Monthly Archive: August 2008

Interestingly, a full 11 days after registering thegreenshift.ca to be the online home of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's plan for a massive carbon tax, the Liberals registered thegreentaxshift.ca.  That was only days after being told by Jennifer Wright that she did not want to share the name.  Days after registering this alternate name, the Liberals were served with a cease-and-desist order from Jennifer Wright of Green Shift Inc.

Despite registering this alternate name, the Liberals aren't using it, preferring to fight Jennifer Wright for "Green Shift".

Update: I found some more alternate names.  And they were all registered after the launch and after the call to Jennifer Wright, not before.

Right on the heels of a news story reporting that the Liberals claim no reasonable chance of confusion between the Liberal Party's Green Shift tax plan and Jennifer Wright's Green Shift environmental consultancy firm, I find yet another example of confusion between the two.

As before, it is a Liberal who is unable to keep the two straight.

No this isn't a double posting.  I just posted yesterday about how the Liberals lost candidate Parissa Aujla.

In reading an entirely unrelated story, I learned that another candidate has quit.

It happened at the beginning of the summer, and the reason given by Buffy Baumbrough for quitting was that she did not feel she could help the environment as a federal Liberal.

Shocking revelations at the committee hearings looking into Conservative Party election spending.

Thanks to Liberal MP Karen Redman, we learned two things:

• Other parties engaged in In-and-Out funding and are being investigated by Elections Canada
• The Liberals are sore at Conservative efficiency, and believe that is why the Conservatives need to be punished

The Ontario Young Liberals hosted a three day party in Guelph this past weekend.

That's great.

And they debate Liberal Party policy and strategy.

That's great.

And they want everyone to vote for Frank Valeriote on September 8 at the by-election.

Oops.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a point of mentioning how the Liberals in Atlantic Canada avoided mention of Stephane Dion's plan for a carbon tax in the media release following their caucus meeting.

The silence speaks volumes.

But oddly, the media made it sound like a simple statement of fact -- that the Liberal media release did not discuss the carbon tax -- is some sort of clever Conservative trick meant to confuse the listener.

The Liberal Party has lost yet another candidate.  And this time in a riding that had lost its previous candidate mere months ago.

You would think that with Stephane Dion threatening to trigger an election, Liberal candidates would be pulling together instead of looking for the escape hatch.

Garth Turner has apologized.

I know.  It's a day to remember.  But I'm confused, because Garth Turner has nothing to apologize for.

But let's back up and set the stage for how this happened.

Liberal MP Garth Turner has had a relatively minor dustup with Elections Canada.  Frankly, he should have just kept quiet about it.  Instead, he makes an accusation in an attempt to embarrass the Conservative Party.

The problem is that based on the evidence I've developed, I can't see how that accusation can be justified.

Well, you can decide who's been embarrassed.

Update: Garth Turner apologizes...for no good reason

Liberal MP Hedy Fry becomes the latest in a line of Liberals attempting to explain Stephane Dion's promised carbon tax.

It is a pitiable performance.

The Liberal MP for the Nova Scotia riding of West Nova, Robert Thibault, is in some trouble.  In the space of two weeks, he has insulted seniors and women.  In his attempt to defend his comments, he called Senator Majory LeBreton an "idiot".

Clearly Garth Turner is working his special magic with his communication seminars for Liberal MPs.

But to the question of idiocy, I cast my eye on Robert Thibault.  Does he not know the demographic cross section of his riding?

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has announced a plan to start testing the use of GPS tracking ankle bracelets on parolees.  There is resistance to the idea, which has me puzzled.

You would think parolees would love the idea.

Check out the new sleek design.

In my last post, I looked at a blog post by Garth Turner, Liberal MP and communications guru for the Liberal Party.  A senior citizen by the name of Jon C Coates had a letter printed in a Halifax newspaper, in which he proceeded to show how a single senior would suffer under Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan.

Garth Turner immediately responded by alleging that this person was not real, and indeed was some sort of fraudulent Conservative Party frontman spewing lies.

This even after Garth Turner had spoken to Jon's wife.

Well, in the best Orwellian fashion, Garth Turner has erased his old post, put up a new one, speaks highly of Jon C Coates, and proceeds to call Stephen Harper a liar.

Hmmm.  I don't see a public apology directed at Jon for publicly declaring Jon to be a liar.

A letter from Jon C Coates of Halifax is getting a lot of attention.  In it, he describes how he is going to suffer as a result of Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's carbon tax.

Well, Garth Turner is the communications guru handling the carbon tax file.  So he reveals on his blog that (1) Jon C Coates is a liar, and (2) Jon C Coates probably doesn't exist.

Jon C Coates, according to Garth Turner, is likely a fiction concocted by the Prime Minister's Office, and Garth Turner is pulling back the curtain to reveal the ugly truth.

OK, so I called Jon C Coates, and we had a long conversation.

I've been idly checking out references to Jennifer Wright's website greenshift.ca, the site that supports her company Green Shift Inc.  The Liberals under Stephane Dion decided that the name "Green Shift" should really have been theirs, and so named their carbon tax plan The Green Shift, supported with a website thegreenshift.ca.

The reason I've been checking is to see whether Jennifer Wright is correct in her assertion that the Liberals are damaging her brand.  The Liberals say that no one is going to be confused and that the two entities can easily coexist.

The problem is that I find evidence, over and over again, of confusion.  This time from the Liberal's own environment critic, David McGuinty.

As I've posted before, there is something to Jennifer Wright's argument that when the Liberal Party decided to name Stephane Dion's carbon tax plan "The Green Shift", her company Green Shift Inc would suffer from the confusion that would result.

Nonsense, say the Liberals and their apologists.  People will be able to tell the two apart.

Apparently people can't tell them apart.  One such person is Claudette Roy.  She's the Liberal Party's candidate for the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona.

Jennifer Wright of Green Shift Inc is suing the Liberal Party.  The Liberal Party has named their carbon tax plan "The Green Shift", and Wright's position is that the use of that name is hurting her business.

The Liberal contend that there is no reason for people to be confused.

Well, for the second time, I've found a blatant example of confusion is the media.

Garry Oledzki was the Liberal Party candidate for Palliser in Saskatchewan.  Until yesterday, when he quit.

The report of his resignation was, well, cold.

Frigid even.

Even as Stephane Dion is making noises about a fall election (that could be as soon as six weeks from now), the Liberal Party has lost two candidates. 

Garry Oledzki in Saskatchewan and Robert "Bobby" Morrissy in PEI have both stepped down as candidates.

In the case of Bobby Morrissey, it might indeed be a problem selling Stephane Dion's carbon tax.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion could not explain his carbon tax plan to his own aides.

There are a lot of questions that I suspect Stephane Dion will have trouble answering.  I've compiled my favourite 21 questions that I think every Liberal MP ought to be able to answer.

I was among many people who commented when Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay was quoted as saying that the effectiveness of Stephane Dion's carbon tax could not be predicted, or even measured after the fact.

Martha Hall Findlay wrote to me by way of response.  I've posted her note here in its entirety:

Liberal MP Garth Turner is very excited.  The most loyal of all Liberal MPs is hosting a town hall meeting for his hero, Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion. 

But what if no one shows up?

To make sure that doesn't happen (and so show that he can command a loyal following of Liberal voters) Garth Turner has sent out a mass mailing to encourage people to turn out for the meeting.

Here's the problem.  Pulling together various threads, I wonder if there is reason to believe Garth Turner has contravened the anti-spam rules of the US-based email marketing service he is using his effort to look make Stephane Dion look good.

A "resident" of Cornwall is very upset at the mailing he received from his Conservative MP, Guy Lauzon.

According to local resident Guy Tropper, the flyer is juvenile in its design, and shows how the Conservatives are not spending time dealing with global warming, the way the Liberals are.

Gee, this letter to the editor could have been written by someone in Liberal headquarters.

No wait, it was written by someone at Liberal headquarters.  Guy Tropper.

You might think I'm talking about Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion's green credentials -- using a bicycle and such.

I'm not.

I'm talking about the Stephane Dion Election Cycle.

The David Suzuki Foundation gets roughed up badly by the Center for Media and Democracy Watch, the group that looks to expose spin and propaganda.

A report from an internal Foreign Affairs department investigation has concluded that Maxime Bernier was the victim in the events that led to his resignation from cabinet.