Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Oh, Buzz off!

Say it ain’t so, Stephane, say it ain’t so!

From National Newswatch (via …in moderation)

Ottawa is abuzz with rumours that the CAW's Buzz Hargrove will run for the Liberals in the next federal election.. and he plans to take on a big fish....

Rumour has it that Buzz Hargrove will run in Toronto, against NDP Leader, Jack Layton...

Great, because this worked out so well last time, didn’t it?

The Conservative leader is essentially a separatist and Quebecers ought to vote for the Bloc because anything is better than a Tory government, labour leader Buzz Hargrove said on Wednesday.

Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, made the comments at a campaign stop in Strathroy, Ont., where he was endorsing Liberal Leader Paul Martin.


Martin said he doesn't agree with the characterization of Harper has a separatist. "I have large differences with Stephen Harper but I have never doubted his patriotism," Martin said at a news conference London.


Later, the CAW issued a statement clarifying Hargrove's comments, saying that the union boss "recognizes that Harper is a federalist."

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

13 comments:

Saskboy said...

Buzz is an idiot. He either can't comprehend, or doesn't understand that the reason Canadians don't buy his cars, is because they are designed with the 1980s in mind. Another excellent addition to the Liberal Party. Built tough, for the 1980s, ready for the 1990s.

Babylonian777 said...

Don't BUZZards just make a lot of noise and scavenge?

burlivespipe said...

You don't believe this do you? I'm certain that this is Harper up to his ol' misinformation tricks again, ala having James Moore spread Bob the Red buttons on the convention floor.

Babylonian777 said...

I just heard from the Duffster that there's a rumour going on that Pope Miller of the Annexed "city state" of Toronto will be running for Trinity-Spadina as a Liberal! Lol, I wonder whats going through Olivia Chow's mind. Those silly socialites would vote the abismal Miller in just to have "our boy from Toronto" in house.

ch said...

This rumour was spread by Mike Duffy. I think that says it all.

MississaugaJoan said...

Buzz would be an embarrassment during a national campaign.

He is not a team player and he would not be able to keep his mouth shut.

All for what? A run at Layton. Lately, Layton has shown to be quite ineffective for the NDP (i.e. dismal results in Toronto by-elections).

I hope Buzz is not considered by Dion as another "star" Liberal candidate.

RuralSandi said...

Relax kids - it's only a "rumour": Angelo Perschilli's only mission in life is to attack Dion and now he's spreading false rumours (one has to keep in mind he's an admitted conserverative supporter):

March 26, 2008
The 'Buzz' about Liberal candidates
Last night, CTV's Mike Duffy floated a rumour that the Liberals were recruiting Toronto Mayor David Miller and Buzz Hargrove of the CAW to run in the GTA in the next election. The same rumour is being circulated over at the National Newswatch website.

The official word from the Liberals is this: "If only it were true," a spokesperson from Liberal leader Stephane Dion's circle told us last night.

The rumour seems to have its origins in the last paragraph of a column in this week's Hill Times by Angelo Persichilli (but warning, content is only available to paid subscribers.)

Persichilli, in blue-sky mode, so to speak, is reminding readers how Hargrove enraged his old pals in the NDP during the last couple of elections by urging New Democrat-leaning voters to cast ballots for the Liberals if that's what it took to defeat the Conservatives. And so, he writes:

The NDP leader should be very worried about the erosion of support for his party towards the Liberals. Rae's victory brings the "strategic vote" notion of Buzz Hargrove to a higher level. Now not just votes, but also leaders, are marching from the NDP toward the Liberals. Many New Democrats might be tired of seeing their party being the conscience of Canadians between elections who then send the Liberals or Conservatives into power when the actual election comes.

The only thing missing to close the circle would be an announcement from two former NDP bigwigs that they were running for the Liberals: CAW president Buzz Hargrove in Toronto-Danforth, challenging Layton, and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, as a Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina (against Olivia Chow).

And then, bingo, the takeover of the Liberal Party is a done deal.

So, that's all it takes these days, it seems to start rumours on Parliament Hill: the last couple of paragraphs in a Hill Times column. Nonetheless, I'm sure we'll be checking them out more today, just in case, with Hargrove and Miller themselves.

Update: A senior Liberal has also this morning pointed out another flaw in the Persichilli scenario. There is already a nominated Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina. His name is Tony Ianno, the man who held that riding from 1993 to 2006 and the former minister of state for families and caregivers.


....Mike Duffy can't be trusted either....he should be working for The Inquirer...

RuralSandi said...

Trust Paul Wells to tell it like it is:

Crybaby federalism
Paul Wells | March 25, 2008 | 12:46:46 | Permalink
paul.wells@macleans.rogers.com

"Our appeal followed the time-honoured advice for raising money by direct mail -- make people angry and afraid, and set up an opponent for them to give against."
— Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team

Ontario led the country in job growth last month, nearly all of it in full-time work, much of it through a construction boom that produced job growth outstripping the loss of industrial jobs by 50%. Given the troubles of Ontario's main export market it is a stellar performance.

But Stephen Harper needs somebody to pick on, and Stéphane Dion refuses to show up for the fight. So Dalton McGuinty's Ontario government is the latest designated target, and we are all being asked to sit and smile through yet another of the Prime Minister's asinine tantrums.

Today is budget day at Queen's Park. Pierre Poilièvre, the reliably pliable eastern Ontario Tory MP, has been sent to Queen's Park to critique the budget on behalf of the federal Conservative party. (UPDATE: And the Conservative party's website is now doing a limbo dance under its own previously rock-bottom standards.) This merely extends a show that has been going on for a while now. For weeks the Prime Minister's yappy little budget terrier, Jim Flaherty, has been making apocalyptic pronouncements about the Ontario economy and the McGuinty government's stewardship. Ontario is "the last place" to start a business, and it's headed for have-not status, and it was the "strongest economic province in the federation" when his party delivered its last budget at a car-parts plant somewhere.

Now the truth, if anyone wants some, is that unemployment in Ontario is down nine-tenths of a percentage point from the days when Flaherty and his friends were running up a hidden $5.6 billion deficit. But then, nobody should depend too heavily on Jim Flaherty to pick a winner: he has the unique distinction of being the only man in Canadian history who managed to lose to both Ernie Eves and John Tory.

As for Ontario's chances of becoming an equalization-receiving province, here's Don Drummond of TD Bank saying the biggest culprit if that ever happens will be the Harper-Flaherty government. "They seem to be bent on making Ontario's situation worse at the moment," Drummond says.

Of course they are. For then Harper will have created a bogeyman Ontarians can be angry and afraid of, so he can do some fundraising against them. It's what he does.

The Senate, the CBC, assorted arms-length commissioners and regulators having exhausted their amusements for our impatient leader, he has now turned his distracted, essentially random fury on the voters of Ontario. This is because they voted wrong.

They had their instructions. Nearly two years ago Harper went to a John Tory fundraiser and called Tory "the next premier of Ontario." But just because Tory can beat Jim Flaherty doesn't mean he can beat a pro, and Ontarians stubbornly decided to elect somebody else.

Surely by now Ontarians should know that the big guy doesn't like it when his orders are ignored. And his contempt for Ontarians' electoral decisions, when the voters of that province have the gall not to vote Harper's way, is a matter of long record: witness his childish rant in the aftermath of Stockwell Day's 2000 election defeat. (And understand this: if anyone ever manages to beat Stephen Harper fair and square in a general election, we will see a display of gracelessness in defeat without precedent in the history of Confederation. This is simply guaranteed. It is what he does.)

There are two things going on here. One is the baselessness of Flaherty/Poilièvre/Harper's attack on Ontario's budgeting. Oil is at historic highs, the dollar is up a quarter in the last years, the U.S. real-estate industry is essentially imploding, five central banks pumped hundreds of billions of liquidity into the market in a co-ordinated push -- and the problem is Dwight Duncan's business-tax rates? Come on.

The other is the impudence of Harper's control-freakery. We know he likes to run everything, but here's the deal: if somebody signs up to be a Conservative staffer, you can tell them what to do, OK? You don't get to run the Senate. You don't get to push bureaucrats around for kicks. You don't get to muzzle public servants, tell reporters how to cover you, pick the next US president or write Ontario budgets. There's a Canadian constitution that says so, and just because you boycotted the 25th-anniversary celebrations of the Charter of Rights doesn't mean the separation of powers, which isn't even in the Charter, goes away by fiat.

Stephen Harper is such a clever tactician that his little games can be so fascinating we overlook their significance. The significance of this one is, well, significant: he's badmouthing his own country's industrial heartland and running roughshod over the prerogatives of a legitimately-elected government for the sake of cheap political points and to prop up his serial loser of a finance minister. It's not funny.


....now there's real jounalism for you.

James Curran said...

Tony Ianno haas already been nominated in Trinity Spadina. So Im certain the David Miller thing is bullshit. I'd have to give some thought as to whether I'd stay involved with this party if we are recruiting the likes of David Miller to run in the GTA - currently one the most hated politicians in that city.

Jason Cherniak said...

Delacourt has put the lie to this on her blog.

Mike514 said...

An appeal to other commenters: Can we please stop copy/pasting full-length blog entries or articles in their entirety onto the comments section?

A link to other sites will suffice, or a short quote. Jeff, feel free to condemn my comments if you think otherwise.

Forward Looking Canadian said...

Buzz is a loser. He didn't help Martin in the last election, why would the Liberals want him now?

I bet the CPC would love to have him be a candidate for the Libs though.

Jeff said...

If this is all just a CPC/Duffy rumour, then thank goodness. Best to squelch these things right off though lest some people get bright ideas.