Senator Duffy Sets the 'Election' Record Straight

 

CFRA RADIO PROGRAM:  MICHAEL HARRIS LIVE 

INTERVIEW: SENATOR MIKE  DUFFY, CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF CANADA

MICHAEL HARRIS

(Host): It  may be summer. You may be cooking up some
wonders on your barbecue, but politics  are never very far off in our country. And
you just heard on this program both  Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail
and Darrell Bricker of Ipsos-Reid, both  saying there is in their opinion a
very reasonable chance we’ll be going to the  polls this fall. Well, I have
reached the man who will know the answer to that  question. He is Senator
Mike Duffy. He is speaking to us on his cell phone. And  it’s been a while
Mike. It’s good to hear your  voice.

MIKE DUFFY (Senator,  Conservative Party of Canada): Good to hear you Mike.
Listening all the time of  course from the mighty 50,000 watt (inaudible).

HARRIS: Now listen. You  are personally, single-handedly responsible for at
least ten stories today  saying Mike Duffy is getting ready, getting Prince
Edward Islanders ready for a  trip to the polls. I know you have fun when
you do your speeches. But is there a  real possibility in your view, as
bereft as the Liberals are of ideas except for  EI reform, that they could force
an election come the  fall?

DUFFY: Well, first of all  Michael, I don’t think we should have an
election. And let me just rewind the  tape for a second.

HARRIS:  Yeah.

DUFFY: I gave a speech  yesterday to the Rotary Club of Charlottetown, in
which I never used the word  election, and frankly, never mentioned the Prime
Minister, I gave a very dry,  because as you know, Rotary is a
non-political body, I gave a very dry report  card on the more than 200 million
additional dollars this government has poured  into Prince Edward Island.

HARRIS:  Yes.

DUFFY: I was never asked  about an election. I never used the word
election. I never mentioned the Prime  Minister by name in my speech or by his
office. And yet the headline comes out  this morning, Duffy refuses to dampen
speculation of an election and sings the  praises of the Prime Minister in a
speech laden with rhetoric. Well,  Michael...

HARRIS: You didn’t  mention the Prime Minister at all.

DUFFY: I didn’t mention  the Prime Minister. I didn’t ever use the word
election or make any reference to  it because I didn’t want to hurt the
neutral ears of the Rotarians, who do so  much great work. And I thought, don’t
drag that dirty political thing in  here.

HARRIS:  Yeah.

DUFFY: We’ll, we’ll give  it as a very factual thing. And here it is, and
the newspaper reporter never  asked me about an election or about anything
else related to the Prime Minister.  She had no, repeat, no questions, so, at
least not of the national scene. She  asked something about a local
community college. But that was it. And then I  wake up this morning and here they’
ve got me singing the praises, great  rhetoric. Well, let me tell you, as
much as I like to think that every speech is  a good one, they’ve obviously
never heard me when I’ve gotten going as we have.  And so, they put it, all
this great rhetoric. I was reading a grocery list of,  of projects for the
island. So anyway, this whole thing is manufactured. And I  was thinking so
much about you today as I read the paper and the brilliant  column you wrote in
last week’s Sun about wafergate in New Brunswick, where the  editors made
it up. It had nothing to do with what the reporter said. And so,  I’m saying
to myself, my God, this is like the virus or something. It’s creeping 
across provincial borders. Now all of a sudden the Charlottetown paper can’t 
just report the news. They’ve got to make it up.

HARRIS: Did you, did you  get a chance to speak to the reporter?

DUFFY: Well, I haven’t  seen her today. I saw her yesterday. And, well, in
fact I was at an event this  morning. And by the time it was finished and I
went over, she had jumped in her  car and fled. So, I didn’t get a chance.
But you know, never get in a fight with  people who buy ink by the, by the
barrel. I mean, it’s another example. Here it  is in the quiet summertime and
everybody’s bound and determined to try and  create something. Now, let me
get back to your  question.

HARRIS:  Yeah.

DUFFY: I don’t think  there’s any need for an election. What is the
outstanding burning issue that’s  got to be resolved? I think the government’s
frankly –and this is my honest  opinion –done a good job. 
And I think we’ve seen  the governor of the bank, Mark Carney, come out and
say we’re just about to hit  bottom. That doesn’t mean that it’s all going
to be solved in the next three or  four months, because as you well know,
in economics there’s a lag time and there  will be still people getting bad
news and pink slips before we’re out of this.  But I think we’ve done
remarkably well as a country and I give credit to all  levels of government. Look
at all the stuff Stephen Harper’s been doing with  Dalton McGuinty. There
was a time a year ago when they barely spoke to each  other because everybody
was clawing for partisan advantage. But now they’re  buddy-buddy, flying on
the same plane together and working together because this  is bigger than
politics. This is the future of our country. And so, every once  in a while
the little terriers or whatever they are around here will nip at your  heels.
But as Dief used to say, ah, when you’re on the trail of big game don’t 
get sidetracked by rabbit tracks. And that’s what we have here in, that’s
what  we had in the Charlottetown Guardian, rabbits thumping where there wasn’t
 tracks. It might have been something else.

HARRIS: Well, I’ll tell  you what. It was certainly picked up, it was
picked up everywhere. I used to,  when I wrote my columns for the Globe and Mail
you’d sometimes pick up a news  piece or a column and you wouldn’t
recognize your work under the headline. And I  always used to have kind of a instant
reflex to call the editor and say, you  know, of all the things to have
taken out of the column, why did you, why did  you make it about that? I wrote
a column once about a fellow you know, Bill  Rowe, a former politician in
Newfoundland, almost became premier, and they  called the column, which was a
respectful piece outlining some of the things he  did, Reflections on a
Derailed Life. So, he called me up and he said, derailed  life? I mean, at that
time had a television show.

DUFFY: He was a Rhodes  Scholar.

HARRIS: That’s right,  yeah. So he found it hard, hard to deal with that. 
I want to  just...

DUFFY: People in  Toronto, you  know, the thought control centre, and some
of that’s infected them down here. So  thank heavens most of the public doesn
’t take that seriously. They count on  people like you to keep them
straight Michael.

HARRIS: One last little  point. The, you said that looking out at the
political landscape there’s no  really big idea. If you take a look back in
history,  Trudeau...

DUFFY: I’m saying big  issue.

HARRIS: Trudeau  (inaudible) did the thing on EI, EI availability and
making it easier to get it  and the unemployment rate actually went up two
percent. The only big idea I see  them talking about is EI reform if you cost that
as a big idea. But I don’t  think you can frame an election around that.

DUFFY: No. And I think  the issue in the election will be management in
tough times. And whatever people  may think about Stephen Harper, that’s he’s
not, he doesn’t grin enough and  doesn’t kiss enough babies or whatever
else they can say, the fact of the matter  is is that he did not remain true to
hard rock conservative ideology. This was  the one case in a million when
Keynesian economics was called for and he went  for it. 
And there was a lot of  people grumbling, as I say, at the Rotary as I came
in. There were people  talking about deficit spending, why did we bail out
the auto industry. The auto  industry is really very simple and I don’t know
why the media hasn’t made it  clear. It’s one thing if you allowed
Chrysler and GM to shut down in  Canada. You’d lose 20,000 jobs and  that’s a
tragedy. But then the protectionists in the States would say, let’s get  back at
Canada for what they did, and they’d  tear up the Auto Pact and then we
lose the parts business, which is a  quarter-of-a-million or 300,000 jobs. So,
while we might want to beat our  chests, the reality is that with Mr. Obama
in the White House our options are  pretty limited. And I think we, as a
country, have been doing very well with all  politicians working together. And
I hope that at the end of the day Mr.  Ignatieff will see that it’s not
worth putting the country through an election  this fall. There’s lots of time
for that after we’re out of the woods and let  people make their decisions
then.

HARRIS: Mike, a great  pleasure to talk to you. You enjoy the rest of this
summer day and I hope to  talk to you again very soon.

DUFFY: All the best  Michael. Great to hear you as always.

HARRIS: Take care. That  is Senator Mike Duffy, talking to us on his cell
phone, I think, from beautiful  Prince Edward  Island.