Election 2015

[Kirkhill]

Equally it is "good" that the Jeffrey Simpsons of the country have been forced to self-identify both themselves and "their" Liberals as tax-payer funded social engineers.

It is great fun playing games on somebody else's nickel.

 

[ballz]

FTFY - paperwork CRA prepares for Parliament says the CRA costs closer to $4B a year to operate, out of a total budget of between $230B and $240B/year.

Wow, I rarely take info at face value and this is why. Mea culpa.

My point to the original post, however, remains the same.

1. You will all probably save more money under the Libertarian proposed tax system than any other system.

2. We are paying billions of dollars for administer the tax system. A flat tax system with very few credits (four more than I would like but that's another issue) can leave money in the taxpayer's pocket and reduce the financial burden of administering taxes. If it costs $4 billion to administer our current system, I think its relatively conservative to bet that a flat tax would cost less than $2 billion to administer. $2 billion is big savings. Would the net revenue - costs be a positive balance? No. But the government shouldn't be in the business of maximizing profit.

This is all besides the fact that a flat tax is much more fairer than a progressive tax. Not as fair as a lump sum tax (nor as efficient), but that would be utopian thinking.

Edit: To expand the post.

 

[Brad Sallows]

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.

Both of those things are trivially true - or very nearly so - and nice.  But there remains the unaddressed problem of the very large shift of the relative shares of the revenue burden from higher income earners to lower income earners.  "Spending cuts" won't fix it.  Whether or not people who already have a reasonable income get to keep more of it isn't where the focus of the flat tax discussion should lie.

 

[ballz]

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.

Both of those things are trivially true - or very nearly so - and nice.  But there remains the unaddressed problem of the very large shift of the relative shares of the revenue burden from higher income earners to lower income earners.  "Spending cuts" won't fix it.  Whether or not people who already have a reasonable income get to keep more of it isn't where the focus of the flat tax discussion should lie.

Well I don't see how it is trivial at all.

The "burden" is currently unfair. People don't like people that have more money than them, I understand that (well I understand it to be true, I don't understand the mentality at all), but how that is justification for another person to pay more money for the same services is well beyond me. If you look at it objectively, there is nothing fair about a progressive tax system. Only if you look at it from a "I'm not wealthy so I want wealthy people to pay more money because I don't like them" standpoint can you justify it as "fair." Sometimes medicine tastes bad, but you have to swallow it anyway.

Yes, a flat tax would "shift the burden." It is important to point out that "shift the burden" doesn't mean "make the wealthy pay less and the middle class pay more" which is the way it is advertised. Someone making 100k would still have a higher tax burden than someone making 20k, it just wouldn't be as heavy as it currently is. It would shift it to a way that's closer to fair (again, just because people don't like people who have more wealth than them doesn't make the current system fair in any sense).

However, under the Libertarian tax plan, it wouldn't just be "people who already have a reasonable income" who get to keep more of it. Our plan was deliberately laid out to ensure that every single tax payer would end up paying less federal taxes. That includes people only making 15-20k a year.


Yes, I am all about talking about the economics of a flat tax, but I feel the need to openly disagree with the whole "shifting the burden on the poor/middle class" stuff, as I find it principally untrue.

 

[Brad Sallows]

How is it principally untrue?

There aren't many options on the table.

1) Set the flat tax rate to increase income tax revenues.  I gather this option is not even open for consideration.

2) Set the flat tax rate to maintain current income tax revenues.  This option definitely ensures people with lower incomes will have to contribute a greater share of those revenues than they currently do.

3) Set the flat tax rate to ensure "every single tax payer would end up paying less federal taxes".  This option definitely ensures income tax revenues will fall, and we move to the second set of options:

A) Raise other taxes.  By how much?

B) Cut spending.  Where, and by how much?

C) Deficit financing, indefinitely.

 

[TCBF]

Well I'm glad you declare "moot" like you are the authority or something. I didn't realize that's how this works.

Your point is based on a comparison that makes no sense. It's apples to melons. The money is collected through legislation. The CRA's budget is used to administer the money collected. Your comparison would be correct if you were comparing how much Greenpeace pays in accounting expenses. It would still be irrelevant, however, because you are comparing a charity to a government which is just bananas. But comparing a charity's cost of raising revenue to a governments cost of raising revenue is RTFO 'er.

Try comparing the Swiss Federal Tax Administration budget to the CRA as a percentage of each country's revenue for a fair comparison.

But you keep going with your point, I'm not sure what it is yet. Are you trying to argue that our tax system is efficient or that a flat tax wouldn't be lightyears cheaper to administer? I'm dying to hear.

- It would appear that I was unintentionally rude. Apologies.
- My point was that seven billion, at first glance, did not strike me as excessive for CRA. My allegory of a charity may have been chosen hastily. I have no idea what the Swiss do.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Consumption taxes, like the HST/GST are flat taxes; they are reasonable simple to collect and rebate to government; and they are, within limits, discretionary: consume less and you pay less in taxes.

I agree that tax codes ~ especially America's, but Canada's, too ~ are too complex but I'm not sure how we, anyone, will find the political will to fix them. Our tax system reflects a firm belief in the macroeconomic theory that the tax code can push us to make "better" decisions. Sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco are classic examples. Raise the price, through higher and higher taxes, and two "good" things will result, the theory says: a) lower usage of "bad" products; and b) higher revenue from those to weak to change their behaviours. Of course we also know that a third, unintended consequence results: bootlegging and tobacco smuggling with the attendant, low risk, benefits for criminals. But everything from supply management to the old, unlamented R&D tax credit and so on, nearly ad infinitum, resulted from the fact that macroeconomics is fairly simple in the classroom but hideously complex in the marketplace. It is the simple theory that attracts politicians and voters and the complexity that baffles even the best bureaucrats.

 

[Edward Campbell]

According to the Globe and Mail's front page banner the results were:

PC: 27.8%  Wildrose: 24.2%  Liberals: 4.2%  NDP: 40.6%  Others: 3.2%

I'm going to go waaaaay out on a limb here, before much real analysis is done, and suggest that the Alberta NDP won 53 of 87 seats (60% of the seats) with only 40% of the popular vote because their vote was very, vert efficient. I'm guessing that in many, many ridings the conservatives (Wildrose and PC ~ who, between them, got 52% of the popular vote) split the vote, getting, say, 25-30% each and allowing the NDP to "come up the middle" and win with, say, 35%.

That's what Prime Minister Harper needs in the 2015 federal general election.

Let's say that he (the CPC) has a solid base of, say, 45 to 50 (of 338) seats, seats that he almost cannot lose (the worst recent 'conservative' result was in 1993 when the conservatives (Reform and PC) were held to a total of 54 (of only 295) seats, and the Liberals and NDP also have about the same base: 75 to 100 secure seats. That means that 120 to 150 (of 338) seats are "given" and 185 to 220 are "up for grabs."

The Conservatives have to win 70 to 90 of those 200ish 'open' seats (40%) and that means they need a very efficient vote with the Liberals and NDP splitting the liberal/progressivevote in many, many ridings, with 30% each while the CPC candidate polls 35%.

That means Prime Minister Harper has to be careful in how he attacks the opposition parties in each riding.


Edit: typo

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I wonder where the usual commentariat is this morning after the Aberta NDP won with 40 percent of the vote...you know, that ones that call for proportionate representation because the federal Conservatives keep winning with 39 percent of the vote. Which is undemocratic, don't you know? 

 

[Edward Campbell]

:goodpost:

Oh, that doesn't apply here, of course ... their right favourite side won so it's all good.

 

[GAP]

The Conservatives have to win 70 to 90 of those 200ish 'open' seats (40%) and that means they need a very efficient vote with the Liberals and NDP splitting the liberal/progressivevote in many, many ridings, with 30% each while the CPC candidate polls 35%.

That means Prime Minister Harper has to be careful in how he attacks the opposition parties in each riding.

I listened to the CPC radio ad about Justin Trudeau's policy this morning........

The one thought that struck me (I can only afford one at a time), is maybe they are attacking the wrong group, what with the NDP win in Alberta.....Trudeau may become irrelevant if this gives a boost to Mulclair....

 

[Edward Campbell]

I listened to the CPC radio ad about Justin Trudeau's policy this morning........

The one thought that struck me (I can only afford one at a time), is maybe they are attacking the wrong group, what with the NDP win in Alberta.....Trudeau may become irrelevant if this gives a boost to Mulclair....

This will give a big boost to Mr Mulcair and a smaller one to M Trudeau ... both will be buoyed by the thought that the CPC can be beaten in Alberta. Mr Mulcair has to hope that Ms Notley governs prudently and well for the next few months.

This, from an article in the Globe and Mail caught my attention:

    "... the New Democrats were led by someone who captured the public’s imagination. At some point during the campaign, almost a cult of personality developed around Rachel Notley. People became increasingly attracted to her character,
      the easy, accessible way in which she expressed her views. In the process, she differentiated herself from the other party leaders, all men, who lacked the charm and natural salesmanship abilities that she possessed.

      Ms. Notley was the NDP campaign, and unquestionably elevated herself above her party’s brand.

      The unprecedented New Democrat surge in Alberta was certainly abetted by a Conservative regime that looked out of touch and, frankly, acted like a dysfunctional family that needed counselling. And if it required any additional proof,
      the campaign demonstrated the price a politician can pay for imprecise language. The smallest of phrases can have the largest of impacts and consequences.

      Before the election was even called, Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Prentice said in an interview that when it came to the fiscal mess in which the province found itself, Albertans needed to “look in the mirror.” Those four simple words
      infuriated a public that felt Mr. Prentice was blaming them for a problem created by a succession of PC governments."

Two lessons:

    1. Personality matters, and, like Ms Notley, M Trudeau's greatest strength is that he is a genuinely nice young man;

    2. The government's record matters: Canadians have to like what Prime Minister Harper has done for them.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This will give a big boost to Mr Mulcair and a smaller one to M Trudeau ... both will be buoyed by the thought that the CPC can be beaten in Alberta. Mr Mulcair has to hope that Ms Notley governs prudently and well for the next few months.

This, from an article in the Globe and Mail caught my attention:

    "... the New Democrats were led by someone who captured the public’s imagination. At some point during the campaign, almost a cult of personality developed around Rachel Notley. People became increasingly attracted to her character,
      the easy, accessible way in which she expressed her views. In the process, she differentiated herself from the other party leaders, all men, who lacked the charm and natural salesmanship abilities that she possessed.

      Ms. Notley was the NDP campaign, and unquestionably elevated herself above her party’s brand.

      The unprecedented New Democrat surge in Alberta was certainly abetted by a Conservative regime that looked out of touch and, frankly, acted like a dysfunctional family that needed counselling. And if it required any additional proof,
      the campaign demonstrated the price a politician can pay for imprecise language. The smallest of phrases can have the largest of impacts and consequences.

      Before the election was even called, Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Prentice said in an interview that when it came to the fiscal mess in which the province found itself, Albertans needed to “look in the mirror.” Those four simple words
      infuriated a public that felt Mr. Prentice was blaming them for a problem created by a succession of PC governments."

Two lessons:

    1. Personality matters, and, like Ms Notley, M Trudeau's greatest strength is that he is a genuinely nice young man;

    2. The government's record matters: Canadians have to like what Prime Minister Harper has done for them.

And, in this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail Alberta political scientist and (conservative) political insider Prof Tom Flanagan suggests how Ms Notley can succeed:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/how-notley-can-avoid-becoming-a-one-term-wonder/article24281617/

How Notley can avoid becoming a one-term wonder

TOM FLANAGAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May. 06 2015

Tom Flanagan holds a research chair at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He managed the 2012 Wildrose campaign.

It was a great night for Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP. The Alberta Liberals collapsed, giving the NDP free run on the left. Having won 53 of 87 seats, the NDP can govern for four years with a comfortable majority. But Ms. Notley should be realistic about her new popularity. The last three Alberta premiers – Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, and Jim Prentice – also had high ratings when they assumed office, and look what happened to them.

Despite that note of caution, Ms. Notley’s prospects may be quite bright if she keeps close tabs on her inexperienced caucus. A party of the centre-left can keep voters happy by borrowing money to pay for enhanced social services (remember the four straight victories for the Ontario Liberals). Eventually the debts become too large to ignore, but that could be years down the road, given Alberta’s robust credit rating.

However, she must govern with moderation. It could be one-and-done if she pushes too hard to implement some of the further-left ideas in the NDP platform, such as a royalty review for oil and gas, higher taxes on corporations and high-income earners, and a $15 minimum wage. Can you spell capital flight?

The oil industry operates all over the world, and many parts of it are highly mobile. Departure of investors and workers would lead to lower tax revenues and higher budget deficits. Ms. Notley would not like to join the company of NDP premiers – Bob Rae in Ontario, Dave Barrett in British Columbia, Darrell Dexter in Nova Scotia – who also won unexpected victories but failed to achieve re-election.

Alberta is now moving into the same political configuration as in the other three Western provinces – the NDP as a party of the centre-left facing a large party of the centre-right (BC Liberals, Saskatchewan Party, Manitoba Progressive Conservatives). However, it will take time for the parties of the right to get together. The Progressive Conservatives got more popular votes than Wildrose (28 per cent to 24 per cent), but Wildrose won more seats (21 to 10) because its vote skews so heavily rural. There will be partisans in both parties who will think they can bury the other and emerge as the only champion of the right.

Yet the experience of the other Western provinces, going all the way back to the BC Liberal-Conservative coalition of 1945, is that the right needs to be united if it is going to defeat the social democrats. The story has been repeated over and over – splits on the right leading to NDP victories, reunification on the right leading to recapture of power.

Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives need each other’s members, donors, and voters if they are to defeat a consolidated centre-left. Wildrose has come back from the dead to retain official opposition status, but it is a rural party, shut out of Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat. The PCs, now the third party in the legislature, face their own grave difficulties. They need to find a new leader; and the NDP will quickly move to abolish corporate donations to political parties and reduce the limit for personal donations from the current astronomical $30,000 in an election year to something more reasonable. Wildrose has learned to live on grassroots fundraising, but the PCs failed to cultivate that art while they thrived on corporate money.

In spite of the way they would complement each other, the PCs and Wildrose may not unite quickly. There is a lot of bad blood on both sides, and each can justifiably criticize the mistakes of the other. Reconciliation is the hardest part of politics. It will help if both sides follow Ronald Reagan’s famous Eleventh Commandment (reworded for Alberta’s circumstances): “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow conservative.”

Two things screwed Bob Rae in Ontario:

    1. An economy in trouble ~ not his fault, but a bad time for the second problem;

    2. The ideological left wing of his party.

There is no reason why a socially liberal, modestly free spending government cannot succeed. Tommy Douglas did, in Saskatchewan, in the 1940s and '50s. He paid off a large public debt, introduced several new social programmes and left saskatchewan with a budgetary surplus. Douglas did not have big labour in the 1940s and '50s; he led a CCF government - solid urban and rural folks steeped in the co-op movement ...

I suspect that Ms Notley will get an (unearned) break in oil prices ... Financial Times: May 5, 2015 6:30 pm. Oil reaches $68 as Saudi raises selling prices and that will allow her to introduce a sane budget, IF she can keep the loony-left ideologues at bay.

Edited to add:

If she can do that then she makes the NDP much less scary and gives Thomas Mulcair a national break at M Trudeau's expense.

 

[GAP]

Ms. Notley has a huge job ahead of her in rooting out the PC people infrastructure that was built up over the last 40 years......there have been many articles about the appointments that were made, only if they were beholding to the PC's when the time came.

I suspect there will be many changes on a lot of boards, committee's, etc.....

 

[Kirkhill]

GAP:

So Ms Notley will have to govern against the Bureaucrats and the Courts .....

and maybe the Press and the Unions.  Some of the first socialist supporters to bail are the Unions.

 

[ballz]

FTFY - paperwork CRA prepares for Parliament says the CRA costs closer to $4B a year to operate, out of a total budget of between $230B and $240B/year.

I went to find the bastard that gave me the wrong info to give me a source. The Department of Finance numbers indicate that the total cost of the CRA was $7.7 billion in 2013, while a annual report by the CRA to Parliament from 2012/2013 had numbers in the realm of $4 billion. I'm now less concerned about which one is right and which one is wrong and more about why the discrepancy?

http://www.fin.gc.ca/tax-impot/2013/2013-eng.pdf found on Page 16

- It would appear that I was unintentionally rude. Apologies.

No biggie, could have been me being oversensitive, it is the internet after all.

- My point was that seven billion, at first glance, did not strike me as excessive for CRA. My allegory of a charity may have been chosen hastily. I have no idea what the Swiss do.

Maybe its not a large percentage, I've been trying to find the Swiss numbers ever since saying that, just because it would be a more apples to apples comparison and the Swiss are a very "small government" country. Going to be hard to find considering what I just found out our own numbers.

How is it principally untrue?

I guess what I find untrue about it is the way its advertised. It makes people think the taxes are being raised on the middle class or that the middle class will be paying a higher tax rate than upper class. The fact is, a flat tax would still result in the upper class paying a very high proportion of all the taxes.

There aren't many options on the table.

1) Set the flat tax rate to increase income tax revenues.  I gather this option is not even open for consideration.

2) Set the flat tax rate to maintain current income tax revenues.  This option definitely ensures people with lower incomes will have to contribute a greater share of those revenues than they currently do.

3) Set the flat tax rate to ensure "every single tax payer would end up paying less federal taxes".  This option definitely ensures income tax revenues will fall, and we move to the second set of options:

A) Raise other taxes.  By how much?

B) Cut spending.  Where, and by how much?

C) Deficit financing, indefinitely.

Option 5 (B) please... At the federal level, cut spending almost every where. The federal government should be limited to protecting life, liberty, and property of the country. All this social spending should be decentralized to the provinces, and even better, to the municipalities. One because its more efficient to do this, and two because it gives the person affected by that social spending a more powerful vote. It also holds the province more accountable to not spend itself into oblivion. If you can't afford a certain social program, or your citizens don't think the juice is worth the squeeze to raise the taxes in order to pay for it, then you shouldn't have it. You certainly shouldn't be able to have $7/day daycare because other provinces are paying for it for you, meaning now they can't afford it.

I would rather pay $1000 total taxes and see $100 go to the federal government while $900 goes to the province, than pay $1000 in taxes and see a 50/50 split. But the truth is, if we decentralized (lowered federal taxes and raised provincial taxes, with the expectation that the province will pay for more than they used to because the feds are only worried about life, liberty, and property) we'd probably find that once the tax rates evened out, I'd be paying $800 or $900 total instead, and receiving better services than before.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>This will give a big boost to Mr Mulcair and a smaller one to M Trudeau

I believe otherwise.  The election of Liberal parties in BC and ON and NDP in AB strengthens the likelihood voters will go Blue in the federal election in those provinces, and those are all important provinces for the CPC.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'm going to go waaaaay out on a limb here, before much real analysis is done, and suggest that the Alberta NDP won 53 of 87 seats (60% of the seats) with only 40% of the popular vote because their vote was very, vert efficient. I'm guessing that in many, many ridings the conservatives (Wildrose and PC ~ who, between them, got 52% of the popular vote) split the vote, getting, say, 25-30% each and allowing the NDP to "come up the middle" and win with, say, 35%.

That's what Prime Minister Harper needs in the 2015 federal general election.

Let's say that he (the CPC) has a solid base of, say, 45 to 50 (of 338) seats, seats that he almost cannot lose (the worst recent 'conservative' result was in 1993 when the conservatives (Reform and PC) were held to a total of 54 (of only 295) seats, and the Liberals and NDP also have about the same base: 75 to 100 secure seats. That means that 120 to 150 (of 338) seats are "given" and 185 to 220 are "up for grabs."

The Conservatives have to win 70 to 90 of those 200ish 'open' seats (40%) and that means they need a very efficient vote with the Liberals and NDP splitting the liberal/progressivevote in many, many ridings, with 30% each while the CPC candidate polls 35%.

That means Prime Minister Harper has to be careful in how he attacks the opposition parties in each riding.


Edit: typo

And, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, Adam Radwanski takes issue with tacticians like me, who are moving 'seat counts' around a spreadsheet (like Ops Clerks move 'markers' on a bird table) and suggests that we get out of the CP bunker and take a good look at the ground:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/the-lesson-for-politicians-underestimate-voters-at-your-peril/article24287580/

The lesson in Alberta for politicians: underestimate voters at your peril

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Adam Radwanski
The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May. 06 2015

Don't believe anyone who says they saw it coming.

At the outset of Alberta’s election campaign, there was chatter that Rachel Notley was one to watch, but only in the sense that her New Democrats had a shot at winning enough Edmonton seats to form Official Opposition. There were questions about whether Jim Prentice was really the political force he’d been billed as, but mostly just in the context of how big his majority would be. Even when polls showed Mr. Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives running third, seasoned observers of the province’s politics initially brushed off any prospect of them actually losing government.

Now that the results are in, nobody who works in or around politics in this country – who holds elected office, who operates behind the scenes, who covers it – should be feeling comfortable. Because the lesson out of what was supposed to be the province most resistant to political change is that the modern electorate is far more volatile than the political class tends to assume or likes to admit.

That message is particularly timely, coming as it does shortly before a federal election that we’re already unwisely gaming-out to within an inch of its life.

Talk to people who will be working on the federal parties’ national campaigns, or are following them closely, and the conversation often becomes an itemization of how many seats each party is capable of winning in each region. The Liberals will reclaim ridings in Toronto or Montreal that are naturally theirs and only slipped away during a fluke election in 2011, and they’re a lock in Atlantic Canada, but they can’t expect too much outside urban centres or west of Manitoba. The Conservatives may be making headway in Quebec, but there’s no way they’re winning more than 10 or 15 seats there. The NDP will mostly be fighting to keep what it has, and it just can’t compete in the suburban battlegrounds needed to win power. And so on.

Behind such prognostications are all sorts of underlying assumptions about how elections are won. A party that hasn’t traditionally won in a region needs a beachhead there before making wider gains, for instance. Parties can’t quickly discard their baggage or negative associations with their brand, and neither are long-formed habits of voting a certain way easy to break.

There are echoes, in such discussions, of the certainty in many corners until even a week or two ago that Alberta’s New Democrats couldn’t possibly win in Calgary, let alone smaller towns. Unlike in Edmonton, which had some history of veering left and had affection for Ms. Notley personally, that was just too big a leap.

It can be reassuring to think that way, particularly for those who are in power, but even to some extent for those who aren’t. Increasingly sophisticated data collection is supposed to be making it easier to break the electorate down into segments of likely and unlikely supporters, well before the campaign officially starts. And a not-insignificant number of people make a living off of predicting voter behaviour, or devising strategies and allocating resources based on that knowledge, or just telling political junkies what they can expect well before the campaign actually starts.

The reality, though, is that nobody knows how opinion will crystallize once a campaign starts – and, if anything, voter behaviour seems to be getting more unpredictable. The last federal election started with the NDP as an afterthought, and ended with it sweeping Quebec despite many of its candidates there barely knowing they were running. Last year’s Ontario election saw the governing Liberals win back a majority government that seemed long gone, claiming ridings even they didn’t think they had a chance in. Now, we’ve got the wildest result – the province that’s supposed to be the most conservative in the country, rejecting a premier who was supposed to coast to victory in favour of a left-of-centre party that held a grand total of four seats coming into the campaign.

If ever we were tribal enough to keep voting the same way our parents or communities always did, that seems to be the case no longer. Nor do long-held impressions of parties seem to matter a whole lot, if we like (or dislike) their leaders. And the less engaged many voters are between elections, the more unpredictable their behaviour will be once they start to pay attention.

It’s not that all the stuff that happens between elections is irrelevant to their outcome; far from it. The resentment toward the Alberta Tories that bubbled over in the past month was percolating through years of scandals and perceived arrogance. Positive impressions of Ms. Notley had to at least be in the back of many voters’ heads before they turned to her. The groundwork that parties do leading up to campaigns to build local organizations – well, it might not have mattered that much in this campaign, but even in unpredictable elections, the results are often close enough that it matters a great deal indeed.

It’s just that, until the race really begins, nobody should pretend to know what all the jockeying before it adds up to. And those who rely too much on past history as an indicator of future voter behaviour can expect to be unsettled.

I am, indeed, making assumptions about electoral politics and they may well be very wrong.

My sense of the "ground," as far as I can see it, and how the issue will play out, still leaves me persuaded that the suburbs and small cities in Ontario, Alberta and BC matter most. I don't think the CPC is going to make many big gains in downtown Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. I don't think either M. Mulcair or M Trudeau is likely to make a breakthrough in rural/small-town Alberta, etc. I believe that the vital ground is the suburbs and smaller cities in "New Canada," that vast region West of the Ottawa River.

 

[Edward Campbell]

>This will give a big boost to Mr Mulcair and a smaller one to M Trudeau

I believe otherwise.  The election of Liberal parties in BC and ON and NDP in AB strengthens the likelihood voters will go Blue in the federal election in those provinces, and those are all important provinces for the CPC.

I really don't understand BC politics.  :

I agree that, generally, Ontarians have voted against their provincial governments and that bodes well for Prime Minister Harper, but they can vote against the Liberals, because they are fed up with Premier Wynne, and then vote for the NDP, instead of the Tories.

I doubt the NDP victory in Alberta will do serious harm to the CPC, but I will not be surprised if the Liberals and/or NDP pick up a seat or two in Edmonton.

 

[Rocky Mountains]

Only five months until the federal election.  It will probably take a year and a half for the socialists to totally destroy the Alberta economy, even from the sad state it is in currently.  Alberta will elect a few Bolsheviks.