Take anything the National Post says with a large pound of salt

Late last night, we had John Ivison claiming that Michael Ignatieff, despite his strong calls of support for Dion and his repeated statements that the Conservative government deserved to be defeated on such shows as Question Period on CTV and on the CBC Sunday Morning Show, was actually against this deal according to “sources”, and that many of his supporters would probably abstain from defeating the government. Several hours later, Ivison had a different story – now Dion, Rae, and Leblanc had met in Toronto with Iggy and had decided they would step aside and allow Iggy to become interim leader of the Liberals and thus Prime Minister if the Conservative government fell and the coalition took place.

This morning Bob Rae got on CTV’s Canada AM to set the record straight, and his most important statement he made in his interview in my view was this:

I think it’s very important for Canadians to know that the notion that somehow any internal issues in the party would be allowed to interfere with a successful transition to a new government, that notion is false. We are all going to be working together. We’re all putting national interests first. We’re all going to be making sure that it’s the national interest that prevails and that interest is in having a stable government with strong economic leadership with a program that makes sense to Canadians. That’s what we’re doing.

The Conservatives are in desperation mode here; they are furiously trying to backpedal from their political miscalculation that an economic statement was really not going to be used as an economic statement and more as a partisan sledge-hammer. I’m not just talking the elimination of public election financing, but the elimination of public sector unions right to strike, as well as taking away the concept of equal pay for work of equal value for women. This was all right-wing red meat for their base, but nothing done for economic stimulus for the country in a time of recession, where Canada is experiencing a lot of job losses and a lot of struggling companies.

As such, they are going to try everything they can to hang on, and that includes using their allies in the media (such as Ivison and the National Post in general, as well as their favourite network CTV) to try and sew dissension amongst the Liberal Party. Chantal Hebert said the same thing this morning in the Star that internal Liberal divisions was the Conservatives best hope at trying to break up the coalition and save their government.

So, until we see something official, I suggest everyone calm down over every little report from some of the media that comes out saying this thing or that, when more then a few of those media folks are all too willing to help their Conservative friends out in trying to save their skins.