Moldy Peaches

Appearing at Yuk Yuks nightly - Stephen Harper. Here are some highlights you can expect to hear.

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States."

"In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance."

"The important point is that Canada is not a bilingual country. It is a country with two languages. And there is a big difference."

"Let's take the New Democratic Party, the NDP, which won twenty-one seats. The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men."

"The leadership of the Conservative Party was running the largest deficits in Canadian history. They were in favour of gay rights officially and officially for abortion on demand."

Try the veal.

read full text of the speech here.

Tim Powers and the Conservatives can try to spin this anyway they want, however, they are just wrong to say these comments aren't relevant. First, Harper wants to be Prime Minister and his previous writings, speeches and beliefs matter. He is entitled to change his mind, however, he hasn't indicated that he has done that.

Second, anyone who reads the speech can see that it is not "tongue in cheek" as Powers suggests but one man's personal opinion. There was no humour intended in it. The speech was designed to be informative.

Finally, if the Conservatives weren't concerned about it why, after the story became public Wednesday night, did the icon on the council web site that had provided a link to Mr. Harper's speech disappear?