Sunday, August 30, 2009

This Is One Anonymous Liberal Source I Can Get Behind

“Even if the Liberals haven't made up their minds about wanting an election, [it's] good to see they have their act together this early.”

I don't think the party ever really got its act together under Dion. At least Ignatieff has the Liberal machine turning over smoothly. Its a start.

3 comments:

crf said...

What are their policies? If you go to their website, there is ZERO discussion of any policy, other than a link to a pdf of resolutions from Vancouver.

Ti-Guy said...

Link to Jane Taber? Pass.

What are their policies?

What would you like?

I'm seeing this all over. Whiners who have no ideas of their own screaming about policy. Better to listen to what David Frum (!) said a while ago (and I paraphrase): We've solved most of the big issues in this country. We shouldn't look for anything novel. Just good management and making the institutions we have work as intended. The pressing issues we really need to address (climate and environmental degradation, global economic collapse, human rights and peace, etc.) are out of our hands for the foreseeable future.

The Harper government's ruse of making Canadians confuse mere motion for growth is no alternative. It's waste of resources and enables cretins who are very good at pretending to be doing something.

crf said...

Hi Ti-Guy ... thanks for calling me an idea free whiner. Lucky for you, I guess, I'm not running the country.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. Making sure government runs well is the biggest issue, and that can't be summarized in bullet points.

But you and Frum are simply wrong about Canada not lacking necessary policies.

My Dad works at a fairly high level in a government scientific capacity, so I have a second-hand understanding of an important issue: Canada has no science policy. The civil service and politicians have little idea of what fields Canadians do well in now, or what they need to do well in the future. There is no decision process for deciding which science (especially large science) should be funded, and amazingly, no way to fund it. The Canadian light source, for instance, got its operations funded because they snaggled a ministerial visit during a Saskatoon speech. Neptune, for example, has no current way of being funded for the long term. Was a light source a good idea for Canada in the first place? Was it best placed in Saskatoon? Those were policy decisions, obviously.

Preston Manning understands, in a vague way, that when politicians make decisions on science, they are now looking at a deep void. Read.

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This is the kind of thing I want discussed on the Liberal website. Clear ideas about how they are going to run government. Detailed policies.