Wondering why the Liberals pulled out of the coalition?

Thanks to babbler janfromthebruce [2] and writer Scott Piatowski [3] for bringing this much less reported tidbit from the Lisa Raitt "Greatest Hits" tape to our attention.  We'll be tuning into to see how will this play out today in the Commons today.

[3]One of the lesser reported portions of the Lisa Raitt's Greatest Hits tape concerned the Liberals:

Later in her conversation with Ms. MacDonnell, Ms. Raitt tells the man driving them around Victoria that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had backed down from defeating the Conservative government on a budget a few days earlier because he got a message from Canadian bankers.

“They did it at the Canadian Council of (Chief) Executives, there was three presidents of major banks who stood up in the room — and this is not from cabinet so I can talk about it — stood up and said, ‘Ignatieff, don’t you even think about bringing us to an election,’” said Ms. Raitt.

“'We don’t need this. We have no interest in this. And we will never fund your party again.’ That was very powerful. So he heard it from very powerful people in the industry. He was definitely muzzled.”

Liberal finance critic John McCallum, who was present for the closed-door Jan. 20 meeting with about 100 executives, says they were against the coalition and an election, but there was “not even a hint of a veiled threat,” and bankers would never make such a threat in a meeting with so many people present.

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