Hebert thinks the stars are against rae and better fpr iggy. I think both these men would cause division in the grits and help the Tories. So I am happy with either. I would prefer rae , as I think his disatrous term as NDP premier of Ontario could finally inish off the grits.Alignment of stars doesn't favour RaeNov 03, 2008 04:30 AMCHANTAL HÉBERT OTTAWATime has not stood still since the 2006 Liberal leadership convention and its passage has been kinder to Michael Ignatieff than to Bob Rae.In 2006, Ignatieff was an untested political quantity. He had been elected to Parliament for the first time only weeks before the leadership campaign got underway.Since then, he has made quite a mark in the Commons. Indeed, he is probably the most compelling parliamentarian to have entered the place...
Chantal Hebert seems to think that the divided left his Hm Pm Stephen harper's greatest asset. I disagree, it is his strong leadership and straight forward poicies which resonate with the middle class. It doesn't hurt that the left is so fractured.In Quebec, passive opposition is about as friendly as most left-leaning groups get to the Liberals – even at the provincial level. And the NDP is too federalist for many Bloc Québécois supporters. Although there has been a recent loosening of the ties between the two, the province's sovereignty and progressive movements have worked hand in hand for decades.Outside Quebec, many progressive icons are card-carrying members of the NDP or sympathizers of the Green party.A lot of them feel that the Liberals are not credible in their promises to...
Chantal Hebert has an interesting piece on how the grits got to the abyss. She argues the neophyte Kennedy completely misjudged the Qubec is a Nation within a United Canada resolution. keenedy is much more of a centralist than dion, yet Kennedy fundamentally didn't understand that.Among the candidates, he took the most vocal stance against the Quebec nation resolution. That and future leadership considerations led him to Dion, a Quebecer and a unity warrior, rather than to a fellow Ontarian.But if Kennedy thought he was supporting a like-minded federalist or that he was advancing Canadian unity, he was mistaken.When it comes to federalism, Dion and Kennedy ultimately have precious little in common.The latter belongs to the school of Liberals – largely Ontario-based – for whom the...
Chantal Hébert writes that Liberal leader Stéphane Dion is running out of time: Dion has at most a week to recast himself as a credible alternative to Harper or else the Liberals will find themselves on an irreversible course to a near-historical defeat next month. Based on current numbers, some Liberal projections give the party no more than 65 seats on election night. They also confirm that Dion is an albatross around the party's neck. One reader of Hébert's column has seen through Dion's Green Shift: I've seen some of the details of the proposed tax "cuts" proposed under...
she finds some hope for dion, but lots of negatives. Dion's English is going to be a major problem. The carbon tax is not selling well. I look forward to watching HM PM Harper wipe up the floor with dion in the debates. The Liberal plan is too complex to be delivered succinctly. Time and again, the core message gets lost to technical jargon. That jargon is too dense to pack as much of a punch as the single-minded Conservative attacks on Dion’s carbon tax.Given that, the Green Shift is taking up too much space in the Liberal playbook, crowding out other themes that the party could score on. At a Winnipeg town hall on Tuesday night, more than half the questions dealt with matters other than the environment. The notion that the plan has an economic backbone does not really come...
Chantal Hebert points out the divided opposition is leading to what we Tories want: Tory victory. Thanks for the good work taliban jack, carbon tax dion and gossip columnist gilles.With opponents battling it out, Tories winJun 16, 2008 04:30 AmCHANTAL HÉBERT OTTAWA–The arrivals of Thomas Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal minister, on the NDP front bench and Bob Rae, a former New Democrat premier of Ontario, in the Liberal caucus were the main highlights of a silly parliamentary season for the federal opposition.Taken together, these high-profile additions offer a vivid illustration of the zero-sum game their parties have been playing in the battle for the title of progressive alternative to the Conservatives.So far, the fight has produced only one clear winner.Over the past year, the...
Chantal Hebert makes the point that dion better announce his Carbon tax fast and do it well. The Tories have already framed his tax. He is again fighting his Mps. Things don't get better for dion.Dion, his MPs are still on a teeter-totterJun 13, 2008 04:30 AMCHANTAL HÉBERT OTTAWA—Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is ending the parliamentary season the way he started it: at cross purposes with his caucus on the party's electoral strategy.On the timing of the next campaign as well as on the ballot question that should be put to Canadians by the Liberals, Dion and his MPs have been at opposite ends of a teeter-totter for the better part of a year.Twice since the fall Speech from the Throne, Dion has been forced to drop plans to bring down the Conservative government in the face of poor...
Chantal Hebert has a great piece on the elections Canada storm trooper tactics. Elections canad officials seem to be avoiding being deposed for the lawsuit. They also seem to be ignoring client attorney privelege. Elections Canada will pay dearly for their tactics. Who will believe anything elections Canada does anymore? Its tim for parliament to reign in these out of control grit civil servants.By calling in the RCMP to assist them in executing a warrant against the governing party, election officials had to know that they were hanging the Conservatives out to dry, creating a perception of guilt that will not be easily dissipated and a sense of wrongdoing that may yet not live up to the facts.Having forced his way into the filing cabinets of the governing party, elections commissioner...
As I have said before, bring it on dion. Chantal Hebert feels a June election would be very bad news for the grits.Pulling the plug on Stephen Harper's minority government would certainly bring relief to Dion, who has faced scathing criticism for not doing so over the budget or the Afghan mission.But the Liberals would be trading a short-term gain for long-term pain.An election triggered over immigration might improve the impressive majorities of the Toronto Liberals who are itching to go to the polls on the issue. But in many other regions of Canada, not the least of which Quebec, it could tip enough marginal seats in the Conservative camp to give Harper a governing majority.In an election this spring, Dion would go to voters with his personal standing at a dismal low. In the glaring...
Chantal Hebert believes dion's biggest mistake was not defeating HM Government on the green plan of last year. I think she underestimates the Tory campaign, framing dion as not a leader. I also think she underestimates the Quebec effect on dion and the gritsConventional wisdom has it that the ongoing unravelling of the Liberal leader started last September, when his first electoral test turned for the worst and the Montreal fortress of Outremont was lost to the NDP. But when observers look back on Dion's downhill course with the benefit of more distance, they will likely pinpoint its origin back to an earlier point in his tenure, to the time 12 months ago when he decided to let the government get away with its second green plan.At that point, the environment was the forte of the new...
Hebert sees good news for Canada and federalism. The Tories are now the defacto face of federalsim in Quebec. hebert sees substantial gains in Quebec for the Tories. The grits are a joke in Quebec now. Their latest attempts to hide their candidates is just pathetic.• More and more Quebecers are walking the walk of their talk on a Quebec future within Canada. They are turning away from the Bloc to re-engage in federalist coalitions led by non-Quebecers. In the process, they are putting the lie to their made-outside-Quebec reputation for isolationism.When asked which leader would make the best prime minister, Quebecers rank Harper 20 points ahead of Dion; the Liberal leader also trails Jack Layton by half-a-dozen points.The CROP tracking has the Bloc down 12 points since the last election...
I have been wondering why taliban jack has been so annxious for an election. The NDP poll numbers have been abysmal. Thomas Mulcair has caused more harm than good for the party. In many polls the NDP looks like it is tied with the greens. The disloyal position of the NDP on Afghanistan is not winning them support. If they NDP poll 12% in the next elefction they would probably have far fewer seats. SO I am not sure what the NDP strategy is. I guess it is to be losers.The federal NDP could hardly be described as being on a roll anywhere else in Canada. While polls have come up with conflicting scores for the two main parties, their numbers concur on the fact that the NDP has not been catching up to either the Liberals or the Conservatives.Instead, the party regularly scores below its last...
I agree with Chantal Hebert who thinks HM PM Harper clearly has out manouevered dion at every turn in the Afghan Mission. I also think it is interesting that the mission will end in Kandahar and says nothing about elsewhere in Afghanistan after 2011. I think this is a victory for the Tories and for Canada. The Afghan mission is an honourable one and I want it to continue. HM PM Has done that and opened the possibility for a mission after 2011 elsewhere in Afghanistan.From then on, it was a given that it would only take a few strokes of his prime ministerial pen for Stephen Harper to shrink the remaining gap to insignificance. Yesterday, he did just that with a revised motion that transfers the differences between the Liberals and the Conservatives to the margins of the debate.As...
I think there are still a few grits with some decency who do support the Afghan Mission. The Manleyrreport puts dion in a bad position once again. Will the 30 or so MP's that probably support the mission revolt? The signs are there. dion and his party are ineffective. Dion can't even get his MP's to attend in the house.For what would it say about the Liberals if they could not present a united front on the defining foreign policy issue of the time?In the end, though, it may come down to the path of least resistance for Dion.These days, it is not always clear that the official opposition has the fire in the belly to acquit itself of some of its most basic parliamentary duties. On Monday, the first day back in Parliament after a six-week break, more than 30 Liberal MPs were missing in...
It is increasingly clear to anyone except dion, that will look that Kyoto targets are not attainable. The grits under psuedochretien knew they were never attainable. hebert correctly points out that the beating of the dead kyoto pony ( dogand pony?) has not particularly helped dion. On the other hand this may play very well for the Tories.Today, polls show voters do not see the Liberal party as the most apt to deal with the environment. That title goes to the Green party. And more Canadians see Layton as prime ministerial than do the Liberal leader.Conservative strategists are convinced that they are immensely better equipped to win the debate on climate change today than a year ago. But the issue remains Dion's top card.These days on Parliament Hill, all eyes are on the next election...
Chantal Hebert doesn't think much of citoyen dion's chances. Yesterday on CBC( the at issue panel) she said some people are just losers and here is here column today, which restates a lot of what she said on the At Issue panel also night. Hebert see litle chance for dion to get out of his morass and he drags the grits down with himDion a drag on already foundering LiberalsNov 23, 2007 04:30 AmCHANTAL HÉBERT OttawaTwelve months after Stéphane Dion's Liberal leadership victory, bewilderment about the result has turned into widespread consternation. In one year, the rookie Liberal leader has gone from prime minister in waiting to opposition leader in hiding.These days, its brand name is all that is keeping the Liberal party afloat in the polls. In Quebec, where the Liberals thought they...
Quebec's laws have often mad us a laughing stock in the rest of the world. Remeber the unlingual Kosher foods that were confiscated by the language police? Eeven Bernard Landry finds Bill 195 troublesome. The PQ has been trying to say that separation is a territorial nationalism. We now see it for what i is , the worst kind of ethnic nationalism. Bill 195 is the sign of a desperate party. I beleiev that Quebecers will see through this and the PQ will ultimately pay a heavy price at the polls.For most of the out-of-province coverage has focused on the PQ plan rather than on the fact that it was actually dead on arrival. The Quebec Liberals and the Action démocratique du Québec party have rejected it out of hand as did the left-leaning Québec Solidaire.The bulk of commentators, including...
I am very eager to hear the speech from the throne . i ma hoping for a much more bold and conservative agenda. I want large tax cuts, cuts in spending, the declawing of Kyoto, limiting the federal spending power in provincial matters, increased military spending and large cuts to the civil service. I want much more including limits on abortion, more protection of free speech, better property rights legislation, defanging of the Human rights commissions, but I am not holding my breath.Chantal Hebert thinks the budget will be bold and HM PM Harper and dion's mettles will be tested.So far, Harper's vision of federalism has largely remained on the drawing board. But he has promised both to curtail the federal spending power and to strengthen Canada's economic union. A move on the first...
Hebert thinks the decisive defeat of MMP in Ontario, means it will not be tried federally any time soon. This will probably mean vote splitting on the left for a change. more good news for the Tories.Then for a decade the Reform/Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives fought each other to no avail other than to facilitate consecutive Liberal majorities. Now the shoe is back on the other foot.The federal NDP spent the past decade fending off Liberal efforts to use its superior electoral position to woo left-leaning supporters under their flag. The roles will be reversed in the next election when the New Democrats try to overtake the troubled Liberals as the main progressive voice in the Commons. Both parties are also striving to prevent the Green party from sucking away their...
I think duceppe will leave after the next election. He seems tired and so does his party. Chantal hebert feels he will leave after another election. Thebloc has very few candidates that could replace him. The day keeps getting better.The Bloc has been losing ground for months, a decline that was likely delayed by the advent of the sponsorship scandal in 2004. Sovereignist strategists had hoped that the Afghan deployment would similarly keep the party afloat. So far, that has not been the case.Since the last election, Duceppe has been largely off his game. From the Quebec nation resolution to the last budget, he has routinely been outmanoeuvred by Harper.After 17 years, the Bloc leader has outlived most of the MPs who originally joined party founder Lucien Bouchard on Parliament Hill....
Thing are looking even worse for dion. Chantal Hebert's column paints a prettyblack picture. Those who still support dion in Quebec seem delusional. All I can say is it is delightful to watch this self inflicted trainwreck. When dion was picked last December, I was shocked. dion was the one I had wished to be elected and I am no friend of the grits. I hope the Tories do all they can to help the sinking grit ship go down even faster.Confidence in Dion reaches crisis levelSep 28, 2007 04:30 AmCHANTAL HÉBERT OttawaBig parties are like big ships. They are designed to be virtually unsinkable but once they start taking on water they tend to go down quickly.The listing Liberal Party of Canada is fast approaching the point of no return.Over a bit more than a week, the cracks caused by a triple...
Chantal Hebert seems to thing the Tory cabinet does. She also seems to think that the throne speech will be very centrist. That will be disappointing for many conservatives, who see the throne speech as an opportunity for the Tories to bring in more conservative policies. Conservatives , like me, have been somewhat disappointed by the lack of tax cuts and high spending of HM Government. I tend to agree with her that the BQ and the grits don't really want an election. I am not sure even if the Tories do. I think the Tories are in a strong position either way. I hope the throne speech will be bolder than Hebert thinks, because the opposition is no shape to bring down HM Government.With an emboldened NDP going aggressively after Liberal votes in the next campaign, Harper also stands to...
Chantal hebert again points out that the Quebec results will send signals to the voters in Ontario and elsewhere. national unity is not just a Quebec problem. HM PM Harper is Captain Canada now. Dion is just the joker. Dion and the grits are on their way to becoming irrelevant nationwide.As battle lines are being redrawn around stakes other than sovereignty and federalism, the Bloc Québécois is losing its purpose and the federal Liberal party – as it is currently led – its relevance.The single dominating feature of Monday's by-elections was a steady erosion in support for the Bloc. But even as sovereignists were taking a hit, the Liberals were left out of the federalist action.In Outremont, Bloc supporters switched en masse to the NDP and its anti-war message while the voters of...
Chantal Hébert knows what she's talking about (as usual) when she refers to the upcoming byelections:By all indications, Dion's candidates in Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot and Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean are not even in contention for second place.
But it is the creaky wheels of the campaign in the Liberal fortress of Outremont that should really send alarms bells ringing throughout the party.
Three days to the vote, a Liberal cakewalk has turned into a cliffhanger with the NDP emerging as the party to beat in Outremont.
In the final sprint to the vote, Liberal campaign literature has yet to land on most of the riding's doorsteps.
With the NDP working hard to get its recently recruited Quebec star, former provincial environment minister Thomas Mulcair, into Parliament, local Liberals complain...
I have been struck by the absence of the grits from the Outremont campaign. They were the last to put up signs and I have yet to receive a phone call or any campaign literature from citoyen dion's personal pick, Jocelyn Coulon. Coulon seems to be a ghost. I have yet to see or hear him on Radio or television. I have received literature and calls friom the Tories and NDP. Chantal Hebert sees disaster looming for citoyen dion in the byelections. At a time when sovereignist parties are undergoing a crisis of relevance, the Bloc Québécois is bracing to lose votes to its federalist foes on Monday, but not to the Liberals. The NDP is poised to benefit from a slippage of the anti-war Bloc vote in Outremont while, in Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe's candidate is locked in...
Chantal Hebert sees a lot of trouble for dion and the grits in Quebec. She is also thinking that Mulcair can win Outremont.I also note Mulcair does not like dion much.Mulcair – who switched parties to move on to the federal scene – is living evidence of Dion's baggage in Quebec. As environment ministers for their respective governments, the two crossed swords on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, inflicting cutting blows on each other.In the heat of that battle, Mulcair once quipped that he had found Dion so contemptuous in his approach to Quebec-Canada files that he had come to better understand why so many Quebecers had been driven to support sovereignty.And that is from someone who had to deal with citoyen dion. We will all be watching the byelections closely. Wonder if dion...
Chantal hebert agrees that the daupin's nomination is a lose lose proposition for dion. It turns out that dion may have to accept the dauphin as his only new "star" candidate in quebec. Few want to be a grit candidate in Quebec. Dion looks more and more pathetic. Chantal HébertMONTREAL–His father's name got Justin Trudeau his entry ticket into federal politics yesterday. It will be less of an asset in his battle against the Bloc Québécois for a seat in the House of Commons.Still, the Montreal riding of Papineau is probably the most winnable Bloc riding the Liberals have on offer these days.But between now and the next election, Trudeau will have to fight hard to convince his fellow Quebec Liberals that he is part of the solution to the party's predicament in the province rather than...
I think this analysis from Chantal Hebert is exactly right. Dion is busy trolling for votes on the extreme left and leaving much of his party behind. It is wishful thinking on the left , to think that May could actually meet Peter Mackay. When you lie with pigs , you also get covered in mud. Dion will have to defend himself over links to the loony left green candidates like the 9/11 nut from Vancouver. The nut seems to have recanted,but the damage is done. Many grits are annoyed by this policy...while May and Dion are teaming up to checkmate Jack Layton, they may be creating new openings for Stephen Harper on the election chessboard. On that score, they may both have gotten ahead of themselves.For years, the Liberals benefited from the war between factions of the right. Those battles...
The pur and dur Josee Legault seems quit annoyed that Mr Boisclair seems willing to abandon the central plank of the PQ:Soft on sovereigntyBoisclair's willingness to work with ADQ on constitutional change means PQ knives will be out for himJOSEE LEGAULT, The GazettePublished: Wednesday, March 28, 2007Yesterday, Pequistes witnessed the surprising return of former leader Pierre Marc Johnson's "national affirmation."It was one thing for Andre Boisclair to decide he would stay on as leader, even though he led the Parti Quebecois to third-party status. But it was quite another to take it upon himself, without a party congress, to make the stunning statement that sovereignty is desirable but not do-able, for now, and that the PQ's program must be adapted accordingly.Translation: Boisclair is...
Chantal Hebert was making the rounds of the Montreal Radio stations today, promoting her new book, French Kiss.You can listen to her interview on CBC onehere. I don't always like what Ms Hebert has to say but her analysis is usually right. The interview was fascinating. Ms Hebert is very impressed how HM PM Harper has managed to get one of four Quebec votes. She also says that Quebec sovereignty became very unpalatable because of the Yugoslav wars. She thinks that Boisclair is now fighting for the hearts of his own party. She wonders if Mario has peaked to soon. The world wanted a multi ethnic country that worked. I look forward to reading the book. Listen to the interview for more great...