One of the media reports yesterday talked about how the defection of Joan/Wally to the Libs would be good for Moncton. Good for Greater Moncton because there are two more voices around the government table. You know, about the exact same logic used when David Emmerson crossed the floor to join the Federal Tories.
Who knows.
I can tell you this. The Liberals will alway be handicapped in Moncton as long as Al Hogan’s the editor of the T&T. His editorial this morning was vitriolic. It reminded me of his piece after Lord got hammered in the SJ by-election. Instead of at least some nuance, Al blasted Saint Johners and basically told Lord to forget Saint John and get on with governing.
Now Lord is commuting to Montreal to hustle corporate Canada at $400/hour.
There was a lesson for Lord in the SJ by-election. As a matter of fact, there were warning signs all over the place but when your #1 fan is the editor of the largest newspaper in the province, it’s hard to get perspective.
So, Al’s loving David Emmerson’s cross and hating Joan/Wally’s cross is consistent with his ideological views.
But the voters in Greater Moncton deserve a little more credibility in its local newspaper and indeed, so do Progressive Conservatives.
I have heard from a two PCs that Jeannot Volpe is going beserk. And this can’t be good for the party.
In many ways, Al Hogan is the reason the Tories held on to their power in 2003 with the slimmest of majorities.
But, in my opinion, he is also one of the reasons they nearly lost in 2003 and did lose in 2006. When a government is not challenged in the editorial pages, there is something seriously wrong.
David I know you want to focus of Al’s reaction. But I just finished listening to Joan and Wally on CBC radio and had a hard time to keep my breakfeast down. The self justification and self serving explanation was sickening.
This type of events is the exact reason why people have become so cynical about people involved in public life. This will only add to the current negative climate in the Greater Moncton area, and the on-going mudsligning about politicians and the current municipal and provincial governments will have negative impact on economic development in the South East.
Virginian, as always you put things into perspective.
Floor crossing is a sad business that’s for sure. But if you take the time to read the TJ opinion piece (where it praises former Tory leaders including Bernard Lord), you will see a more balanced view. Hence, my focus on poor old Al Hogan.
I’m not much of a fan of Joan Macalpine – never was – since she was head of BNB. Maybe I expected too much but the early days in 2000-2001 should have been time to renew economic development in New Brunswick and instead it went futher down.
So, I guess you are correct, in the grand scheme of things, Al Hogan’s reaction probably should be relegated to the trash heap.
I have to agree with the Virginian, if you look at that piece, its the old ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ thing. While I haven’t followed many editorials since the election so don’t know whether Al is still swinging the tory party line, in this case he is saying exactly what most people are thinking.
I’d been looking around at commentaries and just before I read his article I was thinking “how come nobody is mentioning by-elections?” Of course liberals would immediately state the province can’t afford it, but that is pretty irrelevant in a democracy.
I think it was fairly ‘balanced’, while it DOES smack of political opportunism (and what doesn’t?) he also gives the liberal space to talk about how it bolsters, etc.
Al may be a lousy and biased editor, but here he’s just saying what a lot of people think. It’s too bad he wouldn’t do it when it comes to Irving issues. Imagine if this kind of repetition and bias were shown when LNG terminals were being discussed instead of giving the corporate party line.