According to The Now, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is lobbying to change the balance of Federal and municipal funding for the police.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is urging the feds to cough up more cash to help cities across Canada cope with rising policing costs.

A motion endorsed by Metro Vancouver’s mayor’s committee calls on the federal and provincial governments to change the cost-sharing formula for policing for cities with populations over 15,000.

Currently, the split is 90-10, with cities and municipalities picking up the bulk of the tab.

I presume this means that Watts believes the police are underfunded, and doesn’t want to take the blame for raising taxes locally.

More of Raven’s writings can be found at Fumbled Mumblings.

South Surrey has just received its first batch of election propaganda, thinly disguised as a survey from the incumbent Member of Parliament, Russ Hiebert.  For the most part it is generic “aren’t the Conservatives great?” stuff, but Hiebert does make a small effort to distinguish himself from the larger party.

Firstly there is some custom text about his support for reforming the Senate: pretty uncontroversial really – is there anyone (besides the Senators in question) that thinks lifetime appointments are a good thing?

Secondly there is a bit on how Hiebert has been working on increasing border crossing throughput.  This strikes me as a risky thing to brag about, as anyone that has crossed at Peace Arch in the last 3 years or so will have pretty negative feelings about the apparently eternal construction going on there.

More of Raven’s writings can be found at Fumbled Mumblings.

There are a number of interesting variables when discussing the events surrounding the federal election with a British Columbia flavor. The season of fall is approaching us as the October 14th election is providing perhaps a dry run for the May provincial encounter, along with its inside battles.

In Skeena-Bulkley the stage is being set with the Nathan Cullen – Sharon Smith federal tussle, although significant in itself , shaping as a practice for the Liberal- NDP encounter in May 2009. Smith the Harper conservative is also a Gordon Campbell Liberal who alternate names but maintain the same policy. In this region the stakes are very high as the provincial election sets the stage for a tussle that includes the prize of the newly reconfigured Bulkley Valley- Stekine riding, that lacks a incumbent.

The current MLA Dennis Mackay has served the electorate for the past two Campbell terms, failing to attain a cabinet post.The degree of political efficacy that our MLA has in Victoria is a bone of contention with one un-named insider claiming that MacKay never really had ” his head into it for the past few years” Mackay is and has been very abled but shunned on by the Campbell regime which failed to appoint anybody from the northwest region in the second term cabinet. By contrast the NDP under three previous premiers had up to two cabinet members at a time and including a acting premier and forest Minister Dan Miller.

It is from that backdrop that the NDP feel that they have a shot of reclaiming the Smithers region provincially, while re-electing its star federal MP Nathan Cullen. In the federal encounter the battle is long and arduous as many campaign workers have had to by-pass the provincial campaign nomination process in order to re-elect Cullen.

Shelly Browne is one such worker who in addition to working as an constituency assistant to Cullen. Has to put in longer hours in this heated campaign , which also hinders her ambition to win the NDP nomination if the provincial battle. Such is the case in many BC races where the federal cause has sidetracked the preparation for the provincial election.

On another front the Smith- Cullen encounter has shaped up into more of a mirror image of the US election as Smith has, as of Tuesday the 22 of September, refused to engage in a all candidates meeting in Smithers and at least two other locales. Whether this is posturing on her camp or a deliberate snub on the democratic process it is unknown. It appears though that Harper is putting a little more emphasis in this riding as another notch towards that illusive conservative majority. The battle between the strong MP and the party machine continues.

Canvassing voters door to door is the essence of the political process. That’s why I looked forward to joining Steve Clarke, the Liberal federal election candidate in Simcoe North, as he made the rounds of Lagoon City Monday evening.

The calls we made reminded me that Canadians are always (well, almost always) polite at the doorstep.

The canvass also reminded me that you don’t get much of a real discussion of the issues during these calls. Candidates of all parties can’t afford the time to get into detailed debate about their party’s platform, or the shortcomings of the other guy’s. The idea is to meet and greet, shake the hand, pledge that you’ll work hard if you’re elected, and then get on to the next house.

A couple of things impressed me about Steve Clarke when we made the rounds.

 Steve Clarke, Liberal, Simcoe North (Ontario)

The first was his obvious commitment to being a good “constituency man.” In Canadian politics, that’s usually where it’s at. He invited people to phone him with any problems and committed to getting action for them.

Steve’s Conservative opponent, the incumbent Bruce Stanton, has “worked” the riding hard since his election two years ago. He’s had the benefit of incumbency (householder mailings, making government announcements, etc) and has a good chance of re-election.

But Simcoe North is a swing riding. It was a Liberal seat for years and in 2006 Stanton took it by fewer than 1,200 votes out of 60,000 cast.

That brings me to the other thing that impressed me about Clarke. He’s got a firm grasp of the issues, and nails hard any point that a voter brings up, whether it’s for or against his party.

Lagoon City is largely a retirement community and he made a good case for the tax reductions and the increased social benefits that seniors are promised in the Liberal Green Shift. The Liberal promise to drop the tax on income trust earnings is also popular with seniors who had bought these funds when the Conservatives were promising to allow the trusts to operate as usual. Then, bam, less than a year after being elected, the Conservatives put a draconian tax load on the trusts on the grounds that they’d enjoyed preferential tax treatment. Maybe, but still, a broken promise is a broken promise.

Clarke got a better reception at the door than I’d expected. Quite a few people asked for signs. He got berated by only one person who expressed a visceral dislike of the Liberal leader, Stephane Dion.

According to today’s polls, the Liberals have bottomed out and are starting to recover some support. It’s said this may be the result of voter fear of a Stephen Harper majority. Interesting that Dion says he’ll have no truck with the NDP in an anti-Harper coalition.

If enough Liberals and NDPers are elected that together they can form a majority, I suspect he’ll sing a different tune! Remember the NDP-Liberal accord in Ontario that allowed the Liberals to form a government when the provincial Tories had won the most seats? It could happen again.

Ray Argyle

www.wildaboutwriting.com

  Voters in ridings as far away as B.C. and Ontario have apparently been getting flyers signed by our incumbent Peace River MP Chris Warkentin.  Why is our northern Alberta MP spamming voters in other ridings?  According to Garth Turner’s blogsite: “I just received a Conservative flyer…I’m for banning dangerous chemicals from baby bottles, and cracking down on manufacturers and importers of dangerous products…so I don’t object to the message…Anyway, the flyer says ‘compliments of Chris Warkentin, MP’ who is the MP for Peace River….a bit of a distance from Waterloo Region, wouldn’t you say?  Why isn’t it from my local MP?  Oh, I know, my local MP is a Liberal.”    And from the NDP-held B.C. riding of Skeena-Bulkey Valley: “Skeena-Bulkley Valley must be a hot riding…got already 6 pieces of propaganda…Inky Mark, Jay Hill, and Chris Warkentin.”  This is happening all over Canada, and involves many different Conservative MPs. The flyers are known as ten-percenters, due to the fact that federal MPs are allowed to send flyers to any riding in Canada, as long as they are not sent to more than 10 per cent of the households in that riding.   However, it IS taxpayers’ money that is being used to mail out the flyers.  The Conservatives seem to be abusing the privilege of having access to the money to send the flyers as part of a concerted strategy to sway voters in ridings that don’t already have an incumbent Conservative MP. And that may well be against the rules.  The flyers are clearly about the election, since they depict an election ballot with the names of four federal party leaders and an arrow pointing to Prime Minister Harper.  But according to rules distributed to every MP by the office of the Speaker of the House, such flyers may not contain “provincial, municipal or local election campaign material”, and they can’t request “re-election support”. NDP MP Pat Martin launched a complaint about the flyers prior to the election, saying they are “way over the line”. The Liberals have also been complaining. The strategy certainly isn’t winning any prizes from voters in the affected ridings.  A handful of voters in Ontario were upset enough to found a new Facebook group in Warkentin’s name just to complain, and New Brunswick Conservative MP Mike Allen has already had to defend himself to the CBC.   Meanwhile, voters in the Peace should be asking if Warkentin even knows about the flyers.  If he does, then isn’t he taking his own riding for granted and focusing more on swaying other ridings, and possibly breaking election rules to boot?  And if doesn’t, then isn’t the Conservative party being misleading by sending the flyers in his name?   

Yesterday, the Liberal Party of Canada issued a press release boasting that the LPC had placed first in the number of women candidates running in this election: 113 or 36.8% of 307 candidates.

Yet only 28% of those candidates are running in winnable ridings.

This places the Liberals third in terms of true female representation – behind the NDP (39%) and Bloc (32%), and one position ahead of the Conservatives (15%).

Canada ranks 51st in the World in representation of women, trailing behind Afghanistan (27th) and Iraq (33rd). Rwanda ranks 1st at 48.8%.

The top countries for representation of women use proportional representation.

Under our current first-past-the-post system (FPTP), nominations frequently are not transparent and are under the control of backroom boys. On average, 80% of the time, the backroom boys select men.

But 80% of Canadians want to elect more women.

Our FPTP system is not transparent and fails to represent women and minorities. In fact, the majority of Orphan Voters – members of the electorate who have been abandoned, neglected and abused by our archaic voting system – are women.

Julian West has just dropped out as the NDP candidate in Saanich-Gulf Islands. Since the nomination deadline has already passed, this means the NDP will not be running a candidate in the riding. This is significant as it reduces the split among the anti-Gary Lunn vote, leaving Liberal (but former Green) Briony Penn and Green candidate Andrew Lewis to try and knock off Lunn. You may remember that Andrew Lewis was the top vote-getting Green candidate in 2004, winning almost 17% of the vote.

This Sunday there will be an open debate for the Candidates in Ottawa-Centre. If you’re available, RSVP for your spot and hear what each of the candidates has to say. Details follow:

Sunday September 28, 2008
7:00 p.m.
Churchill Recreation Centre
345 Richmond Road
(entrance off of Churchill Avenue, just north of Richmond Road)

An open forum for the Federal Candidates and
residents of Ottawa Centre

Moderator: CBC Radio journalist Carolyn Adolph

Come ask your questions to the Federal Candidates of Ottawa Centre.
Seating is limited. Please arrive early. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Brought to you by the neighbourhood community associations representing Hampton-Iona, Hintonburg, Westboro, Westboro Beach and West Wellington.
For more information, please contact:

Judith of Hampton Iona Community Group at 725-9147 or lacutler@magma.ca;
Hintonburg Community Association at www.hintonburg.com
Westboro Community Association at www.westborovillage.ca
Westboro Beach Community Association at www.westborobeach.org
West Wellington Community Association at www.westwellington.ca

Lawrence Martin asked querulously in the Globe & Mail yesterday why immigration isn’t an issue in the current election campaign. He spent a good deal of time citing the former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, one James Bissett, who is predicting the usual doom and gloom that the rabid right associates with non-white “ethnic” immigration.

Martin gives Bissett a pass on a possible charge of racism because his son married a Black woman, and his daughter married a Cuban. But that’s needlessly defensive, and immediately arouses suspicions even among those like myself who think that a good racism-free socio-economic debate on immigration is there to be had. Those marital choices were rather obviously not up to Bissett; and we have no information, of course, on the state of Bissett family relations today.

But in any case, here is Bissett himself:

“Either our political leaders do not know that Canada is facing an immigration crisis or they care more about gaining a few more so-called “ethnic voters” than they do about telling the truth about immigration.”

He is, to be sure, somewhat more guarded than this fellow. Or this one. But somehow the message is always the same, however encoded it might be. Immigration is being encouraged for crassly political reasons: to secure the existing [clears throat] “ethnic” vote and import some more Xs for political parties at election time. This is the end of Canada as we know it: nothing less than a crisis is looming.

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Just out in time for this election and available FREE online, The Harper Record, edited by my trusted friend Teresa Healy.

Here’s the summary from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

This book is one in a series of CCPA publications that have examined the records of Canadian federal governments during the duration of their tenure. As with earlier CCPA reports on the activities of previous governments while in office, this book gives a detailed account of the laws, policies, regulations, and initiatives of the Conservative minority government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper during its 32-month term from January 2006 to September 2008.

The 47 writers, researchers and analysts who have co-written this book probe into every aspect of the Harper minority government’s administration. From the economy to the environment, from social programs to foreign policy, from health care to tax cuts, from the Afghanistan mission to the tar sands, from free trade to deep integration, and to many other areas of this government’s record, the authors have dug out the facts and analyzed them.

The Harper Record was necessarily researched and written long before an election was called, but its publication does coincide with an election campaign and thus may help citizens to make informed choices about the future of their country. Regardless of the election outcome, its contents will continue to be relevant between elections. In detailing what a minority Conservative government really did, or failed to do, it may serve as a guide and model for future elections.

Well, duh, no surprise there:

Stéphane Dion is not catching on among Canadians, as the more voters get to know the Liberal Leader, the less they like him, according to a new poll.

“To know him, for most Canadians, is not to like him better,” said the Strategic Counsel’s Peter Donolo, pollster for The Globe and Mail and CTV.

But that is not the case in Quebec for New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whose personal popularity is increasing.

That’s what I stated right from the start of the campaign: the more people get to see or hear Dion, the more they will come to detest him.

The remaining Saskatchewan seats (at least those in the south) should be much easier to make predictions on, for those of you not familiar with these ridings I think it will become quite clear as to why pretty quickly. So let’s continue:

CYPRESS HILLS – GRASSLANDS
Incumbent: David Anderson (CON)
Last Election: 66.5/16.8/12.9/3.8
2008 Candidates:
CON – David Anderson
NDP – Scott Wilson
LIB – Duane Filson
GPC – Bill Clary
Analysis: Over the past three elections the Conservative/Alliance candidate has not garnered less than 60% of the popular vote. Need I say much more?

Prediction: A quick and easy decision. Seat to CONSERVATIVES.

SOURIS – MOOSE MOUNTAIN
Incumbent: Ed Komarnicki (CON)
Last Election: 62.8/14.0/18.5/4.7
2008 Candidates:
CON – Ed Komarnicki
NDP – Raquel Fletcher
LIB – Marlin Belt
GPC – Bob Deptuck
Analysis: Except for small challenge from Independent candidate Grant Devine in 2004 (yes that guy), the Conservative/Alliance parties have had over 60% of the popular vote in this riding.

Prediction: Another quick and easy decision. Seat to CONSERVATIVES.

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Ah, to return to the good old days when the red book visuals caused the voter to seriously consider whatever pledges were inside.

This thought came to mind when the Liberals released their complete platform, and the largest nugget the media could focus on was a new treatment for income trusts (a true yawner for the many younger Canadians who have no idea what an income trust is, let alone afford one).

All in all, a depressing media treatment, especially when the green shift – the centrepiece, for good or for ill, of the liberal election platform – has not recieved a full and frank hearing, or at the very least been contrasted with the conservative environmental strategy of cutting taxes on diesel fuel (?).

Of course, not every election can be fought over real policies (such as free trade in 1988), but it would certainly be good for Canadian democracy if election pledges were somehow something more than a campaign prop for the leader’s tour. The media needs to stop its catnip-like focus on polls (especially nightly tracking ones) and actually undertake a frank examination of each parties’ legislative and economic agenda.

Perhaps then, the public could have a frank discussion as to which legislative program merits their support – one in which serious environmental action is pledged in the very near term, or one in which the Prime Minister of a great country resorts to small ball, and declares that throwing teenagers into jail for life is a legislative priority.

Did I hear correctly that Jack Layton is now ready to enter a coalition to prevent a Conservative government? I thought he was running for Prime Minister. I think this is a big strategic mistake. He was running an excellent campaign, gaining support and likely increasing the party’s seats in the House, potentially a breakthrough in Quebec. Now that is all out the window. Watch as NDP support settles back now that the party has dropped principle for politics. What were you thinking Jack?