Election 2011

[Edward Campbell]

An end of week analysis, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29)  from ThreeHundredEight.com:

http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

Liberal and Conservative ceilings after Week 1

After the first week of campaigning, it seems that the Conservatives are capable of topping out at more than the 155 seats needed to get a majority government.  But the wiggle room the party has is miniscule.

Every weekend, I am going to calculate what the Liberal and Conservative ceilings were during the preceding week. The ceilings are established similarly to how I calculate the best and worst case scenarios: I take the best regional results for each party from all of the polls released during the week, and run seat projections with those results. The only difference is that I am taking the highest poll result, rather than the result that delivers the most seats. This puts the onus on the parties themselves, rather than on the strength or weakness of other parties. It is also more manageable from my end.

Of course, these calculations are greatly influenced by the smaller samples of regional polls. But we can still draw some useful information from these ceilings, as it is unlikely that the parties are capable of outpacing the best polls when you consider that the best polls are likely a few points higher than reality thanks to the MOE.

We'll start with the Conservatives. Their best poll results were 43% in British Columbia, 61% in Alberta, 52% in the Prairies, 47.5% in Ontario, 26.7% in Quebec, and 36.2% in Atlantic Canada. Together, that would give the party roughly 43% support in Canada.

It would also hand them 160 seats, five more than are needed for a majority. Their ceilings for the first week are 24 seats in British Columbia, 27 in Alberta, 22 in the Prairies, 63 in Ontario, 12 in Quebec, and 11 in Atlantic Canada, based only on the best poll results. As the Conservatives are currently riding higher in the campaign projection in Atlantic Canada, this is an indication of how the polls have not been great for the Tories out east in this last week. Their numbers have been good, but the Liberals have been doing better. With their support for the Lower Churchill projection, however, I expect the Tories to gain.

For the Liberals, the week has given them some reason to dare to hope that things may turn in their favour, but they still have been struggling and trailing the Conservatives by a significant margin. Their best poll results were 32.3% in British Columbia, 21% in Alberta, 33% in the Prairies, 34.5% in Ontario, 26.5% in Quebec, and 47.9% in Atlantic Canada. Nationally, that would give them 32% support.

Their best seat results are seven in British Columbia, one in Alberta, six in the Prairies, 30 in Ontario, 18 in Quebec, and 23 in Atlantic Canada. This would give them 86 seats in all, a gain of nine over their standings when the government fell and the election was called.

It's a modest gain, but the Conservatives would also make a modest gain of their own. That the best the Liberals can do in Ontario is 30 seats shows the real problem of the first week for Michael Ignatieff: the Conservatives are doing extraordinarily well in Ontario. The Liberals need to whittle that lead down if they want to have any hope of winning more than 90 seats. If they want to form the next government, it is absolutely essential that the tide turns in Ontario.

I have not calculated the ceilings for the New Democrats or the Bloc Québécois for two reasons. Firstly, it takes time to run these calculations through the model. Secondly, the first party is unlikely to form government and the second party definitely will not. And the fate of the NDP depends heavily on the Liberals, as their best chance of influencing government policy is if the Liberals can win enough seats to take the reins of power from the Tories.

The ceilings of the Conservatives and Liberals are thus very important. On the one hand, it gives us an idea of the likelihood of a Conservative majority. On the other hand, it lets us know whether the Liberals really do have a shot of forming the next government or not. At this point, the answer to the last question is no.

The colour code in the graphic is consistent: Conservatives = blue, Liberals = red and NDP = orange. Thus, the "best" the Conservatives can do, based on the first week's polling aggregations, is 160 seats, a working majority (top pie chart) and the best the Liberals can do (bottom pie chart) is 86 seats, holding the Tories to 146 - another, albeit slightly larger minority.

It will be interesting to see what impact the Liberal platform will have.

 

[GAP]

Nik on the Numbers

As we enter week two of the campaign, the Harper Conservatives enjoy a 14 point advantage over the Ignatieff Liberals. Support for the Tories stands at 42.3% nationally, followed by the Grits at 28.4%, the NDP at 16.4%, the BQ at 8.0% and the Green Party at 3.8% looking at the latest three day tracking national Nanos survey for CTV News and The Globe and Mail. Conservative support continues to be driven in the West.

Policy still tops the vote driver measure at 47.3% followed by the party leader at 22.5% but the importance of local candidates is on the rise, increasing from 12.3% two weeks ago to 18.0%. This suggests that more Canadians are starting to look at local candidates in their ridings.

With the three day rolling sample, the possible impact of the Liberal Platform will not be fully captured until mid week.

Visit the Nanos website at 4pm daily to get the latest nightly tracking update on the top national issue of concern and the Nanos Leadership Index comprised of daily trust vision and competence scores of the leaders.

The detailed tables and methodology are posted on our website where you can also register to receive automatic polling updates.


  Methodology
A national random telephone survey is conducted nightly by Nanos Research throughout the campaign. Each evening a new group of 400 eligible voters are interviewed. The daily tracking figures are based on a three-day rolling sample comprised of 1,200 interviews. To update the tracking a new day of interviewing is added and the oldest day dropped. The margin of error for a survey of 1,200 respondents is ±2.8%, 19 times out of 20.


  National Ballot Question: For those parties you would consider voting for federally, could you please rank your top two current local preferences? (Committed voters only - First Preference)

The numbers in parentheses denote the change from the three day rolling average of the Nanos Nightly Tracking ending on April 2nd (n=1,200; committed voters only n=986).

Canada (n=986 committed voters)
Conservative 42.3% (+1.6)
Liberal 28.4% (-1.0)
NDP 16.4% (-0.5)
Bloc Quebecois 8.0% (NC)
Green 3.8% (-0.2)
Undecided 17.8% (NC)

Vote Driver Question: Which of the following factors are most important to you today in influencing your vote [Rotate]? (n=1,200)

The numbers in parentheses denote the change from the three day rolling average of the Nanos Nightly Tracking ending on April 2nd (n=1,200).

Traditionally Vote for Party 8.1% (-1.2)
Party Leader 22.5% (-0.7)
Party Policies 47.3% (-0.7)
Local Candidate 18.0% (+3.0)
Unsure 4.1% (-0.4)

 

[The Bread Guy]

.... RMC already runs a completely bilingual program and without expanding the Canadian Forces any larger than it currently is, the additional officer production, be it francophone or bilingual at CMR St-Jean, is simply not required.  This would demonstrably decrease the efficiency (read increased cost with no proportional benefit) of the CF's officer education process.  :

This is but one aspect of the Liberals' "briefs well to voters, but doesn't translate to fiscally responsible action" plan.

Concur that the Cons need to run the Liberal plans full circle to validate or discredit the proposals ....

Agree with yellow, but doubt orange will happen on this promise, given that it would involve telling Quebec "no, you're NOT going to get a full military university back."

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is the latest projection, based on aggregate poll results, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from ThreeHundredEight.com:

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

And here is the analysis:

Small gains by Conservatives and NDP

With new polls from EKOS and Léger Marketing over the weekend, we now have some other polling firms to add to the model in addition to the daily numbers from Nanos Research. A full poll summary will follow later today.

The new projection involves quite a few seat changes since Friday, but in the end the net result is a gain of one seat by the Conservatives and one by the New Democrats, both at the expense of the Liberals. But in all, five seats have changed hands.

The Conservatives have picked up 0.2 points nationally and now lead with 38.8% support and a projected 152 seats. The Liberals have dropped 0.1 point and are down to 27.1%, putting the gap between the two parties at 11.7 points (it was 11.4 in 2008). The Liberals have slipped to 71 seats in the projection.

The New Democrats are up 0.3 points to 16.9% and 34 seats. Will they get to 17% tomorrow?

The Bloc Québécois is down 0.2 points nationally to 9.4% but is unchanged at 51 seats, while the Greens are also down 0.2 points to 6.5%. Note that is lower than their level of support in 2008.

Regionally, only the NDP had a good weekend. They were steady in the Prairies and Ontario, and made decent-sized gains in Alberta, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. With the possible exception of Quebec, however, those provinces are not growth regions for the NDP.

The Conservatives made a gain of one point in British Columbia, but also lost about a point in the Prairies. A drop of 0.4 points in Ontario is also problematic, considering the 0.5-point gain of the Liberals there.

But aside from that and a 0.7-point jump in the Prairies, this update has little good news for the Liberals. They dropped big in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada, and dipped below 20% in Quebec.

Four of the five seat changes took place in Ontario. Ajax - Pickering went from the Liberals to the Conservatives, and now Christopher Alexander is projected to be in the lead. It is the same story in Brampton West and Brampton - Springdale, where Kyle Seeback and Parm Gill are favoured.

This might seem odd considering that the Liberals closed the gap in Ontario by 0.9 points. I won't try to rationalize this change with some theory about voting behaviour. This is just how the model works. The incumbency effect is partly dependent on whether a party is gaining or losing in a province. In this update, the Liberals have gone from marginally losing support to marginally gaining support compared to 2008 in Ontario. That means the incumbency effect for MPs like Ruby Dhalla and Mark Holland has flipped, putting them at a disadvantage. The incumbency bonus is far greater when a party is losing support than when it is gaining, as my own analysis has shown.

One piece of silver lining for the Liberals, however, is that Ted Hsu is now the favourite in Kingston and the Islands, ahead of the Conservative challenger.

Elsewhere, the New Democrats are now projected to be ahead of the Tories in Elmwood - Transcona, NDP MP Jim Maloway's riding. The Conservatives had been projected to win the riding on Friday.

All this, of course, is before any polls reflect the impact of the Liberal platform.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Nik on the Numbers

As we enter week two of the campaign, the Harper Conservatives enjoy a 14 point advantage over the Ignatieff Liberals. Support for the Tories stands at 42.3% nationally, followed by the Grits at 28.4%, the NDP at 16.4%, the BQ at 8.0% and the Green Party at 3.8% looking at the latest three day tracking national Nanos survey for CTV News and The Globe and Mail. Conservative support continues to be driven in the West.
...

Here, from the Globe and Mail is a graphic to go with the Nanon poll:

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/tories-enter-second-week-with-commanding-14-point-lead/article1969494/


Remember, again, please: we have yet to see any data that shows how the public reacts to the Liberal platform.

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

42.3 % is a safe bet for a majority but it would be comforting to see the results repeated.

I wonder if people haven't started watching the video and noticed that Jack Layton  looks really old..  Jack looks about 80, Iggy about 70 and Harper about 50.  I think not looking like a walking corpse might be a plus to winning an election.

 

[Edward Campbell]

42.3 % is a safe bet for a majority but it would be comforting to see the results repeated.
...

Remember Harold Wilson. We have five "long times" to go.

 

[ModlrMike]

Remember Harold Wilson. We have five "long times" to go.

Indeed. The telling questions are:

1. Has the Liberal platform changed the popular vote intention?

2. If so, has it done so in the most critical sectors, ie: the high volume voters?

3. Is it enough to swing 60 or more seats away from the Torries and to the Liberals or NDP?

I think the answers are likely to be:

1. Probably, but by no more than 5%.

2. Unlikely, the Torries have a significant edge in this demographic.

3. Not in anyone's wildest dreams.

But then I've been wrong before.

 

[Martino]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/04/cv-election-day10.html

The Liberals are offering to fund a 'Canadian GI Bill' that would pay for four years of university for Canadian veterans.

 

[DCRabbit]

Initiatives for vets are great.. my father is one. But I'm positive that any money spent on these initiatives is going to come from cutting the CF budget. It won't be new money.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Two somewhat contrasting stories, at least headlines, about polls this morning:

First, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is this:

Liberals narrow gap to 9 points – but is it a ‘bump or a blip’?

CAMPBELL CLARK
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Liberals appear to have enjoyed a platform bump, as a daily tracking polls shows them nibbling into the Conservatives’ commanding lead.

Tuesday morning’s edition of the three-day rolling Nanos Research tracking poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV shows the Liberals up about 2 percentage points to 30.2 per cent, now less than 10 points behind the Conservatives at 39.8 per cent. The NDP is at 16.5 per cent.

Outside the West, the Conservatives and Liberals are now statistically tied, with Michael Ignatieff’s team winning back ground in the province with the most seats – Ontario.

Part of the Liberal bump likely came from Sunday’s release of the party’s platform, as Monday’s survey interviews show the second day of responses since the release. The question is whether time bears out that gain.

“It could be a bump or a blip,” pollster Nik Nanos said.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives held a 14-point lead in the previous tracking poll, which tallies running results of the previous three days. Still, with the Tories still holding a significant advantage across the country, the shift in numbers shows different regional races.

The Conservatives hold a commanding lead in the West – 54.1 per cent of the vote in the Prairie provinces and 48.4 per cent in British Columbia – but big leads west of Ontario don’t necessarily translate into a lot more seats for a party that already dominates in the region.

“When we get outside the West, it’s actually quite competitive between the Conservatives and the Liberals,” Mr. Nanos said.

In Ontario, the daily tracking poll shows what’s in effect a statistical tie, with the Liberals at 41.1 per cent, and the Conservatives at 39.6. The NDP is at 14.7 per cent in the province.

Mr. Nanos said there may be a link between the Mr. Harper’s recent days of campaigning to abolish the long-gun registry to win votes in rural Ontario. His previous rise in Ontario came from gains in suburban and urban ridings, and that may be slipping a little because of the campaign against the registry, Mr. Nanos suggested.

In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois continue to hold a strong lead, with 35.8-per-cent support, and the Conservatives leading a three-way struggle for second place. They have 22-per-cent support, the Liberals 17.6, and the NDP 16.9.

The three-day tracking poll uses a rolling sample of 400 people a day, for a combined survey of 1,200 Canadians. This sample was conducted April 2 to April 4.

Each day, samples from four days ago are dropped from the results, and the latest day’s are added, to get a three-day rolling result.

Nanos Research says the sample is accurate to within 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Regional results have higher margins of error because of the smaller sample size – Ontario samples have a 5.6 percentage-point margin of error and Quebec samples have a 6.6-percentage point margin.

But, second, ThreeHundredeight.com, says:

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

The analysis, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from ThreeHundredEight.com is:

http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

154 to the Conservatives, 154 to the Opposition

We're finally starting to get some new polls in addition to the very usefulNanos daily tracking. This morning the latest Harris-Decima was added to the projection (removing, where needed, the previous Harris-Decima poll that partly overlapped with some of the regional results in this newest release). The results of the update are a few seat gains for the Conservatives, and a few vote gains for the Liberals.

With a gain of two seats, the Conservatives now stand at 154, exactly half of the seats in the House of Commons. However, they have also dipped 0.2 points nationally to 38.6%. The Liberals, meanwhile, are unchanged at 71 seats but have gained 0.5 points (a relatively large gain in the projection). They now have the projected support of 27.6% of Canadians.

The New Democrats drop the two seats, and now stand at 32. They are also down 0.1 points to 16.8%. The Bloc Québécois is unchanged at 9.4% nationally and 51 seats, while the Greens are down 0.1 points to 6.4%.

The Conservatives are relatively stable, not losing or gaining more than 0.2 points in any part of the country.

The Liberals, however, jumped everywhere. They had infinitesimal gains of 0.1 points in the Prairies and Quebec, decent gains of 0.4 points in Alberta and Ontario, and larger gains of 0.6 points in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada. While it did not translate into any extra seats, it puts them closer in a few. The gain of 0.4 points in Ontario is especially significant.

The New Democrats, like the Tories, were also pretty stable. But the drop of 0.4 points in the Prairies and 0.3 points in Ontario cost them a seat in each region.

The Bloc is up 0.2 points in Quebec to 38.8% after a few days of slow decline. They still hold a very large lead over the Conservatives and Liberals, larger than they had in 2008.

The Conservatives picked up Elmwood - Transcona and Sault Ste. Marie from the New Democrats, in Manitoba and Ontario respectively. Lawrence Toet in Elmwood - Transcona and Bryan Hayes in Sault Ste. Marie are now the projected winners for the Conservatives in these ridings.

So both analyses show relatively large gains for the Liberals and a small drop for the Tories but the effect, seen by ThreeHundredEight.com is to bump the Tories up to the thin edge of a majority.

Here is another interesting graphic, courtesy ThreeHundredEight.com again, showing aggregated polling trends:

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

 

[observor 69]

Mr. Harper, are you on your meds?
RICK MERCER: If the Conservatives want Jack’s prostate to be an election issue, let all the leaders’ health be on the table

Week one of the campaign and I admit I am starting to side with my friends who occasionally question my sanity for following Canadian politics at all, let alone closely. “Why in God’s name would you pay any attention to that bunch of boobs and losers?” they ask. “Boobs and losers,” I say? “These are the best and the brightest that Canada has to offer.” Depression soon kicks in.

Being a political junkie in this country is a bit like being a diehard Leafs fan. Year in and year out you believe you will witness magic; year in and year out you experience the opposite. But yet, you continue to show up, cheer on the team, pay through the nose for a hot dog and it almost always ends in tears.

This election certainly started out with a bang. My prediction that the Liberals would at the last minute run away and hide behind the dumpsters on Parliament Hill, avoiding the vote they triggered, did not come to pass. The government was defeated on a confidence motion because they were in contempt of the Canadian Parliament—a vote that Stephen Harper immediately claimed did not occur. He didn’t argue about the semantics of the vote; he simply denied it happened at all, preferring instead to believe his government was defeated on the budget. There is evidence to the contrary: he was there and it was on TV, but still, as far as he is concerned, it didn’t happen. Some people might consider this inability to understand or admit to what is happening in one’s immediate surroundings systematic of a small stroke or a severe concussion, but in Ottawa it’s just a symptom of spending too much time around people in the PMO.

I like elections. Governments don’t just fall every day, but I understand why some people feel that they do. Three elections in five years is a lot. I have baking soda in the fridge that is older than the Harper government, and I still have Tabasco from the Paul Martin era.

But elections are important. We all know that $300 million is a lot of money—it is a sobering fact that $300 million could be used to purchase 1,000 MRI machines for rural Canada… or six gazebos in Tony Clement’s riding. But this is a democracy and this is the cost of doing business.

According to Stephen Harper, this election is about choices. We can elect a stable, majority Conservative government or a coalition of Liberals, socialists, separatists, criminals and child predators, and not in that particular order.

Michael Ignatieff also says this election is about choice. He says we have a choice between the Red Door and the Blue Door, blissfully unaware that it is not the doors that people are wary of, but the knobs out front.

Jack Layton says there is one choice: make him the next prime minister of Canada. He too may be suffering from a concussion.

That said, once the government fell, both Harper and Ignatieff showed they do things very differently. The choices are stark. Stephen Harper made a terse statement on the situation and refused to take questions. Michael Ignatieff made a terse statement on the situation, then took questions but refused to give answers.

How Michael Ignatieff could orchestrate the defeat of the government and launch himself into a campaign without an answer for the “coalition question” is beyond me. But that was what he did, dodging the question in both official languages. At one point he grabbed his man tits and declared for all to hear, “I am a democrat.” Still, the press was not sated, and he had no other choice but to go home and write a press release that said unequivocally he would not seek to form a coalition with any other political party.

Over at the Harper campaign, the celebration over the disaster that was Ignatieff’s first press conference was short-lived. Turns out Stephen Harper also dilly-dallied with separatist coalitions in the not-so-distant past; and there is proof, not in the form of a forgotten blue dress but in the form of a letter signed by Harper and Gilles Duceppe and sent to then-governor general Adrienne Clarkson.

Personally, I am shocked that Stephen Harper tried to get into bed with Gilles Duceppe. Experimentation of this kind in college is one thing, but at that late in life it probably means you’re hiding a part of yourself that will always be there. Namely a hidden desire to do anything and everything to stay in power.

Jack Layton’s post-vote press conference should have gone well. Jack is born for this type of work. Except instead of talking to Canadians about his version of events, he had to answer personal questions about his health, revealing his prostate-specific antigen numbers. That not being enough, he offered to remove his clothes right there on Parliament Hill to allow journalists to inspect his scars. Nobody took him up on the offer, Rosemary Barton having not been in attendance.

That said, Jack Layton didn’t reveal personal information about his health because the gallery wanted to know, he did it because, earlier that day, Conservatives had fanned out across the country and were practising the dark arts. The whisper campaign about Jack’s health they had been carrying on in the shadows was stepped up a notch.

Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy, who can perhaps kindly be described as the most amoral partisan hack to ever draw a breath, went on radio in Nova Scotia, a province of potential growth for the NDP, and in a hushed tone usually reserved for a palliative care unit told the radio audience that he personally saw Jack on the Hill and “up close it doesn’t look good, Jack doesn’t look good… he is a valiant man for carrying on.”

It takes a certain kind of man to gleefully trade on a man’s battle with cancer, and Mike Duffy is that man. It is why Stephen Harper appointed him to the chamber of sober second thought. Personally, if the Conservatives want Jack’s prostate to be an issue in the campaign, let all the leaders’ health be on the table. Prostate exams for all, weekly if need be, and, perhaps more importantly, let us finally know what medications our leaders are on, or, more importantly, what meds they happen to be off on any given week. Mr. Ignatieff, how is your prostate? Mr. Prime Minister, are you on your meds? Thanks, Senator Duffy.

As I write this, the campaign is in full swing. This time around the Liberals have a plane, chartered from an outfit in Alberta, that looks like everyone else’s plane so nobody is making fun of them. The Conservative plane is chartered from Air Canada so if you’re a journalist that’s the plane to be on. Unlike the Liberal plane, every flight with the Tories gives you Aeroplan travel miles. By the end of the campaign, the journalists will have so many travel miles they will have a card that says super elite on it, just like the one John Baird carries wherever he goes.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/04/mr-harper-are-you-on-your-meds/



If you don't find this humourous then you need to get your meds checked.  ;D

 

[OldSolduer]

All the more reason to start a political party based on Dr. Seuss characters.

I like the Cat in the Hat....

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

What is or is not an election issue in Canada often tends to the unusual.  Jack's physically falling apart would be an issue to me if he had a snowball's chance.

 

[Rifleman62]

Sure it is talk, but it gets the Bloc votes. I for one wish them happy trails. Conversely, if the LieLiberals get elected, Western Canada should look seriously at their options. It is not only Alberta in the west, that has oil. The "hidden" and ignored by the media "NEP" and tax measures in the LieLiberal platform should be enough.

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

5 Apr 2011 - National Post - Graeme Hamilton
   
Why is there no Quebec uprising?

Bloc platform paints a bleak life in Canada

The Bloc Québécois published its electoral policy statement Monday. And the picture it paints of life within Confederation is so relentlessly grim it’s a wonder the spirit driving the Arab Spring has not yet hit the shores of the St. Lawrence.

“Denying our aspirations, indifferent to our interests and opposed to our values, the Conservatives have permanently turned their backs on Quebec,” Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe writes in his introduction. A Conservative majority would mean “the complete negation of what we are,” he continues, and the other parties are hardly better: “In Ottawa, Quebec and its difference are a bother. The Canadian parties would like us to be a province like the others,” subjected to policies tailored for the other provinces.

The document remarks that the other parties are glad to hand over billions to Ontario’s automobile industry but leave “crumbs” for the forestry sector in Quebec. Clean energy projects dear to Quebecers’ hearts are ignored “so as not to displease Calgary.” And the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are “lukewarm” about investing in research and development, “since it is in Quebec that these state-of-the-art sectors are concentrated.” My comment: Now, why is that?

Apparently the only malaise not attributable to the feds is the Canadiens’ lateseason swoon. (Then again, it was one of the Bloc’s cousins in the Parti Québécois, Pierre Curzi, who last year blamed plotting federalists for excluding Quebec-born players from the Habs; stay tuned in the event of an early exit from the playoffs.)

It would be enough to make a Quebecer start looking for a safe haven, except that this Bloc platform, like the others before it, is really just an exercise in creative writing. The Bloc is a political party, and parties run on platforms, so it has to be done. But the toughest job for the platform’s authors is not deciding where to stand on the death penalty (against) or money owed to Quebec (its “fair share,” or roughly $5-billion.) The real challenge is coming up with new ways of pretending the Bloc can actually do anything about the problems.

Running only in Quebec, the Bloc is eternally in opposition. So while other parties make promises and generally attach dollar figures, the Bloc, as its latest slogan indicates, talks. According to the policy statement, the Bloc “will demand” some things and it “undertakes to faithfully represent” other things. The party will be “keeping watch,” “proposing,” “showing its determination,” “putting forward,” “defending” and “continuing to say clearly what it thinks.”

Of course, having already established that all the other parties are lined up against Quebec, it might as well save its breath.

 

[Rifleman62]

Funny, this guy "appears" out of the woodwork in Ottawa with his analysis during an election. No mention in the article as to why this fellow happened to be in Ottawa, or that a press conference was called to hear his announcement that, coincidentally refutes what the former government stated.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ottawas-fighter-jet-estimate-all-hogwash-us-watchdog-warns/article1971274/

Ottawa’s fighter-jet estimate ‘all hogwash,’ U.S. watchdog warns

CAMPBELL CLARK

Globe and Mail - Tuesday, April 5, 2011- Campbell Clark

The plan to buy F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will cost billions more than the $29-billion estimated by Canada’s budget watchdog, a U.S. defence spending analyst says.

“It’s going to be significantly more. It’s not going to be $1-billion more, it’s going to be significantly more,” said Winslow Wheeler, a defence-spending watchdog with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

The $29-billion estimate from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page put a startling price tag on the cost of a fleet of 65 stealth jets, though the government insists they will cost about half that amount.

But Mr. Wheeler, a former staffer with the U.S. Government Accounting Office and with both Republican and Democratic senators, said even Mr. Page’s estimate – though reasonable now – doesn’t take into account key elements that will make the costs rise: problems with the complex planes that will be inevitably be discovered during testing and the slashing of the number of planes to be produced by the United States and its allies.

The Liberals say they’ll put the deal on hold, and hold a competition to determine what planes Canada needs. But the Conservatives, and the Defence Department, insist the F-35 is the only “fifth-generation” fighter, complete with stealth technology and next-generation communications available. It will be needed, the government argues, to defend against Russian interlopers and to take on missions like the one the current CF-18 fleet is now doing over Libya.

Ottawa says the planes will cost about $9-billion to buy, and another $6-billion for service over the first 20 years of their life span. That $9-billion cost estimate to buy the fleet includes a package of equipment and modifications to get the planes flying, but pegs the price of each plane at $75-million.

But Mr. Wheeler argues that price tag, once cited as the “non-recurring fly-away” in the United States, has been abandoned by the planes’ proponents. It usually doesn’t include engines and avionics to get the planes flying, and it includes adjustments to 2002 dollars, plus an ample expectation that the cost of each plane will get markedly cheaper as the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, learns how to build them more efficiently.

“To get to that number, they use several crude, disingenuous tricks. And they sprinkle a little fairy dust, in terms of ‘learning curve’ and other magical potions, to pretend it’s got some science behind it,” he said. “It’s all hogwash.”

“Ultimately,” Mr. Wheeler predicted, “the cost of this airplane is going to be about $200-million per airplane.”

In the United States, where the per-unit costs of the F-35 has been cited as $115-million, some defence estimates put it as high as $155-million per plane. But even that doesn’t take into account problems that will see it rise even further.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says Canada is buying the cheapest, “A” version of the plane – but Mr. Wheeler argues that will only save at most 10 per cent. And the cost of supporting the airplane will be more than buying them, and will also rise.

The biggest problems with the cost estimates is that they don’t include allowances for problems looming on the horizon.

The F-35 has only gone through about 10 per cent of developmental tests, so it’s still unclear what problems will have to be fixed even though several have been found so far. And the plane is so complex the costs are likely to baloon. For example, the plane’s older brother, the F-22, is experiencing pricy problems with its stealth coatings.

“The [F-35] is only about 10 per cent through its developmental flight tests. Those are the easy tests. Those are the laboratory tests. Those tests will be finished in 2016,” Mr. Wheeler said. “That’s when the operational tests are [to be done].”

And the number of F-35s that will eventually be built will be far less than current official projections, he argued, further increasing the cost per plane.

Several countries, like Denmark and Norway, are still debating whether to buy the planes. Britain is cutting its planned buy, and Turkey has put its plan to purchase 100 F-35s on hold because of a dispute sparked because the U.S. refuses to allow the sale of the software “source code” that allows buyers to modify the systems.

Washington has cuts its own plans to buy 2,700 planes to 2,500, and can be expected to reduce it further, Mr. Wheeler said.. The U.S. Defense Department has put the development of one variant of the planes, the “B” version, on probation and a deficit commission suggested dramatically reducing the purchase of other variants.

No one can know the costs of an airplane that’s still not developed, but Mr. Wheeler argued the best way to buy a fighter is “a competitive fly-off” of real airplanes. “And make a decision based on real evidence rather than paper studies,” he said.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Funny, this guy "appears" out of the woodwork in Ottawa with his analysis during an election. No mention in the article as to why this fellow happened to be in Ottawa, or that a press conference was called to hear his announcement that, coincidentally refutes what the former government stated.

It appears the news conference was hosted by ceasefire.ca.  In fact, based on this wording:

.... None of this would be possible without the generous support we have received from people like you to our “No Stealth Fighters” campaign. We are more than halfway to reaching our fundraising goal of $15,000 for this stage of the campaign .... We are very happy to be hosting Winslow T. Wheeler in collaboration with our friends at the Physicians for Global Survival ....

it appears ceasefire.ca may have helped pay, along with PGS, to bring this gentleman to Ottawa.

 

[Northalbertan]

As more people out west read exactly what is in the lieberals platform they are starting to get angrier.  A new NEP thinly disguised as carbon trade designed to steal 30 Billion from Western Canada's coffers over 5 years. 

I think if I was Iggy I'd have steered clear of trying something like that.  In Alberta we have a strong right wing challenger to the PCs provincially.  The Wild Rose Alliance has VERY strong views on Federal interference in provincial politics and our resources, and with a provincial election in the works I wouldn't want to alienate Canada's economic powerhouse.

The Wild Rose Alliance, during it's genesis, had a separatist agenda.  It has since moderated it's views somewhat but, if the Lieberals were actually able to form a government I would be concerned about a reversion to their former point of view.

Simply put, I don't think Western Canada would stand for it again.  Far from uniting a nation this platform alienates half the country.

I  would expect Western Politicians to start voicing their opposition to the Lieberal platform soon.

 

[ModlrMike]

It seems the Globe is squarely in the Liberal camp.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

It seems the Globe is squarely in the Liberal camp.

Yuh think? ;D