Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff would like to be the next prime minister of Canada. It is this ambition that causes rumours that he will vote against the Conservatives’ spring budget and with the help of his “coalition” friends, force an election.
Of course being in power is the hope of all Liberals; the party once known as the Natural Governing Party exists only to govern. But the realists among them would make their first priority finding a new leader; someone who could actually defeat the Tories.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the other hand doesn’t want an election. After heading what has recently become the longest minority government in Canadian history, recent polls show that if an election was held today, it would result in another Conservative minority. But stuff like that doesn’t matter to Ignatieff. He has discovered a way to win the next election despite his poor showing as leader and the CPC’s lead in the polls.
Ignatieff’s riding is in the Etobicoke area of Toronto. This is the very same area that is home to long term city councillor and recently elected mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. Wow! And according to Iggy, the same people; the very same people who voted for him in his riding also voted for Rob Ford. Ergo, Ignatieff will just go after these very same voters and, viola, he will pack his stuff for the move to Sussex Drive. The fact that Ford’s views on spending make Stephen Harper look like Barack Obama seemingly hasn’t occurred to the Egghead.
Since Ignatieff first deigned to return to Canada and the desperate Liberals saw him as the next Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the big complaint about Ignatieff is that the intellectual and former Harvard professor and journalist simply doesn’t understand ordinary Canadians. Ignatieff views that he can successfully go after the voters who enabled Rob Ford to get more votes in a single election than any other candidate in Canada’s history, clearly shows how out of touch he really is. Iggy neither understands Rob Ford nor the unwashed masses that voted him into office.
One thing about Rob Ford is that what you see is what you get. Ford ran on a platform of government waste. His message was to stop the gravy train and have respect for taxpayers. Wasteful spending is something that Ford made a lot of noise about during his entire term as a councillor. Unlike Ignatieff, he didn’t hold his finger up to determine which way the wind was blowing. Nor did he look at other leaders who had won large margins (like Barack Obama and Zimbabwe’s Bobby Mugabe) and then say hey, I’m gonna do what those guys did. Ford made no attempt to move towards the electorate; after seven years of Mayor David Miller and his left wing cabal, the voters moved towards Ford.
But the prime indication that Michael Ignatieff is completely out of touch with ordinary people is his complete misunderstanding as to why so many Torontonians went to the polls last October and marked an “x” besides Ford’s name.
According to the Liberal leader, Torontonians flocked to Ford in large numbers because they weren’t getting value for their tax dollars. While this is true, in Iggy’s view the problem was that the voters were not getting enough services for their money. This is not the way the Ford voters saw things.
Ordinary taxpayers were fed up at the wasteful spending (and programs) that they were forced to pay for that did nothing for them. They resented ever increasing taxes and when that wasn’t enough, new taxes to pay for David Miller to swan over to Europe to save the world from global warming. They were fed up with city council spending their money on pet projects like homes for starving artists. They were fed up with the expensive homelessness bureaucracy when millions could be saved by buying condos for all the homeless. People were tired of seeing new and increasing taxes used to build bicycle lanes all throughout the city while allowing gridlock to worsen, causing economic losses to the city. People who voted for Rob Ford want less government interference in their lives and lower taxes; not more services.
Ignatieff, on the other hand, seems to think that those who supported the current mayor want more government services at the same price. Perhaps they do but anyone living in the real world knows this cannot happen. Ignatieff’s idea is to provide more service such as universal daycare, increase the grip of the nanny state and become Prime Minister Iggy by being voted into office by Rob Ford voters.
Anyone whose total knowledge of Rob Ford came only from watching the occasional sound bite knows this is not what led to Ford’s massive victory. While Ford promised not to cut services, he didn’t promise a host of new ones.
If Ignatieff is serious, let’s hear him promise to stop the gravy train. Ain’t gonna happen.
