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.

Good luck in the debate, Mr. Dion

On a question at the University of Western Ontario today regarding instituting a tax on windfall profits for oil companies, Liberal leader Stephane Dion had this to say:

Maybe Elizabeth May will step in and answer all of Stephane Dion’s questions for him on October 2nd when the federal leaders debate.

Also, when politicians deflect in answering a question they don’t care to answer or don’t understand, they don’t tell people they are doing so. So, my respect to Mr. Dion for telling us he doesn’t know about the issues.

The mask slips

The Conservatives have run advertising comparing Liberal leader Stephane Dion to an out-of-touch academic who doesn’t care about the priorities of average hard-working Canadians.

In this video that I captured from a press conference Dion gave in Richmond BC just minutes ago, Dion says “I like to have a lot of PhDs in Canada but we need also to have plumbers, and all the skilled workers that are needed must have the ability to come here in Canada. Not only PhDs”

While Stephane Dion would like to have Canada populated by like-minded academics like himself, he seems to begrudgingly concede that Canada also needs plumbers.

Imagine if you were somebody with skills that the Prime Minister of Canada only needed rather than liked.

I received an email from a reader which reads,

Professor Dion showed his true colours on the issue of immigration– He would prefer Professors coming from other lands– but knows that he needs plumbers etc.
This is elitist and reveals the true attitude towards the Liberal Party’s view of immigration. We are looked down upon– by this elitist group. Incredibly this elitist view makes the “beer and popcorn” seem tame in comparison.

Signed,
An Immigrant that came to Canada on December 20th 1959

govtweets update

Both govtweets.com and govtweets.ca are humming along nicely as the websites track the real-time online conversation via twitter on the POTUS race and the Canadian federal election. Here are some stats I just compiled from the levels of activity on the both govtweets.ca and govtweets.com:

In the past 8 days on govtweets.ca, there have been 303 tweets about Stephen Harper, and 120 about Jack Layton and 92 about Stephane Dion.

Comparatively, in the last 8 days at govtweets.com, there have been 24838 tweets about “Palin”, 22869 tweets about “Obama”, 20671 tweets about “McCain” and 4051 about “Biden”.

Conclusions that we can draw from this are that McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin for VP has generated much more chatter than Obama’s pick Joe Biden. Further, we can see that American politics is much more discussed globally than Canadian politics. But, I think we can also conclude that Canadians are still in the early stages of posting tweets.

And… for those of you who are wondering, I’ll be adding Elizabeth May to govtweets.ca soon.