"The Liberals occupy the middle and the ground is there for us," Martin said Thursday. "You've got a very far right government in office and I don't think Canadians are there. I also don't think Canadians are going to look to the NDP and that extreme. We are the only people who are speaking to the middle."
Martin, who served as prime minister from 2003 to 2006, said he worries Canada will suffer the same political polarization evident south of the border that stalls progress.
Asked who he believes would make a good leader for the Liberals, Martin replied: "There are a lot of good candidates out there and it's up to them to come forth. No one needs me to be telling them."
In an interview on Global Toronto's The Morning Show, Martin said the Harper government needs to stand firm with Quebec's newly-elected separatist government. "One of the best things that happened in the election campaign is that the more Pauline Marois brought up the referendum, the more the support for the referendum dropped," he said. "She's obviously going to try to provoke a backlash and it's very important that our response be measured but be unequivocal."
THE ECONOMY
Martin, 74, warned Canadians not to take their relatively strong economy for granted. "The Canadian economy is doing reasonably well [but] I don't think it's something we should be smug about," he said. "Canadian consumers are over indebted. We are affected by what goes on in the United States and by what goes on in Europe."
Martin said European governments have dropped the ball. "The Europeans are constantly applying Band-Aids to their problems as opposed to dealing with them and they're eventually going to have to deal with them," he said. "The real problem is when they formed the Eurozone they didn't put in place the kinds of institutions that are going to govern that common currency. You need the same economic institutions to have a monetary union as you do to run a country. You need to have a central bank that can be a lender of last resort, you have to have common banking policies. They have none of this kind of thing and they're taking a lifetime to build them."
The former federal finance minister also said there are big challenges ahead for whoever wins the U.S. presidential election. "The problem is there's no indication that they understand their deficit problems are huge but they've been masked by the fact the American interest rates don't go up the way they did in Spain or Italy," Martin explained. "Sooner or later that's going to catch up with them and when their interest rates start to take off they're going to find that they have left too much time between now and when they should act."
Original Article
Source: global news
Author: John R. Kennedy
No comments:
Post a Comment