In his seemingly limitless efforts to slander anyone associated with the Liberal Party, Bourque has decided to attack not only Pierre Pettigrew but the Council for Canadian Unity, which he refers to as a shadowy group. Before I finished the post, the berk moved the top of pager to here.
May I suggest google to dispel the shadows?
Enter the keywords and you will wind up at the site of the Canadian Unity Council, which seems to have been referred to sometimes as the Council for Canadian Unity.
The board of directors includes Bob Rae. Yep. He's pretty much an underworld type.
Included on the board of governors, no more shadowy a figure as Peter Lougheed. Then from Manitoba there is another unsavoury type - Gail Asper, corporate secretary of CanWest Global.
Ontario's Lincoln Alexander is another known skulker mingling with this dastardly crowd.
Let's not forget retired general Charlie Belzile - he's in there too with this nefarious group.
Maybe Bourque has some bone to pick with Donna Dasko of Environics, another governor of the unity underground?
Closer to home, let me offer up another example of the sort of people involved in this group: Ali Chaisson, of the Federation des francophones de Terre Neuve et du Labrador.
Would you believe Steve Kent, mayor of Mount Pearl?
And that's just a handful of the people involved in this non-partisan group, formed in the early 1960s to inform and engage all Canadians in building and strengthening Canada.
But wait.
These guys are affiliated with a bunch called the Dominion Institute and their honourary patron John Ralston Saul. The advisory board of this bunch includes clearly disreputable people like Ann Medina, Jack Granatstein and Richard Gwynn.
Do a quick google on Option Canada and one can easily find a little compendium of articles on the subject in English and French.
And what pray tell might this be?
A 1997 Montreal Gazette article written by Claude Arpin describing grants made to Option Canada. Ok.
Arpin describes OC as "a Montreal lobby group set up eight weeks before the Oct. 30 referendum vote.
Option Canada included businessmen, along with political organizers from three parties - the Liberal Party of Canada, the Quebec Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada."
Look at that last bit again.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, now without the progressive bits.
Look at the number of articles in the little compendium here and the dates associated with them and you'll see a long-standing anti-federalist campaign dating back to the 1995 referendum designed to "get" the side that won.
Maybe, just maybe I am missing something here, but it seems to me that a tiny bit of research would demonstrate that what appears to be something hideous for Liberals, as it has been painted, is either:
a. nothing much at all; or,
b. something that is going to splash a bunch of people including...wait for it...Conservatives.
In any event, we can safely say Bourque must be French for berk, at best, and that once again we have Stephen Harper in bed with Gilles Duceppe criticizing Liberals on national unity.
The only thing I'd like to see is the list of Progressive Conservatives tied up with Option Canada so we can see how many of them have ties to Mr. Harper.
And as a last thought?
If people want to make this election about the future of Canada:
Bring it on!
