Stephen Taylor

What could be more hypocritical than Paul Martin standing up to give a speech at an international conference on global warming when Canada has done nothing to try to meet the first-phase of Kyoto’s targets?

How about Paul Martin using his old and decrepit gas guzzling jet to rush back to Montreal two days later to get some photos with Bill Clinton for a campaign endorsement?

Paul Martin burned 4,879 litres per hour to get there and back and while he was there he had a ‘bilateral visit’ with a former US president. Of course, if Paul Martin wants to call it a ‘bilateral’ meeting (and announce it on Liberal.ca instead of pm.gc.ca) we know that our brave PM has also had ‘bilateral’ visits with the likes of other non-world leaders such as Bono.

Paul Martin has done little to cut our emissions and to live up to our Kyoto commitments. He has failed in his relations with the current US leadership. Canada used to have leverage for change among our friends, now Paul Martin needs to cover up such erosion in our international influence by meeting with such pseudo-brokers of change like Bill Clinton and Bono.

This is simply crass campaigning by the leader of the Liberal party.

In this video, captured from CPAC, Liberal backbench MP Don Bell gets an earful from a constituent.

Liberal MP Don Bell (00:51) 704KB

[cross-posted to CTV.ca]

Polls will certainly cause madness if we follow them too closely, especially at this phase of the campaign.

I will admit though, seeing the SES numbers this morning left me somewhat baffled. How are these numbers possible when Paul Martin is playing hide-and-seek with the media and while Stephen Harper is releasing positive policy day-by-day?

Perhaps the Liberal Party is doing better in the polls because Mr. Martin isn’t in the public eye? In a somewhat parallel argument to Jason’s own explanation, perhaps Mr. Martin is such a turn-off for Canadian voters that his hiding in Stephen Harper’s shadow has helped Canadians forget the Great Ditherer and thus have helped increase Liberal polling numbers?

In fact, Conservative ads prominently feature Stephen Harper while Liberal ads mysteriously have Mr. Martin absent. While Mr. Harper’s presence hasn’t hurt Conservative numbers, Mr. Martin’s absence seems to have helped the Liberals in the SES poll.

My take on the stalling Tory numbers in the SES poll is that Canadians are still measuring all of the policies that the Conservatives are offering. There are certainly two policies in these early days that I’m certain will be echoed throughout the entire campaign: Stephen Harper’s 2% GST cut and the Conservative offer of choice in childcare.

Canadians know that the Liberals have lied to them over and over about the GST and their assessment of the Liberals is only fortified by the Adscam revelations that we heard this year. Canadians are more likely to believe the Conservatives on the issue of tax reduction than the Liberals, and are more likely to trust parents to choose how to raise their own children, rather than go for Mr. Martin’s proposed boondoggle-in-the-waiting. We’ve seen how the Liberals have butchered the healthcare system. Can we now trust them to create another bureaucracy?

Most of us in the blogosphere are all too eager to rush to interpret daily polling of respondents whom aren’t as fixated on the fine points and drama of politics. Mr. Harper is releasing a tremendous amount of good policy for Canadians, policy which they will need time to interpret. Stephen Harper is building the foundations of his campaign in these early days. When faced with the choice between twelve Liberal years of waste, mismanagement and corruption and a solid outline for Conservative change, I’m confident that the voters will have an easy choice – a choice for change – to make in the only poll that counts on January 23rd.

UPDATE: (and another thing) You’ll notice that the Liberal rise in the SES poll is at the expense of the NDP, as the Conservatives have remained steady.