Tag: Stephane Dion

Stéphane Dion was leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from December 2006-December 2008.

Dion was elected leader of the Liberal Party after the resignation of Prime Minister Paul Martin after the Liberal election loss in 2006.

Dion’s leadership was marred by frequent gaffes and blunders and his inability to be an effective communicator. His interview with CTV’s Steve Murphy was a turning point in Liberal fortunes during the 2008 election. His hallmark Green Shift policy did not fare much better.

Ultimately, Dion’s mishandling of the 2008 coalition crisis – which saw the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois forming a potential coalition government – resulted in the end of his leadership.

Life after leadership wasn’t bad to Stephane Dion. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Trudeau government and the Canadian Ambassador to Germany.

Announcing Google Power Readers Canada

I pleased to announce today, the launch of a new way of connecting with Canada’s political party leaders and the journalists that are covering the election campaign.

I’ve been working with Google over the past couple of months on an innovative project that provides a peek into the reading material of those seeking the Prime Minister’s Office the articles that they’d like to share with you, the voter.

Late last night, our site went live and gained some very valuable real estate on the homepage of Google Canada at google.ca.

Google Power Readers Canada is the product of our work. I was able to gather Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Elizabeth May together to share articles that interest them and of course, articles they figure will interest (or should I say) entice you to vote for their candidates.

Also featured within the project are some of Canada’s top reporters that are covering the day-to-day action of the campaign. Perhaps, this will allow the “reporter’s notebook” to evolve in the way that reporters gather information and provide raw material for their readers to give them insight on the information gathering process.

You can check in what Jack Layton is reading and sharing with Google Reader, you can get a glimpse into Stephen Harper and Elizabeth May’s interests or find out what sites Peter Mansbridge frequents as he goes through his day. For example, we know that the Prime Minister is an avid hockey fan. From his shared items page we can see that the Mr. Harper is watching how the Leafs new and young talent may shape their upcoming season. The Prime Minister shares an article the Toronto Star about the Leaf’s training camp. Stephane Dion maintains his message and shows us more of his personality by linking to a Fishing Magazine in his profile. Elizabeth May has shared a Nova Scotia article from the Chronicle Herald on her platform release.

Check out Google Power Readers Canada and let me know what you think. Sign up for Google Reader yourself and share some articles with other Canadians and participate in the social media conversation for this 2008 general election. If you’re also posting your ideas, maybe Jack Layton or Stephen Harper or Kady O’Malley will share your blog post or article. I should thank the party leader’s and the journalists for taking a chance on my pitch for this project. I’m looking forward to seeing what they have to offer to Google users. This election is showing the full integration of new media within political campaigns. Google is reflecting this with Google Power Readers.

Daniel Hurley billed taxpayers for past election-related expenses

Daniel Hurley is the candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada in Winnipeg Centre.

From Hurley’s biography,

Dan Hurley also has extensive parliamentary and government experience, previously serving as chief of staff to the Hon. Stephane Dion, while he was Canada’s Environment Minister and as President of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. During that time, Dan used his organizational and diplomatic skills to support Stephane Dion’s efforts to bring the Kyoto Protocol into force and to move the international community forward on climate change.

During the last election, Hurley as Dion’s chief of staff, expensed a trip to Edmonton that he took with the now current Liberal leader. The problem is that he went on this trip during an election, he billed it to the taxpayer and listed the purpose of the trip as “travel with Minister for electoral campaign”.

The expenses are listed on Environment Canada’s proactive disclosure website:

Hurley billed $1,161 for flights, $219.20 for accommodations and $166.60 for meals and incidentals for a total of $1,547.56 to travel with Dion during the past federal election between December 15-17, 2005.

The Edmonton Journal states,

“Stephane Dion, the federal environment minister, spent a long Friday in Edmonton beating the drum for local Liberal candidates.” (December 17, 2005)

According to section 6.1.3 of Treasury Board Guidelines for Minister’s Offices,

Expenditures incurred by the chief of staff should be authorized by the minister or the minister’s senior delegate for financial matters.

So, this raises a few questions for Stephane Dion:

Since Dion personally signed off on Hurley’s expenses for accompanying him during an election campaign for “travel with Minister for electoral campaign”, does Mr. Dion think that it’s acceptable for the taxpayer to foot the bill for Liberal election-related expenses?

Will Dion, Hurley or the Liberal Party of Canada refund the Canadian taxpayer $1547.56 with interest?

Will Hurley be asked to step down as the Liberal candidate in Winnipeg Centre?

We’ve seen taxpayer dollars going to fund Liberal campaigns before, is this more of the same from the Liberal Party?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: Of course, staff are allowed to accompany a minister for ministry-related business and file expenses — even during an election campaign — so long as they are doing government work. However, we must take Daniel Hurley’s disclosure at face value when he states that he traveled with Dion “for electoral campaign“. Hurley either made a terrible mistake by filing expenses to the taxpayer for an election campaign or he improperly worded his expense form.

Absent Liberals – The video player

UPDATE: The code is now working. Copy and paste the code below.

Be sure to put this on your blog. Instructions are below.

I was browsing YouTube earlier this evening and came across some recent uploads by somebody messaging against Stephane Dion for instructing his party to sit on their hands during the last session of Parliament. Dion’s Liberals abstained 43 times and could have brought down Stephen Harper’s government with any of these skipped votes. The videos that I found were uploaded by a user called “AbsentLiberals” and I’m fairly certain that it’s an NDP war-room effort. I believe that the NDP campaign created these videos to emphasize the point that their party was the only national opposition party to stand against the government. The NDP is making the point during this campaign that the Liberals gave Harper a de facto majority because they allowed the passage of his agenda by abstaining from votes. Of course, if Dion had voted against the government, we would have been in an election long ago as the Conservative Prime Minister made most bills issues of confidence. I also think that these videos are a product of the NDP war-room because they are also provided in French. Most unofficial activists would make the videos in either French or English but not both (there are 43×2 videos). UPDATE: As I suspected, these videos are from the NDP war-room.

Despite this likely being an NDP production, the message is plain for Conservatives and their supporters too; these videos show that Stephane Dion does not show leadership.

Years ago, I wrote a video distribution technique for Blogging Tories television and I think that the same can be applied for these videos. I modified my BT-TV program to deploy these “Absent Liberals” videos easily on your websites whether you support the Conservatives, the NDP or perhaps you are a Liberal that doesn’t support Dion. Just copy and paste the code into your own blog’s sidebar to embed the “Absent Liberals” video player. Imagine the player embedded on hundreds of blogs both left and right.

Sidebar player

Large player