On the Lighter Side: A Word Cloud!

A word cloud of the most commonly used words thus far. Interesting that "Liberals" seems to be the biggest!

The Rise of the NDP

April 24, 2011

Yes, I know - I haven't updated this in awhile. I've been keeping up with the campaign, but it's been a hectic week and a half. I apologize to my faithful readers (if I have any) for my delay.

For those who have continued to follow the campaign, you'll know that the NDP has been on the rise in polls. Whether this will translate into seats for Jack Layton and his party, we will have to wait until election night to find out.

Looking at another third party that was seemingly on the rise, we can turn to the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom. In the 2010 election there, a massive sweep of "Cleggmania" was expected to wipe out the Labour Party and turn the election into a race between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. At the end of the day, the Lib Dems kept their share of the vote roughly from the previous general election and actually lost five seats in the process.

There are really two scenarios that could play out due to the rise of the NDP: 1) Left-leaning voters split their "anti-Harper" votes between the NDP and Liberals, allowing Conservative candidates to come up the middle; or 2) Left-leaning voters, seeing the rise of the NDP, coalesce around Jack Layton and provide him with enough seats to overtake the Liberals as the Official Opposition.

To be entirely honest, I would be far more comfortable with the NDP as the Official Opposition. I disagree with everything the NDP stands for, but I respect New Democrats far more than Liberals because New Democrats have principles that they stick to no matter what. This is why I'm a Conservative - because Conservatives also tend to be more principled. Liberals, on the other hand, occupy the "mushy middle" of Canadian politics and don't put the focus on what is the best measures policy wise, but what will best benefit them politically.

It will also be interesting to see what the rise of the NDP means for Toronto-area ridings that have always voted Liberal. The two options I outlined earlier, regarding either the Tories coming up the middle or more New Democrats getting elected could be seen to have the greatest impact right here in Toronto and in other urban centres where Liberals/New Democrats are elected in far greater numbers than Conservatives.

I guess we'll find out in eight days!

Highlight of the debate

April 13, 2011


A new post to come shortly, I've been busy. Just wanted to share my favourite debate night moment. Admittedly, it came from Jack Layton but the stunned look and then smirk from Ignatieff is priceless as he tries to come up with a defence.

The Economy

April 5, 2011

For me, this election is all about one issue: the economy. Yes, I identify myself as conservative and support the Conservative Party. That said, if Michael Ignatieff had presented a stellar economic plan, I would have given him a look. But, his platform came out and it was like traveling in time to the days of Trudeau. As I said in a previous post, the policies of the Trudeau government are a reason why I'm a conservative-minded individual.

With the economy being top of mind, I was pleased to read today that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says that Canada will lead the G7 in economic growth for the first half of 2011. In brief, Canada's economy will grow by 5.2 per cent in 2011's first quarter and smaller, but still acceptable, growth rates in the next two quarters.

I have to admit, that when the recession hit, I was worried about the massive amount of spending that was done by federal and provincial governments. I tend to be a bit of a deficit hawk. But looking at the statistics, 23,000 projects were funded across Canada which created 480,000 jobs according to government figures. I also strongly support the government's deficit reduction plan, which includes wrapping up the stimulus spending and conducting a review of government operations. If the Conservative budget measures continue to be implemented, we should be out of deficit by 2015. I can accept that.

For me, there is really only one party that gets the economic balancing act that is necessary at this time - and obviously, it's the Conservatives. Today's report from the OECD just firms up the fact that the Harper Conservatives have done - and will continue to do - a good job (and yes, I support corporate tax cuts).

National Post editorial board: A far cry from the Red Book

April 4, 2011

I was going to write a post this evening about the recently released Liberal platform. The National Post said it best, however, and I've decided to simply share their comments, from the Editorial Board.

The Liberals won power in the 1993 election, in part, because of their platform. Nicknamed the Red Book, the document was an integrated mix of sensible, centrist planks that had all been costed out and that were complementary with one another. Some Liberals are claiming that the 2011 successor to the Red Book, released Sunday, follows in the same tradition.

Alas, the comparison is inapt. The Liberals’ new platform for the current election is disappointing. It contains little that is novel, promises billions in new spending that will be paid for with higher taxes, and sneaks in a major environmental program without disclosing how much it will cost or whether or not it will stunt job growth.

Officially known as “Your Family. Your Future. Your Canada,” the document even reopens the old tar pit of employment equity in the federal civil service — a sop to NDP supporters who never tire of gender politics. This time, though, the Liberals want to go further than merely creating another enormous bureaucracy to evaluate whether an Office Assistant III should be paid the same as a Materials Management Foreman II. They want to elevate pay equity to the status of a human right. That way, federal bureaucrats who feel their positions are undervalued can file both employment and rights grievances.

Not all the Liberals’ ideas are bad. As the National Post has advocated on more than one occasion, the party favours establishment of a civilian oversight board for the RCMP, along the lines of the one already in place for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. The inability to reform the RCMP has been one of the biggest failures of the Tories’ five years in office. Indeed, under the Harper government, the rot within our once-proud national police force has gone from bad to worse.

Nor is there much wrong with the basic concept of a “Canadian Learning Passport” that would offer $1,000 a year to students to attend college or university. The concept is likely to rankle Quebec’s provincial government, which sees even benign forays into education, such as this, as unwelcome intrusions by Ottawa into provincial jurisdiction. (Quebec complained bitterly about another $1,000-gift scheme the Liberals devised in 1999, the Millennium Scholarships.) And the passports could have the unintended consequence of becoming a subsidy just for the middle and upper class, because — at $1,000 a year — they would be too small to make post-secondary schooling affordable to students from low-income families. But as big-government initiatives go, this one is relatively harmless.

When all of the various planks are thrown in, however, the economic math in the Liberal platform doesn’t work. On the one hand, Michael Ignatieff and his party promise $8.2-billion in new social spending over their first two years in office, funded almost entirely by a cancellation of planned corporate tax cuts. Yet they insist that corporations won’t fare poorly, because they will “provide the right incentives for entrepreneurs and investors” to create new jobs and businesses. But the incentives pledge carries with it only about $2-billion over the same period. Forgive us for being dubious, but if the Liberals take $8-billion from entrepreneurs and investors and give them back just $2-billion, the net result is unlikely to be more jobs and economic growth.

The platform even opens the Liberals up to charges of harbouring a — dare we say it — hidden agenda. Having been burned in the last election by the unpopularity of their radical, pro-environmentalist Green Shift program, the Liberals buried their new major eco-plank — a cap-and-trade system — on p. 46. Yet in revealing his party’s policies on the weekend, Mr. Ignatieff made no mention of cap-and-trade, which would put a high price and firm limit on carbon dioxide emissions, then force companies and consumers to buy credits for their use of electricity, gasoline and other fuels. Tory supporters will no doubt argue, with justification, that this is just Green Shift Lite.

In the lead-up to the Liberal platform release, many Canadians wondered whether the party would lurch left or right — either to steal stray voters from the NDP and summon the faded glory of Trudeau-era statism, or else to create a truly centrist pro-growth alternative to the Tories. Unfortunately, Mr. Ignatieff chose the first option. We believe it is not a wise blueprint for Canada, nor a wise path for his party.

Article source: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/04/04/national-post-editorial-board-a-far-cry-from-the-red-book/

Ground Report

April 3, 2011

This afternoon, I attended the office opening for St. Paul's Conservative candidate Maureen Harquail. It was my first time networking and talking with fellow Conservatives in the riding, since moving here in December.

I was struck, immediately, by the crowd. It was huge! The reports of Toronto being a Liberal bastion may soon be coming to an end; the number of people at the event was impressive, as was the fact that it represented a diverse cross-section of the population of the riding and the city as a whole. Old and young, new Canadians and those who have been here for generations, men and women and more. Talk, not just in the room (where the crowd is biased), but on the street is that Carolyn Bennett, the longtime incumbent Liberal MP, is grating on the nerves of constituents. There is also quite a bit of grumbling that, "coincidentally" the day of the confidence vote, the riding was blanketed by a Carolyn Bennett householder featuring her "accomplishments" over the past weeks and months, as well as a number of photos (which were hard to see and horrendously stretched - desktop publishing is not a strength of Bennett's office, apparently).

Slowly but surely, Conservative candidates with strong credentials like Maureen Harquail, are making a dent in the Liberal's last big bastion of support: downtown Toronto. I'm happy to be a part of it and am looking forward to having her represent me in Ottawa after May 2.

Urban Issues

April 2, 2011

One of the things that I've found interesting during this campaign so far, is nobody is talking about issues facing Canadian cities. I did not know this until recently (and this will likely make me sound naive) but 80 per cent of the population lives in an urban area.

For the Liberals and NDP to ignore urban issues is intriguing, because this is largely where their seats come from. Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal largely vote Liberal with a smattering of NDP (and Bloc, for our Québec friends). The only cities that the Conservatives dominate are Calgary and Edmonton.

I think this is a prime issue that the Conservatives should latch on to, in an effort to build upon their seat count and achieve their goal of a majority government. Here in Toronto, where a conservative was handily elected Mayor, there are numerous issues that the federal Conservatives could attach themselves to, in order to gain support. Transit is always a top of mind issue, as are infrastructure dollars in general. With a leader in Rob Ford in Toronto, now more than ever is a chance for the Tories to work with a supportive-minded mayor and perhaps win seats in Scarborough, working towards the downtown core in future campaigns.

To be fair, until a few months ago, I lived in a suburban riding. I don't have a full grasp on the urban issues. From a casual observer, though, it's a vote-getter for a wide swath of the population. Someone just needs to latch on and tackle them.