(Ottawa) Former Secretary of State and first woman to run as a major party candidate for President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, has warned Liberals to beware of political parties that want to backtrack .
“There are forces in your own country that are trying to figure out if they can tinker with the clock and maybe turn it back a bit,” she said Friday at the Liberal Party of Canada’s national convention in Ottawa.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who was interviewing him, replied tit for tat that “there certainly are” before urging the Liberals to “listen carefully to the warnings” of Secretary Clinton.
“Our really wonderful friends and neighbors to the south, in 2016, you warned them, we see what happened,” Ms. Freeland added in reference to her interlocutor’s loss to Donald Trump.
Mrs. Clinton first rose to national prominence during the presidential terms of her husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s, before launching her own political career as a senator from New York.
The politician served as the 67th US Secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s first term before winning the Democratic nomination for the 2016 presidential election, which she lost to Donald Trump.
Earlier in the evening, former Prime Minister of Canada and ex-Liberal leader Jean Chrétien attributed Canadian progressivism and sound management of public finances to Liberal governments, throwing a few arrows at Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
“For 60 years, there have only been ten budget surpluses in Canadian finances and, Mr. Poilievre, it was always (under) Liberal governments”, launched the one who led the country from 1993 to 2003, having won three majority mandates.
During a speech that earned him thunderous applause, Mr. Chrétien described the Canada of 1963, when he was first elected to the Canadian Parliament. This country had no national health care system, no two official languages, no charter of rights and freedoms, the constitution was British law and there was not even a maple leaf, the national flag.
“These things didn’t happen by accident. They did not fall from the sky. They happened because of Liberal governments,” he told the assembled Liberal activists.
Over the years, the Liberals, the “radical center” party, have made the country “more just, more prosperous, more benevolent, more tolerant and more diverse”, he insisted.
Mr. Chrétien, who has visibly lost none of his ardor despite his 89 years, vigorously attacked the new Conservative leader and called on the population to re-elect Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the next election.
The former prime minister also had a rebuttal to Mr. Poilievre’s oft-repeated notion that “everything is broken” in the country. “No, Mr. Poilievre, Canada is not broken. Canada is still the best and long live Canada! he said to warm applause.