Posted on behalf of Martin:

Stéphane Dion’s speech

 
“My fellow Canadians, tonight is a momentous occasion. When we leave here tonight the political landscape in Canada will have moved. Most of you did not want this election that Mr Harper has called. You especially didn’t want an election that changes nothing at all at great expense. Many of you are fearful about the future. It is so uncertain and full of  threats to your way of life.  Fuel costs seem to be unpredictable and rising. Climate change is set to make the world a different place for your children.  The financial system is in a greed driven meltdown. Someone needs to take a leadership role here and lead the nation through these times.  And I can assure you that someone is not Mr Harper.
 
Mr Harper was right about one thing however. Parliament has become dysfunctional.  Mr Harper is the one who has made it so. Mr Harper’s advisors from the Bush administration have helped the Conservatives to consciously take power from the Canadian people and hand it to a new oligarchy of corporate, oil and financial interests. It is now time to reverse this and for politics to become relevant again.  It is time for the Canadian people to feel that their votes matter again. It is time for the Canadian people to take back the power that Mr Harper has stolen from them.
 
This election is about the economy.  It is about social justice and it is about the environment. You could say that we here today are Canada’s best representatives of these three issues while the conservatives represent the corporate world  in a way that is best for them.
 
As many of you already know the Liberal party has taken a political gamble under my leadership.  There are those within the party who are unconvinced that we should go down the path that I have chosen.  But for me while there may be political risk to major change there is also opportunity and in this case the major risk is in not embracing the change before us.  The risk however is not to the Liberal party, it is to our country and indeed our planet and our future on it.
 
There are perhaps those of you who are still unconvinced that climate change is real or perhaps you think that even if climate change is upon us it is not man made and so we can do nothing about it. This is entirely understandable because when you go out for a walk or a drive everything seems the same. Gas prices are higher but still half of what they are in Europe so where’s the worry?
 
Unfortunately the world’s scientific community is convinced that the problem is real and that our reckless use of fossil fuels is to blame.  Sir Nigel Stern, an ex president of the world bank, hardly a radical, has even put some numbers to the scenarios ahead.  He has estimated that if the world economy can contribute 2% of its output to mitigating climate change issues then it may forestall a collapse of up to 20% in the global GNP.  The UN has issued a series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, each one more convincing than the previous one to say that we must take action now.
 
Europe has responded to this call for action and it has universally been good for the economies that have moved forward.  Germany has become a world leader in photo voltaics,  Denmark is producing 20% of their power from wind.  The average per capita CO2 profile for Europe is about 1/3 that of North America and no-one can say that Europe’s lifestyle is inferior to ours.
 
Canada and the US have done nothing except to increase our deadly impact.  Mr Harper has modelled his government on that of Mr Bush. Mr Harper has even hired the same advisors from the US as used by the Bush, Cheney, Rove camp.  These people are evil.  They have absolutely no social conscience. Their sole prerogative is to increase bottom line profits for their supporters and to hold onto power at all costs and that includes well documented vote fixing and disenfranchisement of the poor.  It’s outcomes are becoming clearer every day as the effect of these policies causes a global recession.  The policies of the Right turn out to be very wrong.
 
My fellow Canadians: it is time to change the way we do business. For many years the environmental economists have suggested that we tax the polluters.  ‘Polluter pays’ has been the rallying cry.  Well they are right. Whoever pollutes our environment that we all share should pay to clean it up.  Some one has to clean up. Who should it be? The government? Future generations? No. If you make the mess, you should be responsible for cleaning it up.  The ‘Green Shift’ is the tax mechanism to finally make this happen.  And it is not only about cleaning up, it is now also much more important than that.  It is about our survival as a culture.  We cannot continue to foul our nest anymore and expect the planet to ignore it.  The scale of our presence is now so large that we must change and change dramatically.
 
Europe has been working with a carbon tax system for some years now and so fortunately they have learned some lessons in how to make this work.  We at the Liberal party have already heard back from you about places that you have identified where the green shift might cause real hardship to those most affected.  In response we have made adjustments in the spirit of social justice to put the costs on those who not only can most afford them but also are most responsible.
 
So why are we four before you today?  We are here to ask for your help in moving our country forward amongst the world’s nations.  We have to change now and we have together come up with a plan. Just as Mr Churchill rallied the British people so famously in the Second World War so now we are proposing such a rally.
 
We four parties represent about 65% of Canadian voters against Mr Harper’s 35%.  And yet because of the old first past the post system of voting that we still use here in Canada it is entirely possible for Mr Harper to have a majority government based on these numbers. Canada and the world cannot endure more Bush style policies. The Oil industry is powerful and we are all participants in the oil economy.  The oil industry can change and can be a major participant in this shift; indeed the industry is already making the shift with T. Boone Pickens moving his oil fortune into wind and BP changing its name to ‘Beyond Petroleum’.
 
And so my fellow Canadians I stand before you today with a plan to take us into a new age. It is radical and there will be some amongst you who will find it difficult to accept.  However I hope that you will hear us out and consider our joint proposal.  You can be sure that if we had not heard from Canadians that they want a new way forward we would not be here tonight. If we had not heard from you that the Harper way is an intolerable alternative we would not be here tonight.
 
Our plan is to unite our efforts against Mr Harper and his policies of destruction. We must form a coalition government to guarantee that Mr Harper is removed from power before he destroys us all. In each riding we will make a recommendation of who we would like our supporters to vote for based on who was incumbent in the last parliament.  If the Conservatives were incumbent because of vote splitting between our four socially progressive parties then these ridings are crucial. In each of these ridings we will choose a member of one of our parties to run so that the percentage of members of each party in parliament is representative of the percentage of the popular vote cast in the last general election.
 
Once our new progressive alliance has formed a government we will bring in a proportional representation system of voting so that never again will Canadians have to feel that their votes do not count, never again will they have to vote just to stop who they hate. Canadians will have a reason to vote again and the numbers of Canadians who vote will rise again from the apathetic turnouts that the current system promotes.
 
Once our alliance has formed a government we will take Canada through the green shift to a new progressive economy based on social justice and respect for each other and the environment. We will bring in proportional representative voting based on the recommendations from a citizen’s assembly who will decide on the specific system. We will address the peak oil crisis with a plan that is fair for all. If oil use is to be restricted as it will be soon throughout the world we will ration it based on need not wealth. When the scientists tell us that we must cut our CO2 emissions, we will do so in real terms not in meaningless intensity targets.
We will support public transit over private vehicles. We will support peacekeeping over war. We will support community development over individual wealth creation. We will support beauty before profit.
 
And so my fellow Canadians I ask you here tonight to vote for our coalition.  In a few years when the next election comes around under proportional representation you can again vote for the candidate that you really want and know that you vote will count. Coalition governments can only bring in policies that have a wide acceptance amongst its varied members. They can not be dictatorial. We believe than this is healthy.
 
Thank you and now I would like to introduce my fellow coalition leaders Jack Layton, Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe.”

Jack Layton’s speech

 
“Thank you Stephane. New Democratic party members, Canadians, French and English and First nations and peoples from all over the world with many languages and cultures, all who call this great country home, I speak to you tonight as Mr Dion has said, with a special purpose. Our purpose is to stop Mr Harper’s dictatorial approach to governing our nation.  Even some of his own members will privately tell you that he is a dictator.  He brooks no dissent, he allows no local representation by his members. Everything comes out of the Prime Ministers Office.  His constituency is his corporate masters. His direction comes from big oil.  His objective is for his corporate masters to maximize their obscene profits while normal working Canadians are left behind.  The huge and growing gap between the rich and the middle class is a policy objective of the Conservatives under Mr Harper.  The once principled party of Mr Diefenbaker and Mr Stanfield and Mr Clark has been turned into a vehicle for oppression. He must be stopped.
 
The New Democratic party is not the Liberal party or the Green party. And we are not the Bloc Quebecois although we share the same social values on many issues.  We stand up for those in society who are often voiceless. We represent Canadians who work for a living. Canadians who live normal unglamorous lives with their families in towns across the country and want their government to act fairly towards them. Canadians who expect taxes to be progressive and support the services that we all need in equal measure.  We are not a party with corporate linkages like the Liberals and although we believe like the Green party that the environment and climate change are very important issues that need our immediate and sustained attention, we are not prepared to see this happen on the backs of working Canadians while the corporations and the rich just get richer and help not at all.
 
In this alliance that we join today we will take part only as long as the gap between rich and poor is shrinking. In this alliance we will take part only as long as it is fair. We will not support a green shift that unfairly penalises farmers and truckers and average Canadians heating their modest homes across Canada.  We will ensure for all Canadians that social justice is at the root of every government action.
 
You will hear the Conservative apologists for corporate control of Canada say that our country must be mean and lean in order to compete in the world.  You will hear them say that our workers are too highly paid and so they must move their production to lower waged areas of the world with no environmental or work safety standards. You will have observed that the Corporate wages for CEOs and senior management have skyrocketed over the last decade to a point where salaries for corporate CEOs can be several hundred times the lowest paid worker when only a couple of decades ago a ratio of 20:1 was considered ethically acceptable.  This must stop.  With oil rising to higher and higher prices (and I can assure you that the current dip in this rise is only temporary) the increased windfall profits must be used to mitigate the impact on working Canadians.  The windfalls must be used to kickstart the new economy.  It is intolerable that these huge increases are just making the rich, richer. This must stop.
 
Canada is one of the last functioning democracies to still not have a proportional representation system of voting. It is time for us to join the progressive democracies. The first past the post system supports the ruling party and as such is hard to change because the party in power has no motivation to do so. It can only be brought into place by a strong citizen movement which is what has already happened in virtually every European country.
 
This is the moment when Canada enters the 21st century. Mr Harper is stuck in a Neanderthal past which we must leave behind. Mr Dion and I and Elizabeth May and Mr Duceppe are committed to this future.
 
Thank you all very much for joining with us in this endeavour.

Elizabeth May’s speech

 
“Good evening Canada. The Green party has been in existence since the 1960’s. That is nearly 50 years.  During this time we have been relentless in our role as ‘canary in the coal mine’. Although global warming as a result of human CO2 emissions was  first forecast in 1895 by Svante Arrhenius it wasn’t really until the 1960’s that Rachel Carson with ‘Silent Spring’ and Paul Erlich with ‘The Population Bomb’ and the Club of Rome with ‘Limits to Growth’ really brought public attention to the looming crisis of the limits to human activity on this planet. Within a short period of time many environmental organizations were born to mobilize the planet into action. GreenPeace, Pollution Probe, World Wildlife Fund, soon joined the Sierra Club in the fight to stop mindless development and pollution from destroying the natural heritage of the planet. We were known as ecofreaks and were ridiculed and reviled by the business community. No development project before the 1960’s had to do an environmental impact study. Now all major developments not only do environmental impact studies but they also think that it is the right thing to do.
 
Love canal, Chernobyl, Three mile Island, Bhopal, the Exxon Valdez, the collapse of fisheries, the ozone hole and global warming are all now household words.  We no longer tolerate the massive destruction of the environment as a sidebar to development. And yet Canada has an elephant in the room. The Tar Sands development in Alberta is the single most destructive project underway on the planet. The dams containing its gigantic toxic tailing ponds are visible from space. The potential for absolutely catastrophic environmental disaster is just a freak rainstorm away. If one of those tailing pond dams breaks, the Athabasca and the Beaufort Sea will be dead. We have already seen birds and workers die just from contact with the effluent in these ponds. This is insanity. And it is all to produce oil for the US market at the expense of Canadian natural gas. It takes one unit of natural gas energy for each 3 units of dirty, high CO2 crude oil energy produced. The profit to the companies is now huge and provides the support for the Harper regime. Ethically, scientifically, and morally the tar sands are indefensible. They only exist because of addiction to oil at any price. This must stop.
 
We know that the end of the oil age is within sight. By 2030 or sooner oil will be a luxury item.  And yet because this comes at a time when the fossil fuel already burned has already overloaded the atmosphere with CO2 we cannot substitute tar sands oil, we can not substitute coal, we can not even use natural gas or methane as all of these will only compound the problem. The only way forward will be renewables. Anything else is a stopgap and an aggravation of the problem.  If the investment money going into the tar sands was switched to renewables then we could be well on our way into a new world economy that is sustainable. T. Boone Pickens has started to move his money from oil to wind. China has the largest installed base of solar hot water heaters in the world. Japan is tripling its production of solar voltaics this year. Europe is looking at a network of high voltage DC distribution and solar generating plants in North Africa. Harper is on the wrong track. He has to be stopped.
 
I am sure that there are those who are in disbelief over this alliance just as there are many who have already told us that it is about time the political system here in Canada started dealing with real problems effectively and dynamically rather than continuing to indulge in petty political squabbling.

Our motivation originated with Briony Penn, a west coast Green Party member who saw that even with the substantial percentage of the vote that the Green Party was getting, no Green was likely to be elected for the foreseeable future. Moreover, there was no chance that either the Conservatives or the Liberals would bring in a proportional representation system such as most other advanced democracies already have. So, amidst much agonizing and debate amongst her Green supporters, she moved to the Liberal Party and is now running in Saanich - Gulf islands against Gary Lunn, the Conservative minister of exploitable resources. As Briony has said, Time is too short to not have the power to make the changes that are needed immediately. As the Green Party leader I have to make the difficult choice of encouraging the Green Party supporters in this riding to vote for Briony, who can undoubtedly remove Mr Lunn from the scene. Our Green Party candidate, Andrew Lewis, will announce that he is withdrawing from the race, and I want to personally thank him for his support in this. He knows, as do all the members of the Green Party, that the time we have to make this green shift is very short. This is not a time for nitpicking over details. It is a time for serious action.
 
 
Thanks you all for being part of this dramatic evening with us. We are all committed to serious action. We will not engage in petty political battles at the expense of real action. What we have put before you tonight is the recipe for this action. The world is a changing place and Canadians have the right to control how our country evolves in it.  Just as we will not allow fascist and terrorist interests to dictate how the world’s communities evolve so also we must not allow huge corporate and financial interests to take control away from the people.
 
The decision is now in the hands of voting Canadians. May you all be blessed.”

Gilles Duceppe’s speech:

 
Good evening everyone.  It feels a little strange to be here helping Canadians save their country because, of course, I am a sovereigntist of Quebec. However, even though I know that Quebec is not only a distinct society, not only a nation within a nation I also know it is a nation in its own right. But even though I know this, I also can tell you that Quebec is not going away.  Whatever our political state we will always be exactly where we are geographically and so the future of our neighbours is important to us. Yes we are a regional party and we are in Ottawa for only one reason and that is to fight for the best for Quebec.  We are a progressive party. We believe in human rights, we believe that Quebec should be the best place for Quebecers.  We believe in our culture and we believe that culture is central to our economy.  Mr Harper is a follower of the policies of the discredited US Administration of Mr Bush. He is mad I think. Harper has attacked culture as unnecessary. He believes in Oil and Money only. Well Mr Harper I have some news for you, the cultural exports of Quebec are huge.
 
But I should tell you why I am here tonight. I am here because I want to put the resources of the Bloc into this coalition for the short-term objective of getting rid of Mr Harper.  He is dangerous. He has to be stopped.  It is ridiculous that a party with only 35% of the vote should be able to form an almost dictatorial majority government against the rest of us who really want to stop his destructive policies.  And so we must this one time come together with what we four parties have in common and defeat him.
 
We four parties do have more in common with each other than any of us have in common with Mr Harper.  Most of all we all believe that we need to be part of the Global effort to stop our environment from being destroyed by greed.  We all believe in a fair and generous society not a mean one that only benefits a few rich cats.
 
I do plan to still fight for Quebec’s right to have a seat at the United Nations. I believe that an independent Quebec will be good for us and good for Canada too. We are not going away. Mr Dion and the other leaders disagree with me on this. But I tell you that we will be your partners on this continent forever. And we all agree that we must stop Harper before he destroys us all.
 
Thank you and please help the 65% of Canadians who want Harper out to achieve that goal.

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And so with these four stirring speeches the coalition of the three plus one action parties was born. Each has its special talents and areas of greatest expertise. The Liberals as a party that has long ruled Canada has the deep governing skills and international credentials to give the coalition immediate credibility both amongst Canadians and on the international stage. The NDP as the champions of the working people of Canada and the conscience of the nation -especially in the service of those who find difficulties in dealing with day to day life- are crucial to keeping social justice at the forefront of every policy.  Canada must no longer be a mean country.  The Green party, after nearly 50 years of crying in the wilderness about what has to be done for the health of the planet and the local environment has finally come to the day when the rest of world is catching up with them and realizing perilously late that what they have been saying is true. And it should be on record that the three parties have a full slate of candidates across the nation and a full policy for governance. The plus one Bloc is also the champion party for many in that great nation that we are lucky to have within Canada: Quebec.
 
These three great parties have a huge history of leadership from the likes of Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, Lester Pearson, Ed Broadbent, Stephen Lewis, Jean Cretian  and the Canadian Green movement with David Suzuki, and Bob Hunter the founder of the largest Green organization in the world, GreenPeace.  There is no shortage of credentials in this coalition. The Bloc has the tradition of the passionate Quebecers who truly want to have their place in the world.
 
And to complete this fairy tale the coalition went on to win a landslide victory in the election and had many productive years in government as independent parties elected through a proportional representation system of voting and working together in coalitions to govern this great nation.  Canada recommitted forces to UN peacekeeping.  Most Canadians know that Lester Peason received the Nobel prize for Canada for the creation of UN peacekeeping.  Most Canadians do not know that currently under the Harper regime Canada has less than 50 soldiers wearing the blue beret.
Canada’s role as mediator, peacekeeper and source of the multicultural skills needed in this small and varied planet is re-established.
 
As far as the environmental elephant in the room, a moratorium is put on tar sands expansion until it can be shown that the CO2 profile is being reduced in real terms, ultimately to zero. It was shown that most Canadians had not realized that the Harper intensity target system of measurement was a complete scam to serve the profits of his oil masters.
 
Investment into conservation life style changes reduced the Canadian carbon footprint by 75% in the first 4 years of the coalition. The technologies of countless projects and policies from Drakes landing in Alberta to Ontario Hydro’s lead in tariff for solar electricity were replicated again and again across Canada to further move us from one of the worst CO2 emitters per capita on the planet to a more reasonable level following European standards.
 
Agriculture shifted surprisingly rapidly once the research that organic farming is not only healthier but also actually both more productive and more profitable began to be known.
 
Investments in rapid transit and train networks grew rapidly as peak oil prices made driving too expensive.  The available fuel was subjected to rationing so that the rich were fairly restricted in their driving as much as anyone.
 
And of course Canadians narrowly averted the tragedy of the continued dictatorship of corporate ideology and lived happily ever after with true representative democracy secure.