Ujjal Dosanjh on getting to the truth on Afghan prisoners

Some diplomats are more credible than others according to Dosanjh?

On Twitter, we learn of Mr. Dosanjh’s opinion of Richard Colvin’s testimony:

“Colvin was absolutely honest ystrdy. He risked his all. #lpc #cdnpoli #roft” — Ujjal Dosanjh, November 19th 2009

What is Mr. Dosanjh’s opinion of the testimony that David Mulroney would give?

“The government expects us to go into that committee blindly and Mr. Mulroney sits there and tells us this happened and we have no way of knowing whether it happened or not.” — Ujjal Dosanjh, November 23rd 2009

David Mulroney is the current ambassador to China who ran the Afganistan Task Force for the government of Canada. Richard Colvin was a senior diplomat who served in Afghanistan.

Just where does Ignatieff stand on the HST? Or on anything?

A week ago, I wrote about BC Liberal party MP Ujjal Dosanjh’s characterization of the BC HST as the “Harper Sales Tax”. I pointed out that it was quite a stretch for the former NDP Premier of that province, given that the party he formerly led in that province put the blame squarely on the provincial policy writers — the BC Liberal government.

Dosanjh responded to my comments explaining that the BC Liberals and federal Liberals are two different parties and suggested I was trying to link the two, but yet he’s the one who went out of his way to shift his scorn from those Liberals to the Conservatives in Ottawa. Politics is local and Dosanjh — scraping by with a narrow victory in 2008 by 22 votes — is tapping into a hotly debated populist issue in that province. But is this wise for him?

Despite this, does he have a point? While Dosanjh acts as an apologist for Liberal premier Gordon Campbell, essentially decrying that “Harper made him do it”, tax harmonization was suggested and incentivized at the federal level. However, if harmonization is unpopular in BC, voters are likely to blame those that signed off of on the policy and implemented it into law — ie. the jurisdictional authority — the BC Liberal government. And while we awkwardly parse how related or non-related these Liberals are to those Liberals and which Liberals like taxes and which ones don’t, the overall story then evolved.

Dosanjh’s words rang a bit more hollow this week when Ontario finance minister Dwight Duncan — a Liberal himself — said that Michael Ignatieff had approved of the HST and would help Ontario along its path to harmonization should he become Prime Minister. These Liberals, as Mr. Dosanjh will undoubtedly note, are very much related to their federal Liberal cousins.

Yesterday, Ignatieff’s finance critic John McCallum cited a “miscommunication” when it came to his leader’s position on the HST, while today Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty said that Ignatieff gave him the “clearest of impressions” that he would support the tax.

These days it seems difficult to nail Michael Ignatieff down on any controversial issue. His position on a number of issues from Iraq, to George W Bush, to coercive interrogation, to a Liberal-NDP coalition, to harmonization have evolved drastically over time. By refusing to settle on any particularly substantive issue, Ignatieff is trying to give the impression that he supports your point of view on public policy (whatever it may be). A cynical observer might suggest that this strategy may work for the disengaged soft Liberal supporter.

However, as anyone that runs a focus group will tell you, on the issue of taxes Liberals have always had an wide credibility gap to bridge. Now that two Liberal provincial governments are implementing a harmonized sales tax while the federal Liberal leader seems to at best support it or at worse waffle on it, Liberals — of varied associations — are finding the gap becoming a gulf. For Ujjal Dosanjh, whose riding lists crime as the other top-of-mind issue — another focus group nightmare for the Liberals — perhaps its time to focus on new messaging.

Ujjal Dosanjh’s terrible ten-percenter

The topic of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) is a quite unpopular one in British Columbia.  It was introduced by Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell in late July and will be implemented mid-2010.

The British Columbia NDP is very much against Gordon Campbell’s HST and even has a petition site against it.  The website explains,

Stop the HST

Gordon Campbell’s $4 billion tax hike is going to hit you hard.

The BC Liberals didn’t tell the truth about the HST.

Before the election, Campbell promised he wouldn’t impose a Harmonized Sales Tax, or HST. Shortly after election day he broke that promise, without any consultation.

Here is Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh’s ten-percenter against the HST. Dosanjh used to be the NDP leader in BC and even served as an NDP Premier in that province, but today he finds himself as a federal Liberal MP who narrowly squeaked by in the last election by 22 votes.

One can see what Dosanjh is doing. Instead of blaming the BC Liberals — the party that actually brought in the HST, and a party with which his federal party shares its name — Dosanjh is fabricating by telling his constituents by blaming the unpopular tax on his main threat: the federal Conservatives.

But is it truthful Mr. Dosanjh? Hopefully more than 22 people will know better next time around.

UPDATE: If you’re wondering what Dosanjh’s colleagues in the federal Liberal party have said about the idea of the HST, here’s a sample:

“We support harmonization, but that’s not the problem.

“The issue is deal by deal federalism with the provinces. We have no criticism of the provincial government’s budget. We think it’s a courageous budget in difficult circumstances. Our criticism is with Harper’s let’s make a deal federalism, which seems to me to put strains on the federation” — Michael Ignatieff (CTV Newsnet, March 27, 2009)

McCallum on the HST:

John McCallum, the party’s finance critic, was asked what he thought of the deal after Question Period and replied that it is “absolutely what the doctor ordered for the economy.” (National Post, March 27, 2009)