2006/01/26

Election +3

Among the potential Liberal leadership candidates being mentioned are the following:

Frank McKenna
Bill Graham
Bob Rae
Scott Brison
Stephane Dion
Maurizio Bevilacqua
Denis Coderre
Michael Ignatieff
John Manley
Belinda Stronach
Martin Cauchon
Brian Tobin

Scratch Manley who has announced today that he he will not run.The Globe and Mail ran an article rating the potential candidates.

Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper held his first news conference post election today. He indicated that his first priority would be to clean up government through his proposed federal accountability act. Harper said he will immediately put into action those promises he made during the election campaign.

He said he will also work to implement his proposals to lower taxes beginning with the GST, address the fiscal imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces, and establish wait time standards in health care. More details at
CTV.ca

Prime minister-designate Harper also took advantage of the press conference to take aim at criticism of the Conservatives' Arctic sovereignty plan by American ambassador David Wilkins on Thursday. The U.S. ambassador to Canada had said his government opposes Harper's proposed plan to deploy military icebreakers in the Arctic to detect interlopers and assert Canadian sovereignty over those waters.

"There's no reason to create a problem that doesn't exist," Wilkins said. "We don't recognize Canada's claims to those waters... Most other countries do not recognize their claim."

"The United States defends its sovereignty and the Canadian government will defend our sovereignty," Harper told reporters in Ottawa. "It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the ambassador of the United States."

During the federal election campaign the Conservatives promised to spend $5.3 billion over five years to defend northern waters against the Americans, Russians and Danes.See CBC.ca

Meanwhile Ottawa is abuzz with speculation on the composition of the Conservative cabinet. For an overview of some likely candidates see CTV.ca

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to go , Stephen. Show those Yanks you're no patsy!

Anonymous said...

I have lost a great deal of respect for Frank McKenna.
I think it is very inappropriate to resign like that. It smacks of Liberal opportunism and arrogance with a touch of malevolent revenge.
It sends a strong message to me that Frank McKenna is a cheap politician and not the statesman that I had hoped he might be.
Not the stuff (Royal Jelly) for a Prime Minister.
If this is what the new Liberalism is, then I renounce it now and forever - this from a life-long Liberal.
I think he should have given Stephen Harper half a chance to govern. Until the Liberals give up on the idea that they have the Divine Right to govern, they should be kept in the political wilderness.

Anonymous said...

What about John Godfrey? Looks good to me. Any skeletons in the closet? A Michael Ignatieff with experience?
http://www.johngodfrey.org/bio.html

cardinal47 said...

I don't really know much about him. I note from his bio that:

"John is familiar to many as the editor of The Financial Post, a position he held from 1987 to 1991."

Would that make him another deep integrationist?