End of the term

Well, I've finished my term, and I must say, it was jammed full of good politics. This was my first real foray into blogging, and I must say it's not as easy as you'd expect. Continually coming up with commentary isn't overly easy to do, especially when not much goes on.

But for now, my term is officially over, and we enter the holiday break. Blogging I'm sure will be sporadic over that time. And when I get back to the habit in the Winter, I may also bring a more American perspective, as I'll be working in Northern California. How will all the craziness that I'm sure we'll see be covered down there? We'll just have to wait and see.

But for now, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukkah, a Festive Festivus, and a good time for whatever other holidays you may celebrate!

Conservatives continue pro-choice stand

...well, pro-choice on the wheat board, at least, by firing the president, Adrian Measner today. I may not be a farmer, but from what it sounds like, the majority of farmers like the board, and want to keep it. Could the Liberals pick up some rural votes by being pro-wheat board?

In other news, Harper said that taxing income trusts has been his hardest decision so far. Nice of him to admit that, although there was some tough competition for the title: getting rid of the Status of Women, not putting out an environmental platform, cutting back the Liberals funding for research and education, and the wheat board decision above were all tough choices to make. Personally, I'd say his toughest choice was the only one he got right. Maybe he should have thought harder on some of the others.

Campaign team

Well, Dion officially announced his new campaign team today, putting Bob and Scott on the platform, Martha to test drive the policies, and Gerard to run the rest of the campaign (and giving each a snazzy new title to put on their resumes). I like not putting Rae as the only guy on the platform, to balance it out with Brison, since then at least we won't be attacked by the Cons for putting out an "NDP Platform". And Brison is the type of guy who you want writing that document. Gerard being the main go-to guy for the election is a good choice as well, which will prime him to taking over a top spot in cabinet if we win.

With a team like this, it should be fun following the next campaign!

A leaner, meaner house

Well, I'm not sure if the house is actually leaner than before, but according to some, it's meaner.

Now I unfortunately have been a bit busy this term with school to be able to watch too much Question Period, but it does seem pretty bad. I agree that the standing ovations have gotten a bit ridiculous ("Tax cuts are good! Yay! Yay!" [standing ovation]), but it does add some fun. Heck, we should start up a drinking game:

Take a shot whenever the Conservatives directly blame the Liberals for something, or talk about the Liberals "13 years of incompetence" [but be careful to only include direct quotations, otherwise we'll have too much alcohol poisoning]

Take a shot whenever the conservatives get a standing ovation

Take a shot for when we have 3 questions in a row about the exact same topic

Take a shot for whenever you can hear actual heckling words through the CPAC feed

Take a shot whenever Milliken has to calm everyone down [bonus shot when they burst out laughing at his comment]

That should get you good and drunk, so as to make the "tabling of documents" which usually follows interesting ("I love you stander order 12!").

But now that we can enjoy the raucousness, is it really impeding women from getting in to parliament? Perhaps a bit, but no matter how much we clean it up, it will never get to the point of being civil enough for a normal person watching to not think that these people are crazy. I think the better way to encourage more women to go would be to try to emphasize the 90% of the day where people aren't yelling at each other. I think if people saw that, and realized that QP was only a small part of the parliamentarian day, we would see more women get involved.

Inconveniant greenhouse gases

In honour of Harper's declaration about the "so-called greenhouse gases", I decided to watch "An Inconveniant Truth", the Al Gore movie, tonight. I must say, a great film. I mean, everyone [except a few so-called right wingers] knows about Global Warming, but to see the numbers, the figures, the demos there, it really makes you think.

I would have liked a few more ideas how we can actually reduce our emissions, not just the 5 minute wrap-job at the end. However, still a movie that should be a must-watch for anyone even partly interested in the environment (especially anyone who calls themselves a "Minister of the Environment").

Let the campaign season begin!

Well, with Harper's press conference today, following from his open caucus session yesterday, we're now basically into campaign season. As much as both sides say they don't want an election, I think everyone's thinking that we'll have one pretty soon after we're back from the Holidays.

But until we actually get that campaign, we've got senate reform! and the upcoming cabinet shuffle to talk about. It's gonna be tough for Steve to figure out a way to arrange his Cabinet without admitting the complete failure on the environment. They need to try to send a message of actual policy and change on the environment without admitting their complete failure so far. It's a tough sell, and I think when it does come down, we'll have to try to hammer hard on it. I don't think the environment is the best thing for us to be fighting on, but it seems to be working so far, so we've got to push hard on it.

"Electing" Senators

I will say that I prefer Harper bringing this forward than the sham of a vote that Klein has had a few times in the past. At least this way it's a real organized system, not one province trying to push their own agenda. However, there are some problems:

1. As I read in a few places, and as people like Romeo Dallaire has stated, if we want to change the Senate, we should do it properly and legally. If you want to change stuff with the Senate, we should do it all at once, and have real talks and discussions about what it all accomplishes.

2. Who puts the names forward, and how does the vote run? If it's just anyone who can put their name forward, and everyone just votes for their first number of choices, then I'm all for it, 100%. In that case, we'll see 15 Conservatives run in Alberta, and only 1-2 Liberals. So in that case, the Liberals should easily win it, and every Senator from Alberta will be Liberal.

Now, I wouldn't mind actually having discussions about Senate reform, since it is not right that BC's only got 2 more Senators than PEI, but just doing little patchwork stuff here and there, where we would end up with multiple classes of Senators, and the Senators would then have to start worrying about re-election. I do think the Senate needs changes, but if we do change it, let's actually change it, and not just pass bills that aren't binding at all.

Election speculation

Will the government fall over Afghanistan?

I don't think so. For one, as much as us Liberals are vocal about going into an election right away, we'd be in a terrible spot if we did. We have no money. Heck, it'll take us a few months to raise enough to pay off campaign debts, so we're in no rush for one. Especially I think since we won't keep this big boost from the convention for too much longer (hopefully it will stick around, but I don't think we'll stay around 40 for too long).

So when will we have the election? Ideally I think we'd like to go in the Fall, but with the Ontario election that rules out that one. So that means we either have one pre-budget this winter, post-budget in the spring, or wait until next Winter. Post-budget could be tough, since I can't see how the conservatives won't give us an incredibly nice budget, filled with tax cuts and lots of spending promises, under the assumption that they'll never have to actually fulfill them. Pre-budget is a possibility, but that hearkens back to the argument I posted at the top of the post, about money and readiness.

So that leaves next winter. Could we really let the conservatives stay in power for 2 full years before toppling them, especially after Dion's rallying cry for an election at the end of the leadership contest? Honestly, I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. It would certainly give people more chance to get to know Dion, and would give the Cons more chances to screw up, but it also gives them longer to fix their mistakes, and if they keep without too much trouble for a full year without an ongoing Liberal contest eating up media, could be trouble. I think it's a high risk, high-reward situation to wait that long. Either people will get really pissed off how they're governing and welcome us back with open arms, or people will actually get used to the "new government" and not mind them in power.

So is it worth the risk? I think it could probably be, but I don't see the people higher up taking that chance. I have a feeling that we'll be so trigger happy and probably a bit blinded that we'll rush into an election late this year, maybe mid-May. Will it work? Only time will tell, but it won't be easy.

Convention vs. OMOV

Well, one word that I keep hearing from the convention is that by shooting down OMOV, we ruined a chance at renewal. I say that's a bad viewpoint.

First off, I'm not out there to bash one member one vote systems. I do think that they are a decent system, and we definitely need to give it a serious look. I know not everyone can shell out the 1000 bucks for the delegate fees at the convention, and until we actually have a real way to fundraise for stuff like this, it's too steep for many people.

Now on to why we did the right thing by not jumping into this new system:

1. Conventions are fun, and are a great thing to have. We all saw the poll numbers from Sunday. I haven't seen the Alberta PC polls recently, but I seriously doubt they got a big jump in numbers are their vote, and they had 2 weekends of results. And anyone who went to the convention will say that was one of the best times they've had in a long time.

2. Some may argue with me about this, but OMOV we lose the backroom dealing. Now, to some, this is a great thing, but I think it takes the leader almost another step away from people. The anticipation of figuring out where a leadership candidate will turn to, th scene of them walking across the floor, and all the smoozing between leaders makes it better. I like to know where the guy I likes will go, since if I trust the man enough to think they'd make a good leader, I don't mind knowing who he thinks the next best leader would be. Even if not many Brison or Dryden delegates followed him to Rae, I'm sure a few more did than if he didn't let them know of his choice.

3. OMOV won't actually bring anyone else out to vote who wouldn't have normally. Honestly, does anyone actually believe that some people decided not to vote because they're opposed to the delegated system? If you're anywhat active in the party, you did all you could to get yourself or people you know elected as a delegate. And if you're not involved, then just bringing in a different voting system won't get your more involved, except to possibly vote. But if we just brought in someone to vote, is that actually worth it? This is more a rant in finding ways to get others involved, but I don't think people will suddenly do more with the party just because we have OMOV. I signed up a half-dozen people to vote for me to get me to go as a delegate. Would I still have signed them up without the reward of a delegate spot?

4. OMOV isn't the only form of renewal. It is a form of renewal, but is it worth pushing it in just for the sake of "renewal"? Pushing ahead something just because it's new is no different than changing leaders and calling ourselves a new party. The constitution, now there's a form of renewal. We need to change the way the party operates, but we need to do so in a smart way.

5. As a side point of 4, we shouldn't try to slip this behind people when caught up in leadership. Just like the dump idea of trying to hold policy sessions this time around, everyone knew it was a Leadership convention, even if we tried to stick the "biennial" label on it (and just like the Conservatives being the Alliance in drag, not really a PC/Alliance party). Even the constitution workshop only had 600 or so people out of 5000 who could have gone. Did people actually know what they were voting on? I bet if you asked people to describe the amendment, most wouldn't even know about the points system involved. Wait until we can actually concentrate on it at the next biennial.

6. If the Alberta PC race is any indication, OMOV may bring in catchy campaign songs.

As I said, OMOV is a new way of doing things. I think we need to worry more about getting people involved, and getting more people out, than about worrying about how we pick our leader once every 10 years (on average). However, I do think we need changes before the next leadership vote. Personally, I have not looked enough into it, but I think the best would be to have our leader picked 50% based on a form of OMOV and 50% based on the delegate results. This keeps the usefulness of a convention (since if we went strictly OMOV holding a convention would look pretty stupid), but while still giving everyone a say. Again, maybe some details need to be figured out, but let's actually sit down and talk about it. Figure out how to guarantee an amount of Youth, Women, and Seniors participation, but actually have a talk about it. I think if we spend some time, we can find a system that appeals to people, but even lots of OMOV supporters didn't like this last one.

Back to real life...

Well, apparently there's stuff going on that's not convention related. Soon I should get on to that, but I just wanted to get all my final thoughts on the convention out of the way first, then settle back into my normal routine a bit before heading back to normal blogging.

I will say that the new controversy over whether we should whip our people into voting against the con SSM bill is interesting. As much as I'd love to think everyone should oppose reopening the debate, I'm not sure if we'll manage that. [on a side note, I've been thinking for a while that the best way for Harper himself to play this would be to oppose his own motion. It would be pure political genius for him to show that he's not a crazy maniacal doofus]

So, should we force people to vote our way or kick them out? I think it comes down to politics. Whipping everyone would send a good message that we're a united party and we are the party that will defend everyone's rights. But then again, we have to face the facts that we could lose some numbers on this.

I would say that the best thing to do would be to tell people that if you don't want SSM, too bad, it's already here, and there's no use in bringing it up again. In that case, simply abstain from the vote and be done with it. In an ideal case we should try to get all progressives running in the next election, but I'm not about to throw away a significant percentage of our MPs over this.

Second, Dion being a french citizen. Who cares? If anything this will bring up the much-needed debate as to how much dual citizenry we should allow. This obviously won't affect him in any way in decision making, so if this is the best attack the cons can come up with, I think we picked a great leader last weekend.

Third, I should say congratulation to Stelmach on his win in Alberta. There was a great leadership race: no campaign financing rules, no real membership rules, people being given pre-paid, pre-signed cards to vote with. And did it generate nearly as much interest as the Liberal Leadership convention did? No. Another reason why OMOV failed last week at the constitution plenary.

John Lennard

Read this post.

A great first step towards party unity. We must put aside our past criticisms of everyone, and come together. There was a lot of good reasons why the top 4 contenders had 20-30% support each. The first step is trusting the reasons why everyone else made the choice they did, join together, and put aside the negatives from the campaign. Good on you, John, for realizing that on the floor. Hopefully the rest of us will soon follow you to doing that.

What if...

Well, with the results behind us, I thought it would be interesting to see how it could have ended up differently based on various rumours or possibilities:

1. Kennedy stays on for ballot 3

Well, the most obvious what-if situation is what would happen if Gerard decided to stick it out for another ballot. Barring any strategic voting (which I will get to later), we didn't have enough support coming to us to overcome Dion. Then Kennedy bows out on ballot 3 instead of 2. Would he still be able to deliver his support to Dion? I would tend to think so. As I said before, Kennedy's people went to Dion because we generally liked him more than Iggy or Rae. It may not have been as big, and maybe Dion would have been a couple points behind Iggy at that point instead of a few up. It would have made the final ballot closer, but I think Dion would have still won it.

2. Brison goes Iggy Friday night

Well, according to my sources inside the Iggy camp, Brison was going to go Iggy. They had the rally set up, then Scott backed out and decided to wait for first round results.

Now, I'm pretty sure very few Brison people went Rae, but I think had he gone Iggy, they would have been much more likely to follow him there. It would mean that Iggy would get a better bump after the first ballot, but it might also mean that a few less of those Brison delegates would have gone GK or Dion. GK gained 30 votes, Dion gained 120. Would it have been enough to keep Kennedy close enough to Dion to make him decide to stay around? It might have, but I'm not sure what his split of people were. I don't know what Gerard's cutoff was (I think we could have made up 50-60 from Dryden's people, but not much more).

3. Dryden declares for Kennedy instead of Rae

I could also have the opposite, where Dryden declares for Dion, but all that would have done is make Gerard walk over with Dryden, and probably give even more momentum to Dion.

As for Dryden going Kennedy, obviously GK couldn't have dropped off the ballot then, and we go into the ever crucial ballot 3. As I said above, I think we could have had a net gain of 50-60 from Dryden, maybe even a few more if he declared, but alone it wouldn't have been enough. It would have made us all even more devastated, probably, but hard to say if it would have affected anything in the end.

4. Strategic voting

Rumours out of the Iggy camp had them much more worried about Stephane than Gerard, so what if they decided to give the Kennedy camp a few votes? This would probably be if Gerard had stayed on, since I don't think they would have gone en masse before ballot 2. This would have ensured that Kennedy is ahead of Dion, especially with Dryden's delegates going more towards us as well ("Ken, tear down this ribbon between the boxes").

Then Dion's folks have to pick. Assuming Dion declared for Kennedy, I think we would have picked up a large number of his people. Would we get enough to pass Rae? I think we could have. But then it's much closer, and Iggy would have a bit more. If the second last ballot had Iggy at 40, Kennedy at 33, and Rae at 27, could we have stolen enough of Rae's delegates to win? It would certainly have been an intense final ballot. Iggy managed to make it up to 45% against Dion, could he do better against Kennedy?

5. Plane from Vancouver not cancelled / Rae doesn't challenge AB results

2 rumours from inside the Kennedy campaign has the red eye from Vancouver with a dozen delegates for Kennedy on it cancelled due to weather. We also lost 17 delegates in Alberta due to out of riding rules (they're not allowed people who don't live in the riding to run). Now, I know other camps probably had a few people who missed out for various reasons (for example, I think Dion had a few people who were trucked off with food poisoning), but these would have been big ones.

Had one or the other not happened, then Kennedy would have been about 10-15 votes ahead of Dion after the first night. Dion still picked up about 90 people more than we did on day 2, but some of those may have been following the momentum. Even if Dion passed us, we would have been closer, bringing us to the "Kennedy stays on ballot" from the top. But if we were closer, maybe Ken would have come our way (the "Dryden to Kennedy" section). With both of the situations not happening, we may even have stayed ahead of Dion after the second ballot.

6. Rae declares for Iggy before the last ballot

The last ballot was 55-45. Would Rae's people have followed him if he himself buried the hatched and shook Iggy's hand before the vote? You've got to think at least a few people would have been swayed. It was only about 200 votes difference between Iggy and Rae. An Iggy-Rae team would definitely made Iggy seem better, since at least it's not just an "Ignatieff against the world" feeling (even if Brison did go to Iggy in the end).

And I'm sure there are a lot of other scenarios that would have been interesting as well (Dryden to Iggy would have given him a good boost, for example). But what to make of this all? Well, to me, it seems to make about as much sense and it's just as easy to predict what would have happened after it's all done than it was to try to predict it all before we started.

Convention notes

A few quick points about the convention:

-The speeches by the former PMs were great.

-Parties were fine, except that none except Iggy was rich enough for free-flowing booze. Because of that, I wasn't wasted any evening this weekend, which was disappointing.

-We all chant about a "party united" now, but I still think it will take a bit of time for us to get to that point. It's only natural that those of us who put a lot of time into the guy (or girl) we thought was the right one to lead the party will take a bit of time to react. I personally couldn't reach up the courage to do much cheering for Dion, or even do anything more than wear the scarf. So for those getting a little angry at Antonio, I would say give it some time. It will take us at least until after the holidays to stop thinking in "Iggy vs Dion" terms, or in terms of any candidate. Dion's done a great job reaching out (meeting with the candidates yesterday, giving Iggy the second question today), but it will take a bit of time for everyone to get back on the same train again. It's only natural after a leadership convention, especially one as close as this one.

-Coverage on TV is always something different from coverage from the floor. It felt weird, being my first real convention, not following politics with the running commentary. I kept thinking that during the pause in voting I would hear Peter Mansbridge in my head start analyzing what was just said. It was nice to get that isolation. That being said, I didn't manage to see Kennedy start his walk over to Dion, since there was mad panic and rush around everywhere already. I'd like to see some parts to see how it all looked on TV (especially Kennedy's speech from Friday, and a bit more from the convention floor on Saturday, as well as some of Kennedy's post-mortem speeches), so if anyone can get them on youtube, I'd love to see what it all looked like.

-I felt like I was in the stone age compared to everyone else, since I didn't have a cell phone. I almost felt like I should head out to a store and get one, just to get in on the rush. However, spending a couple hours a day text messaging can't be good for you, so it was nice to be a bit isolated.

-I really still don't want to get back to finishing my work today that I would have been doing last week.

-It was crazy on the convention floor, especially right after a candidate dropped off. For next time, I would say there should be a 10 minute grace period after a candidate drops off where nobody should be allowed to talk to the supporters from that camp. I know it was tough on me and many others when we just learned we weren't going to win, and the first thing anyone else has to say to us is, "Do you have any questions about Stephane Dion's policies?"

-In retrospect, I tended to always hang around the same few people (mostly the Calgary folk I knew). It would have been nice to actually meet a few others, including the blogging folk (who I already feel somewhat like I knew). Next time I'll have to make another effort to meet up with more people, chat with everyone, and get around a bit more. I don't do well at going up to random people (probably from the computer scientist in me).

-I also should probably have tried to get more pictures, especially of me with politicians. The only pictures of me with people are with Kennedy and Trudeau (at separate times), up in Dryden's suite. It would have been nice to finally meet up with Ignatieff, Rae, or Dion, since I've never really met up with them or even seen them talk up close. For me, it was just too tough to try to decide whether it was better to have my tambourine and placard or whether I should try to have my camera out in case if someone big came close.

-And again, it would have been nice to wander around time at some point. After it was done Saturday I did walk around Rue Ste. Catherine with others finding a restaurant, but otherwise, I didn't go anywhere in Montreal that wasn't between convention parties. I have already been there (having lived just off the island until I was 11), but about the only "Montreal" experience was ordering my breakfast in french ("Un muffin anglais").

That seems to be most of the points I have for now. It was a great time overall, filled with lots of excitement, me nearly coming to tears when I didn't hear Kennedy's name going on to the next ballot, and lots of stuff going on all the time. Can't wait for the next one ;)

Candidate recap

I won't post my full thoughts now, now that I'm back at home after a long train ride (quite nice. Had a good, long chat with some delegates from Etobicoke, who seemed to be part of Judy Sgro's undeclared party of people. Very nice people, and made the ride much more interesting on the way back). Tomorrow, I will probably give more details about the convention or other stuff, but for now, I feel more like doing a short recap of the candidates, what happened to them, and what my predictions were (I'm not expecting myself to be right too much).

Martha Hall-Findlay: If anyone can be declared a winner (apart from Dion), it's definitely Martha. She got 2.7% of the vote. She supported the winner, and someone she really agreed with and respected. She's always mentioned up there with Gerard as the big backers, and I think she'll be given something which she should knock out of the park, and be one of the big candidates for the next time we have one of these things. I can guarantee if she runs again, she'll get more than 2.7% of the vote.


Scott Brison: Apparently he was ready to go Iggy, maybe even before his speech, but then decided to wait for the vote. He went Rae. None of his supporters did. Everyone I talked to lost a lot of respect for him. He just seemed to be an opportunistic person with the move, and I think if anyone can be declaed a loser, it's him. He lost a lot of fans this weekend, and isn't looking nearly as well for another leadership run. Had he simply gone to Iggy, Dion, or even Kennedy, we would still respect him for going with the guy he actually agreed with on a few points.

Joe Volpe: He came out, and withdrew on day one. He was then always positioned in photo-ops right behind whoever was the focus. He delivered his delegates to Bob, then we didn't hear from him the rest of the way. The "Zombies for Volpe, Rae" pins seemed to be already made, so it seems to show that at least some people knew about it, but it would be fun if we eventually see "Zombies for Dion", "Zombies for Kennedy", "Zombies for Hall-Findlay" making the rounds.

Ken Dryden: He decided to stay on an extra ballot. He unfortunately went down in vote for it, then went to Bob. I had predicted a large number of people would follow him. I obviously didn't think he would go Bob at all. Too bad for him, and as with Brison, I think a lot of his supporters were shocked by the decision. I'd heard him going to everyone else, but never to Rae. He lost a bit of respect with the move, I think.

Gerard Kennedy: He didn't win. In my last moments, even until Friday night's results, I thought Gerard could win. Even after we were a few votes behind on the first ballot, I thought we would be able to pick up more than Stephane did. Perhaps in the next few days I'll mention some "retrospective hypothetical" questions that people are discussing how stuff would change, but this just wasn't Kennedy's time. We thought he would have a bit more appeal, but we just didn't grow enough early to make it. He was the kingmaker for Dion, and I think he's set himself up for the next leadership race, although hopefully all us Gerard folk don't start thinking Martin-like and undermining Dion. We all voted for him. We'll worry about the next leadership race when it comes around, after a few Dion majorities, I hope.

Bob Rae: What did we prove at this convention? People don't seem to like Rae. He picked up both Dryden and Brison's support, but probably only got a handful of delegates between them. This showed it takes more than some backroom heav-hitters to win a campaign. I had thought he would pick up a bit more support, but it didn't end up that way.

Michael Ignatieff: Too low on the first ballot to win. Lost the support of Brison, which would have changed things. Kennedy's people proved they really didn't like him. Thus, he didn't win. We didn't want to take a chance on him (and hopefully the Iggy folk in the next few days will try to get over him, and be proud of Stephane).


Stephane Dion: He won. It turned out that he had much more ex-officio support than expected, and took the sails out of Kennedy. As much as people play on the 2 votes on ballot 1, it was the fact that he picked up 120 votes to Kennedy's 30 after the first ballot that did Kennedy in. Had we been a couple votes up on them instead of them on us, I don't think it would have been a big deal. In fact, it may have made Dion's momentum even stronger, since he would be the only guy to change spots in the race as well. I can say that he didn't get 91% of Gerard's delegates because we were loyal to Gerard, he got 91% because we all liked Stephane second best.

Go Dion!

Well, too bad GKL didn't make it to the last ballot, but we ran a great campaign, and I think everyone is proud of what we did.

But now, it's not about GK or Iggy or any other candidate, it's about Dion now, and rallying behind him as our new leader. We need to prepare for the next election, and join together to win. More analysis will follow over the next few days.

Day 3

Well, Day 3 is done, and the results of the first ballot are in. Kennedy's practically tied with Dion (2 votes), and with his great performance tonight, combined with Dion's less than stellar one, hopefully we'll be able to pick up a few. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow, with the only dropout being Volpe, now a part of that ever popular in Ontario Volpe/Rae ticket ("now featuring the only politician in Ontario less liked than Rae"). I can't wait for the morning, although I wish it came a bit later.

Day 3: before the madness

Well, I don't imagine I'll have too much time tonight and tomorrow to blog, so we'll get in an extra post now.

Looking forward to seeing the delegate counts coming in. I've heard Kennedy's a solid 3rd in turnout, but nobody seems to know the exact numbers.

It should also be interesting to hear the speeches tonight. It's always better to hear them live, so you get a real impression (and not have the simultaneous translation annoying you). Starts at 4:45 or so, so expect a big cheer for Martha at the start, then expect everyone to go in for supper around the time Volpe gets up to speak. The big 4 are at the end, so they'll probably be starting at 6ish.

And then we have the ever-important parties tonight, where we get the last chance to court delegates. Everyone should be out in full force tonight, getting out last chance to woo other delegates away. Then it'll get even better once they release the numbers, as that will really be the first actual numbers we get, that will tell how the ex-officios declared, and should give us a clue for the weekend. My prediction: that clue will be wrong, and the real way it will play out will depend on the second ballot, once the bottom few people drop off.

Day 2

Well, 2 days down, and sometimes it feels like I barely got here, sometimes it feels like I've been here a week.

Today we had some great spontaneous supports of enthusiasm for all the candidates. Kennedy's got by far the most diverse collection of cheers, and we're going strong. Iggy's got a lot of people (but I seriously doubt this "1000 people" number you hear them try to quote is close to accurate.

Otherwise, nice to see that the new constitution passed and OMOV failed. I personally like the delegated system, and think that it's much better than OMOV.

And Paul's ceremony tonight wasn't bad. Nice to see that we didn'd decide to do every musician from the rest of the country, and it actually made it seem like Paul actually did stuff in his time (although our "enthusiasm" for the environment still seems a bit weird, definitely as well as the Elizabeth May "endorsement").

And in hospitality suites, Iggy's had the most free-flowing alcohol, but the Alberta delegation was pretty nice as well (Mmm, beef). Dion's seemed to be going well, with Trudeau and Holland working the floor for the parts we were there. Tonight's the big voting night, and when it all comes to a semi-end. The hospitality suites will be crazy, especially once numbers are released. Gonna be so good...

Day 1

Well, one day down. Dean had a great speech, even if the 14 acts from the maritimes went overtime beforehand. Hospitality suites were fine. Liblogs had a decent turnout, although mostly Dion people. GK's was packed, although not free drinks (and Trudeau had at least a half hour with the media. Also, apparently Wresnewskij has a great recipe for perogies). Iggy's had a pretty good turnout, and Scott Reid had some interesting comments, which I may perhaps let others explain. Let's see what tomorrow will bring us.

Making my way to the Quebec Nation

I'm on my way on the train now into the convention, having paid for a pretty crappy internet service to pass my time on the ride. It's only taken about 10 minutes to sign on to blogger.

But aside from that, I will be getting into Montreal in about an hour, and I'm looking forward to this weekend. The train seems pretty full of delegates (no poll taken, but I've seen more than a couple GK and Iggy pins around). I'll try to keep writing as much as I can in the next few days, maybe even get a few posts in from other people to get some variety to the coverage. Stay tuned!

Convention

Well, I'm off to convention tomorrow. Should be an exciting time overall. I'll try to get a few posts in when I find the time, and I'm sure everyone will be able to catch comments from lots of people this weekend.

But really, however it ends, we're gonna have a lot of people to lead us heading into the next election, since I hope at least all the frontrunners will go hard to campaign for us, allowing us to be able to cover more ground. It won't be easy, but I think all the candidates will have a great chance to win for us.

Candidate Profiles: Michael Ignatieff

Well, we come to the end of the profile series now with the man in first overall in delegate numbers, Michael Ignatieff.

Michael Ignatieff

Oh, what to make of MI? He's certainly the media darling of the campaign, getting most of the attention. He's been the frontrunner for about a year now. And lots of people hate him.

And I mean they hate him.

Almost more than Volpe.

Now, I can definitely see why people wouldn't like him and wouldn't be fond of him being the leader (his right-wing stances on foreign affairs, his numerous numerous blunders), but the hate-on people get gets a bit disturbing at times. As for me, I don't see why people can hate him so much. Are there others I want to win more than him? Yes, hence my support for GK. But would he be the downfall of the Liberal party, the male Kim Campbell (as a conservative friend of mine opined)? I don't think he'd do that bad. Even if he has really contrary opinions, he is quite eloquent in explaining them.

As I said to people last May at the LPC(O) convention after hearing him speak, I thought that he was a very talented man, and with a bit more political experience, maybe some time in cabinet, he'd be a great person to have as leader. I don't mind his stances on foreign policy, since he explains it well (albeit a bit lengthily), and I don't think we'd lose too many voters from that. And it would definitely be interesting to have a real intellectual as a PM and not simply a politician, to see how they would do.

But to actually be PM, he'd have to win. He has the tendency to say what comes to mind, then go on for 5-10 minutes about why he thinks that way. That isn't so bad when doing it in a closed environment in little groups, but in debates, that doesn't work. In a debate or election campaign, the conservatives will take anything he said and plaster it around. He can't go to every household in the country to give his opinion, so it will sting. With him as leader, we'd face most of our campaign time fixing his mistakes, and not enough time getting policy or being able to attack the opponents lack of doing anything in parliament.

So that is in brief why I don't support him, and why he is not my first choice for leader. Now, I was asked recently if it came down to Rae vs. Iggy, who would I vote for. Honestly, I'm not sure. As I said, I'm not as opposed to him as most people (at least as much as most people on the GK campaign, which I would wager has the highest "non-Iggy" amount of delegates), so I won't need to drink away my sorrows if he wins. [I'm sure I will anyways, but that's another matter entirely].

Convention Prediction:

Well, he's simply gonna have to prove that he's not a terrible leader. As I said before, had he run gaffe-free since the DSM, he'd make a lot more friends. This recent Nation question will be interesting to see how it plays out. He may get a boost from Quebec delegates who like his rigid, early stance for recognizing Quebec, but then again he may not be able to attract as many non-Quebecois voters this way. It's very hard to see a way that we could not be on the last ballot, so it's gonna be very interesting if people really hate him that much, or if all the predictions from last April are correct and Iggy will win.

Future:

Even with his rumours of not running depending on who won, for his reputation he won't be able to back out. I really don't think he'll be overly interested in sitting in opposition, but he's got to stick it out for at least a few years. He's too old to be able to run for leadership next time, even if he would probably be better once he had a bit more experience. If he doesn't win, it would be interesting what cabinet spot to give him. I think he'd be a very interesting foreign affairs minister, but it would be a very controversial appointment.

Candidate Profiles: Bob Rae

Now, we come to the man in second place, Bob Rae.

Bob Rae

Rae is an interesting fellow. After Volpe, he's the hardest to defend. I mean, ask anybody, and they'll tell you that they would never vote Liberal with Rae at the lead.

But then the polls come out and show him almost more electable than some of the others. It really doesn't seem to make sense.

Anyways, with that out of the way, I must say that Rae is far and away the most "politiciany" of the bunch. He's a great public speaker, and would probably do well leading the party. Yet there's some part of me which really doesn't believe he would actually try to change things. He's got the highest average fundraising numbers of anyone. He's taken out way more loans than the rest of the candidates. I just get the sense that he's another member of the old guard (even if he is the newest member).

But even if he may not be the greatest person for the job, as I said, he's a politician and would do very well in debates. He seems masterful at weaving his way in and out of topics without people noticing, and would definitely be a way to steal lots of NDP voters.

Convention Prediction:
Bob's gonna have to try to show that he can win, and that he's not unlikeable. If he does, then he stands a great chance at winning. Ideally he's going to want to pick up a bottom tier candidate or 2 to help solidify his support, then hope that he can steal more of the 4th place people's delegates than the 3rd place person. Even at that, he's going to have to hope for the "stop Iggy" movement to be strong. And even with all that, if I had to put my money down on anyone, I'd put it on him.

Future:
He'll stick around for a bit, to show that he's a real Liberal. He'll be a strong voice in opposition if we're there, either as a leader or just as a normal MP. Prime Minister Bob Rae? I guess it could be worse. But unless if he gets to that point, hard to say how long he'll stick around. I would guess if he wins the leadership he'll last either 2 wins in a row or 2 losses in a row. If he doesn't win, I could see him sticking around for a few years, especially if he's given a decent cabinet spot (maybe something like industry).

Dryden and Dion

Dryden Speech

Good on Ken.

As for Dion's speech, I would say that he is a bright man, and has some well reasoned arguments. But the fact that he can throw out 3 different definitions for the word and proclaim that only one or 2 of them are "correct" is exactly the point that Kennedy is making. We should only vote in favour of a motion which you know exactly what it means. We have the Clarity act which only recognizes referendums with a clear question, why can't we apply the same logic to motions in the house of commons?

Opposing the Nation

Grit leadership hopeful Kennedy bucks tide, opposes Quebec nation resolution

Finally, someone stepping up for what's right.

Candidate Profiles: Gerard Kennedy

Well, we now come to the man sitting in 3rd place for our profile series, Gerard Kennedy.

Gerard Kennedy

I had figured I would support Gerard quite a while ago. I didn't know much about him at the time, but I'd heard he was a younger candidate, worked at the food banks in Edmonton and Toronto, was a CEO of the year in the early 90, had done admirably in Ontario as education minister yet not even having a degree himself, and was bilingual. Almost all of that was true.

My first chance to meet Gerard was at LPC(O). He was suffering from a cold, and thus wasn't overly enthusiastic, but I did like his speech to the youth in the afternoon. He got up on a chair, and gave a good talk to us all. My only comment at that was that he didn't say anything in french at that event.

Now, the recurring theme here is his french capabilities. He's passable in french, certainly no worse than Harper was a couple years ago. To be truthful, I was expecting he would be a bit better than he is, but if you're not used to talking it regularly, it's hard to pick it up right away (heck, I'd taken french immersion from pre-school until Grade 12, then 2 years without it and I could barely order a combo meal from Harveys in french).

Apart from that, he's got a lot of talents. His team is very youthful and full of energy (well, except for the fact that Telegdi is endorsing him. I still can't figure that one out). And he's gotten where he has without any real media coverage. People still don't really think he's a major player, even if at SummerFling he was one vote behind Iggy in the straw poll (boy was that annoying on the bus ride home from Peterborough). He's sitting in 3rd, but even today when they were going over strengths and weaknesses on Question Period they went Iggy, Rae, Dion, Kennedy, in that order.

But back to my experiences with the campaign. He has actually come to KW and visited our club twice. 2 more times than Rae, Iggy, and Dion combined. He came for our club's wine and cheese fundraiser back in June (along with Dryden, Bennett, and Fry), and again a week before the DSM to give a quick speech to our club. He came in and answered some tough questions, and from those I talked to, most people were very impressed by his answers. He knows how to answer questions, and while he may not be as experienced at the federal level in politics, he certainly has learned a lot in the last 6 months and definitely gotten up to speed.

But really, the part I like most about him, is his focus on renewal. He seems to be one of the few people who doesn't blindly think that just changing our leader will bring us back in favour with the people. I'm a firm believer that we need to do more than just put a new coat of paint on the party and make it look like we're a new group. And I, like Justin Trudeau, believes that he has the best vision for how to do that.

Convention Prediction:
We'll go in with a big team, ready to defend our vision for the country and try to get people to see things the way we do. It won't be easy, but it'll be interesting. The first few days should be all trying to convince people that Kennedy is the right man to lead the party and the country. Then we get to the vote. If Dion passed Gerard, then my guess is the Kennedy delegates will swing to him. If we stay ahead of Dion, then we just need to pick up more from him than Rae does in order to pass Rae. Even at that it won't be easy, but Kennedy definitely has a decent shot at taking it all.

Future:
However it ends, we all know Kennedy has a long future. If he loses, the leader will be in his late 50s and Gerard's going to have to be considered the frontrunner for next time. If he wins, then we've got an election to lead. It will be harder for Harper to run negative ads against Gerard than some of the others, but it still won't be an easy campaign.

Candidate Profile: Stephane Dion

Continuing on in our profile series, we come to the #4 candidate, Stephane Dion.

Stephane Dion

I've had many different opinions of Stephane. At first, I thought he was a decent candidate, and probably my second choice. Then came LPC(O) back in May, and as with many others, my opinion of him increased. At that point he became for sure my second choice, and I was really impressed with him.

I held that opinion over most of the summer, Dion being the guy that I always liked and would not be sad in the least if he won. Then something happened. I honestly don't quite remember what it was, but around late August/early September he started doing stuff I didn't like. I didn't become so sold on him. I wavered.

And that opinion has continued along. Even today, I got a phone call from the Strategic Council asking about my delegate intentions, and I said I was unsure of my second choice [on a side note, I'm interested to see, especially for the lower people, what the answers for the question about your candidate dropping off if you keep your choice or go by the candidate's].

I still believe that Dion would be a good leader, but I'm not sure if this is the right time for him. That being said, he's still got a good chance, since if Kennedy drops off, it's between him, Rae, and Iggy. He's an academic and a politician. While he may not have gotten much done in his time as environment minister, he does have credibility there. He did great work with the clarity act. Even if he is Quebecois, he is mostly untainted by sponsorship.

Convention Prediction:
Dion's gonna have to do lots of smoozing in the first few days. He'll come into the convention about 50-100 delegates behind Kennedy, so he needs to pick up that many more than Kennedy early on to win. If he does pick up enough, then he will probably win. If not, then he will unfortunately finish in 4th. While he would probably win on a form of Condorcet voting, that's not how this thing is run.

Future:
If he wins, he becomes leader, and hopefully PM soon. If he doesn't win, then it depends who he endorses, and who actually wins. If he picks the winner, then I have no doubt that he will be a major figure in their eventual cabinet, since he is a very smart guy and will probably be a big part of whoever does win. If he picks wrong, then I would hope that the winner gives him a position anyways. He could probably be an admirable minister for nearly any portfolio.

Trudeau for Kennedy!

It's official. Justin Trudeau is endorsing Kennedy.

The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau said yesterday that he believes the former Ontario cabinet minister offers the best chance for a genuine renewal of the party that will move it closer to grassroots members.

“To my mind, Gerard represents the best chance for creating genuine solutions to appeal to all Canadians,” Mr. Trudeau said in a telephone interview from Calgary.

Candidate Profiles: Joe Volpe

Part 4 of our 8 part series continues with Volpe.

Joe Volpe

He's got a strong handshake. I really don't care to mention anything more.

Convention Prediction:
Joe will come into the convention, complain about some fiendish plot against him by the LPC/Ignatieff/Anti-Immigrants/Anti-Italiant/Aliens from the planet Xenu, get his 3%, go to one of the frontrunners, who will reluctantly shake his hand, and then hopefully walk his way away from the party. Whoever he goes to will not want to shake his hand, but they know that Volpe will come with probably 95% of his supporters, so will be a big boost in terms of actual numbers. He will apparently also tell whoever he is supporting before the convention, so expect a lot of "Volpe" talk early on in the week as the news leaks out.

Future:
Hopefully, he will announce his departure from the Liberal party next Saturday. If not, he'll continue to run, continue to play corrupt, and be a nuisance for us all. I almost hope he picks the wrong guy to support, since then we won't feel tempted to give him a cabinet post. Otherwise, at least he keeps us entertained. Sigh...

Candidate Profiles: Ken Dryden

Continuing on in the series profiling the finalists, I now present my views on Ken Dryden.

Ken Dryden

Ken is actually the candidate I have had the longest talk with. I ran into him at SummerFling this year and had a long time chatting with him. I also had a fairly decent talk with him in his hospitality suite at the LPC(O) AGM last may. First off, he's probably the nicest candidate in the race. While some of the others may ask you what program you're in, he's the only one that actually seems to care. At LPC(O) he had a long chat with another UW Young Liberal member about law schools.

Having said that, he started off the race as a guy who could win by being "everyone's second choice". Unfortunately for him, he's not the first choice of too many people, and as it turned out, he's probably everyone's 4th choice. That would go well under some voting systems, but in our current one, it's not enough.

If this were 10 years ago, and Ken could speak french, he would make a much better candidate. He's a very bright man, and it's about time we had a former hockey player as a leader. As long as he learned enough to sidestep the "Habs vs. Leafs" question (well, at least to let the leaf fans off easy), that is.

For now, the only way I saw us electing Ken this time around was if we knew for sure we were going to lose the next election. Despite his long-windedness, I think he would have done well as leader of the opposition, as a good, respectable man to hold us until someone else came along in 3-4 years time. Not that I don't think he would have made a good PM, but I think he would be one of the people in this race who wouldn't get discouraged and bolt if we lost.

But he does have one thing going for him, it's that nobody doesn't like him. If there was a poll as to which candidates you would most want to sit around and talk with for a few hours, he would win it hands-down. And the Conservatives would look really cheap attacking the man who did so much for this country back in the 70s.

Convention Prediction:
I'm hoping that the Dryden crew comes in to convention dressed in full hockey garb, and they come out and have a good time. Dryden himself will be a big draw for whoever he ends up with, since everybody likes him. Maybe not as symbolic as Martha, and probably without the numbers of Volpe (coming tomorrow in our series), but I have a sense that a lot of his delegates will follow him.

Future:
What is Ken's future in the party? He's going to be too old to make another run at the leadership next time around, and his french won't improve enough to make him a serious candidate next time. If we can win again, he'd go well to go back into one of the social issue cabinet posts, so either back in childcare, or over to heritage, maybe. If we don't win, I could see him staying around for another term then retiring after that.

Candidate Reviews: Scott Brison

Up next in our candiate reviews series we have Scott.

Scott Brison

While I've never really met Scott, he is a very interesting candidate. I've never really had the chance to meet him (more than shaking his hand as he made his way around an event or listening to a short stump speech), but he is a good candidate. A turncoat from the tories, but by now, I think it's generally agreed that he's paid his dues in the party. He also happens to fall further to the right in the party.

Scott is still young, and has a long career ahead of him. He provides a good voice, willing to talk out about economic issues, and from his speech at LPC(O) to the youth, you know he knows stuff about that. He as well as Martha is another person who brings an interesting endorsement when he falls off: Since he is to the right side of the party, he would bring a good amount of credibility to Dion, Kennedy, or Rae. To Ignatieff, he brings an endorsement and shows that not everybody hates Iggy.

Convention Prediction:
Scott will come in with his group of people, party like crazy (since if there's one thing he's got far and away above the others is his and his group's youthful vigour), and enjoy themselves. He'll be well-placed for a future run at the leadership, since he's gained a lot of credibility this time around.

Future:
As I said, his time is not now, but it will be in the future. He's the youngest challenger, and he'll have to decide how he wants to play it. If the Liberals can take back power, then his best bet would be to secure himself some good cabinet positions, and come back as a star minister for the next leadership contest. If we can't win anything back, then maybe he could take a few years off and come back strong from some time away from parliament for the next leadership contest. Either way, he'll be a strong contender next time around.

Candidate reviews: Martha Hall-Findlay

Well, in just over one week (about a week and 4 hours, I think), I'll be off to the convention. Lots of stuff to finish up before heading out (since the Liberal party timed it nicely with end of term assignments and projects), but between now and next week I'll try to get some final impressions, maybe a prediction for how I think stuff will play out, and my final commentary on it all.

So for starters, let me go through my impression of the candidates, going from fewest delegates to most delegates.

Martha Hall-Findlay

Martha was the first candidate to declare, and the first candidate I actually had the chance to meet. Back last April, she came to the University of Waterloo before everything had become heated, and talked to our club. It was also officially the date that I joined the Liberal Party (after a hiatus of a few years due to laziness), and the real start of the Leadership race for me.

In that talk, she elaborated on her vision and ideas. My first impression was that she was a very bright individual with lots of really good ideas. She was bold, willing to propose topics of conversation that I knew most people did not want to touch. She had actual ideas for how to promote green energy. I had heard a bit about her beforehand, but did not see what a great person she actually was.

However, it was not all positive. Listening to her talk, I could definitely see her as a great minister, but I did not get very many "leader" vibes. She was still too novice for the post of the head of the party.

Throughout the campaign, she got pushed to the sidelines. From early on, it seemed like people really didn't give her much credit, and you could tell that she wasn't really ready for a big campaign. At the LPC(O) convention when the other candidates invited the Youth to their suites to talk to us, she didn't have a room planned and held her session in the loud and noisy lobby.

But that didn't stop her from still going out there and giving it her all. You have to respect her in that regard. Even after getting a pitiful 1% of the delegates from Super Weekend, she decided to hang in there. She's the last woman in the race, and that says a lot about her determination to stay in (although unfortunately it also says a lot about the state of women in politics and the Liberal Party as well).

So now, she will go into Super Weekend and everybody knows that she will be knocked off on the first ballot. I was personally hoping that she would have a bit more support, and then a large number of the ex-officio delegates would vote for her on the first ballot, as a show of support. In that scenario, she would gain enough to finish ahead of Volpe, for example, and then she could actually bow out of the race with even more dignity. I still believe that that would be the proper thing to do. However, her numbers are just a bit too much lower than the next person, and the race at the top is getting a bit too intense for me to see a lot of movement on that front.

Convention Prediction:
Martha goes in with her 38 delegates, 3 ex-officio, and does manage to pick up maybe 30-40 ex-officio voters who want to make a stand, and bows out respectfully on the first ballot with about 2% of the vote. I will not predict who she or anyone else will run to, but whoever it is will get a fairly significant endorsement, if not in physical delegates but in appearance.

Future:
While she may not win, she will truly be a star candidate in the next election wherever she runs. She is still quite young for a politician, and has a very promising career ahead of her. She may never make it to the leader's position, but I could definitely see her heading an environmental portfolio in the near future for whoever wins.

"Nomination" meeting

I just came back from the nomination meeting for Andrew Telegdi, meaning that we're into election mode already.

Now, some politicians are great speakers, motivationally inspiring, and make you very proud to be a Liberal. Telegdi isn't one of them. Most of his speech, I was cringing. Like when he blamed Alberta entirely for our greenhouse gas increases, and went off on large rants about citizenship.

Hopefully we'll eventually get a Liberal candidate for the riding which I'll be glad to call my MP. For now, I guess it could be worse.

Congrats to BC

Well, the Als came out for half a game of football, and BC played well. I thought Montreal was going to take this one, and if we'd played both halves like the second half it would have been very close. BC really seems to have a great football team, great D, great offence, and they definitely deserve the win.

Brunch with Ignatieff

Well, this morning I woke up early to go to a brunch fundraiser for Ignatieff in Cambridge [Youth get in free. Obviously I wouldn't actually want to pay to help his campaign]. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was going to keep a count of all of Ignatieff's contradictory remarks. And actually, he did not contradict himself once at all at the brunch!

However, that would be an accomplishment if he actually decided to show up to it. Apparently he's running a high fever, and so did not actually come out to the event. We had John McCallum speak instead, which was interesting, but I was looking forward to getting my picture with Iggy. Also, I think the Ignatieff camp should have either chosen a location that serves brunch or should have splurged a bit more, since the only food there were croissants, danishes, fruit, and cheese slices, along with coffee and juice. No hot food, just basically a light breakfast. They did have chocolate with Ignatieff's name on it, but it was quite disappointing overall.

"I'm not a person, I'm a website!"

Warren Kinsella came to the University of Waterloo today to give a speech about "Arts in the Media", and more specifically, about blogging. It was very nice to hear what he had to think about blogs, how they're popular, and why they actually matter. Hard to say how many people in the room were familiar with blogs, but hopefully this will encourage them to start checking them out. I know it took be a bit to get into reading them at the start, but now I can barely wake up in the morning without seeing what's new with Liblogs.

Afterwards, there was a nice reception where I unfortunately drew the wrong card, and so did not win a copy of Fury's Hour. But it was still nice to hang around with others, and find out there were other bloggers in Waterloo. I've also been invited to an Iggy fundraiser brunch on Sunday morning. Should be interesting. Chatting with some others, we decided the over/under on contradictions was 2.5 within the event, and 6.5 if you count contradictions with previous statements. If I remember, I'll try to keep track and see how close an estimate this was.

Poll results, Turner, and Graham

3 things to cover now:

There's a poll out pitting the Liberals, gasp, ahead of the conservatives nationally. While mid-term polls don't mean much, it's nice to know that we're not falling behind in our leaderless state. If the 2 parties can stay close through the new year, it will be interesting to see how the parties play it this winter. The tories will want to be extra careful not to fall unless if they're ahead, but then if the Tories are playing nice, the Liberals will have to be careful not to look opportunistic and throw down a non-disliked bill.

Garth had his press conference yesterday. I watched it. Not overly exciting overall. Basically, he wants to feel important, and promote his new website. Uh, no wait, I guess he actually wanted to promote HIS new website.

Finally, just after Garth's talk, I had to run out to go see Bill Graham on his way around town. He was gracious enough to come visit the University of Waterloo Young Liberals, give a speech, and talk to our club. We had a good turnout and most people seemed to be excited to get the big shot in the party come to our club. He is really a very knowledgeable individual, and at least once I heard someone ask him if he would consider running for leadership ;).

"Gerard Kennedy can understand Quebecois the most"

Alright, my translation isn't perfect, and it's not quite word for word, but that is the basic idea that I saw someone mention on TV. No, it wasn't some crazed Kennedy supporter spewing out random completely partisan rhetoric, or some wacko nutjob trying to be ironic with a statement. No, that line was said by a young man by the name of Justin Trudeau.

Take a bit to digest that. Okay, now let me but it in a bit more context.

This is from the current Trudeau interview today which Altar Boys alluded to earlier today. Basically, Trudeau was asked about the comparisons between Ignatieff and his dad. The basic facts from that were that at least with Pierre, whether you agreed with him or not, you knew where he stood on the issues. Ignatieff isn't so clear. You can really tell from the interview that Justin doesn't like that comparison at all.

Then the questions turned to the leadership race. He dismissed Ignatieff and Rae, seeing them too much as doing politics in the same way that it's been in the past, without any real change for the future. You see, one thing that Trudeau thinks we need (and perhaps a large part why he's on the renewal committee) is a new vision for the party, and a new way to do politics. He then said he's basically debating between Dion and Kennedy. He feels Dion has some vision and ideas, but is also slightly a member of the old guard.

Then he got on to Kennedy. This is when he started to get that smile in his eyes as he described Kennedy's real ideas for vision for the future, for renewal, and his strategies that will help move the party forward. He also said that Kennedy is mostly unknown in Quebec, but that in the end, he is really the one who understands people from Quebec the most.

Now, that is something that I do truly believe in, not just because I am a Kennedy supporter. I say that as someone who was born in Montreal and who lived over half my life in Quebec. Once Quebecois see Kennedy as the candidate with a real vision, with real ideas, and with a real way to move the party forward, they will like his as much as the rest of the country has.

*update: After some searching, the SRC website has the video, under the "nouvelles" section. The political parts are right near the end, and the article related to the interview can be found here.

*update 2: After a bit more watching the video, the better translation for the line was "Gerard Kennedy can understand best the real needs of the Quebecois". Also it appear that Liberal Outsider's got a YouTube video of it, if you want a direct link to the political part of it.

Go Als!

Well, congrats to the Alouettes and the Lions for advancing to the Grey Cup! Should be a good matchup. We'll see if Montreal can overcome the really tough middle half they had this year.

On another note, some people can take a loss with grace and charm. Some can't.

Ralph speaks

A few bloggers have made comments about Ralph's remarks, about the "only conservative bone in her body". I have to agree with Ralph's post-comments on this one. It was a joke. It was funny. Sure, it wasn't a roast of Belinda, but can he still not make jokes about others? I don't see the big deal about this is.

Also, Kennedy has an announcement on enterprise out which he made today at Ryerson. I wasn't there, but you can catch a few different viewpoints on the event thanks to Cherniak and Gavin Neil, of Politics (chiefly as seen from Toronto, Canada). It's nice to see a leadership candidate still go out and make announcements, which aren't just clarifications of his past statements.

Dems and Fundraising

Well, first off, congrats to the Democrats for not choking under the pressure! I was up late last night, and by last count, it's looking very good for them. Even my most optimistic prediction didn't have them actually winning the Senate, and not doing nearly so well in the house. Finally nice to see the Americans vote against Bush.

Also, since everyone else is doing it, the Kennedy campaign has set up a link to help out the delegates as well, which can be found here. So if you want to help me or another Kennedy delegate, then go and donate. If you want to help out Gerard, at this stage at the game this is by far the best way to do it.

Ekos poll: part 2

Unlike one blogger, I don't think Rae has this one sown up. I mean, page 14 of the report is enough to tell you that. As much as people like to say they like Rae as their second choice, when down to him or Iggy, it's a really tough choice.

If I wasn't so busy the next few days/weeks, I'd love to parse through everything in big detail, making my own conclusions. Unfortunately, I don't have that time, so here are some other points from this:
- Undecideds are very high for second/third choices. From that, we can't really extrapolate that 60% of Dion's supporters would go Rae if Dion dropped out. If those 39% follow Dion if he went to endorse Kennedy, for example, then that's a big swing.

- We can't equate the 2 tables of showing up and first ballot support, since I'm sure if you broke it down, of those who said they probably won't show up to the convention, probably 90% of them are also those who don't support their candidate anymore.

- However, very good news that Kennedy ranks highest among those who feel they will show and among those who still support him. We may not be the largest contingent, but we're sure as hell the most passionate ones.

- The lower contenders have much higher rates of undecided second choices than the top ones. 2 possible things we could read from that: they're keeping a tight lip or they're going to follow their leader. You'd think by now they'd have decided who to support, since they know their candidate won't win. By that, it's going to be big to get those endorsements, then.

- Even if Dion is a bit ahead in the "growth potential", when you count up to 3rd choice, you're adding errors together, so your MOE goes to about 4%, which when you actually count it up in percentage points, ends up being nearly the difference between Dion and Kennedy. Now, maybe my math might be off by a bit, but it's still very close between those 4 at the top. And when you factor in that you've got 30-40% undecided for 2nd and 3rd ballot support, there's a lot of delegates in play.

- I don't like how for "least favourite" they only seemed to ask people about 1 person. It should have been a "list everyone who you do not want to win". I'm pretty sure there are many people who said "Volpe" who might also not want Iggy or Rae to win.

That's my main take on it for now. Sure, the poll looks nice for Dion, but there's still way too much uncertainty. I think it's gonna be huge who the bottom 4 end up supporting. It's gonna be an intense time when we get down to 4 people. Somewhat interestingly, when we get to that point, and down to the last ballot, we're gonna see a lot of completely hammered Dion or Kennedy delegates, which could make for some interesting choices (hey, if Hedy Fry can get a vote in our riding when people are presumably sober, what will happen when the drunks get to voting?).

Exos poll

Well, everyone's all aflutter about the recent Ekos poll out today. There still seems to be a lot of people undecided about their second choice (38%), so hard to draw too many conclusions about how to vote strategically. It certainly wasn't a Bob Rae poll as someone speculated last night.

My take on it: We didn't really learn much we didn't know already. Lots of people don't like Iggy (23%). Lots don't like Rae (18%). Hardly anybody doesn't like Dion (3%) or Kennedy (2%). I'd still like to see the full poll numbers to get a real guage of everything, but for Dion, mentioning that 13% of his delegates may not show could be a big blow. If that is true, then he drops to 14-15%, and many people may not think of him as being so good (perhaps mistaking no-shows as a lack of ex-officio support).

All that this poll really tells us is that we're going to have an important vote when we get down to 4 people. It will most likely be Dion or Kennedy dropped, and by all indication, neither our supporters or theirs are fans of the top 2 guys, so I think there's a very good chance that whichever stays on will be able to surpass Rae, and have lots of momentum going into the final against Iggy. It's sure going to be interesting in 4 weeks.

Rick Mercer Report

As much as I hate what Harper stands for and would like nothing more than to kick him out of government, he can be pretty funny at times. Maybe just because I haven't seen the Rick Mercer report in a while, but I did find his sketch at 24 Sussex drive pretty good. Then adding on with the Peter MacKay dogfood, pretty good skit.

Otherwise, I still don't know why Pete decided not to apologize about his remark. Honestly, even if he know there was absolutely no audio tape and no way people could clarify, what's so bad about owning up to a comment that was said in the heat of the moment and saying, "I'm sorry"?

Finally, Layton meeting with Harper. I gotta agree with Far and Wide on this. If Layton could get us a new deal onthe environment, I don't mind. We all applauded him when he came in to help us on the budget a year ago, so why would we be against him when he's trying to help get more for the environment? I mean, it's especially good if Layton tries and Harper refuses, then we can even campaign against him not even considering anything else for the environment.

By-election and the Nation

First off, I'd encourage people to watch the CTV interview with Kennedy to see his responce to the question about the by-election and the Quebec resolution.

On the by-election, I don't think Kennedy should run. The big problem is that it's a high-risk, medium-reward proposal. If he runs and loses, then there's no chance that he could win the leadership. Simple as that. If he runs and wins, then yes, it's a good bonus, but it in no way gives him a big boost. All he will do if he runs is waste time in staying around London and not getting the chance to talk to people from around the country.

Then there is the nation question. Kennedy gave a good answer on that, saying that the meaning in french really isn't the same as in english. Personally, I find this a tough question to handle. I do believe that there is something distinctive about the french and Quebequois (I myself happen to be born there, and there definitely is something different about that), but the whole question of the word "nation" is very disturbing. I definitely don't think it's the right time to open up the constitution again (I would if I knew it would work smoothly and go well, but they thought that in 87 and look where that ended up), so that whole idea is completely off the table.

But then even if we don't open it up, the words still ring around. I personally don't feel comfortable referring to Quebec as a nation, since I think that rings too much of statehood. Even if you try to limit it to a civic duty, it's still not where we need to be going. Actually, Justin Trudeau has a good comment about it, basically saying that we shouldn't really be concerning ourselves with this question now.

One thing's for sure, this isn't an easy question. I just don't think we should be throwing this around now. Give it a little bit of time, give us a leader, then we can consider whether the time is right to be talking about the issue.

Final Results - take 1

Well, we're seeing some final results now from the DSMs. I really do like the party doing the breakdown by riding and club, since I know many of us had been interested in that for some time.

Now, one thing would be nice would be if they released the number of "unclaimed" delegate spots for each candidate. For example, the University of Waterloo is listed as being one for Kennedy, Iggy, and Martha, but we'll be adding a second Kennedy delegate pretty soon. It will most likely fall as the other delegates spots have been assigned, but it would give another impression of the total support. Also, vote counts (maybe not per riding but at least per province) would be really interesting.

But overall, it's looking good for Kennedy. Over 1% ahead of Dion. It's realy going to come down to how the 15% from the bottom 4 and the undeclareds split, as well as which camps are able to get out their delegates. Still anyone's game.

Ununoctium!

Well, according to the Globe and Mail, scientists have finally been able to make an inert gas. They slammed together calcium and californium to get a new element, element 118. It would be cool if they could make something like this that works for longer than 1 millisecond, but it's still pretty cool where we've come in creating elements.

In other news, apparently the tories kicked Garth out of caucus. I doubt they'll come out of this looking too well. I guess they don't approve of bloggers in the Tory caucus meetings.

Iggy backtrack?

Well, thanks to Paper Dynamite Online, we see Iggy's interview with George Strombo[...] on The Hour. Basically, Iggy is now trying to claim he never admitted that Israel commited war crimes in Qana, simply that war crimes happened there.

Now, perhaps this really was his position all along (as apparent Bob Rae should know), but he certainly hasn't done well in getting that view out to the public. If he really doesn't believe with 100% certainty that Israel committed war crimes, then he should have said that. Even if he wants to leave it open if an international tribunal finds them guilty, a simple, "Based on the information I have, I do not believe that Israel committed a war crime in Qana" would go a long way to clearing it up.

But after what's gone on, maybe his best plan now would be to take a nice long holiday overseas. Anything he says now, people will either accuse him of being anti-Israel or flip-flopping on his position. He really does need to learn how to pick his words and either (a) be much more definite about what he says ("Hezbollah committed war crimes in Qana") or (b) learn to properly comment on tough matters ("I can't comment on what happened; we have to wait to see what an international jury says"). Can he learn to do that before December, or if he wins, before the election? A few more comments like that and it's going to be very tough to run a campaign that doesn't spend half our time and ressources clarifying what our leader says.

Killing Rae in BC

Well, the talk right before today's debate seems to be between Iggy screwing up and Rae filling out some illegal forms in BC.

First off, this type of Iggy comment is a big reason why I don't think he's ready to be leader. A bit more political acumen to not do these stupid comments (he's screwing up his retractions, even!) and he'd be a fine candidate. I was hoping that he would at least be fine from the DEM until the convention, since at least then I might not have to hold my nose so much if it came down to being forced to vote for him. Does he not think before he speaks?

Then we come to Rae in BC. Some people (mostly Rae supporters) believe that this shouldn't be a problem and the campaign shouldn't be forced to lose 70+ delegates because they screwed up. Some people (supporters of other camps) tend to be along the "screw him" route, accusing the Rae campaign of significant mis-steps in the province.

I fall along the middle, and actually aligned nearly perfectly with Cherniak on this issue. I do believe that anyone who was elected with an illegal form should not be allowed to go as a delegate. That's simple enough. But what to do with those Rae delegate spots?

Rae deserves decent representation in BC. As much as I like seeing other candidates get less delegates, we should not unfairly screw over those in BC who legitimately voted for Rae. It's too late to go back and go after membership fraud. I say that Rae should be able to fill as many of those spots as he can with people who legitimately ran. So in a riding if there were 5 Rae illegal Rae delegates elected and 5 other Rae delegates who were legal but who didn't win, then Rae should be able to replace those spots. If there were not any legal delegates, then the campaign should still be allowed to back-fill up to the 2 that it allows.

The way I figure it, with that method, Rae won't be able to fill all the spots, since I would guess for most ridings there would be all illegal delegates. So maybe in total it might cost him 30-40 delegates total, assuming all 78 listed under the challenge did not fill their forms. I think that would be an adequate punishment for the fraud perpetrated, and would still allow most of those in BC who voted Rae to have some representation.

Debate and kitten eating

A few quick things, since blogger swallowed my previous version of this post:

Iggy's exceuse for skipping the RobTV debate today was weak. Cherniak has a recap on his site. Yes, the Liberal Party wants to be inclusive, but you can't expect every company that wants a debate to invite everyone. Just like news shows are more likely to want Iggy or Rae to appear as opposed to Volpe or Dryden, someone organizing a debate won't want everyone. Unless if he is prepared to deny TV interview requests until the networks give equal airplay to all candidates, I think he was just looking for a cop-out from an Iggy-bashing fest.

Second, there's a blogger going around spouting violent anti-Kennedy rhetoric. Just like my previous post about the anti-Iggy website, I think this sort of fearmongering is wrong. At least the stop Iggy people were upfront about their dislike. This other blogger just spouts nonsense, like baseless accusations that Kennedy cheated on his taxes. It's okay to disagree with someone, but to go to this level doesn't help the debate at all. I may not be a fan of Ignatieff, but I won't go so far as to throw out stuff I don't have background information for.

And finally, there's another blogger out there who is taking a much more light-hearted note of the campaign, posting cartoons and jokes about the candidates. Some are pretty good. And at least he's being fair about it, posting jokes about everyone. A nice way to get a break from some of the more serious posts by a lot of others.

GK on "The Current"

Just a quick note to tell everyone to go check out the GK interview on CBC's "The Current", nicely linked to by The Dan Report. Very good interview there.

Also, freaking Habs. Why can't they learn how to hold a lead or do well in a shootout? Hope they can come back strong tomorrow against the Leafs.

Game time!

Habs season starts tonight! Man, I'm so excited for hockey to start and for the Habs to prove all these naysayers wrong. This team WILL make the playoffs this year. Can't wait!

More results / Quebec

Well, I haven't made any post-weekend comments yet (more so because I've been sick and busy than lack of interest), but we're slowly starting to see the last results pour in! Okay, so there's been one riding report since Sunday, but it's something.

And also, Kennedy's showing in Quebec: I don't know how any Kennedy supporter can accept this, and try to spin it positive. We can all give some reasons for it ("Kennedy's not well known in Quebec" "His french wasn't up to par"), but it's pretty disappointing. I mean, were there no Kennedy supporters who could win some delegate spots in some ridings?

But I still don't think this is the death blow for him. Quebecois like to vote for winners and people from Quebec. There's a reason why the Conservatives magically doubled their vote count in Quebec overnight last January (and then they did that a few more times as well) Those are the main reasons why Rae, Dion, and Iggy did well there in terms of delegate counts. But once people start to realise that this Kennedy dude isn't some no-name politician from Ontario, that he has real ideas and a real vision for the country, they will support him and love him. I mean, if you made everyone in Quebec vote based on the policies they liked best, I'd be willing to bet that Gerard would be on par with any other of the leadership camps in terms of Quebecois support.

So now the challenger for the campaign will be to get that message out, and once that's done, I'm confident people in Quebec will be just as receptive to Gerard as people in the rest of Canada have been.

Jockeying for position

Man, it's been close all day. Kennedy vs. Dion for 3rd place. Iggy straddling 30%. Kennedy vs. Iggy in Ontario. Kennedy vs. Iggy in Alberta. It's been so crazy to watch all day. I'm so glad I don't have an assignment due until Friday.

Kennedy's really been picking up steam the last couple days. After the disappointing student club numbers in Ontario and disappointing numbers overall in Quebec, we really came alive and are currently (as of 11:22PM, 394 of 469 meetings) 6 behind Dion overall for 3rd, 3 ahead of Iggy in Alberta, and 19 (less than 1%) behind Iggy in Ontario.

Big congratulations go out to the Kennedy organizers in Southwestern Ontario and in Alberta, where Kennedy managed to claim nearly 40% of the delegates in Southwestern Ontario and 7 of the 12 student club delegates in Alberta, including the only clean sweep of the weekend at the University of Calgary!

No more Ribs

Well, I did say at the start that I would comment not only on politics, but on other matter as well. One of those happens to be the Canadiens. Today, we dealt away Ribeiro.

Now, I post on a few message boards and the general consensus is people don't like him. Similar to how most of us Liberals feel about Volpe. I am not so against Ribeiro, since I think he has a lot of talent and couple be a decent centre in the future. But I definitely did not shed a tear when I heard the news. Hopefully Plekanec will be an adequate replacement on the second line. Hopefully this one turns out as good as last year's last minute Hossa for Murray deal.

National Support

I am very pleased to report that as of 1:15 AM on this Sunday morning, Gerard Kennedy is the only leadership candidate to have support in every province and every territory in this country! Well, okay he has the only delegate for the North-West Territories, and he's one of 2 in Nunavut (the other is undeclared).

Overall, Kennedy seems to have had a good day today, after a somewhat disappointing day yesterday, especially among the Ontario Student Clubs, where I think we all expected we would be doing a bit better. With nearly half the polls reporting, Kennedy sits with 16.3% of the delegate support right now. 4th place for the moment, but very close between him, Dion and Rae.

So as I was looking through the province by province breakdown, I was noticing how the inequity between provinces could skew the totals. Since obviously if we would have had only Ontario, BC, and Alberta reporting, Kennedy would be sitting nicely at or near the top of the list. So I went through each province and copied down how many stations reported and how many delegates each candidate had. Then multiplying by how many ridings have yet to report, I get an extrapolation. Obviously it's not perfect, since each report has a different number of people getting elected (student clubs vs ridings), but I was interested to see if the fact that Manitoba had only 2/21 was really making a big difference in the results. Here are the extrapolated results I get:

Iggy: 29.7%
Rae: 20.3%
Dion: 17.2%
Kennedy: 16.3%
Dryden: 5.5%
Volpe: 4.1%
Brison: 3.6%
MHF: 1%
Undeclared: 2.3%

Comparing to the current results, it's basically 1% less for Iggy and 1% more for Rae (with Dryden getting .5% from a variety of people). Now, I think it's a bit skewed by Manitoba, since I doubt Rae will get 40-50% of the delegates there, but I think in general we can see that the LPC has done a fairly good job of mixing the different regions voting times.

UW Young Liberals

Well, I may not be the most perfectly sober person at the moment, but after a long, hard night as a scrutineer, let me say we needed a drink after it was all done.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone at the University of Waterloo who came out, and especially those who came out to vote Kennedy. We had a great showing, with 28 of the 59 ballots for us (vs. 14 for Martha, 9 for Iggy, 3 for Dion, 2 for Dryden, 2 for Rae, and 1 for Hedy Fry!), giving the UW Young Liberals 2 Kennedy delegate spots! I was very proud of our club tonight, for at least most of the evening. I will be one of the representatives for Gerard, and we have one that the campaign will have to fill (since I was the only one who made it onto the ballot for Gerard), and I am proud to be heading off to the convention with Andres Fuentes Martinez (our club president and an Iggy supporter, although a nice one who actually let me sit down with him and the membership list and let our clubs share secrets), and Abira Balendram, who I am sure will represent Martha with pride.

Our meeting was heald concurrently with the Laurier Young Liberals, and unfortunately Kennedy didn't do as well, but still picked up one of the 4 delegate spots there.

As for the overall numbers, I think it might be a little disappointing for Kennedy, but I will have to tackle my views on that at a time when I am in a slightly better state to guage. I think it's still early, and the very strong showing in Alberta that I see for Kennedy is very impressive.

Also, on a final note, our club did have probably one of the most exciting DEMs of the weekend. Sure, we have had had times when we didn't have anyone show up for either club in a half hour timeframe, but how many clubs had to call the cops in to sort out the affair? I won't elaborate publicly on details, but suffice it to say it turned into a very interesting evening on the UW campus.

Rae: "It's not a campaign about ideas"

No doubt about it, Rae has been moving up in the polls and in the eyes of many Liberal voters. I never game him a second thought, thinking he would be no higher than Volpe, even up until the middle of August.

However, around that time, I got to liking him a bit, and even seeing him as one of those candidates who, while still probably 5th or 6th on my ballot, I could live with as leader.

But this from Far and Wide I just read (quoting from a Macleans article) really disturbed me. Apparently, Rae is running a campaign not on ideas, but on the leader and personality. And not just not running on ideas, but running away from ideas. It's one thing to be like Ignatieff and admit that your ideas might be unpopular, but it's another thing entirely to admit that you don't care about the ideas and vision for the party.

This was probably one of the most overriding reasons why I like Kennedy. He not only is youthful and energetic, but he also has good ideas and visions, and he seems to really be interested in reforming the party. He was on Countdown tonight, and kept re-iterating his vision for reforming the powers of the PM. You can tell by his speeches that he doesn't just care about trying to eke out a win in this next election, but really bringing new life and new ideas into the party. I think he really seems to be the guy who will be able to not just lead the party the next couple years but will actually be able to give us a direction to follow to get us back on the winning path.