While most of the country is in the midst of their third week of the campaign, here in Guelph we’re in the midst of the eighth.  By the time October 14th rolls around, Guelph will have had one of the longest running campaigns in Canadian history, at eleven and a half weeks.  As a result, most of the campaigns in town have taken a more low key tone for the first few weeks.

 Most campaigns have taken things a little slower since the General Election was called, and they have been working on maintaining their momentum… repairing and replacing arterial signs, recharging their batteries, preparing for the next round of the campaign.

So far, it’s been an interesting campaign.  All of the parties had the city plastered with arterial signs within five hours of the by-election writ being dropped.  Lawn signs followed shortly thereafter, and all of the parties have a significant number on lawns throught the city.  The majority of NDP and Green party signs are fighting it out on lawns surrounding the core, while the Liberals and the Tories fight it out on lawns surrounding the rest of the city.  I’ve seen more signs out than ever before, and know for a fact that the Tories have more signs up than any other campaign before.

Though this is a liberal riding, it’s far from clear who will come out victorious this time around.  The Greens are putting forward a very strong effort, the NDP and the Tories both have star candidates, and the Liberals are hurting under the leadership of Mr. Dion.  Will it be enough for someone else to wrest this from the Grits?

Driving through Ottawa today, I noticed a stark difference between political signs there and those in Gatineau. And, having recently driven through eastern Ontario and virtually all of Quebec, I daresay it may be a provincial thing.

The signs in Ontario are boring.

Quebec has beautiful signs, with the faces of candidates, different colours, slogans, and simply good design. And this extends to all of the parties – Bloc, Conservative, Liberal, and even NDP.

In Ontario, signs are usually only two colours and have nothing but the party logo and the name of the candidate. No picture, rarely a slogan. What gives?

And in Gatineau, virtually all of the signs are wrapped around telephone polls and lamp posts. In Ottawa, they are large signs on the sides of highways and street corners or small ones stuck into front lawns.

Why is there such a great difference between the two locations? I can’t even begin to posit why.

Coming from a city that did not allow any form of signs on public space; I find the by-laws in Kingston a bit strange. Having election signs on public property makes the campaigns look desperate. It also makes the streets of the city look dirty. Polluting the streets of the city with any political signs should be banned. As an individual currently living in Kingston I don’t understand the reason why signs have to be place on public property in order to create advertising for a candidate.

But let me be clear I think election signs are useless; campaigns spend a lot of money and they waste material that destroys the enviroment in order to create a buzz around the canadiate. Now why can’t candidates and campaigns advertise in the media and create the same effect desired. Michael Gravelle the MPP for Thunder Bay Superior North gave out trees with his signs during the last provincial election now maybe the candidates in Kingston should give a free tree to the public for every sign placed on public property.

I have never seen an election with a slower start. Kingston has had the slowest election start in history; outside the Conservative signs on public property I have seen no visible form of campaigning yet. So I decided maybe I should call some campaign offices to see if the election is on. The Liberal campaign will start full operations on Sep 18th, they have no signs on the ground yet and Peter being the speaker of the house has remained somewhat neutral during campaign.

The Green Party opened a campaign office across the street from the Queen’s University student ghetto; they hope this will attract student support. I tried calling the Green’s but the office is only open for a short time in the afternoon. I must say that I did see some Green election signs on private property; they are currently winning the sign war.

The Conservative Party campaign did not answer the phone, but they seem to be hard at work placing large campaign signs on public property. Makes you wonder can they find a private residence where they can place the signs they spend so much money buying. As for the NDP I don’t even know if they have a candidate yet.

I must say this has been the most uninteresting local campaign I have ever seen. The candidates should start.

So, an Angus Reid poll on Saturday had the Greens at 26% in BC, which, I would suspect, makes Blair Wilson competitive in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast – I’m not saying it’s an outlier, but… I would never make any predictions based on one poll (a Harris-Decima pole puts them at 8% today), but if the number holds up I may have to change my tune a bit. Nothing is ever impossible in contrarian British Columbia. Needless to say, I’ll get back to it in the coming days. I was going to write about the North Shore candidates. I still will, but it requires research and therefore time, which I don’t have, so in the meantime I’m going to talk about election signs on the North Shore.

Election signs are funny things, in so far as most everyone considers them, at best, an eyesore. Yet, come an election, everyone goes out driving to see who has more up, some people I know base their votes on the number of signs, colour of signs and aesthetic appeal of signs. Signs can tell us something about an election. Throughout a campaign one can tell the organization level of the candidates on their ability to get signs up and maintain them. Signs can even indicate support in a riding, if you’re careful to only acknowledge those signs on private property. Publicly displayed signs offer little more insight than a spitting contest. That said, after a week of the campaign what can we say about signs on the North Shore.

NDP – There are none (that’s not exactly true, I saw one Jack Layton bag sign hiding under a Conservative 4×4 – though location counts, across from the Wheat Pool, well done). Even long-time NDP holdouts in my neighbourhood are lacking their signs. Realistically, this isn’t a big surprise. The NDP has strength in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast, but not much at the south end (ie West Vancouver). They probably believe that it serves them better to concentrate their money around Squamish and the Northern reaches of the riding where NDP votes are concentrated and potentially under pressure. In North Vancouver, the NDP is little more than a rump focused around lower Lonsdale. Don’t get me wrong, provincially this is a solid block that makes the BC Liberals work for the riding. Federally, they’re the equivalent of a lone voice in the wilderness (yay hate mail).

(more…)