Keyboard-playing Harper the envy of Liberal party

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/12/2010 (5442 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — If anyone is thinking about giving the Liberal Party of Canada a Christmas present I have a suggestion: piano lessons and singing instruction for Leader Michael Ignatieff.

Maybe then Ignatieff can regale his MPs with a litany of oldie-but-goodie songs at a Christmas party and his MPs won’t end up being so bitter every time the prime minister does his best imitation of a rock star.

He did so for the second time in just over a year last Wednesday, playing keyboards and singing several popular rock and roll songs at the annual Conservative holiday party.

After his previous performance at the 2009 National Arts Centre gala, his party got a bump of 10 points in the polls — which is likely why this year’s encore left the Liberals griping and sniping.

One senior Liberal complained to the Globe and Mail Harper hadn’t even bothered to perform one song in French and called it a snub to Quebec.

Seriously?

It was a political party’s holiday fete. The prime minister took off his tie and had some fun.

Get over yourself.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae at least seemed to have a potential solution to the whole issue.

Rae, who has been known to tickle the ivories and croon himself at Liberal fundraisers, tweeted Friday:

“Okay Steve. . . you, me, two pianos (at) dawn.”

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Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner had a stellar sophomore year as an MP.

She may not have ended with enough votes to pass her private member’s bill to eliminate the gun registry, but the MP from Portage-Lisgar earned high praise for the way she went about working her bill. It was not with mud slinging and cheap shots but with poise and eloquence and old-fashioned on-the-ground politicking. She certainly got the attention of the PMO in the process but also of the national electorate.

She is now one of the more popular backbenchers on the Hill, tapped often for political commentary on national television shows and looked at as somewhat of a leader among her peers.

Her name is being bandied about as a possible, even likely, candidate for a promotion to cabinet in the shuffle expected in the next few weeks.

In the final weeks of 2010 she has made it onto a number of year-end lists. She is leading a CBC Politics poll for the game changer of 2010, with more than 1,000 votes on second-place WikiLeaks as of Sunday afternoon. A Hill Times poll of MPs, political staffers and analysts on the Hill picked her as their second favourite up-and-coming MP behind Nova Scotia’s Megan Leslie of the NDP. Finally, the Globe and Mail named her one of “Five MPs to watch this winter” along with Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, NDP MP Paul Dewar and cabinet ministers Rona Ambrose and Jason Kenney.

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New Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux took his seat in the House of Commons Thursday. As is the custom, he was accompanied into the House for the first time on the arm of his leader, Michael Ignatieff. Manitoba’s only other Liberal MP, Anita Neville, took Lamoureux’s other arm.

He also was given his token first question, using it to blast Harper for a clandestine, unpublicized appearance in Winnipeg North during the byelection.

“Why was the prime minister scared to engage real people in Winnipeg North,” Lamoureux bellowed.

Just as he was in the Manitoba legislature for the last seven years, Lamoureux was assigned to a seat in the back row of the Liberal benches in the House of Commons. He may take some solace in that he actually gets to sit next to a fellow Liberal now though.

After being reelected to the Manitoba legislature in 2003 after a four-year absence, Lamoureux famously delayed an emergency debate on the mad cow crisis to complain he didn’t get to sit next to his leader.

Conservative Bob Sopuck, elected at the same time as Lamoureux, has yet to be sworn in as an MP and has not yet taken his seat in the House.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca