Politics-Federal

If anyone is living in the west end of Ottawa and plans to attend the rally, but doesn’t want the hassle of driving downtown and finding and paying for a parking spot, there are up to 10 school buses going to Parliament Hill from Kanata on Saturday morning Dec 6. Just park your car for free at the Park N Ride, and take our Rally Shuttle, courtesy of the Carleton-Mississippi Mills Conservative Association.

Where: Eagleson Rd. Park N Ride (at Eagleson Rd. and the 417) in Kanata .

When: Buses leaving from 10:30 to 11:00 AM and returning to Kanata at approximately 2:00 PM

NOTE: Bus Capacity is limited to 480 and it is first come first served so arrive right at 10

Now is the time to act.

Everyone needs to let the Governor General know they oppose the Liberal/NDP coalition government.

You can write the GG by emailing her at

[email protected]

You should address the email with the following

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean
Governor General of Canada
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A1

Reasons you can site are:

-The Liberals and NDP together have fewer seats than the Conservatives.
-Any coalition would need to be propped up by separatists
-Each and every confidence vote made under a coalition would only come with concessions to the Bloc further increasing the fiscal imbalance and angering non Quebecers.

I urge everyone to write her TODAY and ask your friends to do the same.

Flood her office.

Saturday started out with breakfast in the main ballroom. My friend running for National Council arrived at the ballroom 15 minutes early and asked if he could put some flyers out on the breakfast tables. He was told he could not. Yet when the doors opened at 8am, there were already advertisements for several of the other candidates on every table. So we split up and put 1 or 2 of his brochures out on each table as people rolled in for their repast.

After breakfast we were entertained with our financial situation by Irving and then got to watch the Maple Leaf awards get presented. Following that, 3 ridings were recognized for providing over $100,000 in financial assistance to other EDA’s. This gave me great pleasure as our Association made an effort and provided some assistance to three ridings as well. One of those was Egmont where Gale Shea won by 55 votes (which means we probably made a difference), and another was West Nova where we were glad to help throw Robert Thibeault out on his ear.

The late morning had us voting on all the constitutional changes which was televised on CPAC and is probably already out in the press should anyone want to know what changes were made.

Between 12 and 130 we were allowed to eat lunch and vote for national councillors. I arrived early and lined up to vote and the line up quickly formed and wound around and up the stairs back to the main ballroom level which had many of us thinking that some would surely not get in to vote in time or have time for lunch but the layout of the voting room was so well planned that the line outside the door was literally gone within 10 minutes. I must commend whomever planned the voting procedures because they were truly fantastic.

Lunch was lunch and it was off to the Policy Plenary session where we passed several apple pie resolutions. A few controversial ones came up, and there were a few linguistic challenges to overcome but they managed the situation very well. Having watched the NDP plenary a couple of years ago and seeing how they only got through a few motions, I was pleased to see that our party got through 30 in under 3 hours.

They then let us know who the national councillors were. The Ontario list was truly a great list. There were 9 people running and I can safely say that I was impressed with each and every one of them in some manner. The convention was then officially closed and it was off to dinner at Hy’s Steakhouse in the Richardson building where I was disappointed to see that they did not have any Fort Garry Dark!!

After dinner we made our way to the Campaign Research hospitality suite where I spoke to Richard Ciano and got to meet Nick Kouvalis. Blue Blogging Soapbox (blogger) told me Nick would be here and it was a pleasure to run into a fellow Greek conservative. At this suite I also got a chance to spend quite a bit of time to talk to Christian Conservative (blogger) and I also discovered another nice local beer called Two Rivers Lager. This was a really fresh tasting light lager that a non beer drinker would probably find quite nice.

After discovering I had lost my room key, I made my way downstairs where I got stuck in the hotel bar with my friends for a few more Fort Garry Darks. In the hotel bar, we ran into Tom Lukiwski. I congratulated him on his win and we found our seats. Gerry Ritz was nearby with a couple of friends so I went and congratulated him as well and let him know that several of our members watch him as we have a strong agricultural part of our riding and I let him know that I thought Mike Duffy was a bit over the edge with remarks in an interview with Mr. Ritz. Mike was talking about how U.S. protectionist measures albeit not taxes, were putting several small barriers up to trade and he said to Mr. Ritz: “It’s like a death of….” and then he caught himself and changed his wording. Apparently it was on the 5pm MDL, but edited out of the 8pm repeat.

Sunday was an early rise and our flight back was packed with people again. MP’s Stephen Fletcher, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney were all on board, along with La Presse journalist Joel Denis Bellevance and numerous staffers.

Thus ends my journey to Winnipeg. The Convention experience was fantastic and with it being my first political one, I was quite impressed with how down to earth many of the MPs are and how approachable they are.

I did not mention all of them, but below is a list of MP’s/Senators whom I had the chance to meet while I was there.

Diane Ablonczy
Rona Ambrose
John Baird
Lois Brown
Patrick Brown
Rod Bruinooge
Lawrence Cannon
Michael Chong
Tony Clement
Dean Del Mastro
Barry Devolin
Jay Hill
Peter Kent
Tom Lukiwski
Rob Nicholson
Deepak Obhrai
Gordon O’Connor
Pierre Poilievre
Scott Reid
Chris Warkentin

Senator Marjory LeBreton
Senator Terry Stratton

Candidates (who lost)
Elie Salibi
Rob Zandee

Friday started off with Breakfast in the main dining hall where I spent a few minutes talking to Lois Brown (Newmarket-Aurora). I have family in her riding who used to own a now closed restaurant that was a mainstay there for decades and Mrs. Brown knew them well. This was also the first time I ran into Dr. Roy. He introduced me to the Atheist Conservative and pointed out the Christian Conservative, two other bloggers who were at the Convention.

After breakfast I made my way to the first half of the Social and Democratic Sessions where the two key motions that were debated were P-203 (Human Rights Commission Jurisdiction) and P-207 (Protecting Pregnant Woman). Human Rights Commissions abuse of section 13 may be one the government wants to manage like a surgeon with a scalpel to minimize the media spin on Human Rights, but the grassroots want to beat it with 1000 baseball bats and it was clearly favoured to pass. P-207 being such a special interest subject meant the masses in support of it were there to make sure it went on to Plenary.

The second half of the morning sessions, I shifted over to the Constitutional room where C-107 and C-117 were being debated heavily. These affect how EDA’s with less than 100 members will be represented in votes for leadership as well as the number of delegates. Being hot subjects for the old PC crowd and many Quebec ridings, this one was also defended well and in a split decision went on to Plenary. I was pleased in my selections of rooms to attend as it let me observe some of the very hot topics.

Lunch was lunch.

The afternoon had me floating around a bit and helping a friend promote himself for National Council. While helping him I managed to talk to Michael Chong, Marjory LeBreton, Jim Prentice, and several other dignitaries.

Dinner was not just dinner. We discovered a beer brewed locally called Fort Garry Dark. This was truly a treasure that I found myself asking bartenders about the rest of the weekend. It’s brewed locally without preservatives so is only found in some key places that move enough beer to not let it get stale which explains the freshness that made it so good. Apparently, the brewery that makes Kokanee recently purchased the Fort Garry brewery and is starting to ship it out to other areas of the country. In any case, I was very impressed, and I know my beer.

Post dinner had us attending the Canadian Indian Federation’s room where I was very impressed with the turnout as well as the way the room was managed. Being very supportive of Canadian-Indian relations, I was pleased to discuss the positive aspects of working in conjunction with such a large democracy in an area of the world where we can use some friends.