Murray Dobbin is going to make me respect Stephane Dion more than I already do.
...When he [Dion] first came to Ottawa, the academic he sought out for discussion and advice was none other than Tom Flanagan, the extreme-right Calgary School guru who advised and wrote policy for Preston Manning during the most critical years of the Reform Party's growth. Dion had spent a formative year at the Brookings Institution in the U.S., a strictly free-market research and policy institute whose public policy perspective is light years from the social liberalism of the Lester Pearson/Pierre Trudeau era.
...On his leadership candidate website, Stéphane Dion claimed: "My vision is that of a Canada that reconciles economic development, social development, environmental sustainability and public health better than any other country of our world." But he also said that he believed the vicious cuts to social spending by Paul Martin showed "compassion."
These two declarations are irreconcilable. So, too, are Dion's stated intention of creating jobs through the creation of a green economy and his hiring of Marcel Massé as his most important economic advisor. Taking an energy-guzzling economy focussed almost exclusively on exports to the U.S. and turning it into one based on environmental sustainability would require an enormous interventionist role for government. That is something Mr. Massé could never abide.
Comments (7)
Oh, my god, I thought EXACTLY THAT about you when I read that article! Too funny.
Posted by Idealistic Pragmatist | January 9, 2007 4:41 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 16:41
And your habitual brown-nosing of prominant Liberals is making me disrespect you more than I do now.
Posted by Anonymous | January 9, 2007 6:30 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 18:30
Anon don’t be a baby or mean. A guy can’t be a partisan weenie all the time.
Posted by Bob | January 9, 2007 7:14 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 19:14
How about Dion’s latest, where he threatens that ‘unless the people replace Harper with a Liberal government, Canada will miss an industrial revolution”. That’s a pretty serious threat.
What industrial revolution is he talking about, by the way?
And how about his further statement that “Canada will be a winner when the government reconciles people and the planet”. How’s that for theistic interventionism? Shades of Gaia and emotive romanticism.
Posted by ET | January 9, 2007 8:42 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 20:42
I’m assuming that first line was sarcasm?
Posted by Chester | January 9, 2007 10:08 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 22:08
Cards on the table - I respect Harper, Dion and Layton, though my agreement with them varies as you might expect. If Dion truly were a neo-liberal then my vote who be up for grabs but whatever amount of neo-liberalism inherent in him is more than balanced by his and the Liberals statism. He may be too neo-liberal for Murray Dobbin but not for me. So the first line is not so much sarscasm as wishful thinking.
Posted by Greg Staples | January 9, 2007 11:09 PM
Posted on January 9, 2007 23:09
I respect Harper, Dion and Layton, though my agreement with them varies as you might expect.
Me too, actually.
Posted by Idealistic Pragmatist | January 10, 2007 10:12 AM
Posted on January 10, 2007 10:12