Positive Ideas – vs – Personal Attacks

As we head into the second half of the federal election campaign, it’s worth taking stock of what the two main parties did in the first half:


Party A,

• Proposed a Federal Accountability Act to clean up government

• Proposed an Independent Director of Public Prosecutions to crack down on corruption

• Proposed sweeping democratic reforms, including an elected Senate

• Proposed cutting the GST from 7% to 6% to 5%

• Proposed a plan to protect our fisheries, cut capital gains taxes for fishermen, and enhance provincial control over fisheries

• Proposed easing the tax burden on small business, and tax support to create more apprenticeship jobs

• Proposed a plan to promote education and training

• Proposed a plan to support family farmers and Canadian agriculture

• Proposed a plan to crack down on drug crime through mandatory prison sentences for serious drug crimes and an end to house arrest

• Proposed a Patient Wait Times Guarantee

• Proposed a $1200 per year Choice in Child Care Allowance, and the creation of 125,000 daycare spaces

• Proposed a plan to give seniors retirement security and respect

• Proposed a national strategy for cancer control

• Proposed a tax break for sports registration for kids

• Proposed real action on clean air with a tax credit for transit users

• Proposed a Canada First defense strategy to ensure Canada is able to protect its sovereignty in the Arctic, on the West Coast, and around the world

• Outlined detailed solutions to challenges facing British Columbia

• Outlined ideas for a more flexible federalism that strengthens national unity in Quebec

• Proposed a Veterans’ Bill of Rights


Party B,

• On day one, attacked Stephen Harper’s patriotism

• Declared this campaign “a referendum election”

• Said that Stephen Harper was “unfit” to be Prime Minister

• Said that parents would blow a Choice in Childcare Allowance “on beer and popcorn”

• Attacked the US on carbon emissions, while overseeing growth of carbon emissions twice as high as in the US and flying a campaign plane that produces twice the emissions of the other parties’

• Announced a plan to extend a national daycare system that does not exist, to the year 2015.

• Prepared negative campaign ads

• Exploited for political gain a photo taken at a Holocaust memorial

• Announced a hand gun ban which has been in place since 1934

• Pleaded for civility, while saying that Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe would “[work] together to dismantle this country...”

• Compared an NDP candidate to a dog

• Personally insulted NDP Leader Jack Layton as having “a boiled dog’s head smile”

• Called a Muslim candidate the “token ethnic”

• Insulted the RCMP by saying its criminal investigation into Minister Goodale’s office is politically motivated by “opposition allegations”

Which party will you choose to lead our nation Canada, Party A or Party B?