Danny Williams better get those flags ready...
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has indicated that he may be scrapping the Atlantic Accord.
The incredible thing about this is that he's blaming the Liberals for implementing the Atlantic Accord and upsetting the balance of the equalization formula. Mr. Flaherty - who proved during his tenure as Ontario's finance minister to be completely incompetent, leaving the province and the McGuinty government saddled with a $5.6 billion deficit - conveniently left out the fact that the Conservatives not only supported the Atlantic Accord, but vehemently attacked the Liberals and Paul Martin for not supporting it. Of course, the Conservatives have been forgetting a lot of things they said before recently, such as a platform promise to strengthen the ethics commissioner and ensure that the prime minister cannot dismiss him, and another one not to appoint Senators unless they have been elected, and the list goes on.
These guys have been in office for just over a month, the House of Commons hasn't even sat yet. And they have the nerve to say the Liberals break their promises! I guess John "campaigns are campaigns" Reynolds could rationalize and justify scrapping the Atlantic Accord, but I'd love to see Loyola Hearn, Norm Doyle and Fabian Manning do the same!
posted by Ryan Ringer @ 3/11/2006 01:29:00 a.m.
7 comments
7 Comments:
These guys would sell their mothers to 'balance' a budget with tax cuts. We've seen Flahrety opperate in Ontario. Williams will be lucky if they don't sell the resource rights to Hibernia far less honour the Atlantic Accord.
I suspect he is just saying that to try and gain more votes in Ontario. Lets remember back in 2005, the Tories were trailing the Liberals so any seats they could pick-up anywhere they would do what they had to. Now in power, their goal is to get a majority government and this will ultimately depend on their support in Ontario and Quebec and not elsewhere. I can assure you they will make many side deals with Quebec, which is where they think their majority lies.
I hope the Conservatives are not foolish enough to seriously jeopardize, or scrap the Atlantic Accord.
By doing so, they would be committing political suicide across Atlantic Canada.
They can only make so many inroads in Quebec and Ontario. Writing off Atlantic Canada could be a fatal political mistake.
I doubt they will scrap the Atlantic Accord since I don't think there is an appetite in the caucus to lose seats in one region in order to gain in another. Lets remember Flaherty when in provincial politics was strongly known for promoting divisive tactics as opposed to some of the moderates like John Tory or Elizabeth Witmer.
Besides scrapping it would be a real slap in the face to Newfoundland & Labrador when you consider this historically has been the least conservative province in Atlantic Canada, yet this election this was their best province in terms of both the % of seats won (NL - 43%, PE - 0%, NB - 30%, and NS - 27%) and popular vote (NL 43%, NB 36%, PE 33%, NS 30%). In fact they only got 300 votes less than the Liberals. Even though I fundamentally disagree with Stephen Harper's vision of Canada, I think he truly wants to do well in Atlantic Canada even if he doesn't care about them, so until he wins a majority (which I hope he doesn't) he won't do anything to piss them off. After all, he ignored McCartney's plea to end the seal hunt, which would have been equally unpopular in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Sorry Buddy. The Conservatives support the removal of natural resources from the equalization formula - something which basically amounts to an Atlantic Accord on all our resources in perpetuity. Conseidering we had to haul down the Canadian flag to get the Ditherer (henceforth known as "Paul Who?") to honour his off the cuff election promise, the libs have no credibility on this issue and are in no position to criticize the Conservatives. Mr. Williams is quite pleased with the direction of the Conservative government as are Newfoundlanders.
Thus proving a point I've been trying to make - to Tories, it's okay when the Conservatives break promises and reneg on committments, but unforgivable when the Liberals do it.
Actually the PM released a press release saying they wouldn't alter the Atlantic Accords. I think there is so little cohesion with in the party that we are going to have to get use to ministers going off track. Never mind Harper seems to have a history of asking others to say stupid things, see how the public reacts and then come out and say it is not party position if they react negatively. I am perhaps being a cynic here, but I think Harper may have asked Scott Reid, Cheryl Gallant, and Randy White to make the stupid comments they did simply to gage the public reaction. If it didn't hurt them in the polls, Harper would've adopted those policies, while if it did then he would distance them from them. Besides on the bilingualism policy, I find public opinion is more divided along geographic lines than ideological lines. I think in Quebec and Eastern Ontario ridings such as Ottawa-Orleans and Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, you would find almost no support for scrapping bilingualism even amongst Conservative voters, while in the West, even many Liberal and NDP supporters would probably be for scrapping it. I should note despite coming from the West, I am not one of them.
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