Greetings all, I’m finally jumping into the fray here and would like to do a quick linkpost about our riding’s candidates for the uninformed:

Independent – Bernadette Michael
Progressive Canadian Party – Bahman Roudgarnia
Conservative Party – Jake Karns
Green Party – Lou Carcasole
Liberal Party – Martha Hall Findlay
New Democratic Party – Susan Wallace

Thanks to the news section on Susan Wallace’s campaign site, I can also tell you that there is an All Candidates Meeting at Bayview Middle School (25 Bunty Lane) at 8:30 PM on Wednesday October 1st, and another on Tuesday October 7th at Willowdale Pentecostal Church (288 Cummer Avenue) at 7:30 PM (doors open at 6:30 PM).

Tonight was the first time I read up on Jake Karns, and surprise, surprise, his website has a section devoted to “A Safer Willowdale”. I don’t know how many other homes in my riding were treated to flyers from Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative MP of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with promises of locking up all the hypothetical drug pushers in the playgrounds of my hypothetical children, but we’ve received that and two others from his fellow Conservative MPs from across the country.

I love how all it took was a quick round of googling to come up with the 2007 crime rate statistics from StatsCan to show that Ontario has lower crime rates than dear old Saskatchewan.

I’m pretty much in agreement with this Toronto Star article’s take on the best solutions to crime. Attacking the “root cause” (as Gilles Duceppe would say) of the issue, is far more effective in the long term when it comes to combating crime, instead of just making it easier to convict offenders and lock people away. The StatsCanada link above backs up the Star article’s point in that higher crime rates are associated with parts of the country that are more rural and where its citizens are less likely to have easy access to quality public services and social programs. Which, of course, the Conservatives are loathe to fund. They’d rather put that money into prisons, or better yet, just privatize the whole prison system. Some people argue that privatizing healthcare would result in better quality of service (naturally, I disagree), but I have a hard time imagining anyone in Canada being convinced that a private prison system would be safer or best serve the public good.

As for making Willowdale safer…I’ve lived in this riding my whole life, and while I realize that my personal experiences cannot represent those of everyone else living here, I know that I’ve almost always felt safe here. Note the “almost”. The times when I have felt that my personal safety was threatened have all been due to bad or careless drivers. Ban all use of cell phones and handheld devices while driving and better enforce speeding laws, and I’d feel a lot safer in my day-to-day life here.

For a few days now, my Facebook update has been  ”Amanda doesn’t particularly want to come to the defense of Duceppe, but is Jason Kenney REALLY allowed to call anyone intolerant?” I haven’t changed it because, well, the irony still shocks me.

 The irony of Jason Kenney calling someone intolerant made me choke on the water I was drinking when I read it. Seriously. This is the same man who assures us that gays have the right to marry, as long as its to someone of the opposite sex. The man who Harper appointed Secretary of State for Multiculturalism just so he could giggle to himself when Jason opened his mouth and comments about “overheated Sikhs” came out. (Why Harper still lets this guy speak and has gagged everyone elese is beyond me.)

 But anywho, that’s enough Kenney bashing for the day. I’m sure there’s already enough of that out there. The point is, that this was up on my Facebook.

 One of those stupid message things just popped up from someone that I attended Forum for Young Canadians with over two years ago (let’s see if he explores the Blogosphere). 

bloc is searching for a story

its an obvious conservative victory

I know this guy is hardcore big-C Conservative, because, well he is, and his dad is (was?) a Conservative MP.  My first thought was, “Holy insecurity, you can’t handle a Facebook bash of arguably your most pathetic Cabinet Minister? Let it go!” But I left that, and was about to write back something a little Bloc bashing, something I’m sure we had some common ground on, “lol” at and move on with our politiked little lives.  And then he wrote this. 

and unfortunately the green party will be left with no seats…

Don’t troll me. We haven’t spoken since Forum and you troll me? You actually are that insecure?

 Whether you think the Greens will win seats or not, the fact is we’re a presence in this campaign and the possibility of us is scaring people. So your trolling doesn’t bother me, because I know that something we’ve done has triggered fear in you. Crazy Greens with their platform that you didn’t bother to read but will assume is full of socialist lies are shaking up the system. They have a voice and it hurts my ears!

Your attacks inspire us. A misquote of Elizabeth May is a mention of Elizabeth May. It’s finally great just to have some attention.

 PS: Need more Jason Kenney bashing? Not quite sure why you should always laugh at the name, “Jason Kenney”?
How about a Maclean’s liveblog? Once you’re there, search for Andrew Coyne’s videoblog on the same press conference. Or how about Rick Mercer’s story of the creation of JasonKenney.org?
They’re both good times.

Riddle me this. How can people that are now talking about strategic voting be so supportive of the Green party and Elizabeth May?

She just told people to vote for someone else other then the Green Party. Their platform is basically the same as the Liberal party, but a little more extreme. So why did people that hate Harper so much want her in the debates.

If she is more articulate and appealing then Layton or Dion in the debates people will vote for her instead of them.

My prediction: The Green party will be the “Ralph Nader” of this campaign. Not so much that it will win the Conservatives the election, but it will win them the majority.

It shocks me how many people don’t realize that advance polls exist. I’ve been trying to promote Youth Voter Day (October 3rd) to my friends and fellow students. The Young Greens of Canada launched and invited all of the other parties to participate in Youth Voter Day as an initiative to try and encourage early student voting.
Let’s face it, October 14th is a mighty inconvenient day to vote for anyone. Add a few midterms worth of studying to that mix, and even I might consider not voting if there were no other option available.

But what else is Elections Canada to do? They sent out information about voting, registering, all the polls, special ballot, and voter ID at the polls. They have representatives on campus here at Queen’s. They can only give you so much information before it just becomes a waste of resources. Admittedly, they’re kind of busy and caught off guard right now.

In other news, Kingston and the Islands campaigns are facing some dilemmas for the weekend (it’s the infamous homecoming weekend at Queen’s). We’re not delivering signs that were ordered this week to any areas around the student village until Monday at the earliest, and I’m encouraging everyone I know to take their sign in for the weekend. All we need are “Eric Walton” signs scattered across the city along with a new layer of broken glass.

Michael Byers, (NDP Candidate – Vancouver Center), very passionately told an audience today the tar sands should be shut down. It is not the official position of the NDP, who want a moratorium on the pace of the tar sands development, pending studies on the environment.

However, there are many voices in this country, sending distress signals using the internet, that want the tar sands development to stop, yes stop, now, because it has become “the dirtiest oil on the planet”.

If one pauses before thinking the thought “that no matter what the cost, the world needs oil and Canada needs to be richer in the world”, then maybe it is possible to think about the kind of planet this will be if we ruin it for our children and theirs.

Surely if humans survived on this planet in previous centuries and millenia without such a huge dependence on oil, we can figure out a way to do it again before it is too late…

“The Conservative government’s “clear anti-abortion hidden agenda” has led to an erosion of a woman’s right to the procedure, a coalition of women’s rights activists said Thursday.”

“There is a clear anti-abortion hidden agenda at work that is putting women’s health at risk,” said Carolyn Egan of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “We refer to it as anti-choice by stealth.”

The draft Unborn Victims of Crime Act, bill C-484, sought to toughen punishments when a fetus is injured or killed during an attack on a pregnant woman.

In August, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he would replace it with new legislation — which ultimately was never tabled in the House of Commons — to allow judges to consider a victim’s pregnancy when determining a sentence, but that “leaves no room for the introduction of fetal rights.”

The groups also questioned why the federal government won’t enforce the Canada Health Act after a New Brunswick clinic refused to pay for abortions.

New Brunswick remains the only province in Canada that won’t pay for abortions done in clinics. In a 1988 Supreme Court of Canada ruling, the high court struck down Canada’s abortion law as unconstitutional, allowing abortion to be treated like any other medical procedure.

Quite the hot issue don’t you think?

and the Liberals become an endangered species? First, let me apologize for not posting recently, I have been out of town for the last few days. But, good on you readers for keeping the discussion going in the comments section. I’m just going to post a few random thoughts (nothing substantive, but hey that’s nothing new from me) as campaigns and issues are now coming into focus.

West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky:

Everybody but John Weston seems to be fading quietly into the night. By no means is he setting the world ablaze with his campaign, but he seems to be quietly running a smooth campaign with a solid ground presence in both West Van and North Van, bad news for the Libs. The Liberals have been virtually invisible, particularly in West and North Van where they have to win big to be competitive in the riding. That’s not to say that Ian Sutherland isn’t a competent candidate, he is. Nor is it to say that he can’t make in roads in Squamish, he can. It’s just that he needs to maintain the party’s traditional areas of strength and that doesn’t seem to be too likely. The NDP have recovered from the Dana Larsen experiment with a solid (on paper) local Sunshine Coast candidate that may be able to stop any vote bleed that may have been perceived prior to the election. With the NDP seemingly on an upswing in the province maybe they’ll even be able to pick up a few more votes than last time. The Greens, well after an interesting first few days, they have managed to fall into their regular role. I’m convinced Wilson will pull a good number for the party (up to 20% if the Greens can regain some momentum in the debates). On the whole, minus a massive shift, you can count this a Tory pickup.

North Vancouver:

I’m of the mind that you just can’t count out Liberal incumbent Don Bell. It’s been said before and is worth repeating, people vote as much for Don Bell as they vote for the Liberal brand. Consequently, I would expect a competitive Liberal result. It’ll be interesting to see what impact, if any, the arts funding debate has in this riding, as the local movie industry has played a major role in Bell’s two victories. Nonetheless, I would expect that this too ought to be considered a Conservative pickup on voting day – just don’t be too surprised if it’s called late. On a side note, the local NDP have been putting up “Jack Layton and the NDP team” signs, in place of those for the local candidate (admittedly the candidate does have a few of his own). Given that the candidate, Michael Charrois, is relatively unknown outside of the Arts community, this may be beneficial in growing party support – or it may marginalize the candidate. Either way, Charrois will ensure that Arts funding continues to be discussed (I’m not generalizing here at all, really…).

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In my previous post – all of two days ago – I noted that Nanos was consistently publishing estimates for Liberal support that were much higher than the other polling firms: more than what could plausibly attributed to sampling error.

But that was two days ago. Since then, Nanos has joined the crowd (click on the graph for a full-sized version):

What’s going on?

continuing in the theme of trying to figure out who i should spend my vote on this election i sat down and spoke to Andrew Lang, the local Liberal candidate here in toronto-danforth.

i wanted to know why he was running, Jack’s lead seems pretty much insurmountable, but if anyone has a chance (and, let’s be honest… it’s a very small chance) it is the liberal candidate. i’m no historian but i’m pretty sure the Liberals managed to hold this riding for a good long while prior to Jack re-winning it for the NDP, but still, the NDP took this riding by more than 7000 votes last time.

Andrew was straightforward when i asked him about his chances, sincerely hoping that Jack continued to think he has this riding in the bag as it lets him continue to wage political guerrilla warfare (my words, not his) against Jack. in Andrew’s view Jack and the NDP have taken local matters in toronto-danforth for granted, aren’t impressing local voters with their showboating on the campaign trail (is eliminating ATM fees the best thing we can find to talk about during an election?), and above all… torontonians are scared silly of another Harper government. regardless of the outcome, Andrew is convinced that the local race will be close, much closer than Jack or the NDP anticipates.

i’ve never really considered actually voting liberal, i’m usually a little too left wing for that, but Stéphane Dion does seem to be more of the type of person i’d like to see as prime minister, a fact that Andrew was quick to sense in our talk and emphasize. he argues that Dion is the only real leader in this race, whereas Harper and Layton are one man shows, that Dion is sensible and progressive with respect to social policy, and that the Liberals have a track record of a strong economy. it is all pretty much what you’d expect, but i did get the sense that Andrew was sincere in his argument for Stéphane. i even believed that he was sincere when he said Stéphane is a strong leader, despite reports to the contrary.

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For the past few days, the local election buzz has been a YouTube ad entitled “It’s 3pm”:

Essentially, the ad reveals the fact that incumbent Hamilton Mountain MP Chris Charlton has her constituency office open until 1:00pm, Monday through Friday. Banham calls this an afront to democracy, Charlton states that she is always accessible regardless of her posted office hours. Regardless of who is right, the story has gotten some notice across the city.

The other night, CHCH news played the ad and yesterday the Banham camp introduced a new website to accompany the video, www.its3pm.ca.

The crux of the matter here is that this is a significant step forward in local campaigns. Traditional campaigns are generally fought by sign pounding and door knocking and this has taken it to a whole new level. In fact, its rather impressive.

No matter how you view the ad and the explanations, its good to see some life injected into these local races.

How did culture become the issue in the election? The feds spend $45 million every ninety minutes and that’s what the media is focused on? Why are Harper and Dion even talking about this? Come on!

From the Master himself:

If Nick’s right – and I don’t know a serious Liberal who doubts his professionalism – then this thing has turned into a scramble for survival. That’s it.

Here’s the poll Warren Kinsella is referring to.

When the media started reporting in August that an election was imminent I had a “Please, No!” feeling.   Then once the official campaign started, there was Puffingate and Danny Williams rant.  I was re-energized, I was watching the news again, I was surfing the internet for election news and views.

Then something happened…

While Hurricane Ike ravaged the Texas coast, and gas prices had spiked up dramatically, way down the headline page on some news site was an article  titled something like “Trouble at Lehman/Merrill”.   I read the article and started thinking this looks bad.   While I’m really more of a soft political junkie, I am much more hardened financial junkie (full disclosure: I work in the industry).   While most news organizations were doing things like showing Anderson Cooper getting blown around in his red CNN windbreaker, I gave up on broadcast media (aka television and radio) due to lack of content and went straight to the web for places like Bloomberg and Reuters.   That Sunday evening, there were headlines like “Lehman not expected to make it through the night” and the like.   A lot of people woke up Monday morning “surprised” that Lehman Brothers was gone after 150 years and Merrill Lynch was now part of a bank.

Since then, the election has been a non-event to me.   Realizing that maybe I was living in the industry bubble, I sought out others outside of it.   Their views were the same.   Way more interested in protecting their RRSP investments – no time to listen to rhetoric from the parties and their leaders.

Now that the markets have at least temporarily settled down a bit, when I bring up the topic of the election, it gets sort of a “whatever?!” reaction.   If there’s one election they are interested in, it’s Obama vs. McCain and the drama injected by the financial crisis.

When pressed on our election, I get responses that fit this pattern:

• Harper will still be the Prime Minister October 15th
• Not crazy about the idea of a Conservative majority
• Don’t really like Harper’s style but the other leaders aren’t demonstrating they are PM material either
• Dion is uninspiring

And probably most telling,

• just get it (the election) over with

Reading Gary Mason’s (excellent) column in the Globe and Mail today, one cannot help but feel that the end is more than nigh for the Liberals:

[T]he biggest reason the Liberals are tanking in B.C. is Stéphane Dion. [...] Mr. Dion is harming his party right across the country. But he is particularly not translating well in B.C., even in Vancouver and lower Vancouver Island, where the Liberals usually enjoy strong support. [...] Mr. Dion just isn’t going over well west of the Rockies. And a large part of it, maybe most of it in my view, is his struggle with the English language. It’s so bad people feel sorry for him. And that is never a good thing.

Jean Chrétien may have sounded funny when he spoke but he could communicate his policies clearly. He also had a raft of other political skills to compensate for his scrapper-from-Shawinigan speaking style. But you never doubted where he stood, never cringed when he talked (okay, maybe sometimes), never thought you’d be embarrassed to have him representing our country.

[...] At this point, I think the Liberals are just hoping to save some of the furniture in B.C. As things stand now, B.C. could deliver a Tory majority on election night.

Everything Mason writes here is true – of most parts of Canada, not just British Columbia. Unlike Chrétien, as Mason points out, Dion makes Canadians feel embarrassed; they just can’t picture him as their prime minister representing Canada on the world stage.

There was a lot right-thinking and commonsensical Canadians could disagree with during Chrétien’s years in power, but the man was brilliant and a true-blooded politician who was able to connect with ordinary folks – very much like Ralph Klein in Alberta – and sense what it was they wanted or needed. Dion has none of these abilities; he is a walking and unmitigated disaster.

When people look back in time, say a year or five years from now, they won’t remember October 14, 2008, as the historic date of the Liberal Party’s final defeat. The date that will stick in their minds is December 2, 2006 – the day the Liberals elected Dion as their leader (in an undemocratic, delegated vote, rather than allowing all party members a vote, thus resulting in a “choice” supported by less than 9% of all party members).

Based on current numbers, therefore, it is almost safe to predict that there will not be any Liberal MPs west of Manitoba or even Ontario – and, yes, that also means that Ralph Goodale won’t be re-elected in his Saskatchewan riding. Nor will they win any sizable number of seats in Québec, if any at all, they’ll be shut out of most of Ontario (except for benighted Toronto), and if this trend continues, the only riding held by a Liberal will be somewhere far out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, deep into international waters.

After his recent outpouring of lies and smears about the NDP and its candidates, not to mention his implicit suggestion that uncritical support of the State of Israel should be a qualification to run in a Canadian election, blogger Jason Cherniak may now have a little problem with one of his own.

Here’s Lesley Hughes, running for the Liberals in Kildonan-St.Paul, on the 9/11 attacks:

“German Intelligence (BND) claims to have warned the U.S. last June, the Israeli Mossad and Russian Intelligence in August. Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky.”

I await Cherniak’s denunciation of the Liberal Party for running one of those Troofer anti-Semites he’s been going on about.

Jason? Oh, Jason…?

Is that the crash of a glass house shattering–or the pleasant sound of a Liberal operative being torn in two by conflicting priorities?

[H/t commenter Barbara at Sean In Saskatchewan and The Black Rod.]

The Toronto Star reported today that the Harper campaign lives in a bubble.

No surprise here, really. All winning campaigns inoculate their candidate from the flotsam and jetsam of real campaigning, if only to protect their lead.

The challenge for Liberals here is to pierce the bubble. Fortunately, there are lessons from 1988 and 1993 that should guide the Dion team.

1/ Call upon the PM to leave his bubble, and listen to the challenges facing ordinary Canadians. Turner did this in advance of the debates, reminding voters (and the media) that campaigns were about more than staged photo-ops organized by Mulroney, and on rare occasions should be about vital issues (like Free Trade). This warms the electorate up to step two…

2/ Bet the farm on the debates. Turn earnestness into passion, in both English and French. Everyone remembers how Turner came back from the dead in the 1988 English debates as a result of his passionate defense of Canadian sovereignty, but few remember how her performed above expectations in French, as well (read Graham Fraser’s Playing for Keeps for a refresher on the Debates).

Dion needs to start memorizing some great gut-check lines (in both languages), to make voters warm up to the idea that this guy could easily hand out treats at 24 Sussex come Halloween (in other words, seem human). He should talk about how he wrote so many pesky letters to Lucien Bouchard that the guy eventually left politics in a huff, or mention how he first came to Ottawa with little more than a sleeping bag and a napsack, at a time when few in the country were optimistic about Canada’s longterm prospects. In other words, show some emotion, but whatever he says, don’t talk about that dog Kyoto.

3/ Challenge both Layton and May in the French debates, and ask (before Harper) why Duceppe is even here. He needs to start making a play for the abundance of progressive votes out there. He should also quote from his father Leon Dion, to remind the Quebec electorate that he’s something else besides a mousy caricature from Le Devoir, and would arguably better represent his home province than Duceppe.

4/ Inject some energy – chaos, even – into the campaign. The media has been increasingly reporting about the dismal enthusiasm surrounding the leader’s tour – poor attendance at campaign events, a light campaign schedule, etc., etc.

Dion needs to shake things up, by presenting some of the energy his team showed the morning of the leadership race. Go reckless, and avoid whatever bubble might be created for you. Mainstreet, phone-bank, do anything, as long as it shows activity.

Some historical tips, on how to successfully leave the bubble?

In 1988, after his own campaign fell into temporary disarray by the re-emergence of Turner in the polls, Mulroney righted the Tory ship by facing the key issue, unscripted. In one campaign stop, he sat down with anti-Free Trade protestors, and debated the merits of their concerns point blank. He certainly did not win their vote, but the media scrum that reported on their encounter showed a Prime Minister who was supremely confident of the direction he was ready to take the country.

Press reports state that Dion is in Quebec City today. He should be taking the media to the suburban neighbourhood he grew up in, and attempt to connect with voters. A risky strategy, especially if there are few Liberal voters to be found in Quebec’s suburbs, but to change the dynamic of this race Dion needs to cut through the media lens, and reach out to all those who fear a Tory majority.

In 1993, Chretien helped create a winning campaign by literally manufacturing enthusiasm. There was precious little down time on his tour, as even the late-night hotel stops became campaign events (I remember, because I used to attend them). It did not matter that these events were only scripted enthusiasm, or that they were held well after reporters had filed their stories. They created energy, and that is just one of many items the Dion campaign seems to need.

If you know anything about Canadian politics, you know that the cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver (MTV) form the core support for the Liberal Party. Although no big changes are expected in Toronto on October 14th, I’d like to take a moment to highlight a race to watch.

Parkdale-High Park, in the south-western part of the city of Toronto, borders on Lake Ontario. Former Liberal leadership contender and Dion “king maker”, Gerard Kennedy is hoping to pick up this riding up for the Liberals. Parkdale-High Park is currently held by the NDP’s Peggy Nash. Nash was defeated in the 2004 election but came back to win in 2006. Kennedy held the seat as a Liberal in the provincial parliament so he is well known in the area and he’s had a high profile in the Toronto area from his days of running a large food bank. Parkdale-High Park is made up of some of the poorest and wealthiest neighbourhoods in the city. Neither the Conservatives nor the Greens are expected to factor in this race except to siphon votes from the two front runners. While it looks like Kennedy has the upper hand, the NDP may retain the seat if Liberal fair badly nationally. If Nash prevails then it will be a long, long night for Stephane Dion and brings into question the political future of Gerard Kennedy.

With the US experiencing a debt hangover, when are we going to hear about the biggest risk to our prosperity: the federal debt of $460 Billion.

It is likely that interest rates will rise as credit markets tighten further and inflation increases. A 2% rise in rates will cause debt servicing to rise $9 Billion, or to $38 Billion, eliminating the surplus. Everyone is on the spending bandwagon, I want to hear what the plan is to repay the debt?