Friday, March 28, 2008

A Government as Transparent as a Stone Wall

Do you remember the Manley Report? Of course you do. It was promoted far and wide as the definitive, non-partisan, (cough), answer to Canada's future in Afghanistan.

One of the biggest pieces of the report tackled the issue of the lack of transparency by this government concerning the file.

The government had little choice but to accept the findings and the Liberals in their amendment to the bill that followed, stressed the importance of openness and put forward suggestions on how to achieve that.

The Con's desperate for support on the issue whole heartedly agreed, (uh-huh), and moved on.

Well, now that time has passed of course the Con's are back to, well, who they are. That would be a government who says one thing for public consumption and does the opposite.

How incredibly ridiculous. Invite the opposition, provide an itinerary then abruptly revoke same without credible explanation. Not only is there no explanation today, yesterday they said it was NATO's fault. (If you read my previous post, you see the pattern here. When the going gets tough, blame someone else - the Conservative credo.)

The bottom line here to me, is that for whatever reason the Con's believe that their original strategy is working. I'd characterise that strategy as, tell Canadians what they want to hear, then implement our agenda by whatever means possible. First and foremost, keep Canadians out of the loop.

How is that working so far? They haven't moved in the polls so I'd say overall, it's not.

Resuming a secretive, exclusionary position is a bad move imo. Perhaps they believe it won't be noticed because the House isn't sitting.

Well, we'll just watch how that plays out on Monday.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that picture of troubled Harper. nearly a laugh but really a cry.

wilson said...

Sometimes you just have to leave the kids at home with a sitter.

(don't forget to lock up the liquor cabinet)

Omar said...

I love that pic as well. Cunning and stupid. What a combination. I predict he'll go far.

~yeah, lots of the young folk listening to that 30 year old music these days.

RuralSandi said...

Wilson - when's you sitter coming over and will he/she let you have chips and pop before you go to bed?

What a stupid comment, really it is.

Go back to Harper's talking points on their website - then we can have a real laugh.

Amazing how CPC supporters lower their standards when it comes to Harper - lie, mislead, play games and pout and stomp - that's a leader?

Karen said...

sandi, there was a panel on this last week, I cannot remember which show but Laurie Hawn was the Con rep and he basically said the same thing.

There is only one government of Canada...we don't need other voices...blah blah. Condescending beyond belief.

What he failed to realise of course is that it's not just about voices. It's been dubbed a Canadian mission and the Con's only represent 30% of them. So, it's also about what is heard at this meeting.

To be honest, I say we just keep letting out the rope. It's long enough now that they are tripping all over it, soon it will be long enough to be useful in the metaphorical hanging of the party.

To those who like the pic, I'm with you. It says an awful lot about the man I think.

I see unease, lack of control over a situation and suspicion.

Ahh, a picture is worth...

RuralSandi said...

I saw that panel - they were discussing the NATO meeting where Harper and his gang of bobbleheads decided AND LIED about it to not let delegates from the other parties attend. They tried to blame NATO and it came out that they lied about.

Hawn's response was related to that. Amazing how arrogant he was considering 2/3rds of Canadians didn't vote for the CPC