Thursday, September 03, 2009

Bob Rae lies about the coalition

Bob Rae was on the Dave Rutherford show earlier today and this is some of what he had to say.

Updated with better audio* and added document.



I see Bob Rae like his boss Michael Ignatieff likes to lie on the subject of the coalition. Too bad for him that we are paying attention.

Steve Janke has a run down of it here.



And here are 3 signatures. You decide whether or not this signed agreement would constitute a deal. A deal that formed a coalition whose goal it was to take the power of government.






* My apologies for the earlier volume problem as the video ran fine on my machine. So dear readers if you notice any major screw-ups like that on the blog please drop me a line in the comments.

Thanks Al

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ignatieff has said publicly that the reason that he did not go along with the coalition was because he did not want to make a deal with the separatists. If his boss thought the coalition deal included the Bloc why doesn't Rae?

Anonymous said...

Awesome question, anony. That is precisely why we need this stuff in the 'archives'. Prior to the internet and instant news, these guys could spin this crap to suit their needs.
Their theory? If they SAY IT, it's TRUE.
Now we can show them to be the lying sleazes that they always were.
Bec

Ardvark said...

Ignatieff has used the word "partners" as well as more specifically "three partners" when referring to the coalition deal. He is a smart guy so I think the plural was on purpose.

Rae is being a revisionist with Canadian political history, but the question remains why?

Ardvark said...

My favorite part is where Rae says that the Liberals (not Ignatieff as that was brought up a bit later) did not sign a deal with the Bloc.

Anonymous said...

Another comment that has been missed all day is his rant about the ways and means vote (renovation refund)
He did the whole Conservative bashing and fear mongering accusation claiming that it was a done deal, period.


"A spokesman for the Canada Revenue Agency also confirmed the credit will die if the second budget bill isn't passed, meaning Canadians won't be able to claim it on their 2009 tax returns."

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Election+would+kill+home+reno+credit+Tories/1957480/story.html

So again, he is a VERY CONFUSED individual and completely untrustworthy.

Bec

Jack said...

I use to respect Bot Rae as person, even if I did not agree with his politics. Since he joined the Liberals he's just become such an asshole, which is disappointing.

I think the CPC will pick up votes (if not seats) in Ontario by painting Bob Rae front and centre with his understudy Ignatieff.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

I've never heard so many lies in such a short time frame!

Bob Rae's nose must be so long he's probably tripping over it tonight.

hunter said...

Excellent job Ardvark! The picture of the crowd protesting is priceless.

frmgrl said...

Fantastic post! This is going to haunt Rae, Iggy and the whole party.

Ardvark, you should send this to the CPC war room. They should hire you too.

Babylonian777 said...

This is a CPC commercial worthy piece of audio. I mean, hearing this guy speak made me want to puke.

Ardvark said...

Bec, there is more. Bob Rae said that "technically it (reno tax) doesn't need a ways and means motion."

That is strange. I guess changes to the tax code can be made willy nilly without Parliamentary approval and that all of the Liberals running around tripping over themselves saying that if if it gets defeated in a confidence vote and they get elected that they would introduce the very same measure, the one Bob Rae says is not necessary, are mistaken.

Sammy said...

2 words explain this...'Bagdad Bob'

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Excellent post, Ardvark!

Gayle said...

"My favorite part is where Rae says that the Liberals (not Ignatieff as that was brought up a bit later) did not sign a deal with the Bloc."

What he said was that the LPC did not sign a coalition deal with the Bloc - and they didn't.

So hopefully the CPC will try to make an ad out of this one - it hardly hurts the LPC that Bob Rae went onto a radio show and set things right.

Platty said...

Ahh Gayle, delusional to the end.....

Ardvark said...

Updated with better audio.

Ah Gayle, when Mr Ignatieff said: “I felt it was very difficult to guarantee the necessary political stability during a time of crisis with three partners in a formal coalition,” “That was my first doubt. I couldn't guarantee the long-term stability of the coalition under the circumstances.”

Just who was Ignatieff referring to?

And if your answer does not include the Bloc you are too delusional to even respond to.

Gayle said...

He could have been referring to anyone, it does not matter.

What matters is the exact nature of the agreement between the three parties.

A coalition government, by definition, includes all parties of the coalition in Cabinet. In this case there were two separate agreements. One was a formal agreement between the two partners of the coalition setting out who would be PM, and how many cabinet seats each member would get.

The second agreement was between the coalition and the Bloc, setting out the circumstances where the Bloc would be giving up its veto.

Now, you go an look at the coalition agreement and tell me where the Bloc signed on.

You can keep trying to milk this statement by Ignatieff all you want, the problem you have is that the actual written and signed coalition agreement did not include the Bloc. The Bloc very specifically stated they did not wish to be part of the coalition government.

Gayle said...

Here is a link to the coalition agreement.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/pdf/081201_Accord_en.pdf

Ardvark said...

Gayle, bite me. Your constant spin is not only BS but it is really getting tiresome. Are you seriously claiming that you know more about the coalition deal than Michael Ignatieff?

You ignore( Iggy saying 3 partners), then say it matters not (when that is the issue),attempt to go technical but don't use the right definition ( comparing the word coalition to the TERM coalition government is a cheap trick) So go stuff your Clinton like spin of 'that depends on what your definition of a coalition is' because my definition is the same as Websters and when 3 people sign an agreement THAT is a coalition.

Stop treating everyone as stupid Gayle. The Liberal Party does that well enough on their own and we are tired of the constant political games.

Gayle said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ardvark said...

I choose the last one. Deleted.

So you do know more about the coalition than Ignatieff does.

Congrats. Really you should be running the Liberals Gayle because you are all spin all of the time, and yet decry that everyone is playing political games.

You sound exactly like LPC leadership material to me Gayle.

Ardvark said...

You know it may seem heavy handed to delete Gayle like that but frankly I am tired of all the BS spin and distraction.

It was a deal that formed a coalition of political parties whose goal it was to gain control of the Canadian Government. Parse the specifics if you must but it was an agreement only what do we really know about the coalition deal. (Gayle tells us to ignore what Iggy said because she knows more than him) When did Jack Layton first talk with the Bloc? What about Senate appointments (remember when Elizabeth May said she would be in the senate, has it actually been rescinded, who was supposed to be in cabinet etc etc.There is much more to this deal than we, OK not you Gayle, know.

What about the other lies in the video? Nothing from Gayle on that, but if pushed I bet she could write up 1000 words proving how Rae was correct that Ignatieff never said "coalition if necessary not necessarily a coalition"

I deal enough with demented people at work. I really don't need to play the same stupid games here on the blog.

maryT said...

Christian Conservative asks a great question, was the coalition deal ever officially recinded, via documents ect. It was planned to expire in 2011. Is that contract still valid, in the coalition minds. The deal with the Bloc expires in June 2010.
Best way out of an election is for the coalition to agree to have 6 members each to miss the vote. Share the blame equally.
As for the reno credit, how many re-assessment will be issued if someone tries to claim it if it hasn't passed the HofC.
And another question asked by CC, what will he cut, let's remember how the libs did it last time. And, that is a valid point, as Iggy brought it up by saying we have been here before.
Wait and see is not an answer.

Gayle said...

Well, actually you deleted me because I demonstrated pretty clearly that there were two agreements (the two that Rae refers to in his comments) and that he was not lying.

The rest is simply hypothesis on your part - which is not something I am either arguing for or against.

But, as usual, rather than enter into a mature argument you delete and then lie about what it is you deleted.

Well you cannot delete me from Janke's site - and I already proved you wrong there. That must be why you retreated to the safety of a blog where you can censor people who prove you wrong. I suggest you stay here where it is safe from now on.

maryT said...

So the alphabet poster wants the gst back at 7%. He/she/it fails to realize that many people do not pay income tax but do benefit from the gst cut. Those that don't pay tax are low income earners, yet alphabet would love to see their expenses raise by about 3.
3.00-1000/year. I don't think he/she/it has any idea of what one pays in gst/year.
I do know, as I deal with it every day in my business. However, it is nice to know that Iggy would raise it back to 7%, but would he, libs at one time promised to cancel it altogether. Even the unemployed pay gst, and libs want to ding them another 2% on their bills.
As for the coalition agreement only coming into play if accepted, it wasn't accepted then, but if it was never cancelled, it could be presented again. It expires in 2011 unless RENEWED, NOT CANCELLED. There is nothing in that document that says it wont be resubmitted if not accepted at time of presentation.
The libs have a hard time accepting defeat, so it is a possibility that all this election crap is just an attempt to resubmit it.

maryT said...

OOPs, that should be 300.00 not 3.00, guess I was using liberal math and missed the decimal.

Ardvark said...

Actually Gayle in that last post you gave me some choices and one of those was to delete your post (your words) and I did.

* Main Entry: co·a·li·tion
* Pronunciation: \ˌkō-ə-ˈli-shən\
* Function: noun
* Etymology: French, from Latin coalescere
* Date: 1604

1 a : the act of coalescing : union b : a body formed by the coalescing of originally distinct elements : combination
2 : a temporary alliance of distinct parties, persons, or states for joint action.

So how is it the coup plotters were not a coalition? Or do you now claim to know more than Websters?

1 piece of paper or 20 there was a written arrangement of 3 separate entities to enter into a coalition to seize power. How it was set up it does not matter other than they agreed in some way(s) to work as a single body towards a distinct purpose. The Bloc was needed or the numbers were not there and this is why Michael Ignatieff has consistently spoke of the coalition partners.

Do you honestly think that treating Canadians as stupid, because we all know what we saw, is helping out your side?

Oh and I see that you never responded about Raes other lies but why ruin your perfect record of not answering pertinent questions.

Calgary Junkie said...

Great video Aardvark !

There's also the tape we have of Jack giving Coalition details, for the first time, to his caucus. I think it was Stephen Taylor who posted that Harper has only released 25 % of that tape.

So there's more "Jack unmasked" stuff that our war room COULD use (not sure if they will or not ... they might release stuff on the blogs and youtube).

Anyway, only Jack, the Dipper caucus, and the Harper inner circle know whats on the rest of the tape. The Libs and Bloc are in the dark, which is where we want them.

Harper likes to pull surprises, and also wrong-foot his opponents (Doer appointment a good example). So MAYBE Harper waits for Jack to lie about some aspect of the coalition deal, and THEN our war room plays the contradictory thing what Jack said behind closed doors.

Final point: if the media or anybody scream about us releasing selected parts of private conversations, secretly taped ? We say, "you mean like what you guys did with the Raitt tape ?"

Ardvark said...

dgjkfkggjjka actually when you insult people and call people names, make potentially libelous claims and deny such basic truths as Jean Chretien saying he would "abolish" the GST then your comments get will get deleted.

maryT said...

alphabet-do the unemployed not buy paper products, like toilet paper or tissues, pay utilities, buy junk food, go to shows, sporting events, parking tickets, those items and so many more have gst. It is not just on luxury items. Look at the receipt from your grocery shopping, lots of gst there. How about pop, soda, stamps, and beer. Your lack of info is amazing. How old are you.
Everyone pays gst, not everyone pays income tax. If Iggy tries to raise it back to 7% listen to liberal seniors and unemployed cry foul. What other taxes will he raise, and what programs will he cut. I would prefer the libs pay back all the stolen money.

Anonymous said...

If AA is wrong and you are right about the Bloc Quebecois not being part of the coalition Gayle, why are you the only one who seems to see it this way?

Anonymous said...

Wow that was just absurd.

Anonymous said...

Gayle has stated on Janke's site that Harper caused her father's cancer.
She'll toss her own family under the bus to score a cheap political point.

jm66 said...

Well, actually you deleted me because

To use one of your over used former lines Gayle, "you are projecting."

I demonstrated pretty clearly that there were two agreements (the two that Rae refers to in his comments) and that he was not lying. and - and I already proved you wrong there.

To use another of your over used quotes, "saying it over and over does not make it true."

Now go back to that link that you provided to the coalition agreement Gayle. Go to page 3 of it. There are 2 things missing, and because they are missing, it means nothing. I could change Stephane Dion to Fairy Godmother and Jack Layton to Santa Claus, and that link would mean exactly the same. Nothing.

That is not to say that there isn't a signed copy out there, it is just that your link/proof means nothing to me. AA's signed copy with the three signatures does mean alot more to me though.

The only thing that you have demonstrated to me here, and at Steve Yanke's blog, is that you deal in liberal spin and use news reports that support what you think, as fact. It doesn't make it fact though.

gimbol said...

This is powerful stuff.

Lets keep it front and center till the MSM in fear of getting scooped by their counterparts, runs it through the weekend.

gimbol said...

Adding to that thought.

Yesterday Adler was hot to trot to run with this
The libs better pray like hell Rutherford or Adler don't make an appearance on a televised panel over the long weekend.

baddog65 said...

I heard that interview on Adler. Could not believe my ears. who does Bob think he is, and does he really believe his own crap ? I can only hope that if an election does get called, there will be enough angry voters to defeat these liers.

Anonymous said...

I am from western Ontario, and we have an excellent conservative m.p. Unlike the Liberals, who are lazy and won't visit us, our guy is out and about talking with us, sponsoring passport renewal programs-he actually attended the last one-and talking on talk radio programs.

The Liberals, who are basically a Toronto based party, are lazy. They're composed of a bunch of intellectuals who believe that all they need to do is read books and figure our ways how to make Parliament fail. And the Toronto groups doesn't need to worry about their jobs because Torontonians will always vote for them, and the Toronto Star will always support them.

Ontario is in trouble due to socialists, such as David Miller and Liberals who genuflect to unions, arrogantly say negative things about Americans, and discourage investment by raising taxes to pay for their social programs. The province is old, exhausted, infertile and in rapid transition. And many of our problems stem from Liberal legislation and liberal practices.

I hope Bob Rae is exposed for lying and held to account. But being a socialist, he likely will escape accountability. Most of them do.

Rich said...

It's true that the Libs & Dips had the formal agreement...coalition if you will....and the Bloc agreed to support it for a time.
Every other Canadian would say that the coalition was the 3 parties so Bob is mincing words and I suspect he just wants to be on record as the libs NOT having a coalition with the Bloc. This in preparation for the CPC using that in the election.
Pfft! Call it what it was then, a Troika.
Happy Bob?

dgkfhfhjlfjhgla said...

let's try a fourth time....it's late at night, so i should get a few hours in before it gets deleted.

everybody needs toilet paper; you are talking specifically about the unemployed, but in canada, today, almost 70% of the population works in the services industry - fast food, retail, etc. - and has an income in the $20,000-$30,000 neighborhood. the costs you described can, for most people in this income bracket, which is most people, be pushed into the $100/month.

however, let's really be generous to your side; let's double that to $200/month. i don't know your income. i'm in this income bracket (i'm a student) and i can tell you that there's no way i spend more than $100/month on taxable items. $200/month is being extraordinarily generous to your side.

so, that's $48/year, a far cry from the government's absurd numbers. who wrote the policy, anyways? jim flaherty?

i'll again reiterate that in order to the see the minimum savings that your side is pushing, i'd have to spend $15,000 on luxury items - not food, not rent/mortgage, not child care. in order to see the maximum savings that your side is suggesting apply to low income people, i'd have to spend $50,000 on luxury items, which is more than double the gross income of the lowest tax bracket.

the claim that the gst cut benefits everybody is, like most of what stephen harper has tried to tell us over the last three years, indescribable in any other way than labeling it a simple, blatant lie.

Anonymous said...

This is a bit off topic no?

70% work in the fast food industry. BS, where did you get your numbers?


And yes you, I, and everybody who spends money gets a benefit from the GST cut. Including children, those on disability or anyone else who would does not pay income tax, and that is thousands of people. So the benefit is 100% across the board while a tax cut would only help a few.

Which one is fairer?

dgkfhjglgkla said...

it is off topic, but i was responding to a provocation.

what i said was that almost 70% work in the services industry, which was coming from the "2/3rds of canadians work in the services industry" statement, which i'm going to label as common knowledge. services is a broad category; very few of the jobs available in this sector are high paying jobs.

the number is actually 76%, which is higher than i thought. this suggests to me that the numbers have recently gone up. again, some of these jobs - doctors, professors - are high paying, but most aren't.

here's a source for the 76% claim. you need to divide it out.

http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/econ40-eng.htm

the median income for families in canada is $70,000, which is $35,000 per spouse - working or not.

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil108b-eng.htm

this is consistent with the $33,000 median income for single parents:

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil108c-eng.htm

...and a bit higher than the $23,000 median for bachelors and other "non-family" households:

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil108d-eng.htm

so, i'll admit a slight correction on my upper bound; most canadians make between $20000-$35000.

tell me: how is somebody making $20000-$35000 going to buy $50000 worth of taxable goods to get the $1000 that harper claimed they'd get from a gst cut? even if you take the $70000 median for two-income families, they'd have to spend essentially all of their income on things that are taxable in order to get that $1000 back.

i'm not arguing the benefits of an income tax cut over a consumption tax cut out of my rear end. this is the view of most mainstream economists.

yes, stephen harper is an economist but his views are not within the mainstream of academic canadian economic thought. economics isn't a hard science like mathematics or biology, it's a social science with widely differing schools of thought. i'm not claiming he's always been wrong and will always be wrong, but his views are simply contradictory to those you'd hear from just about any random economics prof at any random school across the country (a few exceptions excluded).

the general view amongst academics at the time of the gst cut could be summarized in the statement...

"this may be good politics, but it's awful economics."

Anonymous said...

My Dad, who is on a fixed disability income and pays no income tax, saves money with almost each and every purchase he makes because of the lower GST. Please explain to me how a tax break would have been better for him, and all those that do not pay tax, than the GST cut was?

Or are you one of those people who think only the rich should get the breaks?

dgfgkfhjgla said...

"My Dad, who is on a fixed disability income and pays no income tax, saves money with almost each and every purchase he makes because of the lower GST."

your father saves $0.02 on every dollar he spends; if he's on disability, he doesn't save a lot of money because he doesn't spend a lot of money. as previously mentioned, the sum (ideally) adds up to between $20 and $50 per year. is that a little saving? sure, it is. yet, most businesses just raised their prices by 2-5 cents on the dollar. tim horton's, for example, raised their prices by 5%, meaning that your father now pays 3% MORE for coffee there than he did before the tax cut. they raised prices to justify the costs of upgrading their cash registers, etc to take the new tax into consideration. this approach was taken by many restaurants and retailers; the cut was only passed on to consumers for large purchases like automobiles.

"Please explain to me how a tax break would have been better for him, and all those that do not pay tax, than the GST cut was?"

neither cut would have benefited your father directly because your father pays almost no taxes. however, the income tax cut would have been better for society as a whole because the cut to the treasury would have been smaller because it would have been a much smaller cut for the wealthy. we all benefit from balanced budgets as the hope is that, one day, once the budgets are balanced then we can once again increase the size of government and spend more on social services, such as the one that pays your father's bills. if we continue to push deficits and debt by championing poor economic policies then we won't be able to do this.

"Or are you one of those people who think only the rich should get the breaks?"

again - it is those who support the GST cut that think that only the rich should get the breaks and those that oppose the GST cut that understand that it was a tax cut that only benefits the wealthy.