Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I was invited with many other bloggers to do an on-the-record phone conference with Stephane Dion of the Liberal Party of Canada. Here are some of the results:
- 3:15 PM MDT:
Things are yet to get underway. The bloggers are talking about people’s mothers and other inside jokes (ie. “Blogfather”) they are joking that no one should hear about, but are secretly hoping someone will talk about on their blog so they don’t have to.

- 3:20: Someone was admiring Nagy’s bilingual signs in the byelection.

- 3:21: Dion is on the line and giving opening remarks, but keeps them short because of short time. He expects blogs reach the young generation “big time”.

-3:23 Steve V - Far N Wide asks why isn’t there more Dion appearances in Quebec?
Dion responds that he has been in Quebec, but wants to do more. He is finding the size of Canada makes it difficult to get to every province as much as he’d like.

Drew asks about Via Rail?
-Dion says he strongly believes in transit and trains as a transportation solution for Canada.

3:27 - Dion is continuing his talk on train infrastructure. He claims Liberals have grown rail use, traditionally. Unfortunately during the 1990s, I saw the reverse trend in my province.

3:30 - Danielle had the next question.
Dion is talking about rural energy use now.
Unfortunately someone is unable to mute their phone and it’s drowning out some of Dion’s answer. Technology isn’t perfect yet, even though it’s 2008 and we have flying iPhones.

3:31ish - My blog host dies for the next 20 minutes until the call has ended. But I took notes!

3:50ish - And here’s what happened while my blog was offline at the worst possible time:
knb asks what the plan is for the provincial premiers opposed to the Green Shift.
-Dion answers that he has a long history of building relations between provinces and the federal government He sees the Green Shift as good for AB, Nova Scotia, and all provinces. And the changes proposed are federal jurisdiction anyway (income tax reduction for instance).

[Will explains in detail in the comments] I missed who asked the next question which was paraphrased by Dion as:
Will Conservative propaganda about green shift work?
Answer: Possibly. Harper will a “use dismissive and simplistic approach” to climate change.
Dion is not intending to use attack ads.

(We all know the Liberals will use some anyway since they are generally very effective at convincing poorly informed Canadians to swing their votes around like a madman with a gun surrounded by police.)

Jason Cherniak (who is probably glad that Ezra Levant wasn’t also in the conference call) asks – Harper is threatening to call an election, which is either unethical or illegal (given his supposed desire to fix election dates in advance), but the Liberals should not use that argument, correct?

Dion responds - The press conference today was where he gave his answer to this question. The country is not prepared for the slowdown of the economy. “The country will discover more and more the kind of tricks” done to the country by Harper and the Conservatives.

And finally my question (because I asked last and late):
How do the Liberals intend to respond to the Conservatives’ use of 10%er mailings into targeted ridings like Ralph Goodale’s in Regina Wascana? I’ve been Conservaspammed with “communication” propaganda from more than 7 different Conservative MPs this year alone! It’s a crass, Conservative waste of taxpayer money.

Thank you,
[Saskboy]
He fully agrees and the “answer is in [my] question”. The Liberals will denounce it, show the government is partisan, and not respecting the letter of the law or parliament.
It’s a cheap and low blow attack against parliament. Many of his colleagues are working hard to stop it from continuing.

They really will have to do something, because even if the Liberals win, the Conservatives could still abuse their communications budget as opposition MPs, and spam ridings they don’t have a seat in.

I think a pledge to continue to responsibly use the communications mailing budget should be one step of the Liberals. Past government’s “communication” doesn’t bring up any memory of misuse in my brain, to the Liberal’s credit. Oh wait. Adscam? Not quite the same thing. Not at all actually, but I guess it shows that any government, Conservative or Liberal is prone to a few (or a lot) of bad eggs willing to misuse taxpayer money for their own advertising benefit.

Dion also mentioned that his staff reads Liblogs, and so too do his wife and daughter.
So… hello Dion family. I hope you enjoy my window into the world of western Canada.

–
Scott has some more thoughts on the call.