Michael Ignatieff has real trouble distinguishing between rhetoric and reality. At his press outing yesterday, where he explained the deal he had reached with Stephen Harper, he was asked how the unemployed would benefit from the decision of the Liberals and Conservatives to set up a Blue Ribbon panel to study qualifications for Employment Insurance. The panel will report in late September. On Monday, the Liberal leader had insisted that something had to be done about EI this summer. Yesterday, he tried to claim that the unemployed were the beneficiaries of the arrangement he has made with the Harper government.
Ignatieff may actually believe that an unemployed Canadian who doesn't qualify for EI---most of them don't---will enjoy a better life while the members of the Blue Ribbon Panel meet over muffins and latte. The enjoyment will have to be ethereal rather than material, of course, the sort of enjoyment one might derive from sitting through a seminar led by the verbose Liberal leader.
At the end of September, the panel will report, and the Liberals and Conservatives will check the polls and decide whether to provoke an election or come to another deal among themselves.
In January, when Michael Ignatieff trashed his party's coalition with the NDP and announced that the Liberals would vote for Jim Flaherty's budget, he promised Canadians that he would watch the Harper government “like a hawk.” Since then, the Hawk has flapped his wings a few times, but he has remained firmly perched on the Prime Minister's shoulder.
Ignatieff dismisses the NDP and the Bloc as oppositional parties that should not be taken seriously. In truth, without the votes of these two parties, the Liberal leader would not be in a position to threaten Harper's hold on office.
And he's less than candid when he claims that the only way to come to the aid of the unemployed was through a deal with Stephen Harper. There was another way, and he knows it. The Liberals could have negotiated a deal on EI qualifications with the NDP and the Bloc to be presented to parliament this week. These three parties---holding the majority of seats in the House—-could have told Harper to take the EI deal or face defeat in a confidence vote.
There would then have been a real showdown in Ottawa, not the staged farce we’ve sat through. The odds are that Harper would have caved. There would have been no summer election. The difference is that thousands of unemployed Canadians would have received EI, starting now.
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8 comments:
I'm not so sure that the unemployed would have benefited from any immediate changes to the EI system because it still takes about 4 to 6 weeks to see a cheque after all the processing. That said, you're quite right Jim about the politics of a blue ribben panel to have chats about changing the system.
Seems Mr. Ignatieff has become deputy Prime Minister...
Makes for a great summer job, doesn't it?
LeonT
Mr. Ignatieff made EI a big deal and didn't deliver. I like this man, but this and his recent support for the Cons' privacy and freedom-invasive "security" measures throw me off a bit.
He's supposed to be a "human rights" guy. For which side?
Richard, human rights for the privileged and theorists. When it comes to really standing up and just not talking about all those economic injustices, well Ignatieff is just not to much into it.
Actually, I don't like the man. He doesn't want to get his hands dirty and wants the throne delivered on a silver platter. This won't be a leader who is willing to stand up to the bankers and corporate CEOs who are bankrolling the liberal party under his stewardship. Remember always follow the money and that tells one whose interests he really represents, and it's not the ordinary folk.
James:
Ignatieff is a pompous dilettante. He has no compassion for the unemployed and little courage. He could have stood up to Harper. He didn't. He just looked for wiggle room. He wound up with a committee to ponder EI. What courage! The only thing he's passionate about is making war.
I think I'm one of those politics-watchers who always ends up feeling like the jilted GF/BF.
Nice post, JL.
When Iggy's name comes up, I always end up recalling an interview with David Rieff at Berkely: referring to Ignatieff and Samantha Power, he expressed his suspicion that they were public intellectuals who were looking for a seat at the table. That was a few years ago, before Iggy and Sam got near the campaigning biz. Talk about prescience.
Cast in that light, Iggy is a power-seeker, and the ideals are but incidental.
On the other hand, if one goes to Iggy's writings, he oft-alludes to the virtue of deal-making in politics -- the art of getting less than you bargained for in the name of something greater. To be fair, Michael Ignatieff has remained true to pinciple.
All that said, given the terrain of Canuck politics, I'm not sure what that something greater is.
Sorry, this is off topic...
You have nothing on the Nova Scotia election? The election of the first NDP government on the east coast, could have effects throughout the region (in New Brunswick the NDP is already sharply up in the polls).
I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on the NS election, and on Dexter's campaign and on the prospects of his new government.
Yes, Ignatieff is a dilettante etc. One of Canada's problems is that the national parties are all led by dilettantes, people who have been rewarded throughout their adult lives for producing ideas rather than for producing results with action. Harper and Layton have never had real jobs. Duceppe, though, went from hospital orderly to union negotiator, and it's scarcely surprising that the BQ, which runs in only one province, actually rivals the NDP.
It seems to me that the NDP should be the natural ruling party of this country -- anybody left of the right wing of the Conservative party of Canada believes in a mixed economy and individual civil rights, the cornerstones of socialism. If the NDP were led by people who were interested in socialism rather than in proportional representation, Iggy and the Hairpiece might be sweating a bit.
Ignatieff is only a hawk when it comes to defending the Afghan war as he was formerly in defending the invasion of Iraq.
I guess he is also a hawk in shooting down the green shift and defending the oil sands..but when it comes to Harper he is simply like Dion but not as likeable!
Some day some hawk lover is going to get riled up about these hawk comparisons!
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