Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette on Stephen Harper and Terrorism

In the wake of the terror arrests in Toronto and Montreal yesterday, Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette tweeted,

Sen.Hervieux-Payette (@HervieuxPayette): #Harper wants to align #Canada with the US, wants the same republican policies: he will also get the same terrorists. #cdnpoli

h/t: @NeilJEdmondson

The tweet has since been deleted.

Of course, this raises questions about the Liberal Party and their attitudes towards terrorism and the cognitive-reasoning skills of this senior Liberal. Only last week, hours after bombs exploded in Boston, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau failed to condemn the act of terror while musing about societal root causes, suggesting that the perpetrators must have felt “excluded”.

The Liberals have indeed become the fringe third party if they believe it is appropriate to muse about “root causes” while a manhunt is underway and before justice has been done for the victims. Mr. Trudeau believes the root cause of terrorism is social exclusion, while Senator Hervieux-Payette believes a root cause of terror is the Prime Minister of Canada.

UPDATE: Hervieux-Payette’s staffer said the tweet was meant to come from his own personal account rather than his boss’s.

Here is the tweet from his account:

But note the timestamps. The tweet from the Hervieux-Payette account went out at 1:49pm and the staffer’s tweet went out at 2:57pm.

The staffer says he “also thought he scrubbed the tweet from the Internet’s memory within 10 seconds of realizing his mistake” according to the National Post, so why wait over an hour to repost from his own account?

What also makes me doubt the staffer’s account is — as the National Post also notes — Hervieux-Payette’s on-the-record statements about US foreign policy mirrors the same sort of warped mindset in this tweet. Here she is in 2006,

“The daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.”

Justin Trudeau asks for Temporary Foreign Worker permits

The Liberal crusade against Temporary Foreign Workers hit a snag this afternoon after James Moore revealed in Question Period that Justin Trudeau once petitioned the Canadian government for work permits.

In the letter, Trudeau asks the Canadian embassy in China that work permits be considered for Chinese nationals for a restaurant in the riding of the Papineau MP. Trudeau pleads that the workers are needed for a restaurant that served his own father and caters to Hollywood celebrities.

UPDATE: The Conservative Party has issued a dispatch on this revelation,

Justin Trudeau – In Over His Head on Temporary Foreign Workers
 
– Justin Trudeau is in over his head.
– Yesterday, the Liberals introduced a motion in the House regarding their concerns with the temporary foreign worker program, and yet their leader wrote to us asking that foreign workers in the food service industry be rushed in to his riding.
– What did Justin think that temporary foreign workers could add to Montreal’s food service industry that 100,000 Canadian workers in that industry could not provide?
 
– Does Justin not understand the program, did he forget that he made such a demand, or is he just in over his head?
– The leader of the Liberal Party refused to explain himself in Question Period today. We call on him to do so immediately.
 
Facts:
 
– The Liberal record on the Temporary Foreign Worker program has been abysmal.
– While in government, the member from York West fast-tracked the temporary foreign worker application of a stripper who worked on her election campaign.
– The member from York West was then forced to step down from cabinet after she was accused of promising a foreign pizzeria-owner living in Canada that he could stay longer if he supplied her campaign team with free pizza and garlic bread.
– Since the program’s inception in 1976, the Liberal Party has failed to introduce substantive and effective reforms despite having plenty of opportunities to do so. Instead, they fast-tracked the process for several occupations including strippers, and tried to use the program for their own political gain.

Updates from other parties will be posted as they are received.

National Citizens Coalition reacts to Alexandre Boulerice’s comments

From the Toronto Sun,

OTTAWA – NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice refuses to retreat from a blog post that praises communists and slags the First World War as a “capitalist” conflict.
 
Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney has demanded Boulerice apologize for the 2007 post that came to light on Tuesday on the 96th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
 
Boulerice offered no defence of his comments, but he did shoot back at Blaney on Wednesday.
 
“I think Mr. Blaney yesterday, it was the last day to engage in partisan politics and to try and score points like that, with old stories,” said Boulerice in Montreal.
 
“He is the minister who is making the largest cuts in support programs for disabled veterans.”
 
In his post on the blog Presse-toi a gauche (Hurry to the left), Boulerice questioned the value of the Battle for Vimy Ridge, mocked the First World War as “a purely capitalist war on the backs of the workers and peasants” and lauded communists for their opposition to it.
 
The comments lit a firestorm of controversy, with the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) joining the barrage and aiming its guns on Boulerice’s admiration for communist activists.
 
“It is shocking to think that Mr. Boulerice would be praising communists as having foresight,” said NCC Director Steven Taylor. “The rest of us exercise our benefit of hindsight and realize that communism has been one of the most destructive ideologies ever imposed upon human industry and ingenuity.”