It is kind of odd when you think about it: after all, we’re “only” talking about a couple of hundred million, when right here in town there’s a stadium that someone accidentally paid a billion dollars for, and that wasn’t even enough to bring down the municipal government over. 
Has Drapeau delivered his baby yet?
Stephen Harper would be Prime Minister. That’s nightmarish enough to me.
I’m just bracing myself for the Pine-Park interchange.
It’s only recently that we’ve seen actual testimony linking senior party members to electoral fraud (fake volunteers), government payments funneled back to liberal party coffers and systemic avoidance of the rule of law.
I’ll take ideological opponents running the legal and executive branches of government over criminals any day.
I must admit that I’m also not quite sure why Layton decided to try to reach an agreement with Martin now. If he actually had to power to bring the Liberals a majority in the House, and if the Liberals weren’t so widely seen as criminals, I’d say this was a good (but pretty obvious) move by Layton. But now, his support might not even actually save the government (and therefore he won’t even get the modifications to the budget he wants), and he might lose the votes of some people who would have voted for the NDP if it hadn’t tried to associate with the Liberals (for example, more left-leaning former Liberal voters who are angry at all the corruption in the government).
Maybe Gorsnak is right and it’s all done with the upcoming election in mind, but I still don’t see what he expects to get from this.
Alfonso Gagliano wasn’t a senior party member?
Hmm. Depends. What portion of the government made up of criminals are we talking about? How important are the ideological differences? Are you saying you’d vote Green if it were shown that there were at least one member of each of the Conservative, Liberal, and NDP caucuses who’d claimed fraudulent expenses on their travel allowance (as I’m sure there are)? That would be a ridiculous position for you to take, given your views, just as matt voting for Christian Heritage (as he claimed in the IMHO poll thread) would be ridiculous given his views. Surely we’ve got to do a bit of a cost-benefit analysis. How much money are we talking about? How widespread is the problem? How much is the government protecting the guilty parties? How serious and sincere are its efforts to cut out the cancer? What sort of policies would the hypothetical ideological opponents pass? How significant are those costs? Are there other consequences, like the appearance of condoning fraud encouraging others to engage in it in the future?
This isn’t a cut and dried issue just because you say it is.
Sure it is. As to opponents running the place, I’d trust them enough to give them a term.
So you’re saying that you would vote Green if it were shown that at least one member of each of the Tory, Liberal, and NDP caucuses had claimed fraudulent expenses on their travel allowances? Fraud is criminal, after all.
Are you seriously claiming that claiming expenses for a meal you didn’t eat, or claiming your spouse’s travel expenses for a trip you took, is the same as the systematic, large-scale, essentially racketering of the Liberals?
Absolutely not. They’re very different things. But they’re both criminal. So, if we accept the common sense position that some fraudulent expense claims aren’t a reason to vote against a party, we’ve established that mere criminality isn’t a reason to vote against a party. So, we’re back to weighing the factors I mentioned in post 28.
As long as we’re spinning all crimes into ‘mere criminality’ so that you can lump them together, are you saying you’d vote liberal if it turned out the Liberals were systematically killing and eating babies?
This type of hairsplitting semantic argument is nothing more than sophistry. We’re not talking about a ‘single member of the party’. We’re talking about widespread corruption, theft of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of public money, and use of stolen goods to give a political party an advantage over others. And it’s not just one or two bad apples, or a small cabal of renegades. It appears to be a widespread operation involving party leadership and members at various levels.
Everyone knew Chretien was dirty, but people looked the other way as long as he would show up every other week and spout platitudes about our ‘unique Canadian values’. Now we find that this rot has worked its way through the highest levels of the party and spread beyond Chretien’s intimate little gang of crooks. Some of you are willing to look the other way again, because the same assholes who stole this money have managed to so demonize their only real opposition that you’re terrified of voting for them.
Have you recently lost your ability to read, Sam? Come on, I clearly pointed out several relevant considerations for a cost-benefit analysis, which directly implies that at some point the costs of supporting a party one agrees with would outweigh the benefits. I assure you that eating babies would tip the balance. It’s you guys that keep insisting that there’s no need to consider the issue. Just a straight if there’s a whiff of corruption we can’t vote for them. I may be overly cynical in expecting corruption, but that’s ridiculously naive in thinking it can be avoided entirely.
And, since I’m on the record as having voted NDP in the last election, and have announced my intention to vote NDP again, your question seems rather odd to begin with. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever voted Liberal federally. In my younger years I was leftier than I am now, and always voted NDP. During the elections when I would have voted Liberal (97 and 00) I was out of the country and didn’t go to the effort of casting an absentee ballot. My riding at that point was a lock for Reform/Alliance - they elected Jim freaking Pankiw, for crying out loud - so there was little incentive to go to the trouble.
I do believe that remains to be seen. Chretien, Gagliano, numerous bureaucrats, and a bunch of party officials in Quebec. Any current sitting MPs? Who? I haven’t heard any further names implicated.
And they stole about 8 bucks from me. It’s just not clear to me that my policy preferences aren’t worth more than $8 to me. YM obviously V.
On top of that, not only did it give them an advantage it was used in a time when the Liberal party was enacting reforms to the party funding system? They weren’t just giving themselves the advantage through this scandal they were ensuring their victory in the last two elections.
I laugh when I hear the clip of Martin saying he will return any money they received from this sponsorship scandal. They already spent it getting him re elected.
Damn!
As for the OP… Yes Layton is being an opportunistic bastard but so have the Conservatives in this mess. The only party that has shown any integrity and demanded the end of this government from the start is the Bloc…
Fuck, I hate to say it but the Bloc Quebecquois is the only party that has any sense of integrity. I hate them yet, If they were a national non seperatiste (scum bage) party I’d want Gilles Duceppe as Prime Minister… sorry but he is a straight shooter, and comes across as an honest politician.
It’s easy to be honest when there is no chance whatsoever that you’ll ever win an election.
No, that flippant remark underestimates the change in Quebec politics since the mid seventies.
The truth is the reason that this scandel is such the soap opera for many Quebecers is that they have risen above the courrupt past they had in their politics. This is an offense to them. Duceppe like many Quebecois are outraged about this misuse of government funds in their province.
Of all the provinces I’d say Quebec is the least courrupt as far as poliics go.
That and the fact that Ducceppes Raison d’etre is the eventual seperation from the country and so he really doesn’t give a fig about what the rest of Canada thinks.
I wasn’t really being flippant. Governing is tough. It’s extremely rare for a government to get to do everything it wants, as reality tends to intrude. So, you tend to end up eating some of your words.
Take the Saskatchewan Party, for example. Since Devine’s Tories self-destructed we’ve had four consecutive NDP governments. The tattered remnants of the provincial PCs formed the Saskatchewan Party. As opposition parties are wont to do, they criticize the NDP on just about every front. Fine, you say? Well, at various times they’ve said the government needs to decrease taxes, increase funding to nearly all major programs, and stop the trend back towards deficits. They’ll likely win the next election, and then they’ll have to decide which of those commitments they’re going to renege on.
So far as I can tell, the only thing Duceppe has to do to live up to his commitments is criticize the government whenever Quebec is or appears to be getting a raw deal. He’s got the easiest job in the House.
Fair enough. When you explain it that way I can agree with the statement.
Where’s the Rhino Party when you really need it?