Dion still doesn't get it?

[TOM4CWB]

Joke time...

Ice Fishing

After the election, Prime Minister Harper was tired and needed some well deserved R&R . There was much talk about some ballot recounting, court challenges, etc., but a week-long ice fishing trip seeemed the sportsmanlike way to settle things and set the stage for a more civil parliament in the future.


The leader that caught the most fish at the end of the week would get their favorite election promise fulfilled without the ususal bickering. Therefore, it was decided that there
should be an ice fishing contest between Prime Minister Harper and loser Dion to determine whose favoritet election promise would be fulfilled.


After much back and forth discussion, it was decided that the contest take place on a remote frozen lake in northern Manitoba . There were to be no observers present, and both men were to be sent out separately on this isolated lake and return at 5 P.M. with their catch for counting and verification by a team of neutral parties.


At the end of the first day, Steven Harper returned to the starting line and he had ten fish. Soon, Dion returned and had no fish.



Well, everyone assumed he was just having another 'bad hair' day or something and hopefully, he would catch up the next day.
At the end of the 2nd day Harper came in with 20 fish and Dion came in again with none.



That evening, Jack Layton got together secretly with Dion and said, 'Dion, I think Steven Harper. is a low-life, cheatin' son-of-a-gun.
I want you to go out tomorrow and don't even bother with fishing. Just spy on him and see just how he is cheating.'


The next night (after Steven Harper. returns with 50 fish), Layton said to Dion, 'Well, tell me, how is Steven Harper cheating?'
Dion replied, 'Jack, you're not going to believe this, but he's cutting holes in the ice!'

Why didn't he just resign... or at least allow an interm leader to guide the ship?

[furrowtickler]

Good one Tom, sums things up very well.

[mustardman]

What happened ?
Good Politics (smear tactics and propaganda ) trumps good policy

If people would listen to ALL their candidates platforms, listen to the interviews and then decide, maybe things would be different.

OH Wait I forgot none of the Cons were allowed to Speak or give interviews or when Invited to Candidates meeting Didn't Show up (David Anderson)

AH yes the truly transparent and accountable Democracy according to Steve

[mustardman]

All you progressive conservatives should realize that if Dief were alive today he Would not vote for this mean spirited son of a b----

[Fransisco]

Get over it all ready mus, your guy lost. The sore loser routine is getting old.

[Burbert]

Let the bells ring out and the banners fly, a stronger minority government, and it only cost 300 Mil. Canada is truly a trend setter, celebrating more of the same old same old, ironic. However having said that, I believe that we truly get better governing from a minority government, in that only good stuff can get passed into legislation. Parties other than the government in power must agree to the bills to become law, win/win, no crap and no corrupt lobbying can cause bogus acts in parliament. The danger for Harper is that he has to ride herd on his members, cause they are always shooting their mouths off, mean old guys flapping their yaps. The population is getting tired of Harpsters style in the meantime, seeing him as a dictator, rather than PM.

[cottonpicken]

I sure hope bill c51 is never reserected.

It basically eliminates homeopathic medicine and puts anyone in jail who practises it.

F@ck*n Nazis's.

[mustardman]

Fran your guys have been losing the CWB elections for years - get over it.

The sore loser routine is getting old

[HFL]

Mustard Man - CWB elections are irrelevent. Farmers showed what they want on Oct 14th.

[skhadenuf]

Since the only issue any of the three parties ran on in terms of agriculture was the CWB then I guess real quick we should see it gone right? Or are we gonna drag this out again until the next election just so we don't have to come up with any real policies for the other issues?

[TOM4CWB]

"Dion should quit whining: His loss was his own fault


Liberal leader is delusional to blame Conservative attack ads for his defeat...


L. IAN MACDONALD,
The Gazette

There are only two major national parties in this country, and the job of the leader of each is to unite the party, fill its campaign coffers, and win the election. Stéphane Dion never understood this, and never accomplished any of those tasks, which is why he's out of a job as Liberal leader. The leader of the other national party, Stephen Harper, has always understood he had to unite the right, bring it to power, and keep it there, which is why he has two jobs, one as Conservative leader and the other as prime minister.

Dion thought he could win an election by saving the planet, but his Green Shift was a strategy born of desperation when he had failed at all his other tasks. And it turned out to be an incomprehensible message from an incoherent leader. It also made a ballot question about Dion rather than about Harper.

And Dion blames Conservative attack ads for his defeat? He is delusional. There's no doubt that the Conservatives effectively defined Dion as "not a leader" from the first series of pre-writ television ads at the beginning of 2007. But Dion allowed the Conservatives to define him, and the Liberals failed to push back with a pre-writ buy of their own, quite simply because they were broke.

And whose fault was that? Well, certainly Jean Chrétien is partly to blame for his legacy campaign-finance reform that prohibited corporate donations, the very mother's milk of Liberal fundraising. The party of the $5,000-a-table dinner was put out of business by its own outgoing leader. The Conservatives played within Chrétien's 2003 rules, and later tightened them, limiting individual donations to parties and to leadership campaigns to $1,100 per person per year. It is not the Conservatives' fault that going into the election, they had raised four times as much money in each of the last two years as the Liberals. Or that the Conservative donor base is several times larger than that of the Liberals, who have never adapted to the new rules of the game, rules they themselves enacted when in government.

Dion's complaint that he was the victim of Conservative propaganda, and that Canadians never got to know him, is just so much whining. The fact is that he lost, and at 26 per cent of the popular vote, posted the worst score in the history of the Liberal Party, eclipsing John Turner's 28 per cent in the Mulroney landslide of 1984. And if Dion wants to know why, he needs to come back to the job description of uniting the party, financing its campaign and taking it to power.

As an accidental leader, the third and even fourth choice of delegates on the first ballot at the 2006 leadership convention, he had special challenges in bringing Liberals together. Eighty-two per cent of the delegates had voted for another candidate. He was also a leader without a power base in his own province of Quebec. This was a flashing light of danger from the day Dion took over the party, but he never succeeded, or even tried, to build a big tent in which his vanquished leadership rivals could flourish. He never built a front bench that said to the country: This is the Liberal team, this is a government-in-waiting. It isn't that Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae and the other others weren't occasionally consulted. But their advice was invariably ignored.

And then on campaign financing, the Liberal Party went into the election having raised only $4 million in the last year, and relying on its anticipated allowance from Elections Canada, against which it would have had to borrow at the bank to spend the $18-million legal limit in the election. Dion had two years to get those finances in shape, but as of now still has a $200,000 debt from his own leadership race.

And now the Liberals find themselves in a very bad spot. In addition to the campaign debts they've assumed, their parliamentary and campaign allowances will be reduced to reflect their score. They elected only 76 MPs, 27 fewer than 2006, and that will cost them over $1 million a year in office staff. They received 850,000 fewer votes than in 2006, and that means the payments from Elections Canada to the Liberal Party will shrink by $1.6 million a year, or more than $6 million over the next four years.

And finally they went into an election with a platform that couldn't be sold, and a leader who couldn't sell it.

All this because of Conservative pre-writ advertising? Nope. Sorry. Time for a reality check, in the mirror."

[Fransisco]

Mustard, the barley plebiscite and every survey of permit book holders in the last ten years shows that the majority of producers are in favour of a voluntary wheat board.

On top of that all of the rural ridings went Conservative.

The monopoly directors are the last hold out and I think their days are numbered.

It might be a good time for you to stock up on sour g****s.

[chaffmeister]

Conservatives still have a minority - doubt they'll change their mind about making the CWB a confidence issue (too regional). So, even though the prairies is a sea of Conservative blue, it would make the world of difference in Ottawa if the farmer-elected CWB directors actually pushed for marketing choice.

The current CWB election is very much relevant.

Don't forget to vote.

[mustardman]

HFL so why is it that all my Conservative neighbours are in favour of the wheat board, but vote conservative in the election.

Maybe an IQ test is required before voting in the federal election

[mustardman]

HFL so why is it that all my Conservative neighbours are in favour of the wheat board, but vote conservative in the election.

Maybe an IQ test is required before voting in the federal election