Stephen Harper, Thursday. “This is not a card game … This is not a game.”
Globe and Mail, tonight. This week, on the heels of their new resolve to defeat the government, the Liberals announced they would no longer attend the EI working group … On Thursday, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley decided to capitalize on this and cast the Tories as the party that had been stood up in the affair.
She summoned TV cameras and photographers to take pictures of her meeting on EI without the Liberals and lamenting the rival party’s absence from the talks. Ms. Finley held this event in the same room the two parties had used in past weeks to discuss the now-aborted venture, making chit chat with fellow Tory MP Pierre Poilievre as the cameras rolled.
At one point, journalists there to capture the scene asked Ms. Finley to speak up – but she replied that she had only intended to be seen rather than heard. “I was just trying to mouth it for you,” she said. An artificial dialogue then ensued for the cameras.