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.

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/

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.

The Social Media Election?

March 28, 2011

Early in to "Campaign '11," much is being made out of each party's campaign and the usage of social media. There is a lot of hype - with the Green Party saying it will conduct the most advanced social media campaign Canada has ever seen and statistics about each party's "Facebook Likes" and Twitter followers being analyzed. The Ontario Liberals use fRed, the Conservatives have Tory Nation. Heck, even Jack Layton and the NDP have gotten in on the gig, launching the Jack Layton iPhone app.

My background is in communications and public relations. I don't pretend to be an expert, but social media is not the be all and end all to a national campaign. We have seen its impact in local campaigns; remember the NDP candidate in Durham in 2008, who was forced to step down after making terribly racist and sexist comments on Facebook. But on a national level, social media will not win or lose an election for a party.

Ever since Obama used social media to motivate his base, politicos have looked at it as the master tool. It's not - especially for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Whether a seat is urban or rural, social media is not going to have a massive impact on a campaign, despite what the powers that be think. Picture, for a moment, the core supporters of the Conservative Party. What comes to mind? It's not a latte-sipping, bike riding resident of Toronto or Vancouver. It's a middle class family with not a lot of spare time, it's a senior enjoying their retirement years or it's a farmer. Now picture any of those people engaged in social media, aside from keeping in touch with friends and family!

This campaign is not about social media - it's about the economy and whether or not Canadians are sick and tired of the constant politicking that comes with minority parliament.

On Coalitions

March 27, 2011

Since 2008, "coalition" has become a dirty word in Canadian politics. I shared the shock after the last election when the Liberals, who had just come from one of their worst showings in Canadian electoral history, decided to try and overturn the results of the election, install Stéphane Dion as Prime Minister and welcome the NDP in cabinet.

Here we are, two and a half years later, and heading to the polls once again. As we know, Stephen Harper is using the coalition issue to garner support for the Conservatives, while Michael Ignatieff disavows himself of trying to form a coalition government. 

The debate on this issue, in my opinion, is distracting. As we saw in the U.K., coalitions are a legitimate form of government in a parliamentary democracy. I agree with Harper, however, that the party that wins the largest number of seats, should form the government. That said, though, there is the potential in this election for the Tories to be returned with a minority, Parliament to return and the government to be voted down on the Speech from the Throne. It would be likely, in that situation, for the Governor General to ask the Official Opposition (likely to be the Liberals) to try and form a government that can command confidence of the House. In this situation, a coalition is necessary for the political stability of the country.

This election should not be about constitutional convention. Instead, voters should focus on their pocketbooks. Who is going to provide economic growth, keep taxes low and reduce the deficit? The Conservative Party of Canada. Do we need political stability to stop the insanity of constant electioneering in minority parliament? Yes. This election should be about economic and political stability. Those are the issues I want addressed - and to address them, I'll be voting Conservative.