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David McGuinty goes over the top, again.
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I’ve been saying for about a week now that the Liberals are taking a good issue with the flap over cheques and logos and going too far. Now I call B.S.
The party, particularly my M.P. David McGuinty has gone from saying that putting a Conservative logo on a cheque is unacceptable and wrong to declaring that the Conservatives have taken illegal donations, that the Auditor General, the Public Service Commission and Elections Canada all need to look into this matter.
The Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, has agreed to investigate the cheque flap and see if any rules were broken. I expect the Conservatives will get a wrist slap and rightly so. While this is not a case of the MP putting a Conservative logo on a cheque, cashing it himself and buying a nice boat for his cottage, it is still a breach of the rules.
But to claim illegal donations David? Gimme a break.
Now McGuinty, who has been using the line “Reform-Conservative Party” to refer to the governing party, is referring to the Republican-Conservative Party. Tuesday in a scrum after Question Period, McGuinty had this to say when asked about the Ethics Commissioner’s investigation,
“This is not a good day for Canadians. It's a bad thing to see this kind of expenditure. It's a bad thing to see this kind of - it's predictable. It's predictable. This all started some time ago with the birth of the Republican Party in Canada in Toronto under Mr. Harris and all of their advisors came up from the United States and New Jersey. They're still here now. They're practicing the same kinds of techniques, same approach. It's not a good day for Canada.”
Why do I call BS on that? Well for a start, it has been a long time since we’ve seen a Republican operative travel north and frankly I’ve never seen one come up to speak to the Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen Harper.
I did note the articles proudly saying that Premier Dalton McGuinty was trained and schooled by David Axelrod, the mastermind behind the Obama campaign. James Carville has spoken at events for the Liberals and lists them as a past client. I have seen Howard Dean, yes he of the scream fame, a one-time Democratic presidential primary candidate and then president of the Democratic Party speak before the Liberal Party convention in December of 2006.
Last week McGuinty took the Prime Minister to task for signing cheques, for putting too many photos of himself on government websites, for referring to the Harper government 7,800 times. When asked whether this was normal and told the government of Ontario, run by his brother Dalton, does the same thing, McGuinty tried to sidestep the question by saying some governments do that, some don’t. I invite you to look at Ontario.ca or at the premier’s own website. Both are filled with pictures of the premier. As for references to the McGuinty government, a name the premier and his team use, the search feature at Ontario.ca tells me there are 1,400,747 references. I can’t verify that they are all true, I’m not examining that many links.
None of what I’m saying here is about letting the Harper government off scot free, the logos were wrong, some of the links on websites crossed the line. But David McGuinty would have you believe all of this is indicative of a government off the rails, one driven purely by partisanship where those who vote Tory Blue get rewarded while everyone else can freeze in the dark. That’s hardly the case or we wouldn’t see the roadwork going on in Pleasant Park, not far from McGuinty’s home or the community centre near my house expanding, both projects listed as over $1 million.
McGuinty and the rest of the Liberals would be better off focussing on real problems rather than telling the public so much BS that evidence of real scandal, when it does surface, is dismissed out of hand.
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Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. Follow Brian on Twitter to get the latest as it happens.
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