Election 2015

[Scott]

Agreed. This compass seems fine. The isidewith thingie seemed effect up...to me.

 

[CougarKing]

Wow, just wow. Trudeau really is averse to balancing the budget!  :-\

Globe and Mail

Liberals vow to get rid of balanced-budget law to clear way for stimulus

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are planning, if elected, to scrap a law entrenching federal balanced budgets in order to run deficits to finance a spike in infrastructure spending.

The party confirmed its policy on the Conservative legislation after recently making the contentious deficit-boosting pledge the centrepiece of its campaign in the run-up to the Oct. 19 vote, drawing criticism from both the Conservatives and the NDP.

Elizabeth May is voicing her opposition to Energy East and to bans on inter-provincial alcohol transport. The Green party leader joked the proposed pipeline could carry beer instead of bitumen at a Fredericton event Wednesday.

The issue of whether to balance the books is shaping up as a key dividing line in the federal campaign.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[McG]

I have frequently said that M Trudeau's road to 24 Sussex Drive, even to Stornoway, runs through Quebec where he must defeat M Mulcair's NDP.

A new story, from the Montreal Gazette via Canada.com suggests that he's struggling, even in Montreal, proper.

It would definitely be a schadenfreude moment, for a large number of people, if he lost his own riding.

Given that we have established Mr Mulcair as a better fit for leader of the Liberals that of his own party, and that objections to coalitions really seemed to have revolved around one leader not wanting to work with the other  ...  would a leaderless Liberal caucus be more inclined to fall-in behind the leadership of Mr Mulcair for a coalition government?

 

[The Bread Guy]

.... doesn't let you put a value on how important each question is to you, and seems to just go by left - right spectrum ....

This one lets you adjust weighting once you've answered all the questions.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I have frequently said that M Trudeau's road to 24 Sussex Drive, even to Stornoway, runs through Quebec where he must defeat M Mulcair's NDP.

A new story, from the Montreal Gazette via Canada.com suggests that he's struggling, even in Montreal, proper.

Further: David Akin, who is not one of the media Harper Haters™, suggests, in an article in the Toronto Sun, that "Trudeau aims at austerity-loving Thatcher fan Mulcair."

The article says, "Thomas Mulcair and the NDP now have the undivided attention of the Liberal war room attack machine ... Once, when he was a cabinet minister in the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest, Thomas Mulcair said he admired some of the policies of that matron of the global conservative movement, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Asked recently about his endorsement of the anti-union Thatcher, Mulcair did not back away but coloured it slightly differently." and "... the Liberals apparently need something to weaken surprisingly resilient support for the NDP in two parts of the country Liberals absolutely must dominate to have any hope to form government, downtown Montreal and downtown Toronto."

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Wow, just wow. Trudeau really is averse to balancing the budget!  :-\

He is not against balancing the budget - rather he is disavowing the national fetish for surpluses, even when economic conditions suggest otherwise - and he is at least being honest about it

 

[Edward Campbell]

He is not against balancing the budget - rather he is disavowing the national fetish for surpluses, even when economic conditions suggest otherwise - and he is at least being honest about it

Both are true, in so far as they go, and I (as I have done several times) applaud M Trudeau for his boldness and honesty ... BUT:

    1. He's following the Premier Wynne script which means that ⅔ of his proposed stimulus spending (on "social" and "green" projects) will be (I am 98% certain) wasteful and even counter-productive; and

    2. Both "social" and "green" projects are very likely to actualy create new debt/spending problems for lower orders of government ~ the provinces and municipalities by adding un-budgeted maintenance costs to their books.

In short:

M Trudeau for being bold and honest, but

for adopting a deeply flawed model.

 

[Remius]

So Chris Alexander is suspending his campaign for now.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-alexander-refugee-crisis-1.3213869

I watched him on tv yesterday on power and politics and his performance there was...well wasn't what it should have been.  He struggled, especialy when he was pressed and Paul Dewar kept lambasting him rather effectively and he contradicted himself too. 

There could be any number of reasons why he's suspending his campaign but I suspect they need him to be quiet for a bit. 

I'm curious if, given the length of the campaign if we'll see slip ups due to fatigue and what not. 

 

[Good2Golf]

Paul Dewar is a highly intelligent, worthy adversary.  Tom Mulcair has, for all the young padawans in the caucus, some solid players whom others would be quite wrong to underestimate -- Dewar is one.  That Chris Alexander is feeling the pressure is interesting.  I'm waiting to see Mr. Dewar lock sights on the CPC's energizer bunney, Jason Kenney...

 

[MARS]

So Chris Alexander is suspending his campaign for now.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-alexander-refugee-crisis-1.3213869

I watched him on tv yesterday on power and politics and his performance there was...well wasn't what it should have been.  He struggled, especialy when he was pressed and Paul Dewar kept lambasting him rather effectively and he contradicted himself too. 

There could be any number of reasons why he's suspending his campaign but I suspect they need him to be quiet for a bit. 

I'm curious if, given the length of the campaign if we'll see slip ups due to fatigue and what not.

Yeah, Rosemary Barton gave him a (well deserved, IMHO) kick in the nuts yesterday.

While there certainly could have been (and continue to be) more coverage of Syria, I am unsure our limited participation in it and the limited effects it has on Canada would justify it in the Canadian media.  What Chris Alexander was trying to say was that the media wasn't covering it as a safety/security issue - thus not covering it in a way which fits the CPC narrative.

Sorry buds, you can't just throw up a campaign slogan on the side of your campaign bus and expect apathetic voters to buy it.  You are going to have to work for it.

 

[Remius]

I should note though, that Mr. Alexander wasn't looking too healthy either. 

 

[Poppa]

Could it be that he is doing his job as the current Minister? And not hiding?

 

[Remius]

Could it be that he is doing his job as the current Minister? And not hiding?

It is unlikely he would have announced a suspension of his campaign for that.  They would have touted that to their advantage.  And his campaign would still roll on with his volunteers etc. 

UPDATE: The article added the following "Alexander cancelled a Thursday morning media appearance and is returning to Ottawa to focus on his ministerial responsibilities"

So maybe...just seems odd that his campaign would stop.

 

[Remius]

More details here.  It seems he his focusing on his ministerial duties as surmised by Poppa.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/immigration-minister-halts-campaign-to-address-refugee-crisis-1.2545919

The optics and the story behind this are not good though.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson asks a very good question: "What happened to the Liberals’ francophone foundation?"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/what-happened-to-the-liberals-francophone-foundation/article26195459/

What happened to the Liberals’ francophone foundation?

JEFFREY SIMPSON
The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Sep. 03, 2015

Glengarry-Prescott-Russell riding sprawls east of Ottawa. About 40 per cent of the residents speak French and 9 per cent are bilingual. For 44 straight years, the riding voted Liberal, until 2006, when it went Conservative.

Across Canada, what used to be a foundation stone for the Liberal Party – French-speaking populations outside Quebec – has splintered. From Eastern and Northeastern Ontario to Acadia in New Brunswick to Saint Boniface in Manitoba, Liberal dominance is gone.

Maybe in this election the Liberals can claw back some ridings outside Quebec with large French-speaking populations, but there will no sweep. The days are over when francophone Liberal leaders such as Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, both of whom fiercely defended bilingualism and French-language minorities in particular, could count on huge support from francophones outside Quebec.

Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Ottawa-Orleans, Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, Madawaska-Restigouche, Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe and Saint Boniface are all held today by Conservatives; Timmins-James Bay and Acadie-Bathurst by the NDP.

Only two New Brunswick seats and one in Ottawa with large French-speaking populations remain Liberal.

If Liberals are to make a serious comeback in national politics, they need most of these seats.

Obviously, each of these ridings is different. Francophones are in the majority in some, in the minority in others. Some are urban; others largely rural. Winners in most of these ridings need to attract non-francophone voters, too.

Regardless of their differences, there was a time not long ago when the Liberals owned these ridings. Liberal dominance was built on rock-solid support from francophones. What has happened?

Part of the Liberal decline simply mirrored the party’s overall national fade. Voters, whatever their maternal language, turned away from the Liberals.

That explanation is incomplete. Even when the Liberals slumped years ago, losing power to Conservatives, they held on to more of these ridings than in recent years. For example, the Liberals once held Saint Boniface (and one other seat in Manitoba) while losing all the others in the Prairie provinces. Eastern Ontario seats stayed Liberal election after election, regardless of the national outcome.

Maybe memories have faded of the victories for minority-language rights secured under Liberal governments. Gratitude, as every politician knows, does not last forever. It might have been assumed that, with a leader whose last name is Trudeau, the Liberals would be back on top in these ridings. If so, it has not happened yet.

When the Liberals owned the ridings, the New Democratic Party was not a serious factor in national politics, as it became under bilingual leader Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair.

NDP MP Yvon Godin captured and held Acadie-Bathurst in a backlash against changes to unemployment insurance the Chrétien government implemented. Mr. Godin became unbeatable, but is not seeking re-election.

In Ottawa-Vanier, four credible people sought the NDP nomination at a well-attended meeting for a chance to unseat Liberal incumbent Mauril Bélanger, whose majority has shrunk in recent elections.

The Conservatives, years ago, were still considered the party of the anglophones with a few francophobes in their midst. In Ontario, francophones remembered that the Conservative provincial government of Mike Harris sought to close Monfort Hospital, the French-speaking institution in Ottawa. A large public mobilization reversed that decision.

Brian Mulroney’s leadership put paid to the impression that the Conservatives nationally were anti-French. Stephen Harper, while not having pushed minority-language rights, has not done anything to harm them. He speaks good French, and that fact is appreciated.

Maybe bread-and-butter issues began to favour other parties in the eyes of francophone voters, and the Conservatives, at least until recently, seemed to be the preferred party to run the economy.

In Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, a rural riding, the Conservative MP is a strong right-to-life individual. It is said (by Liberals) that he uses an anti-abortion stand to good effect among older, francophone Catholic voters in rural parishes. In addition, the Conservatives are the preferred party among farmers across Ontario, language notwithstanding.

If the Harper government agrees to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and therefore Canada accepts more dairy-product imports, the farmers and cheese-makers in this riding will be mad. Will they be mad enough to throw out the Conservative incumbent?

Other parts of the old Liberal coalitions have fallen away, including the majority of French-speakers in Quebec and voters in industrial Ontario. Francophone minorities, too, have drifted away.

Mr Simpson answers his own question, in part, with two names: Brian Mulroney and "Le Bon Jack" Layton. Both were extremely effective in French speaking Canada, Jack Layton even unseated (nearly annihilated) the separatist BQ in2011.

But there's more: older, rural voters, of both Anglo and Franco heritage, tend to have more conservative social values, and the Conservatives, starting with Brian Mulroney, but especially under prime Minister Harper, have appealed to those values more than did/do the Liberals.

Further, the Liberals and NDP are, too often, using the same points to try to counter the CPC: that confuses the voters who, generally, want three clear choices.

Language is a dying issue in rural regions: young people are leaving the farm (as they always have) and they are moving into the city. Farms will, slowly but surely, consolidate ... there will be fewer and fewer family farms, especially Franco family farms. Franco small towns, like Orleans, East of Ottawa, have changed. Orleans, for example, is no longer a small, predominantly French-Catholic town; it's a big, polyglot suburb with a wide range of "issues," French language rights being just one amongst many.

 

[Edward Campbell]

More details here.  It seems he his focusing on his ministerial duties as surmised by Poppa.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/immigration-minister-halts-campaign-to-address-refugee-crisis-1.2545919

The optics and the story behind this are not good though.

I don't want to sound cruel, but I do need to restate my views on refugees vs immigrants and the better way forward:

Refugees are, by definition, people who are:

    1. Fleeing their home in fear of life or limb; and

    2. Want, and fully intend to return to their homes as soon as the danger is removed.

People who are fleeing their homes, for whatever reason, and who want to settle somewhere new are migrants, not refugees.

It is wrong to settle refugees in far off, foreign lands, where they have little ability or, often, inclination to adapt. Refugees should be:

    First: Made safe ~ provided with shelter, food, medical care, schools and security, as close to their homes as is practical. This will put a HUGE strain on a few countries which are unfortunate enough to border conflict zones.

    Second: Able to see the international community deal with the threats/dangers which have made them into refugees. This is the real nature of R2P: the civilized, able, mature countries must ACT to change governments which abuse their
    own people: invade; overthrow the cruel, repressive, unrepresentative government; hang the leaders and their henchmen (and women); and, briefly, support new, better leaders.

    Third: Assisted in returning to their homes.

Bringing e.g. Syrian refugees to Canada or Denmark or Germany is unproductive, possibly even counter-productive. Some people in refugee camps will decide that home is no longer attractive; they will want to change their own status from refugee to migrant. Those who want to immigrate to Australia or Britain or Canada should fill out the forms just like all other potential immigrants and hope that they have the "points" they need, based on skill and knowledge and so on.

In short, as much as this picture pains me, personally, too ...

   

        ... and as much as I am glad that the government wants to "do something," I am afraid that we, Canada, under pressure from our friends and neighbours and the media, will do the wrong thing, rather than taking
            a leadership role in helping the Arabs to find a solution to Syria, military, I guess,* and helping some Arabs, especially Jordan to better manage the Syrian refugees.

____
* The US led West can, with minimal effort, invade Syria, topple and hang Assad, deal a series of smashing military blows to IS** and then leave, and leave the Arabs to clean up the mess. There will be all manner of "do gooders" (from the political left, centre and right) screaming "You broke it, you fix it!" but the correct answer tol that is silence, during the rapid withdrawal and nearly total from the region. There is nothing that we, the West, can do to "fix" the Middle East; only the people there, Arabs, Persians and Israelis, can do that, and they may have to have another generation (or two) of war ~ small or large wars, doesn't matter ~ to manage the "fix," whatever it is. What we, the US led West, can do is to simplify the problem:


                                                                                                  Simplifying a problem

                                                                                                  This way    or    that way

 

[George Wallace]

____
* The US led West can, with minimal effort, invade Syria, topple and hang Assad, deal a series of smashing military blows to IS** and then leave, and leave the Arabs to clean up the mess. There will be all manner of "do gooders" (from the political left, centre and right) screaming "You broke it, you fix it!" but the correct answer tol that is silence, during the rapid withdrawal and nearly total from the region. There is nothing that we, the West, can do to "fix" the Middle East; only the people there, Arabs, Persians and Israelis, can do that, and they may have to have another generation (or two) of war ~ small or large wars, doesn't matter ~ to manage the "fix," whatever it is. What we, the US led West, can do is to simplify the problem:

We in the WEST have become too weak riding on our laurels.  We are too soft and that will lead to our demise.  Your suggestion is a very reasonable solution.  A US led invasion, with hundreds of thousands of WESTERN troops on the ground would advance and create the "SAFE HAVENS" behind them, as they advance, where the "refugees" could return to their native lands.  Of course that would mean that what we see now in Europe are indeed refugees and not migrants.

A few RCAF personnel and fighters will not achieve this.  Do we have any real Statesmen left in our parliament, and those Governments in our allied Western nations, that have the 'balls' to mount such an invasion to eradicate the IS threat?  It does not look like it.  Nor does it look like the soft population of our nation and those of our allied Western nations have the courage to agree to such an action.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, Andrew Coyne discusses the possibilities ~ constitutional possibilities, conventional possibilities, tactical political possibilities ~ after the election:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/andrew+coyne+just+election+results+that+impossible+predict+what/11336244/story.html

img]http://cfl.uploads.mrx.ca/ott/images/general/2014/07/crop_20562474919.jpg[/img]
It isn’t just the election results that are impossible to predict — it’s what happens after

ANDREW COYNE  09.02.2015

We have reached the end of the “phoney war” stage of the campaign. From Labour Day on, the parties will be using live ammunition.

That said, it was a surprisingly frisky August: from the revelations at the Mike Duffy trial to last week’s Liberal-NDP policy-swap on the deficit, there was no shortage of electoral fodder for the interested voter to chew on. And the result? The same close three-way race at the end of the month as at the beginning, plus or minus a percentage point or two.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see bigger shifts in the weeks to come. The parties will have saved their most dramatic gambits, their nastiest “oppo research” for the final six weeks. Moreover, the dynamics of a three-way race, in a highly polarized political environment and with more than 50 per cent of the electorate, according to a Nanos Research poll, undecided, makes for a high degree of fluidity.

The efforts of the parties may in fact be secondary. More important, perhaps, may be the interaction between the polls and strategic voters. Such is the loathing of the Conservatives among the two-thirds of voters who say they want a change of government that we could see a strong last-minute move toward whichever opposition party appeared best placed to defeat them.

Conversely, should the NDP seem headed for power, it is possible to imagine Liberal and Tory voters coalescing in a “stop-the-NDP” movement — though Tom Mulcair’s strenuous efforts to play up his centre-right credentials may take some of the steam out of this. Let us just hope, after the experience of the recent British election, that the polls guiding voters’ calculations are accurate.

So it’s an unusually unpredictable election. But that doesn’t begin to describe how uncertain the outcome is. Because it isn’t just the results on election night that are impossible to predict: it’s what happens after. Even if the polls as they now stand turn out to be an exact reflection of each party’s share of the vote on Oct. 19, that still doesn’t give us the first clue who will be governing us.

For one thing, it is always difficult to know how precisely the polls will translate into seats. But suppose the current projections are right: that the NDP wins about 125 seats, to the Conservatives’ 120 and the Liberals’ 95. What then?

Among the imponderables: who does the governor general call upon to form a government? The answer is not, as popularly believed, the party with the most seats. Rather, by convention it is supposed to be the incumbent who gets first crack. Probably that is what would happen, and probably Stephen Harper would accept. But what if the gap in seats between the NDP and the Conservatives were larger? Would he try to form a government with, say, 110 seats? 105?

Suppose he does (out of power, he would almost certainly be out of a job). The supposition is that the other parties would combine to defeat him at the first opportunity. So the next question becomes: when does that first opportunity arise? In countries with properly functioning parliamentary systems, convention dictates that the prime minister recall Parliament within days, weeks at most. The prime minister must command the confidence of the house at all times. Without that having been tested, his mandate to govern is uncertain.

But this is not a country with a properly functioning parliamentary system; the convention that the prime minister must face the house as soon as possible is among the many that have been allowed to fall into disuse. Joe Clark, parliamentary man that he was, did not recall Parliament for five months after his election in 1979 (yes, there was a summer in between: so what?).

It is not hard to imagine Harper holding off for many months, while he toured the country in an attempt to gin up popular support, unveiling policies he was not legally in a position to enact and not conventionally in a position to announce, in the hope that, by the time Parliament is recalled, the opposition parties would think twice about defeating him.

Suppose he does recall Parliament, either soon or late. And suppose the opposition parties do combine to defeat him? Does he accept his fate, and recommend to the governor general that he call upon one or more of the other parties to form a government? Or does he follow Mackenzie King’s example in 1926, and insist he dissolve the House and call fresh elections? What then?

I wish I could say the convention was clear here. It seems pretty clear to me that, Harper having lost the confidence of the house, the governor general would be under no obligation to accept his advice. But there are respected authorities who disagree. I could well imagine Harper making such a demand. And it would be a nervy governor general who disregarded it.

But was our previous supposition correct? Can we, that is, take it as read that the Liberals and NDP would, in fact, defeat the government, given the chance? To persuade the governor general not to dissolve the house, after all, they would have to present themselves as a credible government in waiting, most likely meaning a coalition, or at least some sort of durable electoral pact.

The conventional wisdom is that they would; that if the alternative were to leave Harper in power, they would be under irresistible pressure to do so. But coalitions don’t tend to work out too well for the smaller party in the arrangement: ask Britain’s Liberal Democrats. And besides, they hate each other.

So let’s close on one last imponderable. Is it inconceivable that one or the other of the opposition parties might instead strike a deal to prop up the Conservatives in power? Maybe on condition that they dump Harper as leader?

National Post

One factor Mr Coyne ignores is that if Prime Minister harper holds on to power and is, fairly quickly, defeated in the HoC he will demand an election (remember the "King Byng Thing") because the CPC, unlike the LPC and NDP will still have a sizeable "war chest" available to mount a big, aggressive campaign while the others will, very likely, be in financial distress.

 

[Lumber]

I don't know if this will actually contribute to anything anyone has said, but anyways...

Something that has really furstrated me about this election (and about average joe Canadian in general) is how blind to reality the anti-Harper/anti-CPC front seems to be. Their rhetoric is so strong and so full of conviction that I can't help but think that they believe that all Canadians are with them in their hate for Harper. They always speak about the change that is coming and that "Haper is going to get his", and many more of what they say can be down right violent.

Do they not pay attention to the polls and news? Do they not see that the CPC still has a very large support base, and can very likely win the next election? They don't speak on behalf of all Canadians. A lot of people supported some of Harper's most controversial bills (C-51 anyone?). Futhermore, I can't stand how much they de-huminize him (and any other politician for that matter). The worst ones have actually advocated killing him (seen it many time) to solve Canada's "Harper problem". Come on! The guy is a husband, a farther and  Canadian. You may not like his policies, but he's not Pol Pot!

Anyone else find this annoying?

FYI this is a non-partisan post; on all of the political/vote compasses I consistently get the CPC as the furthest away from my political views.

 

[Kirkhill]

I don't know if this will actually contribute to anything anyone has said, but anyways...

Something that has really furstrated me about this election (and about average joe Canadian in general) is how blind to reality the anti-Harper/anti-CPC front seems to be. Their rhetoric is so strong and so full of conviction that I can't help but think that they believe that all Canadians are with them in their hate for Harper. They always speak about the change that is coming and that "Haper is going to get his", and many more of what they say can be down right violent.

Do they not pay attention to the polls and news? Do they not see that the CPC still has a very large support base, and can very likely win the next election? They don't speak on behalf of all Canadians. A lot of people supported some of Harper's most controversial bills (C-51 anyone?). Futhermore, I can't stand how much they de-huminize him (and any other politician for that matter). The worst ones have actually advocated killing him (seen it many time) to solve Canada's "Harper problem". Come on! The guy is a husband, a farther and  Canadian. You may not like his policies, but he's not Pol Pot!

Anyone else find this annoying?

FYI this is a non-partisan post; on all of the political/vote compasses I consistently get the CPC as the furthest away from my political views.

Lumber - I don't share your politics but I do share your views on discourse.

This whole environment where discourse is fuelled by bringing the mob to a boil, and then trying to keep it there without having the lid blow off entirely, is not healthy.

Heat does not lend clarity.  And there is no country, or cause, or party that can claim to be free  of guilt on this one.

Everyone has adopted the Gramsci-Alinsky school of campaigning.