Alberta’s turnout was among the lowest in the country, fourth from the bottom, with the Northwest Territories (48.6%), Nunavut (49.4%) and Newfoundland & Labrador (48.1%) the only provinces or territories lower.

In the case of Alberta … that 94.6% virtual seat sweep was courtesy of 34.2% of the Alberta electorate. The other 65.8% of Alberta voters either stayed home or voted other than Conservative.

Now consider Newfoundland and Labrador…. Reports were common of demoralized Conservatives and the CPoC’s struggles to find people willing to run as candidates against the moneyed avalanche which was the ABC campaign.

Should progressives be pleased with the demoralization of the CPoC’s supporters in the province?

No, not if they hold that democracy should be inclusive of and for everyone, not just those with whose views they can agree.

I feel as bad for the disenfranchised Conservatives in NL as I do for the 65.8% disenfranchised Albertans who either voted differently or didn’t vote at all.

The numbers are telling. No matter which political ideology you hold, surely you can see that forcing a multi-party democracy into a two-party voting system is unfair to the electorate, undemocratic and horribly wrong….

Full article goes on to respond to a Toronto Star item on proportional representation. Predictably, The Star once again employs scare tactics in its endless argument against reforming our electoral system.

Thirty-seven days and about $300 million later, Canadians awake to a “new” government in Ottawa. The Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper have built on their previous minority position and added a substantial number of seats, just a tad short of a majority. The Liberals, meanwhile, have seen the biggest decline in support in at least twenty years, placing Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s head squarely and firmly on the chopping block. The Greens have failed yet again to elect a single MP, which will shut them out of the televised leaders’ debates no matter how loudly leader Elizabeth May screams to push her way in again. The NDP has gained a good number of seats, but despite party leader Jack Layton’s determination to replace Mr. Harper, it is quite obvious now that there is a ceiling to how far the federal NDP can go in Canada.

While the election may have produced a result that is only slightly different from the last parliament, there have been some interesting developments at riding level. Trudeau scion Justin won his seat in Montréal under the Liberal banner, and is already being traded on the rumour mill as a potential leadership candidate to follow in his famous father’s footsteps. Garth Turner, a former Conservative, then Liberal, MP, has been defeated in his Ontario riding – too bad for his constituents, but certainly a boon for the fans of his blog, as Mr. Turner will now be a free agent who can speak his mind without any fetters imposed by party discipline.
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It is widely believed that all 28 ridings in Alberta will go to the Conservatives, but there are two ridings that might switch to a different couleur.

The first one is Calgary Northeast. This riding, which used to belong to Art Hanger, who is retiring from politics, is the scene of conservative infighting between the official Conservative candidate, Devinder Shory, and an independent conservative contender, Roger Richard. The battle between them has been anything but benign, with injunctions and other legal threats being traded liberally.

This could result in the same split of the vote on the right in this riding that was also instrumental in allowing the Liberals three majority governments under Jean Chrétien when the right was divided into Tories and Reform.

It’s a story as old as time: when two are engaged in battle like this, it is usually a third that comes up the middle and takes the prize – in this case, Liberal candidate Sanam Kang, for example. But the riding may also go to the Green Party candidate or the NDP. The only thing that the two conservative candidates have going for them is that the candidates of the other parties don’t seem too capable or promising, which may limit voters’ choices to Shory and Richard.

The other riding that warrants close attention is Edmonton-Strathcona. Here, the Tory incumbent is facing off against a strong NDP candidate, Linda Duncan. Duncan has enjoyed great momentum, as documented by Liberals4Linda, a blog of Liberals who have decided to endorse and vote for Duncan.

There is no real threat to Conservatives in any of the other 26 ridings, which will be won by the Conservatives by five-digit margins – as usual – including, unfortunately, Calgary West, where the always-absent and abrasive Conservative incumbent should have been removed from office a long time ago. So, in Calgary West, people’s hopes are that Jennifer Pollock can pull it off and restore democracy in the riding at long last.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) had an ingenious idea for this election campaign, called Canada Votes: X-Challenge: a townhall-like meeting where voters have a chance to confront candidates of the main political parties. The CBC ran two instalments, one taped in Toronto and the other in Vancouver. The way it works is that members of a studio audience, all of whom state their voting preferences prior to the show, ask candidates questions. The candidates, then, have one minute each to respond, followed by two minutes each for rebuttal – or “free-for-all”, as the show’s host called it.

After each question, the studio audience votes on who they thought answered the question most expertly and truthfully. The results are revealed before the next round starts. At the end, the audience is asked to vote on the final winner based on his or her performance throughout the entire townhall meeting.
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The Calgary Herald has been tracking opinion through one of its online forums:

Of the 17 people who firmed up how they’re going to vote in the last week of the campaign, 41 per cent picked the Greens, 24 per cent are headed to the NDP, and 18 per cent plan to back the Conservatives. The Greens are also the top choice for 34 voters who haven’t yet made up their minds. Stephane Dion’s Liberals, however, trail all parties among the survey’s decided and undecided voters.

That poll, of course is anything but scientific and representative, but it’s quite interesting all the same. It may, however, reveal traces of a very general trend. Then again, it’s not really news that Liberals finish dead last in Alberta, particularly in Calgary.

Below is my final chart of how the democraticSPACE projected vote totals in Edmonton-Strathcona have changed over time (between September 25th and October 12th). The graph displays averages of democraticSPACE’s projected ranges.  According to these averages, the Conservatives are currently projected as one point ahead of the NDP, but the democraticSPACE projection model doesn’t take potential strategic voting into account.

I’m glad I’m not in the position–as the real masterminds behind democraticSPACE are–of having to make a prediction about this race. It’s simply not possible this time. I admit to having access to a bit more data than democraticSPACE has, but even so, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. I will say that I can foresee anything from a rather more marginal win than usual for Conservative candidate Rahim Jaffer (if the progressive strategic vote for NDP candidate Linda Duncan turns out to be weak or non-existent) to a comfortable win for Duncan (if the Liberal vote collapses into the single digits). Both of those scenarios are possible. More likely than either one, though, is one of the various nail-biter scenarios in between. At this point it all comes down to three factors: 1) how well the Tories are able to get out their vote, 2) how well the NDP is able to get out its vote, and the most important and yet least controllable factor: 3) just how strong the Anybody But the Conservatives movement is in the riding–i.e., how willing the Liberal and Green voters are to switch their votes to oust a Tory.

It’s already been said by the Ottawa Citizen, the CBC, the Calgary Herald, and the National Post, but to say that this is a riding to watch is a massive understatement. And for all those denizens of the riding who are sick of your vote not counting, well, just consider this election a rare gift.  Because oh boy does it count this time.

Further reading:
Edmonton-Strathcona: a snapshot
Winners and losers in Edmonton-Strathcona
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Conservatives
Edmonton-Strathcona: the New Democrats
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Liberals
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Greens

On a beaucoup parlé de la campagne libérale, de ses ratés et de son chef mais si la lecture des sondages est exacte, le grand perdant de cette élection devrait être le chef conservateur Stephen Harper.

Comprenons-nous bien : la performance de l’actuel premier ministre, quoique très ordinaire depuis le débat des chefs, n’est pas catastrophique. Dans la moyenne pour être exact. Mais ce n’est pas là-dessus qu’il sera jugé.

Les conservateurs, comme la majorité des mouvements de droite, veulent des résultats. Les coupures aux subventions dans le domaine culturel et dans le développement économique des régions sont des exemples bien réels de cette idéologie politique. Si le retour sur l’investissement n’est pas bon, on coupe ou on remodèle le programme. La logique peut tenir.

Stephen Harper a décidé d’utiliser un des échappatoires de sa propre loi sur les élections à date fixe pour se lancer dans une campagne électorale qui n’avait pour but que d’aller chercher les sièges manquants à une majorité conservatrice. L’opportunisme politique avec un grand O, quoique le seul reproche qu’on puisse lui faire est d’avoir voilé sciemment l’esprit de la loi qu’il a mis en place.

Le résultat net, en date d’aujourd’hui, est que le Parti conservateur a fragilisé sa place à la Chambre des Communes. Après avoir créé de toutes pièces le personnage de Stéphane Dion, il a laissé les autres partis redéfinir son image. Il les a même aidés, par exemple avec sa position face à la situation économique mondiale. On ne se donne pas de chances lorsqu’on dit aux Canadiens d’investir dans la Bourse, alors que ceux-ci ne cherchent qu’à se faire rassurer. Pas plus qu’en présentant une plate-forme électorale (qui, malgré certains bons côtés, avait plutôt l’air d’un plan B fabriqué à la va-vite)… après le vote par anticipation.

Que feront les militants conservateurs après l’élection? Attendons les résultats, mais Stephen Harper devra répondre de ses actes. Si le résultat net de l’élection est le retour à la case départ, c’est que le premier ministre aura échoué son plus gros test politique.

Chris Warkentin, the incumbent MP for Peace River, was never the local Conservative party’s first pick for MP, even if he was former MP Charlie Penson’s pick.  At least, as I’ve mentioned before, his nomination raised enough ire within the party that in the last election, Grande Prairie town councillor Bill Given took him on as an independent, in large part because he didn’t get a chance to try for the nomination himself.  Given’s Conservative support helped him come in second in the last election, Warkentin’s closest competition by far with around 9800 votes.  Of course, compared to Warkentin’s almost 28,000 votes it wasn’t a close race whatsover.  (Incidentally, this election Given says he’s voting Green, an interesting choice since the Greens received only 2% of the vote last time, and have a very small, if dedicated, core group running their campaign.  Green candidate Jennifer Villebrun, however, has done well at forums and is both well-spoken and upbeat, and will likely get a boost from the popularity of leader Elizabeth May.) But what will happen to all of those disaffected and largely Conservative voters who voted for Given?  That’s 9800 voters who already broke with a long tradition of voting Conservative in the Peace River riding once in the past.  Will they mark their “x” by Warkentin’s name now, despite their dissatisfaction with him, out of party loyalty?  Or will they seek another alternative in this election?  Perhaps like Given, those voters will turn to the Greens, with their fiscal conservatism.  Or might they even turn to the NDP, third place after Given in the last election?

There are some other factors to consider too.  The nuclear issue continues to polarize the riding.  In Valleyview, a Conservative bastion where in my experience to be progressive was almost to be spit upon in the past, audience members at the recent forum stood up and called out to Warkentin to “take a stand, take a stand” on the proposed nuclear power plant, frustrated with his continued waffling (Warkentin has stead-fastedly refused to take a position on nuclear, saying either that it’s a provincial issue or that he has no personal opinion, and carefully saying nothing about his party’s support for nuclear energy in general).  If Warkentin said he supported nuclear, there are any number of people who would agree.  There are also those who would refuse to vote for him as a result.  But trying to straddle the fence doesn’t seems to be earning Warkentin any points, if the Valleyview forum was any indication.

 Another factor is Warkentin’s group of core supporters at the Peace River Bible Institute in Sexsmith.  They were out in force at the 2006 election forum in Grande Prairie, having travelled out together in several identical white vans to ask questions of candidates like why the government allowed nudity in art.  Yet they were conspiciously absent at the most Grande Prairie forum in this election (while nuclear protestors were there and asking questions).  It could be that the Bible College crowd doesn’t feel Warkentin needs any more extra help, now that he’s an incumbent and sure to win. Or could it be that they are upset with Warkentin for not doing more on their key issues, abortion and gay marriage? After all, it has been tough lately for Warkentin to walk this line as well.  His religious beliefs clearly include a personal opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and if you press him personally, as I did after the Peace River forum, he will admit to having personal views to that effect.  But he hasn’t said so flat out while campaigning, and his religious supporters expect him to do actually something about it.

 It’s not that Warkentin hasn’t tried.  He has raised the issues in the House of Commons, memorably trying to focus on the alleged damage gay marriage does to children (his cries of “what about the children” were subsequently dubbed “the Lovejoy factor” by the Upper Canadian blog), and supporting a crime bill, C-484 (the Unborn Victims of Crime Act), that might have reopened the abortion debate by giving special status to the life of an unborn child as a victim.  Which seems like a good point to note that Dr. Henry Morgentaler received the Order of Canada today for his role in making abortion legal in Canada, an award Warkentin also opposed.

 But Warkentin was dealt a blow when the Conservative Justice Minister dropped C-484 in August, right before the election.  The cynical, or the realistic, might say that the Harper government was afraid of being called anti-abortion during the election, a dangerous political position when polls consistently show Canadians remain supportive of legal abortion.  Warkentin was one of the few MPs who vowed to carry forward the bill despite his own government’s refusal to support it.  But with Harper and his spokesperson continuing to say another Conservative government will not support private members bills on abortion, does Warkentin really have a chance?  And will his statements in the House be enough for his religious supporters, or are they becoming frustrated with what, to them, may seem like a lot of talk and very little action, and a lack of support from Harper?

 There is one last change in the riding since the last election, and that is the introduction of candidates for two parties that have never had a presence before, the Canadian Action Party (CAP) and the Libertarians.  The votes they will draw will likely be small, but there is no question Peace River residents have more choice than ever before on their ballots.

 All of this may add up to a more interesting election result than expected, or it may amount to nothing more than a little more mild grumbling as people obediently mark their “x” for the Conservatives as they always have.  Fortunately, we’re only one long weekend away from finding out.

After the Liberals were defeated in the federal election of January 2006, there was a sense of renewal in the air. Both Liberals, who had grown tired of the old ways after thirteen years in government under Jean Chrétien and then Paul Martin, and non-Liberals saw a golden opportunity in defeat to give the party a new sense of direction and purpose, to transform it into a party that would reflect small-l liberal values and be well-positioned as one of the main parties in 21st-century Canada.

In those heady days the Liberal Party attracted a considerable number of people who had never been members of the party, or even voted for it, before. I was one of them. In Alberta, building a new movement or political party from scratch is in our blood. The Reform Party, for example, was a product of this passion so typical of Albertans. For me, therefore, it was a great opportunity to be part of a process that would breathe new life into an old and stale party that had long forgotten its roots.

Albertans are often erroneously labelled as conservatives when, in fact, they are small-l liberals in the traditional sense: protecting people’s freedoms and ensuring that every individual can unfold his or her full potential, while keeping government and its reach to a reasonable level and cracking down on those whose excesses of freedom, such as criminal activity, make it impossible for others to enjoy their freedoms. In that sense, and in that sense only, I am a liberal. As far as I am concerned, a party that uses the word “liberal” in its name must live up to those principles.
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Look at these numbers:

Nationally, however, the party appears to have stopped its week-long slide and come to rest with between 33 and 35 per cent support from decided voters – a shade below the 36 per cent of the vote it won in 2006, allowing it to form a minority government.

What does all this really mean? Very little, to tell the truth. First of all, polls are never accurate. To achieve any real representative accuracy or significance, polling companies would have to poll at least 3,500 people for each poll, rather than only 1,200, 1,000 or 800-900. Given the sample sizes in Canadian polls, all of them are for the birds.

Second, there is the issue of Canada’s undemocratic and antiquated first-past-the-post system – i.e., the winner takes all, as they say. Even if the polling numbers are accurate, which they are not, and we assume that the Tories will get, say, 34%, they can still form a majority government. All they have to do is win by at least one vote in 155 ridings, and the majority is in place. Or to put it in more drastic terms, if they obtained as little as 10% of the votes in 155 ridings, and 10% happens to be the highest count for any of the candidates in the ridings, they would also win a majority.

Always keep in mind what happened in the provincial election in Alberta this March: with only 22% of the electorate supporting them, the Alberta Tories formed a majority government, holding 72 of 83 seats (!).

Finally, the above numbers may not be all that accurate, as I said:

University of B.C. political scientist Fred Cutler, a voting specialist, warned that polling numbers early in a campaign can be suspect and that the decline in support is probably exaggerated.

It is for this reason that it will be a long time before any of the mainstream parties will ever agree to change to a system of proportional representation. As they surely see it: Why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Fait étonnant, c’est un Gilles Duceppe visiblement agacé des attaques que subit Stéphane Dion à propos de la qualité de son anglais, qui s’est porté à la défense de ce dernier. Qualifiant la sortie de Stephen Haper à l’endroit du chef du Parti libéral de « coup bas », M. Duceppe est d’avis que les commentaires du genre n’ont pas leur place en campagne électorale. Selon le chef du Bloc québécois, plusieurs leaders politiques éprouvent des difficultés à s’exprimer dans les deux langues officielles.

Bonjour my friend, how are you mon ami ?

Il faut avouer que le bilinguisme des chefs des cinq principaux partis politiques varie énormément d’un à l’autre. Et si le français de Jack Layton est de loin supérieur à celui d’Elizabeth May, il est permis de s’étonner des propos de Stephen Harper dont le français est relativement du même calibre que l’anglais de Stéphane Dion.

Toujours selon Gilles Duceppe, « M. Dion fait des efforts pour parler en anglais et je pense qu’il a progressé. On demande beaucoup plus aux francophones de bien parler anglais qu’aux anglophones de bien parler français. Il y a deux poids, deux mesures. »

À ce propos, il est indéniable que le bilinguisme canadien n’existe que sur papier. En effet, selon Statistique Canada (chiffres de 2007), seulement 17% des Canadiens sont bilingues. Or, cette donnée masque le véritable écart qui existe entre le Québec et le ROC. En effet, si l’on fait exception du Nouveau-Brunswick où il atteint 33,4% – principalement en raison de la population acadienne –, le taux de bilinguisme est beaucoup moins reluisant dans le ROC, où il varie de 4 à 12%, qu’au Québec où il atteint 40,6%.

Baignant dans une Amérique en grande majorité anglophone, il est généralement admis que les Québécois d’origine francophone ont tout à gagner à maîtriser l’anglais.

Cela dit, en ce qui a trait au « bilinguisme canadien », ces derniers n’ont pas de leçons à recevoir de CTV, de Stephen Harper, ni même de l’ensemble ROC.

Canadians heading to the polls on October 14 do not really have much of a choice, because there is not one leader who really stands out – except, perhaps, NDP leader Jack Layton, who has displayed real pizzazz in this campaign and the ability to connect with real Canadians and their main concerns, unparalleled by any of the other leaders, for which he may yet be rewarded with the job as leader of the Official Opposition . Still, of the mediocre-to-outright-poor choices for the top job in the country available, one emerges as the clear and reasonable choice on election day: Stephen Harper.

The minority prime minister of two and a half years has not exactly wowed Canadians with visionary ideas, but he has provided steady leadership. Were mistakes made? Of course, they were. Government by definition is highly imperfect, and there is no government that has not botched things at some point during its term.

The British newspaper The Economist has endorsed Stephen Harper, just as it did prior to the last election in early 2006. That by itself speaks volumes, because, as the saying goes in Canada, the British publication is more influential than any of the Canadian media. When The Economist favours one leader over another, it is the former that invariably wins. Last time, the Brits dished up a double whammy: not only did one of the oldest magazines in the world endorse Mr. Harper, but it also trashed the then-prime minister Paul Martin by calling him “Mr. Dithers”. In the current campaign, The Economist has described Liberal leader Stéphane Dion as “wimpish” and now come out with its support for Mr. Harper – another double whammy.
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It’s the same old story, isn’t it? The Liberals send Canadian troops to Afghanistan, but the Conservatives get blamed for it.

Listeriosis kills several people across Canada because of lax food-safety inspections, and who gets blamed? The Harper government.

However, the lax inspection regime with respect to food safety was implemented by the previous Liberal government:

The architecture of the recently revamped food-inspection system–an issue that has dogged the Tories during the election– was crafted when the Liberals were in power in 2005, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed.

The design of pilot tests for the Compliance Verification System (CVS), rolled out at federally regulated meat plants in April, began in August, 2005, said Brian Evans, the agency’s executive vice-president.

At the time, the agency was operating under the direction of former Liberal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, who lost in the 2006 election. Ujjal Dosanjh, currently seeking re-election in Vancouver, was in charge of food-safety policy as minister of health; he now serves as health critic for the Liberals.

If anyone needs to resign over this, it is Andy Mitchell, but he’s already gone, and Ujjal Dosanjh.

Fingers need to be pointed in this tragic mess, but they need to be pointed directly at the Liberals, who have blood on their hands.

Below is a chart of how the democraticSPACE projected vote totals in Edmonton-Strathcona have changed between September 25th and October 8th. The graph displays averages of democraticSPACE’s projected ranges.

With this current situation in mind, here are the things each of the four main parties will have to achieve in order to call this election a success.

The Conservatives:

The Conservatives have to keep their seat. That’s really all. In the end it doesn’t really matter whether their vote total goes up or down or stays the same as long as incumbent Rahim Jaffer stays in Parliament for a fifth term.

How likely are they to get their wish? Well, at the moment, the democraticSPACE projections do favour them, but only slightly. If NDP candidate Linda Duncan can cut only a few points out of the Liberal vote, she can win. This is going to be a tough battle, and an impossible race to call. Still, the odds are in the Conservatives’ favour, as is history.

The New Democrats:

In the 2006 election, just massively increasing the vote for the New Democrats was enough to call it a success. This time is different–this time they need to take the seat from the Conservatives. Anything less is a massive defeat, even if they increase their vote percentage enough to only lose by a few votes.

What’s their likelihood of success? Well, they’re clearly the underdogs in this race, but the softness of the Liberal vote is the wild card. The Liberals for Linda blog has been getting plenty of coverage in the local media, and Duncan has scored endorsements from the likes of former Liberal candidate Steven Leard and Liberal blogger daveberta. Plus, the Duncan team is both hungry for a win and willing to work for it–just as an example, they recently sent out a team of more than a hundred volunteers to canvass more than 5000 houses in the Tory-bluest part of the riding in a single afternoon. Don’t count them out yet.

The Liberals:

They can’t win, but to call this election a success, they need to recover from the 2006 election’s eleven-point drop in their vote. Maintaining their vote wouldn’t quite cut it–they really do need to recover some ground in order to have achieved something for their party in this election.

Are they likely to achieve this? In a word: no. Now that Edmonton-Strathcona has been reported as a close two-way race between the Conservatives and the NDP everywhere from the National Post to the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun to CBC radio, Anybody But Conservative voters in the riding pretty much all know the score. The Liberal candidate has been publicly asked to step down at an all-candidates’ forum, and her anti-NDP brochures are being panned by the media. Whether enough of the Liberal vote migrates to the NDP to achieve a Duncan win is still an open question, but one thing is certain: the Edmonton-Strathcona Liberals will suffer further losses in this election.

The Greens:

Like the Liberals, they can’t win. But in the 2006 election, Edmonton-Strathcona was the only riding in Alberta where the Green vote actually decreased. So in order to call this election a success, they need to reverse that trend and increase their percentage of the vote.

What is their likelihood of success? Pretty good, actually. In fact, I’d say that of each of the four parties, the Greens are the most likely to walk away from this election happy.  The fact that NDP candidate Duncan is a well-known environmentalist will almost certainly still prevent the Green surge we’ll see in the rest of the province, but the Green vote is soaring across the country right now, and it would surprise me a great deal if they didn’t gain at least a little bit of ground in Edmonton-Strathcona.

Further reading:
Edmonton-Strathcona: a snapshot
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Conservatives
Edmonton-Strathcona: the New Democrats
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Liberals
Edmonton-Strathcona: the Greens

This information is noteworthy and should be read and internalized by all Canadians before heading to the polls on October 14. It is proof positive, yet again, that on October 14, the only right way to vote is Anything But Liberal (ABL) or Anyone But Dion (ABD) – emphasis added:

Strange, isn’t it? Along with other Canadian journalists, CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge (to cite only one example) uses the word “massive” to describe the $700-billion (U.S.) economic rescue package in the United States – but declines to use it to describe the cost of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion’s election promises. Why this deference? Most analysts say that Mr. Dion’s promises would cost $80-billion (Canadian). Based on population numbers and using the usual 10-to-1 conversion ratio, Mr. Dion’s promises would thus cost the U.S. equivalent of $800-billion in supplementary spending. If the U.S. credit crunch expenditure is massive, Mr. Dion’s campaign promise expenditures must necessarily be massive, too.

Throw in a high-speed train service between Toronto and Montreal, which Mr. Dion has endorsed but hasn’t promised (at a cost of another $20-billion), and the Liberal Leader – his promises again expressed in cross-border conversion – hits $1-trillion in campaign commitments, making the credit crunch relief operation look quite restrained and, in an odd way, less important than the restoration of Liberal rule in Canada.

In this relative kind of comparison, useful in keeping things in perspective, Mr. Dion’s election promises exceed the cost of the U.S. government’s emergency credit crunch bailout. Yet Mr. Dion’s promises exceed the U.S. bailout in absolute terms – when compared on a per-capita basis. Mr. Dion’s promises would increase government spending by $2,424 for each man, woman and child in the country; the U.S. emergency funding package would increase government spending by $2,330.

Talk about something long enough, and it may just happen. Wish for something, and the universe may just listen and grant you your wish. Some would call it the underlying principle of The Secret; to others, it is merely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In some ways this is how special-interest groups operate in order to drive public debate on their pet issues. They keep shining the spotlight on an issue in the hope of influencing people’s behaviour or attitudes. This, for example, is how wearing real fur has come to be considered gauche, and the global warming movement has been planting similar seeds in people’s minds.

Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has been driving his own mind-and-behaviour-altering campaign by talking incessantly about how sick the Canadian economy has become. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, realizing the effect that this could have on people and the economy, retorted that Mr. Dion was panicking and might actually trigger an economic crisis by repeatedly talking it down. It is for this reason that Mr. Harper has assumed a position some consider standoffish and even cold. When one political leader runs around like a headless chicken screaming “The sky is falling”, the other must step in and counteract any negative effect this will invariably have.
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Say I support a party and want it to govern. I want it to win seats this election. My vote supports it financially, and money is the lifeblood of politics. Under the political financing law, each vote provides the party $1.75/year. So 1 million votes gives my party $7.5 Million dollars over a four year term. That goes a long way to providing my party the resources to grow support in the near term, and over time, hopefully lead to forming a government.

But what if my party’s candidate has no chance of winning in my riding? Do I vote “strategically” (really tactically) to stop my least favorite outcome? This not only deprives my party of money and gives it to my opponents, but if I make this choice in election after election, likely reinforces the perception in the general electorate that my party is a fringe party, with no chance of winning and not worthy of support. This perception becomes self perpetuating, and my party likely never gets elected. Am I prepared to continue working for and supporting such a party?

 Electoral success is the result of conviction and persistence over a number of years. Strategy by definition means a long term perspective.  There are 35% of Canadians who didn’t vote in the last election. Perhaps as my party grows its support and get its message out, these voters may find my party offers them a real choice they want to support. But they won’t have this choice if my party becomes irrelevant. Voting with conviction for my party is the best strategic vote I can make. If I don’t support my party, how can I expect others to do 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.
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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.”

One of NDP leader Jack Layton’s recurring themes in this election campaign has been Stephen Harper’s “$50-billion giveaway in corporate tax cuts“.

If there’s anything we have learned, it’s “It’s the economy, stupid”. But equally important is: “Keep it simple, stupid.”

When Layton speaks of cancelling the corporate tax cuts, Harper immediately counters that it would be insane to saddle companies with an extra $50 billion in the current economic climate. Maybe this take is overly simplistic, but I doubt that the reversal of the cuts would result in companies being slammed with $50 billion.

Here’s why:

No matter what the tax rate, companies have a variety of options and tricks to reduce their taxable income – more so than any personal income taxpayer, a lot more, in fact.
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