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Looks like Georgetti is backtracking after laying an egg after the budget yesterday!
http://www.canadianlabour.ca/national/news/canadian-labour-congress-pres...
What an arsehole that Georgetti is. And look at the dude who does his press releases - Dennis Gruending - could that be the same as the NDP "Faith and Justice" religious self-promoter? Or just coincidence?
Flaherty will get brownie points for this one from his boss.
Georgetti sound like he is fishing for a Senate appointment. Time for him to go.
I wouldn't bale it all on his press secretary. I saw Georgetti himself being interviewed in a scrum right after the budget was brought down and his first reaction was to go and on about what a good budget it was and how satisfied he was with it!
I see two possible explanations:
a) Georgetti plans to join the Conservative party and give Harper a CLC jacket to wear - mimicking Hargrove and Martin in 2006
b) Georgetti expected the Layton and the NDP to cave and support the budget and so he thought he was helping to give the NDP some cover - in which case he was pretty dumb not to wait for Jack to speak before shooting his mouth off.
BTW: I have to say I've always found Georgetti to be very uninpressive. As head of the CLC, he is supposed to be the voice of the labour movement in Canada - and yet his profile is so low as to be non-existent. He is 100% absent from any debate in Canada. Remember when the CLC was led by people like Dennis McDermott or Bob White - and they were contantly quoted in the media and thjeir views were always sought out whenever journalists wanted to hear "labour's perspective" - you almost NEVER see Georgetti in the news saying anything of any relevance.
Is the person occupying the post of President of the CLC supposed to be a major advocate for labour issues and social justice - or it the job supposed to be a sinecure that is the closest thing the left can offer to a lifetime appointment to the senate?
Georgetti is Labours Problems. Labour keeps him in , then live with it. Look at Labour today, and Look at the Budget comments.
Is anyone surprised by this?
Great point.
And remember when Chaviva Hosek and Judy Rebek were the leaders of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the organization was a household name? In '84 they actually hosted a national televised leaders debate between Mulroney, Turner, and Broadbent.
An anti-feminist prime minister is suddenly concerned with maternal health. What's happening? - Judy RebickTo see how Canada has changed during the last 27 years one can enter the CBC's time machine:
1984 debate on women's issuesMansbridge sure had a lot more hair back when.
Double post
Correct. Georgetti is an utter dud. He and his entourage are destroying whatever potential credibility and organizing power the CLC could and should have.
But I have other recollections of Dennis McDermott. In the 1984 election, he focused all the CLC's opposition against the Liberals. Mulroney was not ungrateful. After McDermott's retirement in 1986, he was appointed ambassador to Ireland.
I'm nominating Ken Georgetti as ambassador to Libya!
BRILLIANT move by the opposition today. They have effectively killed the budget by not allowing the government to proceed to orders of the day. All that will be voted now is the opposition non-confidence motion on contempt of parliament and the early days of the election will be framed by us and not on a phony budget that the Cons know will never be implemented
Yay!!!
Yes, it looks like the Cons won't be able to bring up a budget vote before the non-confidence vote now so it looks like the Opposition will get to vote on what they want first.
Indeed.
Now, it should be noted that Harper can start playing the same games that Martin played in 2005 before the Stronach defection. He could take away the liberal opposition day on Friday-backend it to the end of the session-and try to force the opposition to vote on the budget. I suppose that the opposition could filibuster its own report to try to prevent the government from doing that and getting that vote first.
I love parliamentary procedure and there are games that Harper can play, like Rosemary Barton mentioned today on Power and Politics with Evan Solomon. We'll see how much he wants to avoid an election on ethics soon.
That would be funny- the spectacle of the Cons using unethical games in the commons to avoid a vote on ethics. Sounds fine to me.
The opposition could play back-- the budget is not the big issue so they could if Harper plays a game on them not show up till they get their non-confidence vote and say there was no reason to vote on the budget since the government already lost confidence and all they were doing is waiting for that vote. Effectively that would pass the budget without any opposition MP voting for it but the government would fall a few days later and the campaign would be on ethics.
Can't see how the government can win this battle.
Now that would be funny.
Harper would not survive a third kick at that can.
No... I agree with the prevailing wisdom that he probably engineered this himself.
It's all going as the Tory strategists planned.
A budget that answers NDP issues with peanuts and Bloc issues with some promises that gives the illusion of a fair budget and makes the opposition look like the villains.
And I'm sick and tired of the 'Canadians don't want an election' bullshit.
When will Canadians 'want' an election?..In a year,5 years or maybe never.
Any which way you slice it,the Tories have succeeded in making Canadians believe elections should become a thing of the past,making the electorate more apathetic and making the opposition up as the bogeyman.
I'm not looking forward to this election.
I wonder what made the Tories think that Canadians "wanted" an election in 2008 when they needlessly called one just two years into their mandate?
No, I don't think he can, because today is the last day of the current supply period. When Martin did that it was in May, and the last day of that supply period would not have come until June or something.
Friday is the last day the Liberal opposition can be called for ... and it must be called ... and after it's voted on, there would still have been the money votes to vote supply for the next period. The Liberals could make their votable opposition day motion confidence or not, but they put a non-confidence motion on the order paper today, and have announced that they plan to move that one on Friday.
Now, I think Harper picked the budget day precisely with this squeeze in mind, thinking they could squeeze the NDP. But then other things go and happen, don't they.
I think Harper got suckered punched by the NDP. Our PM is getting a little too big for his britches, and it's time he is brought down a notch or two. After all he just has a minority government with less than 38% of the vote.
I'm tired of it too. And some of the commentators and radio show hosts exacerbate the situation by also puffing and sighing about the prospect of an election. There were several radio hosts on Don Martin's show on CTV earlier tonight doing just that.
It's time that Canadians stop complaining about elections and start becoming grateful that they have the right to vote. Many people around the world don't have that right. It is time for Canadians to get off their backsides and start getting involved. There are mid-term elections every 2 years in the United States. It's no big deal if we have them every 2 or 3 years either.
Observer, thank you so much for this post! It was very informative!!!
The rest of you calm down. Harper is not a 1,000 pound Godzilla. The dude has tried for a majority and lost 3 times.
True, but it would be unwise to assume he'll fail a 4th time.
Any time I hear that people are sick of elections I'm going to ask whoever's speaking if they'd prefer if we just get rid of elections altogether. People need to smarten up.
Guy Giorno, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, says if the Conservatives fail to win a majority in the next election, the party expects to be toppled by an opposition coalition.
“Make no mistake, if they are given the opportunity again I think there is every indication they will do that,” Giorno, the Conservative Party’s national campaign chair, said Wednesday in a freewheeling conversation at the University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Governance.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/959422--another-tory...
Sounds good to me.
Wasn't there a fair bit of public support for a coalition last time it came up? What makes this a threat exactly? Maybe he's just trying to energise his base.
It's a threat to Stephen Harper. Which makes it a threat to Canada