Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff promotes his homecare plan after visiting an Ottawa couple affected by cancer
OTTAWA – A leaky faucet is slowly overflowing a tub with damaging revelations about the federal Conservatives, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Friday.
Ignatieff said the latest incident, involving a Conservative operative who allegedly attempted to grab a ballot box at a university in Guelph, is another example that will leave an impression on voters.
“I think there’s a drip, drip, drip of issues here which are slowly beginning to fill up the bathtub,” said Ignatieff, after visiting the home of an Ottawa couple struck by cancer. “That’s beginning to connect right? That is what’s happening, I believe, in the minds of voters.”
Ignatieff, who was promoting his party’s pledge to offer new support and employment insurance benefits to help families provide home care for sick loved ones said the incident was similar to what happened a few weeks earlier when Conservative leader Stephen Harper allowed security to remove two women at a rally who had Liberal ties on the social networking Facebook website.
“The president of the university was challenging students to mobilize the vote and presto, the Conservatives come in and grab a ballot box,” said Ignatieff. “I’ve been saying throughout this election that democracy is an issue… This is part of a pattern… A politician has two loyalties here. A loyalty to his party, and a loyalty to the democratic system. I’d like to see some loyalty to the democratic system from the prime minister.”
The Conservative party later issued a statement saying it was protesting whether the polling station was authorized, but dismissed suggestions that it interfered with the voting process as “outlandish and unfounded claims being spread on the Internet.”
Meantime, Ignatieff also blasted Harper following new revelations that former Conservative minister and MP, Helena Guergis, was ejected from cabinet and the party caucus even though the prime minister did not have credible evidence to call in the RCMP to investigate her.
The thing that’s astounding to me is the prime minister’s judgment,” said Ignatieff. “You cashier a member of your own caucus, but you keep in your inner circle, in the prime minister’s own office, a man five times convicted of fraud, Mr. Carson, who then gets accused of influence peddling.”
He dismissed suggestions that his party had also unfairly attacked Guergis’s credibility.
“The issue was not Helena Guergis, the issue was the lobbying conduct of her husband. that was always the issue for us and we continue to make that the issue,” Ignatieff said.
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