{"id":1002,"date":"2006-07-12T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-12T20:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2006-07-12T16:27:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-12T20:27:00","slug":"stephane-dion-speaks-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1002","title":{"rendered":"Stephane Dion Speaks – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I had a chance to sit down with Stephane Dion over the weekend, after the Hays breakfast<\/a> on Sunday, to talk about his leadership bid. First off, let me offer a big thanks to Stephane\u2019s Alberta team who were really nice and gave me well over an hour with their candidate on what must have been a busy trip for him. It was also entertaining to see Stephane drop the gloves and take a few swipes at the frontrunners \u2013 at least more so than anyone else I\u2019ve talked to.<\/p>\n

Because of the length of the interview and some technical problems mid-way through it, I\u2019m going to do things differently and post the interview in three parts. Today, I\u2019ll post the first few questions with Stephane\u2019s answers in his own words. Tomorrow, I\u2019ll recap our discussion on federalism. Friday I\u2019ll post quick opinions and quotes from Dion on a wide range of topics (including his opponents in the race).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be running a \u201cGreatest Prime Minister\u2026We Never Had\u201d poll on my blog this summer and I was wondering if there is anyone in Canadian history who never reached the top office who you think would have made a good Prime Minister?<\/strong> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d have to say Roy Romanow \u2013 on the condition that he learned French. There might have been someone earlier in our history, but Roy is someone who I worked with a lot during my time as intergovernmental affairs minister and I was always very impressed with him, and his grasp of the federation. If he\u2019d learned French, he could certainly have made a good Prime Minister\u2026but maybe I shouldn\u2019t say that or he\u2019ll jump into the race now.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve made the environment a key part of your platform. But as environment minister you put forward a plan which you yourself admit would not have allowed Canada to reach our Kyoto targets. So what\u2019s the point of staying in Kyoto if we\u2019re not going to reach the targets?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the media took my comments there and misinterpreted them. I said that if Stephen Harper was in government for two years and then I took power, that we wouldn\u2019t have a chance to meet our Kyoto targets. However, had our government not been defeated, or even if I got the chance to become Prime Minister in 2007, we could still reach our Kyoto targets. [ed note: I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m not an expert here but I haven\u2019t seen a single report or study which has even raised the possibility of Canada being able to get our emissions levels to 6% bellow 1990 levels by 2012\u2026under any plan. If anyone (in the Dion campaign or otherwise) has one, I\u2019d be very curious to see the numbers used<\/em>]
\"\"<\/a>
The key is the carbon market so that you can trade credits. This provides companies with the possibility to make money by becoming more environmentally competitive. A carbon tax is not the answer since that only punishes industry. You obviously need tax reform to compliment the carbon market since you need to deal with other types of pollution too. But worldwide, emissions trading has worked far better than carbon taxes and this is the route Canada needs to go down.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re talking about the environment, I\u2019d like to say that I was extremely disappointed in Michael Ignatieff\u2019s article in the National Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s thrown out some ideas, but he didn\u2019t even include a single word recognizing the work which myself and the Liberal government did on the climate change file or on our 2005 climate change proposal. When I travel to the Bahamas, they recognize the work Canada has done on Climate Change. I think it shows incredible disrespect for a new Liberal MP to come in here and ignore everything we\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

Apart from the snub, what do you think about what Michael actually said in the article?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are some good ideas in there, but they\u2019re fairly obvious ones. I think Michael needs to learn more about the carbon market system since that\u2019s definitely the approach we need to take.<\/p>\n

As a Quebec Cabinet Minister during the late 90s, do you believe that your election as Liberal leader would make it hard for the party to move beyond Adscam and allow Harper to use it as an election issue in the future?<\/strong>
\"\"<\/a>
If Harper tries that, I would say that my integrity has never been tarnished at all. The fact is, we have been too kind and we need to say \u201cno more mister nice guy\u201d. The people who were crooks went to jail and will go to jail, but our 75 candidates in Quebec are honest people and we need to aggressively defend their integrity. If Gilles Duceppe brings it up, I would ask him about the Parti Quebecois accepting illegal funds from Group Action. If he calls the Liberal Party crooks, I would sue the Bloc. If Harper brings it up, I would ask him to release the names of the donors to his first leadership campaign in the name of integrity.<\/p>\n

And if anyone in the Liberal Party implies that we can\u2019t have a leader because he comes from Quebec, that\u2019s completely unacceptable.<\/p>\n

At this point, a group of four cyclists came up to our table and introduced themselves as Liberals and big fans of Stephane\u2019s. Unfortunately for him, they\u2019re not party members, but at least it did show him that there are a few Liberals in Calgary. One of them said that if he becomes Prime Minister, there needs to be tax credits for cycling and good fitness. I\u2019ll give Dion marks for actually telling them that he thought this was a bad approach to take since tax credits don\u2019t benefit the poor who don\u2019t pay taxes. He told them instead that the government needed to build fitness centres and seemed to talk them around to his point of view.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a chance to sit down with Stephane Dion over the weekend, after the Hays breakfast on Sunday, to talk about his leadership bid. First off, let me offer a big thanks to Stephane\u2019s Alberta team who were really nice and gave me well over an hour with their candidate on what must have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}