. They have little faith that politicians will do as they say or that they really have their interests at heart. But Canadians deserve better, especially in these tough times.

Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals must demonstrate (and once in government ultimately prove) that we've learned lessons from both past Liberal and Conservative governments and that we want to restore honesty and dignity to public service again.

That we want Canadians to have a government they can be proud of, instead of one Canadians see as being more interested in helping their own than helping them.

The last budget wasn't really a popular one, but the best Canadians could expect from this tired government, and whether we liked or not, they didn't really believe a coalition would do any better (in fact out West they thought a coalition would be much worse). Canadians have become accustomed to mediocrity from Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty and are just waiting for a better alternative to truly present itself. And it will, but Canadians aren't convinced yet.

In the next election and when we ultimately get back to power we will have a tremendous opportunity to restore Canadians faith in our party and our federal government. Conservatives have completely squandered their opportunity. We can seize ours.

So I hope Michael and his team will be putting together some proposals to "change the culture in Ottawa", because not only is it the right thing to do, it will resonate with Canadians just like it did with Americans last year.

Why not promise to set up an independent commission (perhaps similar to that used for deciding who receives the Order of Canada) to appoint Senators and make other public appointments (e.g., heads of Crown Corporations, boards, etc...) to get rid of the patronage the public thinks is synonymous with holding government? The Conservative promised it for non-Senate public appointments (and the Liberals I believe supported the process) but obviously Harper was never serious about it or he wouldn't have thrown away the idea just because he couldn't get first choice to lead it (someone I'm sure he knew was unacceptable to the opposition in the first place). We can get it done.

Why not promise to enshrine a code of conduct for MPs in the House of Commons? The Speaker could be greatly empowered to boot out MPs who made false statements, heckled or other types of behaviour that the public just shakes their head at.

Why not promise to eliminate the right of a PM to prorogue the House of Commons when he/she faces a confidence vote? What Stephen Harper did in December should be banned through legislation that would be very difficult to vote against or overturn later.

Why not promise to enhance Access to Information laws as opposed to trampling on them as Harper has done? Canadians shouldn't have to find out what their government is doing, or what knowledge it has at its disposal, through anonymous sources, trying to make sense of 50% blacked out reports or paying large fees up front.

Why not promise weekly (or bi-weekly) press conferences by the PM at the National Press Gallery so the press can finally do their job on the Hill?

Why not promise more transparency in how government dollars are spent? Quarterly reports shouldn't just be this year, but every year and perhaps it should even be more frequent than that.

Those are just a few suggestions, but there's much more that could be done and none of these cost much money (some cost none).

The biggest challenge will be convincing a cynical public that we'd actually carry out these promises, but it can be done. If we succeed, the country will be better for it and in fact I think it's the best ticket to boosting our popularity out West and in some rural areas where the term LIEberals is thrown around and actually taken seriously.

It's time for a government all Canadians can be proud of and that can be a model to the world. I'm hopeful Michael Ignatieff will give it to them this year.

UPDATE: Not sure how much press the initiative will get, but I would say this (www.recovery.gov) is a pretty good example of one of my suggestions in action (increasing transparency and accountability in government spending) that could be easily imported by the Liberals here.

UPDATE 2: I have to say that this Liberal website (onprobation.ca) is an EXCELLENT first step towards achieving what I was talking about in this post. Kudos to Michael Ignatieff and his team for putting this effort together!

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Becoming Everything You Said You Hated

“For those Canadians seeking accountability the question is clear: which party can deliver the change of government that’s needed to ensure political accountability in Ottawa? We need a change of government to replace old style politics with a new vision. We need to replace a culture of entitlement and corruption with a culture of accountability. We need to replace benefits for a privileged few with government for all.”
- Stephen Harper, Introduction, 2006 Conservative Platform

Political accountability and honesty in Ottawa?
“Auditor General says that feds hand out big bucks with no control”
“Budget overly optimistic about economy, Page (Parliamentary Budget Officer) says”
“Feds can't track green spending, says watchdog”

Old style politics replaced with new style? Benefits of a “privileged few” versus benefits for all?
“Tories bulking up own ridings with infrastructure funds”

How about say or do anything to get yourself elected?

And those examples just from yesterday! There’s A LOT more where that came from.

The Conservatives used to complain about wasteful spending and yet that's been the hallmark of their government! (yes paying Canadians to pave their driveways who were going to do it anyway is just what we need right now).

The Conservatives once believed in balanced budgets, now they have NO PLAN to get us back to one.

The Conservatives slammed the use of tax dollars for public polling to serve partisan interests and now they’ve done that worse than anyone!

The Conservatives complained about how too many benefits flowed to “Liberal ridings” and now gleefully promise to favour those held by CONSERVATIVES!

The Conservatives used to rail against an unelected Senate, now they’ve made the largest single amount of Patronage appointments to the Senate in a single day with MORE promised to come!

They fumed at “Liberal” appointments and promised to do better, but instead have done worse.

And I could go on…

The Conservatives Canadians thought they elected in 2006 are the polar opposite of what they’ve got. Since the 2008 election they’ve only abandoned what few principles they were thought to have left.

Is there ANYTHING Conservatives criticized that they haven’t now gone and done themselves?

So what do Conservative supporters “support” these days? I’d really like to know because it seems to me it’s just power and hatred of Liberals. That’s some political philosophy.

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Was This the Last Conservative “Justice Week”?

Many bloggers (including myself) have noted that the “In and Out” scandal once and for all ends any chance of the Conservatives running on openness and accountability in the next election. However, I also think now that the scandal and the Conservative response will also mean that it will be very difficult for them to be running as the “law & order” party either. Kady (ITQ) has noted that Conservatives seem to have a habit of launching a "justice week" when they seem to be in trouble. Well I say that card is gone now for several reasons. First is the obvious fact that Conservatives being raided by the RCMP in them midst of their “justice week” doesn’t make for a nice association or make them seem like they are the party you can trust with fighting crime. Second, as Warren has mentioned you can’t be a crime-fighting party when you are smearing the national police force just for investigating you. I’m frankly surprised that no one in the national force (or at least a former member of the force) has expressed outrage with Conservatives smearing the RCMP for doing their job in carrying out a search warrant. I can only imagine what Conservative smears of the RCMP would come out if the RCMP actually formally launch their own criminal investigation of this scandal or the Cadman affair. However, I think the most important reason why Conservatives have no credibly on crime issues any more is that their actions this week have laid clear that the Conservative view of the law is “if we suspect you of crime we’ll lock you up and throw away the key, but if we are the ones suspected of crime, then ‘so what?’ no big deal nothing to see here, it’s all a PR stunt or an Illuminati conspiracy.”

Conservatives need to learn the law is the law (and that includes elections laws), if it’s broken or suspected of being broken it’s a very serious matter and yet Conservatives shown themselves to be complete and utter hypocrites on this matter. By trivializing what they are being investigated for and smearing those that are investigated them they are trying to undermine confidence in the investigators but in the end they are only undermining Canadians confidence in the Conservative Government itself. Liberals have even given Stephen Harper a chance to try and regain his credibility on the crime issue with some very modest proposals to get to the bottom of the In and Out Scandal, yet there has been a deafening silence in response. The latest Conservative justice week has laid bare that the Conservative have no claim any more to being the party of “law and order”

But in order for Conservatives to not manage to try and resurrect crime as one of their issues it’s very important that the Liberals do everything they can to keep the media’s focus on the “In and Out” scandal and how the Conservatives have dealt with it because it gets to the very heart of why the Conservatives are not a party you can trust on crime or really on anything for that matter. I’d say Liberal bloggers across the board did a pretty good job of covering the bases of this scandal this week. Jeff mentions how it sure does seem like the Conservative Party has nothing to hide. Jason discusses how star Conservative worker Ryan Sparrow quickly losing all credibility, how the RCMP have many avenues to investigate here, and what $1.2 million in extra spending could have bought for the Conservatives in the last election and the latest Conservative strategy is simply to act like whining children. Steve notes how curious it is that the in and out transfers seemed to operate almost entirely in losing ridings (at least outside of Quebec), how Peter Van Loan is once again being extremely deceptive as the Conservatives claim Democracy Watch supports their position on “In and Out” when actually the opposite is true, how Pierre Poilievre is once again full of it in his claims regarding this scandal, and how even former Conservative candidates don't believe the Conservative line (we can now add more to the list too). Scott discussed how Pierre Poilievre is the best spokesman ever (I agree promote him! Put him in all of the Conservative commercials and more interviews like this!) and how Conservatives have been engaging in a troubling pattern of undermining Canadian Government institutions. Finally, Dan gets to the heart of all the sinister forces perpetrating this massive conspiracy against the Conservative Party (though I note the Illuminati is missing from the picture when clearly they are involved as well).

We’ll need to keep this up next week and beyond so Canadians don’t ever forget about this. However, while “In and Out” is a major scandal that Liberals should be talking from here till Election Day, there are many other issues that we have to make sure don’t fall off the radar either. So let’s talk this scandal, but not forget there are so many other Conservative scandals to go on as well (like the latest investigation of Flaherty that I notice many bloggers mentioned) and many positive messages and ideas coming from the Liberals that we can be highlighting too. Either way, while the Conservatives lose some of their main talking points we can continue to highlight ours.

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The Final Nail in the Coffin of Conservative "Accountability"

With a government that has been so patently dishonest and lacking in transparency from the beginning it was only a matter of time before it came to this. Though when was the last time a party's headquarters’ were raided by the RCMP?

But really this is just another in a long list of lies, stonewalling and troubling secrecy on the part of a Government so unwilling to accept any criticism or have any semblance of accountability.....

- The gutting of their own Accountability Act and breaking their promises on Access to Information.
- Continued misleading of Canadians with regard to the Afghan detainee torture scandal and repeated attempts to block any investigation of this file that carry on to this day.
- Shameful and repeated censoring of Access to Information Requests.
- Censoring Government scientists to ensure only the “party line” gets heard.
- Firing independent regulators (like Linda Keen) for doing their jobs.
- Creating a manual manual on how to disrupt committees which they have used to block any investigation of the Cadman affair (where Conservatives stand accused of bribing Chuck Cadman to vote with them) and the “In and Out” Scandal that has been the source of today’s RCMP raid.
- And a long list of other troubling actions.

This from a government that pledged in the last election to be open, transparent and accountable?

So for those who thought the “In and Out” Scandal involving accusations that the Tories broke the law in allowing local candidates to claim $1.2 million in expenses for ads produced by the national campaign (thus going over the legal spending limit) was no big deal think again. You don’t see the RCMP raiding party HQ over a minor issue. But this should not be seen in isolation and with such a long pattern of shameful behavior on the part of this government if they ever tried to run a campaign claiming they were an honest and accountable government Canadians will either just laugh or turn away in disgust.

Canadians will instead be looking in the next election for a leader that embodies honesty and integrity and there is no federal party leader who has exhibited that more in his career than Stephane Dion.

Even Jack Layton has said that Dion is a “committed Canadian and a man of principle and conviction” as have so many others that have worked with Dion over the years. Canadians will see this clearly come election time as well. In contrast to the scandal prone Conservatives who mislead and stonewall at every turn, Dion will provide an honest government that is open and transparent.

Instead of a one-man show Government with the weakest front bench in Canadian history, a Dion led Government will have the strongest front bench in Canadian history.

Instead of demonizing and silencing our scientists and independent regulators, Dion will listen to them.

Instead of a government that governs at home and abroad based on ideology, Canadians will see in a Dion led Government one that governs based on reason and sound policy.

Instead of a government that is now seen as a pariah on human rights and the environment, under Dion, Canada will be a leader on both fronts.

Instead of a government that stands up for Canadians only when it’s convenient, a Dion government will stand up for all Canadians at home and abroad.

Instead of dividing people, Dion will show his capacity to unite them (like he did here).

Instead of always eyeing which policies will win the most voters or only paying attention to those voters that might vote for his party, a Dion government will provide Canadians with the policies needed to move Canada to the head of pack in the 21st century.

Dion will give Canadians the Government we can trust and the Government we need at this time in our history.

I for one look forward to a Prime Minister Dion so we can put this shameful era in Canadian history behind us and have a government we can proud of again not just at home but across the world itself. Today we move one step closer to that.

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