In Oakville, the ground war continues. From the Mississauga like subdivisions in the eastern part of the riding westward through the longer established areas and on to the neighbourhoods near to Burlington, volunteers seek to identify supporters amidst the undecided and the many homes where nobody answers the door either because they are out or just do not feel like it. Although only the Liberal and CPC candidates have any where near enough volunteers to attempt this task, there are signs of a growing Green Party presence in that their signs are appearing on homes. Green’s growth could be more trouble for Liberal Bonnie Brown.

It has been worth the effort from the CPC point of view to door knock all homes – including ones with Liberal Bonnie Brown signs. It feels like panning for gold. For the most part, the reception is polite – even at homes with Liberal signs. Sometimes CPC supporters are found in those homes. In any case, the CPC teams are able to canvass areas fairly quickly because they have many volunteers.

Candidates have All Candidates Meetings to attend that pull them away from meeting and swaying undecided voters.. They may be useful for getting quotes in the local media but as far as being informative, many to most people who attend All Candidates Meetings are active partisans there to cheer on their candidate.

Terrence Young has come out with a new piece of literature that debunks certain claims made by the Liberals. It has some amusing jabs. Some of Bonnie Brown’s previous statements have been shown to be ridiculous.

Terrence Young has been helping out people in Oakville over the last two years while working at his day job. He has had a degree of flexibility that Bonnie Brown’s office lacked. Not everybody in Oakville lives in palatial lakeside mansions.

Up in Halton, which includes the norther part of the municipality of Oakville, Liberal Garth Turner is holding on primarily due to fluctuating national and regional trends. CPC candidate Lisa Raitt would serve the Halton riding well if elected but Turner is fighting for his political life here. During the dying days of the 1993 PC debacle, Turner managed to fire one more torpedo into the sinking SS Kim Campbell when he made pro Liberal remarks. Raitt might benefit if Turner fires another torpedo with the safeties disengaged so that it comes back and blows his own campaign out of the water.

I attended a Candidates’ Meeting at Thornhill Secondary School on October 6, 2008. All four candidates attended – Susan Kakis (Liberal), Peter Kent (Conservative), Norbert Koehl (Green), and Simon Strelchik (NDP).

The format of the evening consisted of a brief introduction by each candidate, the opportunity for each candidate to ask a question of another candidate, and finally the candidates taking questions from voters.

Susan Kadis is the incumbent and has been an MP since 2004. Prior to federal politics she was a Vaughan councillor and school trustee. I’ve never had interaction with her but I understand she does pretty good constituency work.

Peter Kent, a former TV journalist, is the star candidate who has been parachuted into the riding. Though as he noted, he had moved into a heritage home in Thornhill over the summer. The home was purchased 2 years ago and has undergone considerable renovations since then. Kent ran against Carolyn Bennett in St.Paul’s back in 2006 and lost by 15,000 votes. The race is much closer in Thornhill.

Simon Strelchik is a community activist and a veteran of several municipal and federal campaigns. But he is barely 20 years old and frankly I am a little put off when a candidate that young runs for Parliament. Norbert Koehl is a local businessman who manages a commercial bakery in Toronto.

Each candidate pretty much stuck to their party’s platform which means all you need to do was go in the Internet and to get their position on issues. Therefore, I’m not going to bother reviewing their responses to questions and instead provide some general impressions.

Much of Strelchik’s responses were read from prepared notes. He sounded like a real ideologue except when he spoke without his notes. When he spoke without notes he actually had real passion to his voice instead of a theatrical tone. He seems very bright though on a question regarding equalization, he appeared not to understand the issue. After his response, the moderator repeated the question for all the candidates.

Koehl really connected with the audience. He is a soft spoken and thoughtful man who seemed to have a good grasp of the issues. He has the least amount of political experience which means he attempted to answer all questions directed at him. I quite liked him.

I did not care Kent. He avoided answering quite a number of questions and some responses were totally inappropriate. On a question regarding help for low income seniors who may not benefit from tax cuts (because their incomes are so low), he offered – income splitting! On the question regarding equalization, he used it to attack Premier McGuinty. I could only interpret his response to say that he would not be going to Ottawa to fight to protect the interests of Ontarian but only to help Peter Kent. When he had the opportunity to ask Koehl a question, he opened with some comment about how Elizabeth May was running as a Liberal because there is no Liberal candidate in Central Nova. What relevance that has in Thornhill escapes me.

Kadis seemed to switch back and forth between political rhetoric and meaningful information. She took ample opportunities to attack the Conservative government but she was that as skilled at going on the attack. Her strength was when she got to talk about key local issues – pollution, mass transit, infrastructure.

Kadis won in 2004 and 2006 by about 10,000 votes. However, this time around the contest will be very close race between the Liberal and Conservative candidates.

Governments should be accountable to Canadians all the time, not just during election time. One of the key elements of a functioning democracy between elections is transparency and on-going government accountability to Parliament and to the people of Canada. Two new watchdog positions—a Parliamentary Budget Officer and a Public Appointments Commissioner—were created recently with substantial input from my own MP, Paul Dewar. Their respective mandates would allow them to shine a bright light on government expenditures and appointments.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government has seriously undermined both functions before they have even had a chance to be put into operation.

There is at the present time no Public Appointments Commissioner. The office has been deliberately kept vacant. Prime Minister Stephen Harper abruptly made that decision this past May, after a friend of his, Gwyn Morgan, was found to be unsuitable for the position by the House of Commons Government Operations Committee. Mr. Morgan, a Calgary oilman, had made disparaging comments about immigrants, multiculturalism and unions in a speech to the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank. In Mr. Harper’s opinion, Morgan’s plainly intolerant views should not have disqualified him from one of the most sensitive positions in Parliament. The Committee, thankfully, disagreed.

But Mr. Harper’s decision means that it’s still business as usual—unvetted patronage appointments with no Parliamentary oversight whatsoever.

The duties of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, technically an officer of the non-partisan Library of Parliament, include carrying out independent analyses of Canada’s economy, finances and planned government expenditures. Another crucial part of the job is to provide an objective analysis of departmental and agency spending estimates, when asked to do so by parliamentary committees reviewing those estimates, such as the Senate National Finance Committee and the House of Commons Finance and Public Accounts Committees.

The first appointee to this post is Kevin Page, who appears to be very well-qualified for the position. But, in keeping with the Conservative government’s smoke-and-mirrors approach, his office has been given a paltry operating budget of $2.5 million, which will simply not permit him and his staff to do the work with any degree of thoroughness. Mr. Page himself has graciously tried to make the best of this tiny allocation, but questions have been raised about how this sum will permit him to serve all 308 MPs, and the various committees that will call on him for assistance.

An expert on the workings of government, Sharon Sutherland, puts it this way:

“If MPs want to have at their service a challenge function to both the Finance Department and to the expenditure budget, and if all the political parties make full use of the function, even assuming the Budget Office uses only available data, it will find itself out of funds pretty quickly. Even to perform an interpretive function, it will need to hire experts, and it will have to work with academic economists who charge huge fees.”

A responsible and responsive government should be accountable in fact, not just in theory. Two steps in the right direction have now been taken, with the establishment of a Public Appointments Commission and a Parliamentary Budget Officer. But these two steps forward have been countered by two steps right back: an unfilled office in one case, and a grossly under-budgeted one in the other. Canadians, pressed by an economic downturn and shrinking public services, have a right to know what our government is doing on a day-to-day basis. They deserve far better than this.

I always try to offer up my predictions before an election. My blogging colleague NB Politico does some extensive predictions which fluctuate a bit as time goes by based on a number of factors. Mine are based on what I’ve read, people I’ve talked to throughout the province from various political backgrounds (and sometimes none) and my own experience. These aren’t wish lists of mine. They are simply how I think things will go.

Overall, like many, it’s hard to believe Stephen Harper won’t be Prime Minister after the election. It’s simply a matter of whether he’ll have a minority or majority, making New Brunswick’s ten seats important.

I’ll run through all 10 New Brunswick ridings over the new week. Some of the commentary will be quite short, others longer. There are a few ridings which are fluctuating quite a bit which I’ll hold off until closer to the end to make a call. Your take as always is welcomed.

Crossposted – Spink About It

Former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin is coming out with a score-settling book, Hell or High Water. In it he takes swipes at his predecessor, Jean Chrétien, and generally tries to get even with a Liberal Party that is not quite working anymore.

The book is not out yet, but some newspapers have started publishing unauthorized excerpts. Just a week away from October 14, the day of the federal election, Liberals are worried that Mr. Martin’s tell-all book could harm them. The party has therefore issued a call to all candidates and party faithful not to discuss the book with anyone, especially members of the press.

But with the excerpts floating around, the damage already seems done. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who has made his past track record on the Clarity Act one of his oft-repeated mantras in stump speeches, is also coming under attack in Mr. Martin’s book, who writes that “the law, which Mr. Dion oversaw, was unnecessary in light of a previous Supreme Court ruling.”

There you go: considered one of his biggest accomplishments – and arguably his only accomplishment to date – the Clarity Act has just been relegated to the landfill of political ideas by a former prime minister.
(more…)

Voters must stop expecting the impossible from government:

If Mr. Harper comes up with his own new plan for the economy, he could be accused of improvising and will undercut his campaign, during which he has accused Mr. Dion of making up policy as he goes along. If he doesn’t acknowledge the Canadian economy is vulnerable and fails to offer a solution, he may be accused of a “what-me-worry” attitude, the kind of approach that appears to have hurt him in the wake of the debate.

Newsflash: There is no solution to be offered up by government. This is a crisis brought on by human behaviour, such as greed, and the only thing to do is to ride it out with as steady a hand on government as possible.

The crisis now affecting global markets was caused by nothing short of sheer stupidity, with one average American summing it up better than any of the Goldman Sachs economists and analysts:

“You can’t give an $8-an-hour worker a $500,000 home.”

Nor is this a time for experiments, as NDP candidate Tom King has explained:

“Here’s one little story,” he tells the captivated audience in his baritone campfire voice. It’s about Stéphane Dion’s “revenue neutral” Green Shift program. “I’m reminded of a guy with a horse,” he says. “He feeds that horse hay on one end, then walks to the other end and checks to see if he gets the same amount of hay out — and in the same form.”

There’s been a slew of all-candidates’ meetings as of late; haven’t made it to one. Darned job!

Some allege Lorne Mayencourt (Cons.) is withdrawing via passive participation, skipping a number of events that his competitors are all attending. Many have been impressed by both Carr (Green) and Byers (NDP), in terms of their performances on the hustings. But by far, what I’m hearing most is:

What are the polling numbers in the riding, so I can decide how to vote?

Not for whom, but how. Because many see this election as the most contestable since 1993. No one I’ve met thinks Carr could win the first elected Green seat in Canada–but would vote for her if it didn’t increase Mayencourt’s chances via progressive vote splitting. Many more would love to vote for Byers, but fear the same thing. In fact, some who voted for Svend Robinson in 2006 because of his work on queer rights are much more afraid of Mayencourt squeaking in due to a split vote.

I had hoped to vote in the advance polls, but I too am waiting to see what the numbers on the ground say. I would vote for Byers if he has a chance of knocking incumbent Liberal Hedy Fry out of her seat–even though I prefer a carbon tax to the NDP’s gotta-protect-labour-jobs-no-matter-what alternative. I’d even vote for Carr if she was close to Fry and ahead of the others.

Polling numbers for Van Centre s’il vous plaît….

News Flash!

Conservative incumbent David Sweet representing the Hamilton area riding of Ancaster Dundas Flamborough Westdale says that “Stephen Harper is not the bad guy some make him out to be”. I could follow that by saying something like “details at 11″…. but there aren’t many details…again.

True to form for this riding and in many other currently conservative enclaves, the incumbent said little of substance during an all candidates forum recently taped for the local cable TV outlet. When pressed about his government’s action on climate change he did make the relatively shocking statement that (presumably under Mr. Harper’s leadership) “Canada is working toward a global consensus on climate change”.

These comments come in the last week of an election campaign, for the duration of which the local conservative candidate has added to his record of relative silence and inactivity in his riding. Could this be because conservative members (who according to Sweet, Mr. Harper is “prepared to hear from at open mikes” during caucus meetings) seem to be on a short leash in public or is it because their platform was only released this week?

Credit to Green Party Candidate Peter Ormond for raising the question of muzzling of conservative MPs by party leadership when it comes to Climate Change and Global Warming. The entire country has been muzzled it seems, not just conservative MPs.

For example Andrew Weaver a world renowned Canadian Climate Scientist has stated that there has been a “war against science” carried out by the the Harper Conservatives. You may recall that Weaver a member of the Nobel winning IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was snubbed by Prime Minister Harper who refused to attend a Parliament Hill event held earlier this year to recognize the IPCC’s Nobel prize. Weaver is not alone. The recently produced Health Canada report on the effects of Climate Change has been withheld and the public engagement process meant to go along with it cancelled by the Harper govenrment.

With NDP candidate Gordon Guyatt away in Europe at a medical conference, it seems that the riding is shifting into the widely endorsed hands of Liberal Arlene MacFarlane VanderBeek. The broad spectrum of support for her comes from within the riding as well from outside where climate change experts and concerned Canadians agree that the Liberal platform continues to hold out the greatest opportunity at the intersection of the environment and the economy.