Dion's Team-Building
I was pleased today to see Stephane Dion choose Michael Ignatieff as deputy leader. While Ignatieff was certainly not my first choice for leader, I do believe that we need to be united if we wish to succeed in the next election and therefore it was essential that Dion find roles for all the other candidates including his strongest competitor, Michael Ignatieff. Part of the reason we lost the last election is the Martin and Chretien factions spent more time fighting each other, than focusing on their main opponent. By reaching out to all Liberals and building a strong team, we can have our focus squarely on one target, which is Stephen Harper's Conservatives. Politics is a teamsport, not a one man show and I believe one of Harper's biggest mistakes was trying to run everything himself. No person is perfect and everyone his weaknesses so by delegating out one's weaker aspects, that allow for a stronger team than one who tries to do everything on their own. In the case of Harper his negatives have weighed him down and this may have not been the case had he allowed other members of his caucus to have larger roles.
I was also pleased to see Stephane Dion meet with several CEOs from Bay Street. Besides the fact I work in the financial sector, I believe it is important for him to send strong signals to Bay Street that despite not coming from a business background he believes in a strong economy and is willing to work with business rather than against it. Indeed business can not only play a role in bringing about economic prosperity, they also contribute to social justice since they provide much of the tax revenue as well as the people they hire contribute to the tax revenue to provide our social programs. Also we cannot have environmental sustainability without business being onside so that is another reason why it is important to reach out to them.
Although it is early going and Stephane Dion may end up disappointing me, so far to date, he has impressed me. I have every reason to believe I made the right choice at the DSM.
I was also pleased to see Stephane Dion meet with several CEOs from Bay Street. Besides the fact I work in the financial sector, I believe it is important for him to send strong signals to Bay Street that despite not coming from a business background he believes in a strong economy and is willing to work with business rather than against it. Indeed business can not only play a role in bringing about economic prosperity, they also contribute to social justice since they provide much of the tax revenue as well as the people they hire contribute to the tax revenue to provide our social programs. Also we cannot have environmental sustainability without business being onside so that is another reason why it is important to reach out to them.
Although it is early going and Stephane Dion may end up disappointing me, so far to date, he has impressed me. I have every reason to believe I made the right choice at the DSM.
posted by Monkey Loves to Fight at 5:19 PM
10 Comments:
What a pitiful front bench. They are going to get slaughtered.
Alex Dakota
Red State Canucks
Alex Dakota - Don't count on it. Judging by your name, you may not like Liberal values, but many Canadians do and many believe Harper is too right wing. More importantly the Liberals are united and strong, whereas the Conservatives are a one man team, with a right wing agenda that isn't reasonating with most Canadians.
whereas the Conservatives are a one man team, with a right wing agenda that isn't reasonating with most Canadians.
Miles, I still fail to see how the Conservatives are seen as a one-man team, other than because that's how you want to see them. I have yet to see any evidence of Harper doing anything so-called "dictatorial" that Chretien, Mulroney or Trudeau didn't do. Frankly, if you look at PMs such as Thatcher- someone I am sure you admire or at least respect- or Tony Blair, what Harper- or any Canadian PM for that matter- has done is small potatoes by comparison.
So essentially, my point is, how can you call Harper a one-man show without doing the same for Chretien et al?
In many ways Harper is a Trudeau of the right, otherwise same style of governing, just a very different vision and despite being a Liberal, I am no fan of Trudeau. In the case of Brian Mulroney he tolerated far more dissent than Harper does. Chretien in his later years became a lot like Harper, which is why I supported Martin's efforts to push him out when he had overstayed his welcome.
As for Tony Blair, I generally support much of what he has done, although think he screwed up on Iraq big time while Margaret Thatcher was the right person for the time, although not the type of leader we would need. She would be the type of person you would want when our fiscal house was in a mess i.e. Ontario 1995, BC 2001, Canada 1993, as opposed to when you have a huge surplus.
Again, I have yet to see many examples of Harper being intolerant of dissent. The only one I can think of is the nation resolution, which should have been a freer vote, I'll admit. Other than that, there hasn't been much int he way of intolerance.
BC Tory - Any member who speaks to the media without approval from the PMO can face discipline. Just look at what happened to Garth Turner. In addition there have been few times were Conservatives have broken party ranks, while many times where Liberals have. The SSM vote was the exception, not the rule for the Tories.
Turner is NOT a valid example because of two reasons:
1) It was the Ontario Caucus, NOT Harper, who chose to boot him. Harper had no idea what was happening. Now, really, how can one prove that Harper is a top-down autocratic manager when he, in fact, knew nothing about what was going on at the time? Moreover, how can the democratic vote of a provincial wing of the party caucus prove in any way the party is run in the way you claim it is?
2) Turner had been warned a month in advance to not blog on issues that were of caucus confidentiality. It wasn't about muzzling, it was about not revealing confidential information. Turner was told not to blgo about such information a month in advance. He didn't. He was kicked out.
Two points I have to raise here: first of all, the fault, at least to some extent, should fall on Turner, given the fact that he was warned to stop blogging about confidential information, and failed to comply. Moreover, given the nature of this incident, I could easily see the Liberals or NDP doing the same thing in a similar situation. Heck, Nunziata and Parrish got the boot for less!
As to the SSM vote being exception, not rule for the Tories, do you have any evidence of that? The nation resolution is the only piece of legislation I know of put forward by the Tories in which a major whip was enforced. The SSM bill, and Bill C-257 (the replacement workers bill I blogged about last week) are examples of MPs breaking party ranks.
BC Tory,
There is nothing wrong per se with one-man shows -- effective and appreciated one-person shows go a long way in politics: Thatcher, Trudeau and Chrétien come to mind.
No one can argue that Thatcher was not in the British mainstream. Her right-of-center approach to politics proved to be a winning formula with the electorate.
The Prime Minister's personality will serve as the ultimate instrument of his political undoing. In other words, it's bigger than all of us. Harper's natural inclination is to put his head down and rush toward the red sheet. The man can't help himself.
His right-of-center agenda is definitely a horse of a different colour from Trudeau's right-of-center agenda in his later years. The electorate, if the polls are accurate, as I suspect they are, have found Harper wanting and are ready to move on to someone else. Given present political circumstances, Team Dion will be in office after the next election barring a last-minute major error during the election campaign.
Team Dion - give me a break. The only time you guys talk team is when you have no confidence in your leader (eg. Martin).
I don't remember "Team Cretin" or "Team PET"...
Anonymous - Yes there is a team and the Liberals are a united party mainly thanks to Stephen Harper who even though we may have different reasons for disliking him we all believe he doesn't belong in government and needs to be thrown out ASAP.
Unlike the Conservatives who are a one man show, we are not.
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