Friday, October 24, 2008

One Reason Why Chretien Was Canada's Best


I've said this a million times. History will prove Jean Chretien was the greatest PM in the history of Canada. Yesterday the University of Western Ontario bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Laws upon him. He had a couple things to say.

"People will remember how much hell I received in 1995 because I refused to let the banks merge," he said. "They said, 'We need Canadian big banks who can compete with the world, so stop regulating the banks; we need the freedom of the market,"' Chretien told the graduation ceremony.

"Today in the turmoil, because we said no in 1995, you read any newspaper talking about stability, they all say the best stable banks in the world are in Canada today."


And,



Chretien later turned on his characteristic charm when asked why he thought the Liberals were so soundly thrashed in the vote that saw Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives returned to power with a bulked-up minority.

The Liberals were reduced to 76 seats in last week's election - down from 103 in 2006 - and captured just 26.2 per cent of the popular vote.

"We didn't have enough votes to win," he joked.

4 comments:

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Sorry James - I thought our country and financial system was in a shambles.. according to M. Dion.. but now, apparently, we are on solid footing thanks to M. Chretien.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for Jean Chretien, and was impressed with his involvement in the creation of the Charter, however, the honest reality is that there is significant contribution by Chretien, Mulroney, and more recently by Martin and Harper - all cleaning up over the horrendous legacy left by P.E.Trudeau - who I also admired for many reasons - but not for his poor grasp of sound fiscal policy.

The partisan historical revisionists of both of Canada's major parties and their supporters really does little to help the country as a whole deal with real problems.

Perhaps now, with a renewed minority goverment, we might do the country a favor by stopping the suggestion that our respective parties are perfect, and rather, put some heads together to analyze our strenghts and weaknesses honestly, to find sound solutions for the benefit of all citizens.. just a thought :)

RuralSandi said...

Yup, the CPC supporters play the blame game a lot...can't accept responsibility or give credit wher credit is due...poor little children.

Remember - Trudeau was PM during the Viet Nam war....economy had problems just like now because of the Iraq war.

So jealous that Chretien is being recognized obviously.

Silly isn't it?

Mark Richard Francis said...

Trudeau was apparently supposed the cure the world-wide epidemic of stagflation all by himself. Wow.

Canada didn't come out of that all that well, but our debt load at the end of Trudeau's last stint as PM was actually no worse or better than the Western World's average.

Mulroney is the one who had the opportunity to improve our finances as the economy was better behaved when he came into power. Instead, he increased the debt.

Dion was right to call out Harper. Harper was claiming there'd be no recession and no deficit -- a tune which started changing the day after the election was over. Harper claimed that he had a plan in place since the summer of 2007 (a lie), but wouldn't talk about it. Harper requested that the debates have more time in order to discuss the economy more, and yet showed up with nothing to talk about.

It's hard to have any confidence in Harper. His GST cuts were panned by, well, everyone who matters, as being the wrong kind of stimulus. Harper also ramped up spending during his time in office. We now have no real surplus left, just as we're hitting hard economic times.

What economic stability we have seems to be due to Liberal smarts.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Hmm.. typical I suppose. Does anyone at some point acknowledge that, even statistically, the idea that "my party" is always right and "your party" is always wrong establishes a sort of dogmatic blindness to reality.

The point I'm trying to make - is even if you disagree with my point of view of the accomplishment or lack thereof of our leaders - perhaps we need to open our minds to hearing eachother. You can't learn if you don't listen - there is a chinese proverb that I love, that goes:

"To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well.."

Frankly, while I'm a Conservative, I'm getting a little tired of partisan noise-making and would welcome a national dialogue from all political views.. and I think that blogging gives us the opportunity to do that.

Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong - but I have seen positives in all political leaders relative to the economy since Trudeau - who, as I've indicated, I admired - but wage and price controls and the NEP were greatly flawed economic efforts, but,the true point being -if all a party does is undue what another party does - even if its well-done, we do our citizens a grave disservice.

If all we do is talk - and refuse to listen, we do ourselves a disservice.

Just a thought.