Canadian opposition Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said on Monday he would not support a government that was not doing its work but he sidestepped whether he would topple the minority government.
“I can’t be an accomplice to a government that isn’t doing its work,” Ignatieff told reporters as members of his caucus arrived for meeting that will focus on whether to force an early election.
Yet he would not say whether that means the country is likely to head into its fourth election in five-and-a-half years.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper led his Conservative Party to reelection last October, with more seats but still a minority, requiring the support of at least one of the three opposition parties.
Ignatieff faces the delicate question of whether to risk bringing the government down during fragile economic times and risk suffering the third straight Liberal loss — or to face ridicule for continuing to keep the government alive.
“We’re going to have a good discussion and we’ll make a decision when it suits us,” said Ignatieff, who took over as party leader from Stephane Dion after an abysmal Liberal performance in the election.
Ignatieff said the Liberals had kept the government in power for the past 10 months because the Liberals had put the country’s interests before the party’s interests.
“Welcome to the wonderful world of opposition!” he said when a reporter asked him if he felt damned if he brought the government down and damned if he kept it in power.
The Conservatives triggered the last election but have been arguing strongly that it would be a mistake to have another one now.
“The last thing, the very last thing this country needs is an unnecessary election, less than a year [after] we had the last one,” Transport Minister John Baird said during a news conference in Ottawa.
He said it was a measure of sanity that Liberal Senator David Smith, the party’s campaign co-chairman, had been questioning the need for an election.
Liberal hawks say the government has not moved infrastructure money fast enough, has racked up a large budget deficit without an adequate plan for eliminating it, has mismanaged health issues and has not come adequately to the defense of Canadians in trouble abroad.
Party doves point to the Liberals’ tepid standing in the polls, which mostly put their support at about even with the Conservatives, and to the lack of a coherent campaign narrative to excite the electorate.
The Liberals will meet in Sudbury through today.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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