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Libs to try and capitalize on prorogation with attack ads and town halls on the HillGrits will use 'safe' university venues to 're-launch' Ignatieff in 2010. Published January 11, 2010  2 Comments |
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The House of Commons will be silent until March 3, but in the meantime the opposition Liberals will try and make some noise with town hall style forums on Parliament Hill, radio ads attacking the Harper government, and a tour of university campuses to "re-launch" their unpopular leader.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.), who was criticized for being invisible over the last few weeks, held a 45-minute conference call with his 75 MPs last week in which he told them the game plan was to return to Ottawa on Jan. 25, as they would have done had Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) not prorogued Parliament. They will be holding forums on a variety of issues, including a pre-budget consultation on the economy, as well as on the environment, and social issues. The Liberal caucus is also trying to come up with some way of publicly examining the government's handling of the Afghan detainees issue in the absence of the special committee looking into the matter.
Many MPs have been conducting consultations in their ridings to gather policy ideas in the lead-up to a "thinkers conference" the party is holding in Montreal at the end of March.
But Grit MP Rob Oliphant (Don Valley West, Ont.) said the rationale for returning to Parliament Hill is that it provides them with a "national venue" to bring attention to their issues, and to the fact that there won't be any Tories on the Hill.
"Hopefully the media won't be prorogued," he said.
Mr. Ignatieff spoke to his caucus from his vacation home in the south of France, which drew snipes from some commentators and a potshot from PMO spokesman Dimitri Soudas, who pointed out to the media that the Prime Minister was at work in Ottawa last week while the Liberal leader was off in Europe.
Mr. Oliphant brushed off the criticism, saying Mr. Ignatieff, who returned to Ottawa late last week, deserved a vacation and that Canadians don't care whether or not the Liberal leader is in France, they care that the Prime Minister shut down Parliament. He said he believes public opinion is on their side.
"I'm surprised at how many people are commenting on this to me. My staff said this morning that a year ago when there was the whole coalition/prorogation 90 per cent of the calls were negative coming into our office. Now literally 100 per cent of the calls that are coming in are positive towards us and negative about the government.... Someone on the news a week ago said maybe 10 or 15 per cent of Canadians will notice. I think it's higher than that. I haven't seen a poll but my instinct is I think [Mr. Harper] has made a mistake," said Mr. Oliphant.
An Ekos poll released last week showed that support for the Tories was down somewhat, standing at 33.1 per cent support nationally, down from 35.9 per cent last month, and from around 40 per cent in the fall. The Liberals stood at 27.8 per cent support, which is virtually unchanged from last month.
The media have been following the swelling membership of a Facebook group called 'Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,' which has amassed tens of thousands of members over a few days and is being used to organize protest rallies later in the month. But it's still too early to tell whether the decision to prorogue will damage the Harper government in the long run, particularly with the Vancouver Olympic Games, which will take place in Whistler, B.C., for most of the month of February.
"[The Conservatives] will work very hard with their propaganda machine to make it a good news story for the government. But the reality is this government, this Prime Minister have ignored the Olympics until such time as photo-opportunities were available," said Liberal MP Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, B.C.), her party's critic for the Olympics.
She blasted the government for what she said is a "last minute job" on the Canadian Pavilion, which is intended to showcase the nation, and said the fact that the Tories are partly using the Olympics as a rationale for shutting down Parliament is "nonsense."
In the lead up to the Liberals returning to Parliament Hill at the end of the month, Mr. Ignatieff will be holding town halls at 11 universities across the country. The second-half of 2009 was brutal for the Liberal Leader, who saw his popularity plunge, leading him to fire many of his top advisers and bring in a new team. Mr. Oliphant said universities and colleges are a logical place for the former professor to turn over a new leaf in 2010.
"When you're beaten up by both the government propaganda machine, and by the press, you need to take a safe place to find what it is you want to do again.... Getting on campuses is going to be a good natural place for him to re-launch in the New Year."
news@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
Job openings at the Liberal Party
Grits seeking new national director and top fundraiser
Following the departure of former national director Rocco Rossi, who is now running for mayor of Toronto, the Liberal Party is looking for a new national director, as well as a president of the National Liberal Fund. Mr. Rossi is a personal friend of Leader Michael Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.) and was appointed to the position, but in an attempt to open things up party president Alfred Apps recently sent an email to rank and file Liberals soliciting applications for both positions, with a Jan. 6 deadline.
Mr. Rossi, who was head of the Heart and Stroke Foundation before coming to Ottawa, devoted a lot of his time to boosting party membership and raising money, but the new team in the Leader's Office has decided to separate fundraising duties into the president of the National Liberal Fund position. Many of the people in the OLO, such as party liaison Heather Chiasson, who is responsible for coordinating between the leader's office and the party, as well as chief of staff Peter Donolo, are party veterans who were around when the new fundraising rules were brought in under former prime minister Jean Chrétien and are of the opinion that the party should be run more like an NGO-type organization.
The new national director will not be getting paid as much as Mr. Rossi, nor will the job come with some of the perks he enjoyed, such as paid flights home to Toronto every weekend, and hotel accommodations in Ottawa.
---—Harris Macleod
