Ottawa

Your Fall 2009 Election preview

Happy days are here again. Before a feisty session of QP this afternoon, the Conservatives used three of their members’ statements to impugn the leader of the opposition on notably personal terms. The attack ads can’t be far off.

Full statements from Dean del Mastro, Kevin Sorenson and Rodney Weston after the jump. Read them now and feel free to ignore the next year of political discourse.

Mr. Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, CPC): Mr. Speaker, today we see the same bad decision-making from the current Liberal leader as we did from his predecessor. In 2007 the now-rejected Liberal leader broke his promise by accepting back into the party Marc-Yvan Côté, who had been banned for life for his involvement in the sponsorship scandal. Fast forward to today, new leader, same flip-flops.

Beryl Wajsman was one of 10 Liberals banned for life for his involvement in the sponsorship scandal, yet he is now reinstated as an advisor to the Liberal leader. Apparently four years is a lifetime for Liberals. While the Liberals have forgiven the transgressions of their cronies, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, Canadians have not.

Let me quote the Guardian newspaper from the U.K., a description of the Liberal leader: A chameleon, a shifty academic difficult to pin down, but perhaps more accurately he ought to be called an egotist who is sure of his own superiority and who seems to lack any real passion for the country he intends to lead. When will the Liberal Party learn that Canadians do not want to go back to the days of scandals, flip-flops and hypocrisy? Why does the Liberal leader love to flip-flop? When will they find real leadership?

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, CPC): Mr. Speaker, this government has a plan, a plan for its country, a plan for its people, a plan that is working. It is a plan that puts ordinary Canadians first, a plan with tax cuts for low and middle income Canadians, extended EI benefits for the unemployed, a plan of investments in real projects that will create real jobs.

The Leader of the Opposition can muse and pontificate all he wants about the economy, but everyone knows that he has no plan. The only substantive economic idea he has ever proposed was a carbon tax, a carbon tax far deeper and far more sweeping than the carbon tax proposed by his former leader, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. Oh, and one other thing he wants to form, another parliamentary committee to study it.

I have spent a lot of time talking to ordinary people and business leaders and the only two people in this country who remain wedded to a job-killing, recession worsening, carbon tax are the Leader of the Opposition and his former leader.

Mr. Rodney Weston (Saint John, CPC): Mr. Speaker, whereas this government has a plan for the country, the Leader of the Opposition only has a plan for himself. He has the audacity to come back to Canada after 36 lost years for the sole purpose of becoming prime minister. The more he tours, the more he speaks, the more profiles that are written, Canadians are increasingly realizing that he is in it for himself and not for them.

The Guardian writer summed it best, when he said that the Leader of the Opposition is “so sure of his own superiority and who seems to lack any real passion for the country he intends to lead”. For the Leader of the Opposition: Canadians deserve better.

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