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.

We hear rumours…

some good, some bad…

This rumour came in via Twitter:

InfluenceComm (Jean-François Dumas): RUMOUR IN THE MEDIA: resignation of PM (Harper) next week.

Is the source credible? Who is Jean-François Dumas? What is InfluenceComm?

From Marketing Magazine, February 23rd, 1998:

The CBC has preliminary audience numbers for its Olympics coverage. On Monday, Feb. 9, an average 1.48 million Canadians watched prime time coverage. That peaked at 1.77 million between 9:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. On Tuesday, Feb. 10, 1.66 million watched from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.; that number jumped to 2.33 million from 9:30 p.m. to midnight, peaking at 3.05 million between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. That night the International Olympic Committee stripped snowboarder Ross Rebagliati of his gold medal.

The Royal Bank and AT&T have formed the first Canadian alliance between a bank and a long-distance company. Connect@work combines Internet access with on-line banking. It debuted Feb. 9, and it’s only available to businesses banking with Royal. Jo-Anne Wade, manager for E-Commerce marketing at the Royal Bank, says that demand for this type of service is increasing: “There is a growing number of small businesses getting onto the Web,” she says. “This is designed to make it easier for them.”

Montreal’s Groupaction/JWT has created an agency-within-an-agency with GroupaXion New Media, headed by Jean-Francois Dumas. It offers planning and creative services for clients such as the Treasury Board of Canada, showing them how to use technologies including the Internet, intranets, Web sites, debit cards and CD-ROMs for promotional purposes.

Shell Canada Products Ltd., a subsidiary of Shell Canada, is the official sponsor of Ted and Tony’s Inside Track,”the most watched automotive information program” in Canada, Shell says. A survey of 1997

Groupaction… where have we heard that name before?

From the Gomery inquiry documentation:

Mr. J. Brault and his wife, Ms Joane Archambault, started Groupaction Marketing Inc. (“Groupaction”) in 1982.

The main operating companies were:

a) Groupaction Marketing – the primary advertising and marketing
company; and

b) Alléluia Design (“Alléluia”) – a company operating in the field of
artistic and graphic design.

In November 1997 Groupaxion Nouveaux Médias (“Groupaxion”) was
incorporated to operate in the fields of interactive media and web sites.

GroupaXion New Media was owned by Jean Brault and headed up by Jean-Francois Dumas. Now, a man named Jean-Francois Dumas runs a Montreal new media firm called Influence Communication and he’s starting the spread of a rumour on Twitter about the Prime Minister resigning.

C’est intéressant, non?

Announcing IggyFacts.ca

Today, I launched a new political mini-site at IggyFacts.ca.

The site is meant to be a humourous take on the definition campaign of the Leader of the Opposition and of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff.

The site is meant to be integrated with, but does not require, Twitter.  Random facts about Michael Ignatieff are presented and with a single click of a button, they can be “re-tweeted” (repeated) via a person’s twitter account.  You can even submit your own facts.

Twitter + Politics + Crowdsourcing = IggyFacts.ca

For those that aren’t familiar with Twitter, the service is like building your own mailing list.  People sign up to receive information from you at your discretion.  For example, at the time of this writing, I have 3,846 people “following” me on Twitter.  This means that several times a day, almost 4,000 people read my updates on a variety of topics from politics, what I’m thinking or even doing (or whatever else I’d like to write).  The political implications of this are large because each one of these people have their own “following” (or list) and this presents the opportunity to spread a message.  Some people that follow me are web designers, some are Democrats, some Republican, some Conservative, some Liberal, some Calgarian, some Australian, among others.  A police officer that follows me on Twitter may find a message that I write interesting enough to re-tweet (or repeat) it along to his list of his police officer friends, his Vancouver motocycle club twitterers and even his fellow jetskiers on Twitter.  In turn they may pass the message along too.  This bridges groups and it can find a message going out beyond one particular community.  Blogs are often read by die-hard partisans and not often by swing voters.  Since Twitter allows you to read beyond the highly integrated political blog community, it is a powerful tool for politics.