Quote:Justin Trudeau, the man/boy, seems to have never had an original idea in his life nor any discernible vision of the country that drives his politics.  No matter how long he is on the scene as a potential PM I cannot get past reacting to him as if he is an MC at a high school prom.

He is all artifice. More than any Liberal party leader in the past 35 years Trudeau is an empty vessel with little choice but to be filled up by his party’s corporate brain trust.

Bay Street desperately wants back into the game and the Liberals are their only option. While they have been given lots of goodies by Harper, they have been cut off from their historic role as the principal source of federal policy making. (Harper doesn’t care what they think.) In addition, the federal bureaucracy has been made to reflect the ideology of pro-business “efficiency” to such an extent over the past 20 years a genuine small-l liberal would have to replace most of it to get any advice contrary to the status-quo.

Justin doesn’t have a chance. The promises he makes will not be his to keep.

MUR

Quote:Murray Dobbin
Murray Dobbin, who is Vancouver-based, has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over thirty five years. A board member and researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, he has written five studies for the centre including an expose of charter schools and ten myths about the Canadian tax system. He has been a columnist for The Financial Post and Winnipeg Free Press, contributes to The Globe and Mail and other Canadian dailies and now writes a column for the Vancouver on-line paper The Tyee, which is reprinted in rabble.ca. Framing the Medicare issue: Fighting to Win The vast majority of Canadians support the idea of public healthcare. Is this an example of our success in framing the issue? Or is it just that Medicare carries itself because it is so obviously important. The record is mixed. We have succeeded in defending publicly funded health care but have allowed the privateers to gain ground on two-tier health care. One problem: not all Medicare activists use the same frames or use them systematically- something the right does well. To win the framing war, we need to be much more strategic and much more thorough.