Speaking recently in Calgary, former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein had some words for Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff:
Kindly shut up.
"Ignatieff, I think he's playing a game," Klein speculated. "He says all the right things, especially when he's in Alberta and in British Columbia, he says whatever the population desires. "So what I think he should do is keep his mouth shut," he added.
Klein insists that Ignatieff is talking out of opposite sides of his mouth on opposite sides of the country -- particularly as it relates to the Alberta oilsands.
"For instance, [in the West] he says the oilsands are a good thing," Klein later continued. "In Ottawa he says something different."
Yet when one examines Michael Ignatieff's actual statements regarding the oil sands, one finds a very different trend.
On January 22 of this year, Ignatieff spoke about the oilsands in Montreal, defending them to a Quebec audience.
"The stupidest thing you can do (is) to run against an industry that is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and not just in Alberta, but right across the country," Ignatieff said.
Ignatieff went on to explain the amount of influence the oilsands give us with our closest neighbour. "We provide more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia. That changes everything," he mused. "It means that when the Prime Minister of Canada goes into the White House, he gets listened to, in ways that Canadian Prime Ministers have not been listened to before."
Before Ralph Klein starts denouncing Michael Ignatieff as duplicitous on the issue of the oilsands, the least he could do is actually get acquainted with what Ignatieff actually has to say on the issue.
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteI fear we are doomed to suffer through Klein-isms like this for the next 10-20 years. Never one for accuracy, he seems well on his way to becoming one of those crazy elder statesman of Canadian politics out of whose sour and pickled orifice there will rarely come measured words regarding the positions of those he despises on purely partisan grounds. If he's going to keep this up - he might just as well get himself an Alder-like gig on Corus radio!
Well, I'd remind you that Ignatieff is also the one who dreamed up the carbon tax. So it would be only natural for someone otherwise uniformed to make that mistake.
ReplyDelete