Oh no. What a disaster.
And how ironic eh?
An extreme weather event, the kind the Cons don't like to talk about, has forced them to postpone their convention.
The Conservative Party national policy convention which was scheduled to get underway in Calgary next Thursday has been postponed, as city officials warn Calgarians to stay away from the downtown core now engulfed by flood waters.
So now not only are their plans to try to put lipstick on an old hog delayed. So is Stephen Harper's last desperate attempt for a comeback.
For as Paul Wells explains, Harper's keynote speech to the convention is supposed to be the official unveiling of New/Nouveau Great Leader.
It will be one of the most important speeches of his career, a curtain-raiser for the second half of his majority mandate, a rallying call to the troops delivered at ground zero of the old Reform party movement. On May 3, six weeks ago, a source in Harper’s office told me Harper had already been working on the speech for some time.
But now he'll probably have to wait until sometime in late summer. Deliver it when most Canadians are more interested in barbecues than politics.
After the Pamela Wallin audit has landed...
Mayday !!!! Mayday !!!!
Or even better in the late fall !!!
Conservatives are hoping to reschedule their national policy convention for the fall at the earliest, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told CBC News on Sunday.
"That may be a challenge because Calgary is a busy city for conferences and we are actually typically running close to full occupancy in our hotels here but we'll find a date. We really want to do it this year, hopefully in the autumn as soon as possible," Kenney said.
So the scandal will bubble on merrily for MONTHS. Instead of the reset button the Cons will be pressing this one.
And the discontent in the party will continue to fester and grow.
So how’s the mood in the party? “It’s s–tty,” one long-time Conservative political staffer, now recycled in the private sector, said the other day. “I’m a Conservative, and I don’t know what the government stands for.”
Because I can only imagine how the Cons must feel watching themselves on TV eh?
And it's not pretty...
And if Old Duff goes down it's going to be more like *Pop* *Pop* *Kaboom*
And what surprises me is that Wells and so many others in the MSM would think that Harper could undo the damage with one magic speech. When so many Canadians don't believe ANYTHING he says.
Or how so many in the media still cling to the illusion that he's a great economist.
When his insane right-wing economic policies are leading us into the abyss of creative destruction.
Harper wants the economy to be more competitive. To that end, his government is aiding in the destructive side of creative destruction by pushing wages down. Thus, it attacks unions. Thus, it imports temporary foreign workers to dampen down labour costs for business.
And when it comes to scandals you can't look to the past to predict what will happen in the future.
Between the 2008 and 2011 elections Harper endured a steady stream of allegations and missteps, including the controversy over proroguing Parliament, the allegations about abuse of Afghan prisoners, and former minister Bev Oda’s clumsy doctoring (“NOT”) of a memo from her department. Very little of it mattered on election day in 2011, and the Conservatives won a majority of seats in the Commons for the first time.
When we have had so much more of the Con regime since then. So many more ugly scandals. So many Canadians can't stand the very sight of Stephen Harper.
And you really can't put lipstick on a tired old hog.
Or a desperate leader like this one...
Without turning him into the leader of the New Reform Party who would lead them ALL to the slaughter.
Golly. Isn't that a great image eh?
And I can't get this image out of my mind either.
Or the image of all those Con climate change deniers having their convention torpedoed by an extreme weather event. Still clinging to the illusion they can turn their sinking ship around.
Sail on as if nothing had happened.
Or in the case of Great Ugly Leader and his PMO.
And so many true believers in the MSM.
Still clinging to ANYTHING...
OMG. Was that Pamela Wallin flying across the room??? Or Old Duff sliding by the piano ?????
The one Stephen Harper was STILL playing.
Oh boy. This is going to be better than the day the Love Boat hit the iceberg eh?
The
Heading for the bottom...
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8 comments:
Simon; Ivison makes me GRIT my teeth when he spouts off about the CONS; he always manages to justify them, their actions, and their existence, as if we need them and their kind...tolerate them, I will, but need them? Never...Linda
Will Harper, desperate for a favourable story, give lots of bucks to Albertans? He must want to. How will his actions compare with recent floods in Manatoba, Northern Ontario, Quebec and New brunswick?
If he treats Albertans better than Acadians, Natives , Quebecois etc. will this lead to more criticism?
He wants to but will he be able to send the piggy bank to Alberta?
Con on the Cob - has a nice ring to it.
hi anonymous...yes I feel the same way about Ivison. He has turned into a Con shill, always trying to make us believe that glass is half full instead of half empty. Fortunately he's behind a pay wall now, and I won't be paying to read him...
hi rumleyfips... oh I'm sure he'll open us his wallet, he can't afford to alienate Alberta since these days about two thirds of his supporters live there. Not that he should eh? Albertans are going to need all the help they can get, especially since they don't like paying taxes. But yeas, it would be nice if he treated all provinces equally...
hi sassy...you know it does...and it's definitely better than a Kenney on a bun, because that's absolutely HORRIBLE... ;)
There is a real issue here with disaster relief, Simon, and I have written to both the federal NDP as well as the Ontario NDP to query as to why they are not pursuing the issue, to wit, why should taxpayers, represented as either the Government of Canada, or the Government of Alberta, or the Government of Ontario, etc. be required to provide relief for flood losses the insurance industry chooses to exclude on their policies.
Homeowners who purchase a mortgage on their property are required to purchase a policy of homeowner insurance to cover themselves for catastrophic loss. Here in Canada you have a situation where financial institutions sell mortgages, and many of the same companies offer policies of home insurance which are purposely inadequate to cover catastrophic loss such as overland flood, purposely inadequate as the insurance companies deliberately choose to exclude such losses from coverage, leaving the bill for such loss either with the homeowner, or with the taxpayer in the form of government relief programs which are expected to partially reimburse homeowners for catastrophic losses, even when they have purchased a policy of home insurance presumed to cover them for such loss.
What is the argument of the insurance industry - Canadian exceptionalism? Canadian insurers, unlike their counterparts in other G8 countries, are deliberately excluding such coverage from their policies. These same industries would exclude bad drivers from auto coverage if they could, but here government did step in, in the form of provincial auto insurance acts, which require insurers to provide policies of facility coverage to bad drivers, at much higher premiums of course, but the principle is there, everyone is required to be insured and insurance is available to all. On the issue of cost, that's a give and take between government and the industry, and that is why the industry has a fallback in the form of reinsurance of catastrophic losses....
There is a subsidiary argument to this, which deals with safety and health issues with respect to the insurance industry's abdication of its responsibilities with respect to catastrophic flood losses, to wit, if the insurance industry accepted responsibility for such loss, they would properly compensate homeowners for such loss, subject to some minor deductible, say $ 500 to $ 1000, but would ensure that cleanup was done properly, basements and ground floors properly decontaminated, bad material removed and replaced, that proper reliable contractors would carry out repairs in accordance with building codes, etc, etc. Insurers generally do not want to be faced with lawsuits by disgruntled policyholders and unlike the Harper government will not reward the renovation contract to the cheapest, most unreliable bidder but will rather pay a bit more to ensure the job is done properly by a reliable contractor, as they have no desire to pay for the same repairs twice.
Whereas if renovation costs, and the responsibility for renovations is left in the hands of policyholders, with inadequate coverage, there will be a temptation to cut costs and cut corners, to not decontaminate basements, to do it themselves or award the contract to unlicensed contractors with all sorts of building code violations, improper wiring and increased fire risks, increased health risks due to mold, decreased property values and so on and so forth. So here the industry is short-sighted, as it may have avoided the restoration costs by excluding coverage for such losses on its policies, but the restored property, improperly renovated after the fact is not the same as the property initially insured, and presents greater health risks to its occupants and a greater potential loss risk to the insurer....
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