Kelly McParland at the National Post’s Full Comment section takes Michael Ignatieff to task for being led down a rabbit trail: Ignatieff picks the train:
Let’s play pretend.
You are the leader of the opposition, and you dearly want to become prime minister.
The country is facing a budget deficit somewhere north of $50 billion. You have promised to eliminate it. You have also promised no new taxes (sort of) and no cuts to any important program. (No instance of unimportant program has ever been identified by a governing party in Ottawa.)
Someone asks you a hypothetical question. If you were prime minister, which would you commit to first:
1. $175 million for a new hockey arena in Quebec, so it can try to attract an NHL hockey team
2. $20 billion, roughly, for a high-speed train from Quebec City to Windsor.
The correct answer is: “As prime minister my first priority would be to eliminate the deficit and return the country to a sound financial footing, and big new spending projects would have to wait.”
Michael Ignatieff’s answer: The choo-choo. “But I’d really like there to be a hockey team in Quebec City, that’s for sure.”
National Post
Read it here.
I am not surprized Iggy would support Dalton's train to Quebec.
This train will benefit the Quebec work force far more than Ontario's. The train will provide a means for a migrant Franophone workforce to travel to Ontario to take the "Mandatory" bilingual government positions away from English Ontarians.
Over the past few years Dalton has made Ontario communities manditory bilingual while allowing language laws to be enacted throughout Eastern Ontario. It is now illegal in most of Eastern Ontario to put up an English only sign on a store front.
In March of 2009 Iggy was in Embrun Ontario and told the French residents that he supports these language laws and that his Liberal government was there for the French.
Iggy knows he cant win out west so he is doing everything he can to "buy" every French vote he can.So it is not a shock that Iggy loves Dalton's train.
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