Leaders Of The Official Opposition Canada

"Spring is here my friends and a new chapter begins."

"This is a budget that does not protect the vulnerable, it doesn't protect the jobs of today and it doesn't create the jobs that we need for tomorrow."

"I've always favoured proposition over opposition. But we will oppose the government when it's off track.We'll support positive suggestions that we'll bring forward and support the government when it's making progress."

"It's a privilege and it's an honour and Olivia and I are certainly looking forward to visiting this beautiful, historic building and being able to stay there during the session when we're here in Ottawa."

"I believe that when Paul Martin cancelled affordable housing across this country it produced a dramatic rise in homelessness and deaths due to homelessness and I've always said I hold him responsible for that."

"Inevitably, we’ve fastened on those last memorable lines about hope, optimism and love. But the letter was, at its heart, a manifesto for social democracy. And if there was one word that might sum up Jack Layton’s unabashed, social democratic message, it would be “generosity.” He wanted, in the simplest and most visceral terms, a more generous Canada."

"Mr President," I said, " I have to tell you something. I don't want to get too close to you." He looked startled. I imagine it was a rare thing for a U.S. Commander-in-chief to hear. "Canada is your best friend, largest trading partner, and closest ally, but we are also an independent country. Keeping some distance will be good for both of us. If we look as though we're the fifty-first state of the United States, there is nothing we can do for you internationally, just as the governor of a state can't do anything for you internationally. But if we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do."

"The two of us had come a long way together from our humble beginnings and the basement apartment that had been our first home as newlyweds in 1957, when I was still a law student at Laval University in Quebec City."

"Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another."

"For all its prestige, its fabulous views, its indoor pool, and its lovely garden, 24 Sussex is more like an old hotel than a modern home."

"I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister."

"I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply-side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality."

"The problem was, I enjoyed Question Period too much and loved the challenge it provided. Far from being a dreaded burden, it had become an exciting part of my life; opposition members attacked me, I fought back, I won or lost or held them to draw, and the next day we did it all over again."

"To my mind losing is always better than never trying, because you can never tell what may happen."

"I've never believed in seeking perfection at the risk of losing everything."

"I was proud to have been the anti-establishment candidate after more than twenty years in politics, a small town guy fighting for the ordinary Canadian."

"It is not the government's purpose to make a profit the way a company does, because a company doesn't have to give a damn about the unemployed poor or provide services that are non-commercial by definition."

"Economics has been called the dismal science. Once you get to understand it, you may not find it so dismal, but you don't find it much of a science either."

"The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights."

"To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it."

"Canadian federalism is more than a form of government. It's also a system of values that allows different people in diverse communities to live and work together in harmony for the good of all."

"A leader has to know how the system functions - not just the system of government but the whole social and economic system, including business, the unions, and the universities."

"A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against"

"At one point Trudeau mentioned to me that the National Gallery wanted to buy a masterpiece by the great Italian painter Lotto, and it needed a million dollars from the Treasury Board. "Is that Lotto-Quebec or Lotto-Canada?" I joked, but I got the message, and the National Gallery got the painting."

"Politics is a game of friends."

"A man can't ask for much more than the chance to make a difference in his chosen field of work. Politics is my vocation. I'm forever grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this great country of ours. I know I am a better person for it."

"Most Canadians don't understand the House of Commons. They turn on their televisions, see us yelling at one another, and dismiss us as a bunch of fools."

"I learned early that business is business and politics is politics. The proof is how few important businessmen have made good politicians. They may think that they are very smart about everything because they made millions of dollars by digging a hole in the ground and finding oil, but the talent and luck needed to become rich are not the same talent and luck needed to succeed on Parliament Hill."

"There are hundreds of Canadian communities that have given more thought to hiring their rink manager than they have to electing their member of Parliament."

"Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject."

"The Reform Party does not, however, equate "high profile" with electability."

"The first lesson, for all Canadians, is that the closed door, top down approaches to constitution making do not provide the public input or debate necessary to achieve a constitutional consensus that will be supported by the people."

"Over the years, I have seen too many politicians ruin their careers because they could not accept defeat graciously."

"My suspicion was that Manning knew he could never become prime minister of Canada because of Quebec and, consequently, that he wouldn't have been terribly sorry to see it leave the federation."

"The trouble with "sacrifices as symbolic acts" is that the immediate impact on those for whom the sacrifice is made quickly fades, while the impact on those who actually make the sacrifice can go on and on."

"It's one thing for a courier service transport letters and documents from one city to another at a cost that only big business can afford; but it's another thing to take a letter from an Indian boy studying at the University of Ottawa to his mother in Old Crow."

"Besides my religious commitment, the greatest single factor that has enabled me to pursue my business and political objectives has been the security and freedom of my home."

"Albertans are very competitive, and to a large extent are competing against themselves. They do not simply compare their economic and political standing with that of the other provinces, but they compare the Alberta that "is" with the Alberta that "could have been" or "could still be". In other words, part of western alienation stems from frustrated ambitions, unfulfilled expectations, an the tragedy of unrealized potentials-the crop that might have been if the hail had not come, the fortune that might have been made if the well had been drilled three miles farther north. Such sentiments deeply affect how many westerners think about themselves and the country as a whole."

"During his long political career, my father was always active in communicating the Christian gospel from the evangelical perspective,..."

"But last night, the Conservative Party reached a new low; they tried to make fun of the way I look. God gave me a physical defect, and I've accepted that since I'm a kid. It's true, that I speak on one side of my mouth. I'm not a Tory, I don't speak on both sides of my mouth."

"There is nothing more nervous than a million dollars - it moves very fast, and it doesn't speak any language."

"My first official consulting job, therefore, was for a scrap metal dealer (he resented the term "junk dealer") in East Edmonton named Benny Sugarman."

"Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward."

"For me, pepper, I put it on my plate."

"In fall 1967, I was given leave of absence by the National Public Affairs Research Foundation to move to Redondo Beach, California, to work on a short-term research contract with TRW."

"My religious training told me that in times of personal uncertainty one should seek God's direction through personal prayer and study of the Christian scriptures."

"The communications challenge faced by reform movements the world over and illustrated by this incident is this: in the modern communications business, particularly in the case of television, negative is more newsworthy than positive; short term is more newsworthy than long term; disagreement is more newsworthy than agreement; emotion-laden critiques are more newsworthy than well reasoned proposals for constructive change; discord, threats to order, and bad government are much more newsworthy than peace, order, and good government."

"This not to say that the Reform Party appears to be the Canadian equivalent of the Republican Party or that I am trying to pass myself off as a modern-day Lincoln."

"Once when I was Prime Minister, I came back from an international conference, and I set foot in Canada... To me, there, I said: Chrétien, you've got the easiest job of all these guys there, from all round the globe. Original: Quand j'étais premier ministre, pis je revenais d'une conférence internationale, pis je mettais le pied au Canada ... À moi, là, je dis : Chrétien, tu as la job la plus facile de tous ces gars-là alentour du globe."

"New Canada must be workable without Quebec, but it must be open and attractive enough to include a New Quebec."