Martin’s exit bad for Liberals
When there are two leaders and both are convinced they are right, the end result is that the organization they belong to will be destroyed. Both Prime Minister Jean Chretien and former minister of finance Paul Martin are convinced they’re right. To make matters worse, it looks like they both really are right. Let’s see. […]
Some of the top spenders in the House of Commons
Top 10 Staff/Riding Office Expenses 1. Liberal MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Nunavut) – $245,902 2. Alliance MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Carleton, Ont.) – $237,950 3. Liberal MP Reginald Belair (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) – $234,892 4. Liberal MP Rick Laliberte (Churchill River, Sask.) – $232,628 5. Liberal MP Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.) – $226,943 6. […]
Unhealthy Grit split
Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna was on ROBTV last week and told The Bottom Line’s host, Michael Vaughan, that the current split in the federal Liberal Party is actually healthy for the party. Now a practising lawyer, a member of several corporate boards and a high-flyer, Mr. McKenna, who is widely believed to be […]
Don’t like your Lib list: MP Macklin
I write today with regards to a list of ‘supporters’ of the Prime Minister, and former finance minister Paul Martin, respectively, painted in a divisive light in the June 10 issue of The Hill Times. I would like to stress that currently there is no formal leadership race in the Liberal Party of Canada, and […]
Jean Chr&ea;tien’s long-term plan
It is surprising the former finance minister Paul Martin has only now recognized what has been long self-evident outside of the bureaucratic mindset of Ottawa. The country has been drifting for years. The Chretien government drifted into the Quebec referendum just like they are now drifting through the shutdown of our softwood lumber industry and […]
PM to steamroller over any demons that get in his way
Never have so many, owed so much… Deputy Prime Minister John Manley’s tribute to his boss at the Grits’ big Ottawa fundraising dinner last Thursday night could have been summed up by changing the last words of Winston Churchill’s famous Battle of Britain quote from “to so few” to “to one man.” Mr. Manley waxed […]
Beware of the little guy with the big stick
Fore!… There was no way this week’s column was going to get into any analysis or predictions concerning the now open warfare between Mr. Chretien and Mr. Martin. This is not for a want of information on war councils last week, but merely a recognition of the fact that strategies were changing hourly and no […]
Party execs to PM: lose one vote and you’re out: MPs suspect last leadership review not run on the up-and-up [Delegate vote and riding vote]
In a dramatic twist, top officials in the Liberal Party have decided that a leadership convention will be triggered if the Prime Minister loses either the review vote by party members or the review vote by elected delegates. “If he loses one vote, we go into a leadership convention,” said Aurele Gervais, the federal Liberal […]
Dawson jumps from Sun Media to National Post
Dawson’s Creek… Parliamentary Press Gallery President Anne Dawson kept quite a secret while presiding over the nibs and nobs at the Gallery Dinner. Unbeknownst to almost everyone else, it was her last big public appearance as Ottawa bureau chief for Sun Media. Ms. Dawson, who took over the Sun job from yours truly 18 months […]
PM pressured to step down: Leadership review risks dividing us to the extent that our party has never been divided before’: MP
Paul Martin’s supporters hope Prime Minister Jean Chretien steps down before next year’s leadership review in order to avoid an ugly, nasty confrontation between the two political titans that could split the country’s “natural governing party” for years to come. “I wouldn’t recommend him to go through [the review],” said Liberal MP Janko Peric (Cambridge, […]
