Shutting down

Well, I've been very lax in writing my thoughts for quite a while now, and to be honest, I can't seem to find the effort to keep it up. I still love following politics, I'll keep reading everyone else's blogs, and I will stay an active member of my school's Young Liberals, but the last few months, I really haven't found the inspiration necessary to keep up with regular postings. So I guess I'll shut down my comments for now. Whenever we have our next federal election, I will hopefully still contribute to Greg's Riding Bloggers, but I don't think I have the desire to keep this one up. It's been fun while it lasted, and it has certainly given me a newfound respect for those bloggers who can actually maintain a blog. Thanks to everyone who has perused my commentary!

Royalty

Well, it seems the Alberta Liberals will set their foot in the sand and demand the full 20% increase in oil and gas royalties. It's the right thing do to, and for the Liberals, it should set them apart from the Conservatives, since I doubt Ed will be giving in fully to the report. As long as the Liberals are careful to explain that the oil and gas industry won't be packing up and leaving, this should be a solid position, standing up for all Albertans, not just the oil tycoons.

PET Day?

Mario Silva has proposed a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Day. I just can't wait to see the PET Day parade in downtown Calgary.

Avoiding an election

Well, it looks like Dion has decided to try to avoid an election, by just proposing amendments to the Throne Speech, and when they're shot down, abstain on the speech itself.

Basically, the amendments will be getting out of combat in Afghanistan in 2009 and some environmental stuff (to make the Conservatives oppose it), and corporate tax cuts (so the NDP will reject it). I can't say it's the option I'd be in favour of, but we'll see how it holds up. Although the way everyone else is talking, I still find it hard to believe that the Conservatives won't try to find a way to kill parliament before Christmas, and if they do, then this won't look so good on us heading into an election.

Chretien/Martin/Manley

Now, for a few quick points on the other Liberal stories in the news:

- I don't see a big problem with Manley being on the Afghanistan panel. If he rejected, then I'm sure Harper would have found a way to spin it to be like us Liberals are too self-centered to possibly come up with any solutions, and he would still have pressed forward with it anyways. Dion did fairly well again on this question in trying say something along the lines of, "Thank God we have a reasonable voice there, since the rest of the panel is full of Mulroney people." Great move by Harper by doing this, since he might be able to avoid the Afghanistan question in an election campaign, but we'll just have to work around this and show how he doesn't actually care.

- As for the Martin-Chretien dispute, what did people expect? Chretien's not going to back down from taking stabs at Martin. And while Warren may still be angry at the current people for defending Martin over Gomery, politically it's the only thing to do. As incredibly stupid and boneheaded as Martin actually was with the inquiry, once it's announced, we can't have people saying, "We shouldn't have launched it," especially Dion. It was a stupid move, but by denouncing it, we would be bringing up all the old corruption issues back to the forefront, which really doesn't help our poll numbers. Otherwise, all that Chretien's book seems to be getting out is that Martin was incompetent as PM, which I think most people already realize. And as much as talking about these disputes of the past sucks for us, I think it's better than media focusing on the "disputes" of the present group, which we can't so easily dismiss.

Showdown with the Throne Speech

Well, the big question on everyone's mind this week is what will happen with the throne speech. I caught part of Question Period yesterday, and the Conservative memo was definitely, "This is either a mandate for us or an election." I thought Dion was fairly decent in his response, trying to frame it as saying whether or not Harper will go crazy or not. The problem with this is if we actually tacitly support the speech, then it does give some credence to Harper.

So, my guess for the speech is that it will be very tough to support. I don't see Harper backing down wanting this election over with soon. However, I also see him putting in enough goodies to try to paint the opposition as anti-something. Thus, it will be absolutely essential that if we are going into an election to frame the question extremely early as to why we are voting.

That's one thing that Tory did well in the Ontario election: he framed the question early. Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong question, but he did establish the religious schools funding before anyone else started talking about anything. And that's what Hampton was so fed up about: he didn't get his election plank out early enough for anyone to talk about anything in it. He got boxed out early.

If we do go to war, which I think is actually probably more politically sound for us to do, in my opinion, then we need to be ready right off the bat. If we pick the right question, it may not be so bad for us.

And the winner is... Al Gore

Well, he's doing it again. Al Gore wins yet another award, to go on his shelf with his Emmy (for his TV network) and his Oscar (for his documentary). Where to next? The presidency is the obvious one, but I say he just continues the award show tour. I say he goes to try to win a Grammy next. He doesn't have to sing, although maybe he could collaborate with "MC Rove" on a hit.

Congrats Dalton!

Well, I expected that the Liberals would take this one easily, but even I didn't think it would go this easily. Good job to everyone in trouncing the opposition.

Also, tonight I went out to scrutineer and help out for Leeanna Pendergast in Kitchener-Conestoga, and let me tell you, I think people on that campaign are still in shock about the results. They did amazing in getting her elected, and I'm sure she'll be a great MPP. Closer to home, Louise Ervin lost to Elizabeth Witmer, which was expected, but Ervin still got quite a good share of the vote, so congratulations to them on a tough campaign there. Next time, we'll get rid of Witmer.

Get out and vote!

Speaking as a student, I know it's tough to get students out to vote. I always encourage everyone to get out to vote, since for me, democracy is speaking your mind. I would rather lose an election that everyone was informed about and voted on than win because nobody took the time to think about the issues. And with that, I would encourage everyone to get out there and cast your ballots tomorrow, both for the referendum question and for the general election. Both may appear to be fairly solid how they will end up, but everyone should still get out and cast their votes. I'll be voting tomorrow, and I hope everyone else eligible to will as well.

My Take on MMP: My take

Well, I've gone through some points I find big, and overall, I'm still a bit torn on MMP. I do like some forms of reform, and I do believe there are better systems out there than MMP, but I'm still not sure that MMP is one of them.

If we were voting on STV or just some other different way to elect people, then I think I would vote for it, since I like most of them better. They would be relatively small changes, and would have an effect on who was elected, but would still be considered a somewhat minor change.

And I still maintain that I think the best system would be a parallel system, since that brings in an element of proportionality, but still maintaining possible majorities, since I am not a firm believer in coalitions with our current system.

But, we're not voting on those systems. I don't really like some of the anti-MMP people trying to convince people that since MMP isn't the best, we should vote against it. However, I also don't like some of the pro-MMP talk of, "At least it's a step in the right direction", since I know we won't really revisit this until at least after one election of it, and probably not until 2-3 elections down the road, which could be 10 years or more from now.

So, I'm left with my decision. I'm pretty sure that the proposal will fail on at least one of the 2 things it needs to pass, so I'm not overly worried about it. For that sense, I am leaning towards casting my ballot in favour of it, since then at least I can vote for a step towards a better system, without actually having to go through the actual system which I don't like too much. But I don't think there's enough for me in it to actually want it to pass.

My take on MMP: Coalition vs. Minority

Well, the debate about MMP heats up now that Dan has waded into the mess, stepping in against the proposal. One of the points that came up a bit reading over the comments was the distinction between coalitions and minorities, and how they differ, what they mean, and which, if either, is stable. I'll format this message a bit more as a rant than a point/my take thing.

So, first off, a few basics. A coalition is basically just a formal alliance. In general, they would last basically until the dominant party feels they can run it alone. And under an MMP system, I don't see parties being overly excited about breaking off coalitions, since getting an absolute majority government is severely diminished. Thus, an MMP coalition would probably end up being fairly stable.

And overall, coalitions aren't necessarily a bad thing. In general, nobody fits perfectly into one party. I am a Liberal, but I like some ideas the NDP has, and some Conservative ideas make sense as well. The Liberals and NDP would never join together unless if it was a real crisis, but any other combination could make some sense, in a way, and really wouldn't be so bad. Luckily we live in a progressive enough society so that any partnership basically needs a party in the middle and a party on the wings of the political spectrum. For all that we hate the Conservatives federally, this pseudo Conservative-Bloc/NDP partnership hasn't completely destabilized the country or killed off every institution that we love. (It's not exactly on track with most of Canada on files like Afghanistan or the Environment, but that's another matter).

But for all the good that they can be, my big problem with people advocating for them as either a positive of MMP or sort of a consolation prize for no more majority governments is the following: I don't see it happening, at least under our current alignments.

Sure, people might point to stable coalition overseas, but the way our current system is set up, the only coalitions I see possible are Liberal-Green or Conservative-Green. As weak as the NDP are, they're just too mainstream to actually join into an alliance. People saw their demands to vote for a throne speech. I can't imagine they would back down for a coalition, and they've already asked for way too much to be reasonable. And as much as they tag-teamed McGuinty in the debate with the Tories, I think they're just too much opposed on certain key points to be able to hold a stable coalition together.

So some people might still point out something along the lines of, "hey, wait a minute. Wouldn't a Green-Liberal/Tory alliance actually be really good for everyone?" And sure, for a bit. But honestly, a system where the Greens are the only party to enter into a coalition won't work.

I'm not an expert on overseas politics, but everyone seems to bring up New Zealand and Germany. And from a quick wikipedia scan, I gather the reason they work is they have 2 main parties, and then a handful of other ones that all get the 5-10% of the vote necessary. That way, you have a choice in minor parties to get your required votes. If the vote breaks down 35-30-10-10-8-7, then you need to pick 2/4 of the smaller ones to pass your bills. But with our current system, with 3 parties that have a reasonable shot at succeeding, we really don't have any respectable minor parties to ally with.

As I pointed out before, there were only 3 parties who got the 3% vote threshold in the last election. Barring any of the big 3 breaking down, I don't think our current political alignments are ready to force these minority/coalition governments on us, unless if you want a perpetual Green-XXX government in power.

Oh Sheila

Well, when I started to read the Copps Article, I thought it would be another scathing Sheila Copps attacks on dirty laundry the Liberals didn't want to have aired. But I found it to actually be a decent read.

The main thing is that last time, Martin was stuck behind a massively popular Chretien, and even if his bickering cost us a bit of support, we could afford it, because we were still comfortably in a majority. But now, we can't afford to not have everyone on board. And as much as people may not exactly like Dion, I think nearly all us would agree that we like him more than Harper. And Dion looks much better standing tall at the head than with 20 people with knives following him around.

Debate Night

Well, tonight's the leader's debate, and it should be interesting to watch. So far, most people seem to feel the opposition will be going hard against Dalton, and the way the TV ads have been so far, I don't doubt that. If Dalton can stay positive and actually throw some good policy ideas out there, he might come off quite well. If he fumbles on a question, or doesn't appear overly trustworthy, then it might be a big blow to a campaign that should be a walk in the park overall.

Quebec by-elections

Well, I got part of the headlines right, but so far, we are still seeing all these backstabbing stories popping up. Sure, we're back to our "anonymous MPs" or poli sci profs commenting on the plot to destroy the Liberals from within. Dion may not be the perfect leader, but he's keeping us quite steady in the polls so far. And if we could end this little bickering, actually do some changes to the party structure (I don't think I've seen anything that even remotely looks like "renewal" so far), then it doesn't matter who the face on the posters is.

But really, with a bit of work, we can easily not lose the next election that badly. I don't think we have a very good chance at coming out ahead of the conservatives barring a major scandal brewing, but we can do decently. They may talk about some sort of Quebec revolution, and getting 30-40 seats in Quebec, and whatever else they may think of, but they're not riding high overall. If, whenever the next election may be (I still think it's at least a 50-50 shot that we'll see it before the end of the year), we can avoid the media talking about plots to take down Dion, we may actually do fine.

But for the next little bit, I guess it's back to provincial politics, where McGuinty and Tory are fighting to see whether the voters like education/hate religious schools more than they hate broken promises from 4 years ago.

By-election day

The Liberals lose Outremont; Dion to step down after humiliating loss!
Bloc lose Roberval; vow to not fight election soon!

Well, maybe we won't see either of those headlines in the paper tomorrow, but the way some press members are talking, it seems to be gearing up towards that. Yes, Liberal and Bloc losses in the 2 ridings would be tough, but we won't be seeing knives coming out over the results of a by-election. And I don't even think it will affect how likely these parties will be to head into an election this fall.

Which is an interesting point: the way the media has it, the Ignatieff clan are sabotaging Outremont in order to force Dion down. But everyone and their sister knows that Dion will face at least one election as leader. But the media also seem to think that by losing, the Liberals will delay trying to force an election. So by that logic, IF both of these media rumours are true, then Iggy's folk are going against their own wishes. However, they have repeatedly said that they're not trying to help the Liberals lose, so there goes at least one piece of speculation down, although it doesn't really impact the other rumours.

[For the record, I don't think that any "rival" leadership camp is out to sabotage the Liberal party. Dion may not be doing the absolute best around, but I don't think one by-election loss with a rival party throwing out a star candidate shows a tremendous lack of leadership]

Dalton Rally in Kitchener

Well, the place was packed last night to see Dalton speak, even if the Liberals only hold 2 of the 5 local [ish] ridings in the area. He definitely came across a bit differently last night then when I saw him up at Nippissing for SummerFling. Personally, I wasn't overly fond of his speech. He seemed too forceful and not as much of an easy-going fella that I think plays very well for him. And as much as it's nice to keep talking about education and health care, I wouldn't mind hearing about some other topics sometime as well. I guess we'll have to wait and see how the campaign goes, but I do think we'll need some good policies other than health and education to be able to beat Tory, even if he continues to do his best to keep running into his own sword.

Campaign Launches

Well, as we near the official campaign launch, I'll try to keep up as best I can with what's going on in the KW area. I'll be a bit busy this week, as it's the start of the term, and the first week is always tough (mainly due to a lack of internet at home), but after I get settled in, I hope to be able to provide some juicy details, as I hope to do at least a little bit of helping out some local candidates around town.

Other people's take on MMP

Well, I'm going through my own take on items such as lists, lists again, and minorities, so I thought I'd post up a link to some other people's opinions, and specifically, a small debate over at The Great Canadian Debate, about MMP. Many arguments are quite similar to what I've been putting forward so far.

Also, Greg Morrow has a good run-down of what he would like to see in how lists should be created. Not sure if it will be done that way, but it's something to consider. And again, it seems with just about every point that I see so far, I see some good and some bad with it. I may spend a post sometime going through some ways that we could pick the lists, and see which of them I feel would work best.

My take on MMP: Lists (pt 2)

Following my first take on list MPPs and my views on minorities, I'll take another stab at some stuff I've heard about List MPPs, this time focusing more on what they do (or don't do) after they get elected.

List MPPs are responsible to nobody but the party.

My take: Can't really argue too much with this, and it is a minor downfall, I will say. One of the major factors of current MPs is to follow the wishes of the people who elected them. And if they go against the wishes of the people, they will have to step up and explain their decisions the next time. If I don't feel my current MP represents me, I won't vote for them next time. I would really have to think that most of the list my party puts forward doesn't represent me to vote against them. If the top 4-5 people on the Liberal list are all anti-abortion, and I'm pro, then I have to think whether it's worth it to vote against the party on that. I may have to think that the top 4 will get elected regardless, but then my vote for the party is hoping to get numbers 6 and 7 elected, who represent me exactly. Or if every second person on the Liberal list doesn't represent me, do I vote for them? While this may sound bad, it's hard to say how much this will really affect stuff.

List MPPs will have no constituency, and thus won't have to deal with constituency work.
List MPPs constituencies are the entire province. They have the LARGEST constituency!

My take: These are some points that I've heard, and I agree and disagree with both. I do think that the matter of constituency work will have to be dealt with (I'll elaborate more on it later on when I examine the problems of dropping to 90 riding seats), but I can't judge too much, since I've never worked in a constituency office, I'm not positive how much the constituency business really affects everything. I hear some MPs and MPPs really do a lot about constituency work, probably as much as phoning up people with birthdays or stuff like that, and for some, I hear they really don't care too much about them. I do think not having as much constituency work could be both a blessing and a curse (see my next points), but overall, another weak point in the proposed system. I do hope that the List MPPs will take up some of the slack, but it could backfire if they only care about their local ridings, and we would end up with some ridings with effectively 2-3 MPPs, and some with just one. Alternatively, the "List MPPs represent the whole province" is again both true and false. While in some respects it is accurate, and they rely on the whole of Ontario to elect them, they really aren't representative of anyone as much, since it would end up being that the party will end up being responsible to everybody, while the individual List MPPs won't have to deal with as much.

Since List MPPs will have no constituency work, they have an unfair advantage in having more time to act on other stuff, like their re-election.
Since List MPPs will have no constituency work, they will be able to work on some longer-term items that require more time.

My take: Again, without knowing what the impact of constituency work is, I can't judge too much. While it would be VERY unfair for a List MPP to be elected, and then spend all the time that the regular MPP is working on one person's immigration case to be going door to door in the riding campaigning for the next election, they also may be able to take that time to spend more effort on committees, and to actually be able to plan forward.

List MPPs will be a second tier of members, and will be forced to act like the Senate.

My take: Another interesting point. Unless if a specific MPPs was "appointed" to the List to represent a specific demographic group, I don't see how easily they will be able to justify voting against their party's position. Especially since I'm not versed in what happens if a List MPP got kicked out of their party, what would happen to them? I don't know, but if they got replaced with the next person on the party's list, that would be a tremendous whip on them. On the other hand, if they sat as an independent, what does it mean to have a List MPP as an independent? Then they really represent nobody, and everything gets very interesting.

With the extra time, and since they don't have to face tough riding or nomination battles, List MPPs could be a real collection of specialists in their fields.

My take: I put this out, since this is an argument I aspire to. Far be it from me to be able to praise parts of the US electoral system, but I do think that one of their (theoretically) best aspects is that their cabinet ministers are not elected members. Sure, Bush has singlehandedly slaughtered most illusions that the system can be used for good, but as a whole, it could be useful. Since I heard a speech by Larry Page, founder of Google, give a talk about how many US representatives had technical degrees. I believe the number was somewhere less than 10, out of ALL governors, senators, members of congress, etc... We are very under-represented. And we're also not overly personable overall (as the old joke goes: How do you know a mathematician is extroverted? When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes and not his), so it could be tough for us to get elected. But if a party could throw a few people to represent the research and technology sectors onto the lists, they could really bring a new voice to parliament, and may actually know why it is absolutely critical to spend more more on innovation projects, which aren't generally the sexiest funding projects.
On a similar note, since they don't face the electors, they can also think ahead. I know there are tons of things that suck in the short term, but really are the right thing to do long-term (especially to do with the environment. Sure, it sucks to have people lose their jobs, but keeping the dirty, polluting plant open is worse for us overall. And if I represent the riding where that plant is located, no way will I get re-elected after closing that plant). Not directly having to say to someone, "Please, trust me that you being unemployed now is the right thing for the country!" allows me the privilege to do that without knowing that I will be losing my job next time. Having a few people like that might be good overall.

My take on MMP: Minorities and fringe parties

Well, continuing on with my summer series, I will now examine the next set of issues, minority governments and fringe parties:

Since we won't see as many majority governments, parties will be forced to work together.

My take: Well, I must say this will be partly true, but it could also be a problem. Let's just say that in Canada, we don't have a large tradition of working together overall, and I don't think that will necessarily change overnight. It is sometimes refreshing to see parties being forced to work together, but since the Liberals and Conservatives are so opposed to each other, for now, it would just be one of them being propped up by the NDP, which isn't always the greatest thing. I don't mind the NDP myself, but I don't want to always have to rely on them. As I mentioned before, I would like to have some chance at a party forming a majority, since although it may not always be great, I do think that we do sometimes need that sort of stability around.

Since a small change in votes will not cause a large change in seats, parties will have little incentive to force early elections.

My take: Well, I have to agree with this in principle, but in practice, I'm not sure how easy it will be for people to adapt to this. I am not a big fan of the 2% vote change leading to a 10% change in seats, but I'm not sure that this is enough incentive. It could be a good way for a party to say, "you've got to agree to this, or else we're gonna have to go to an election and you're not getting any better", but I can see the party in power holding this over the other parties as well, basically forcing them to go along with their plan, lest they be accused of forcing the election.

30% of people voted for party A, 30% voted for party B, nobody voted for a coalition of A and B!

My take: Another good and bad issue. While nobody may be fully satisfied with coalitions like this, the easy counter is in the current argument where a party with a majority but 36% of the vote is basically governing against 64% of the electorate. But really, as I said above, I don't see the history in Canada for making good coalitions, so I think you'd end up with one party trying to control everything, which may cause troubles.

Fringe parties will call all the shots.

My take: I don't like this argument too much. If a party gets 3% of the vote, they only get a handful of seats. While on a few votes it might make a difference, and I will cringe in the first Tory and Reform/Christian Heritage Party/Right-wing nutjob party coalition or even bill passing, the big parties will still be mostly in control. It may make the difference on a few votes, but really, in our current political system, the Green party will be the main "fringe" party, and to be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing some of them get elected, since then voters will actually have to pay attention to more than their environmental record, which I know will cost them votes.

The 3% threshold is low, and will give credibility to tons of small, fringe parties.

My take: This I find is the craziest argument. Anyone claiming this has obviously never seen election results. Ask people how much the Green party got in the 2003 Ontario election, and I bet hardly anyone would say that they got less than 3% of the vote. So really, the only "fringe" party that has a chance to get elected would be the Greens. The Family Coalition party would need to quadruple its votes to get seats.

So basically, I'm not sold on this incessant minority rule, but rest assured, I don't see there being any problem with crazy fringe parties calling the shots.

My take on MMP: Lists (pt 1)

Well, in my summer MMP series, I figure I may as well start it off with a bang and tackle the issue that it seems most people are wary about. From the arguments I heard last weekend at the OYL's SummerFling, these lists are the largest contention point, and somewhat ironically, are the least elaborated in the entire proposal, basically with the Citizen's Assembly saying, "we'll let the parties figure it out." So with that, here are some arguments I've heard, followed by my comments on them. Part 1 will focus on how the list MPPs are nominated, and who they will be:

If parties aren't responsible filling their lists, people won't vote for them

My take: I would love for this to be true. I think it would be great if the Liberals fill our list with equal numbers of people from each region and group, then we will get more votes from people. That would be great, except I don't expect that to happen too much. Oh, it may make a difference of a few votes, but I don't see this as a great selling point, since I highly doubt that very many people will actually know too much about the lists.

The lists will be filled with party hacks!

My take: This is somewhat fair, since I do believe that the list MPPs will tend to be fairly well-connected members of the party. But how is that too much different than the other MPPs parties nominate? We don't know how the parties will nominate people on the lists, but I don't think it will be much different than how we nominate candidates, so I don't see this as a major drawback. You still need to be involved and connected in the party (or a celebrity) to get elected.

All the list MPs will be white men from Toronto

My take: This could be a problem, but I don't see it as a major one, since I doubt it will happen. Honestly, I'd fill the top spots on my list with people from the areas that I would have the weakest party support, since then I could make sure when I win to have ministers from various areas. I mean, which party wants all their MPPs from one region? Doesn't make for a very balanced cabinet.

No way will there be MPPs from the North, since the party elite in Toronto will run the lists

My take: Again, this could be some trouble, but I'm pretty sure the parties will try to balance it out. Yes, there is the potential to screw some people over, like ignoring the North, but I don't think that would be too much trouble.

The parties will be responsible and make sure that the lists are representative

My take: Well, so far I've been mentioning this quite a bit, and this is one place where stuff can go wrong. As I pointed out above, I do think that parties won't be crazy with lists, but I still wouldn't be surprised if 15-20 of the 39 list MPPs are from Toronto. Sucks, I know, but we can't have everything perfect.

The lists will be a great opportunity to get [insert minority group here] a fairer representation

My take: This is where I feel the lists will be the most useful. I don't mean any disrespect for certain gender or ethnic groups, but they do often have troubles getting nominated, and are thus under-represented in the legislature as a whole. People don't want a "token ethnic" on the list, but I don't see any trouble in being able to better represent certain communities by having a list MPP.
I'll add even more to this: I think it would be a great way to add people who would do very well in cabinet, but may not be the easiest ones to get elected. I'm not a big fan of taking hints from the Americans too much, but one of the supposedly better parts of their system is that since their cabinet is appointed, and not made up of elected members, they could be specialists in their field. Now, they screw that up most of the time, but it could be nice to be able to bring in someone who may not be the campaigner, and be able to bring them into cabinet in a specialist role.

I'll stick with this for now, but I welcome any comments or other criticisms about how these people will be nominated and who they may be, and will do my best to respond to other comments. I will be coming back to discuss the List MPPs later on, probably more in regards to their actual roles in parliament, and depending on what other arguments I hear, I may revisit the way they're nominated again.

My triumphant return

Well, as I mentioned a couple months ago, I decided to take a break this summer from my blogging responsibilities. But now that my final exams are nearly over, and since I plan to keep going strong this fall, especially with at least one election coming up, I thought I'd start back now.

I've been thinking for the past week of starting a small series of posts about the new Mixed-Member Proportional system that is being proposed and voted upon in the upcoming election. I've been rumoured to be fairly much in favour of it, and let me start off by saying that's not true. Mostly.

I do believe that we should have some changes to our voting system. I am a Liberal from Calgary. If we had some form of PR federally, then the Liberals would actually have a reason to campaign there and do their best there. I also believe that both federally and provincially, the Green Party deserves to get some sort of representation, since they do have many supporters and would do well to advance the debates.

But on the other side, I also like getting majority governments some, if not most, of the time. Maybe not winning 75% of the seats with 40% of the votes, but I like some majorities, since they do often get more work done.

So with those initial thoughts out of the way, my idea was to run a little series, attacking the proposal from both sides. I've seen arguments from those who are staunchly in favour, and from those who are staunchly opposed, but haven't seen as much from those of us in the middle. I don't like this massive polarization, where it almost seems every point is black and white to everyone.

But in order to go forward, I don't mind getting some help in this. I am myself not familiar with all the arguments on either side (I've heard many of the basic arguments), so if you know of an argument either side is using to attack or defend, I'd love to hear it. Either post as a comment or e-mail it to me at uwhabs(at)gmail(dot)com and in the upcoming weeks, I hope to give my hopefully somewhat reasoned opinions of the argument.

Take Back Canada

Well, I hope everyone's summer's going well. Have a great Canada Day this weekend, and I leave you with a link to the new YLC campaign, Take Back Canada. Enjoy yourself this weekend!

Bye Bye Bill Graham

Well, it appears that Bill Graham has decided to retire. He was a very nice person, and a good interim leader. He came to talk to our club last November, and gave a nice speech. I wish him the best of luck in his upcoming endeavors.

I also would like to wish Bob Rae the best of luck in his fight for the riding. It won't be easy, but let's hope he keeps the riding red.

Dion Doesn't Buy His Own Clothes!

Well, everyone is aflutter about the fact that Dion lets his wife shop for his clothes. Now, this may be a terrible thing to happen in and of itself, but I think the question we really need to ask ourselves is this: If Harper let his wife buy his clothes for him, would she have gotten him this:

Alberta Libs win something?!?!

Well, looks like there could be some troubles in Steady Eddie's camp, as the Alberta Liberals have won the byelection in Calgary Elbow. While it's still way too early to start mentioning the downfall of the Alberta PCs, it's always nice to see them lose like this. Congrats to everyone on the campaign out there, and good job in winning it. Keep up the good work for the next election out there and we may see some changes out in the Conservative heartland.

Summer delays

Well, I know I haven't updated recently, and there are a few reasons. One, I've been pretty busy with school the last few weeks, getting into midterms and all for this term. Second, I haven't really found inspiration. Barring some overly exciting events, I'll probably take it fairly slow the next few months.

But coming up, it should still be interesting to see how the Alberta provincial by-elections turn out. The Liberals have a real shot at the seat in Calgary, and it would truly be a great victory for them to win that seat. People seem upset at the PCs, and it would be great for the opposition to capitalize on it. Still a long way from fully booting them out of power, but the smaller and smaller the PCs get, the better it is for Alberta.

There goes our summer excitement

Well, it looks like we're going to avoid some summer excitement, since the PQ has caved in and looks to not oppose the Quebec budget. Seemed obvious that someone was going to blink here, since I'd probably think that none of the 3 parties really want to see what would happen if the Liberals lost the vote.

This week's sign that the apocalypse is upon us...

There are Liberals in Calgary. Without Ralph, it's looking like some Alberta PC support is slipping away. While I'm sure more people are focusing on the Quebec situation, or more likely, the Sens, it's going to be interesting to watch to see if the Liberals can break through in the by-elections coming up in Calgary.

WTF Lost!

So, what the hell is going on with Lost? Whose coffin was it? What's going on with everyone? What the hell are they going to do for the next 3 seasons.

Plus, Hurley is the man. Absolutely incredible thing there. Followed by Sayid's move? Something that I thought we only saw on 24.

Citizen's assembly

Reading an article in the Star today, I feel compelled to answer to it. The basic premise is that the author of the article seems to find fault with Ontario letting some of its citizens draft a proposal for electoral reform. To me, this view seems wrong.

Now, from what I gather, the basic premise of the article is PR is bad, and therefore we should not even bother spending any time to consider anything to do with it. I know Greg would find an incredibly large amount of wrong with that statement, and I think the main premise that Mr. Gwyn goes on is faulty.

Now, this isn't a post in support or opposition of any form of PR, but in the need to discuss the issue. And I do firmly believe that we need to discuss the issue. Even if the main conclusions to be drawn from this would be that our current system was the best that we could ever get, it's worth talking about it. You may not like what the assembly put forth, but that shouldn't take away from the fact that they are actually looking at issues and debating on the merits of it.

He does bring some good points that we need to reform maybe not the electoral system itself, but the culture of parliamentarians. Seriously, that deserves a look as well. The whole citizen's assembly may have wasted time and money and we may end up with nothing at the end, but for me, it's a small price to pay on the chance that we could have gotten a serious re-vamp of how elections work, and the chance at something more than we have now.

Summer doldrums

Well, we're off into the summer break, and apart from some infighting over the Sens, I'm not sure if we'll see too much controversy this summer. We'll have to wait and see how much dirt we're going to get over the summer. With the Conservatives faltering near the end, it should be interesting to see if people will forget about this, or whether these will trail behind them all summer.

Antarctica melting?

Well, apparently Antarctica is melting. Cue someone speaking out that this is simply a natural cycle than Antarctica goes through in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ...

The Liberal Party is imploding! OMG!

Well, now that the Liberal party seems to be doing well in the polls, and that the Conservatives are rife with scandal, the Liberal party has decided that it's time to turn against the Leader. Yup, sounds like some great intuitive logic there, at least if you're a reader of the National Post. While obviously not everybody is 100% happy with Dion (you can never really be), it seems odd that people would be doing this much overt planning to get ahead. My guess is that in all these cases noted here, you simply have an organization of folks who want their candidate in. Not every contested nomination battle is a fight between leadership camps that has been directed by on high.

It's pouring out there

First off, some nice crazy storms out there earlier tonight. Coming home, there was a section of the street where cars were in up to the top of their wheels in water. Some days I'm glad I don't need to drive around.

Secondly, everyone seems to be jumping for joy over Falwell meeting his maker today. He definitely isn't a man that commands lots of respect and that we should all be terribly upset about, but I don't think it's the time to rejoice. Let's hope that this will temper the religious right, but it does seem a bit wrong to be cheering for his death.

Duceppe out

Well, I didn't post yesterday about Duceppe declaring his intentions for leadership of the PQ, partly because I was busy, and partly since I figured I'd have some time to analyze the situation and what it would mean for everybody involved, but no sooner than it started did it end. I mean, you would think he would at least stay in the race for a little bit, but basically, the PQ has said that Marois will be their next leader. Now the question remains whether we will see whether Marois will face a Sheila Copps to go against her, or whether she will actually be able to run unopposed.

Accountability, Schmaccountability

Well, by now everyone's well aware of the most recent step in the Tories' new accountability program. I really don't know why they keep failing in this. I mean, is it just incompetence, or are they actually explicitly going out and defying the rules? Do they feel that they can get away with it, since our past deeds are still a little fresh and they know we can't play the "accountability" card without looking bad ourselves?

I mean, I know we're limited, since just saying "look at the Conservatives! They're as bad as WE were when they're in power! And they've only been there a year!" definitely isn't a very good election strategy.

I would normally just chalk it up to some problems learning the actual accountability rules, but it seems to be more than just random chance, and a few mis-declared meals or trips here and there. At this pace, they have to be really stupid for these to be all accidents.

And if they really are trying to subvert the rules, you think they would at least wait a bit, until they got a majority. I mean, it seems insane that they would actually be trying to skirt the rules when they've got such a tenuous hold on power.

So which is it? Are they trying to subvert the rules, or are they just incompetent?

Boisclair steps down

I would at least have thought he would wait until the party kicked him out at a Leadership review vote in September, but it seems that Boisclair is stepping down. Now we just have to wait and see if Duceppe will take the bait and move provincial, or if he'll stick it federally and we'll see someone else take over the sinking ship that is the PQ.

French Elections

Well, as everyone knows by know, Sarkozy has won the French Election by a margin of 53-47. It seems that Sarkozy and Royal split the centrist party's votes to edge out his socialist opponent.

Now, one thing I will comment on is the double ballot. It's a very interesting way to conduct an election, to force everyone to vote twice, and I'm a bit surprised that the turnout was actually so high both times. I know there was a lot on the line, but it seems weird that they still managed 85% of the vote on the second go-around. Canadians seem to hate voting once, never mind what would happen if we were asked to vote twice. Good on the French to come out in forces to vote. One only wonders what would happen in Canada if we managed 85% turnout in an election.

It's pronounced "Nucular"

Well, I'm not a usual commentator about the Alberta PC party's proceedings, but I found this article talking about how they're considering looking into nuclear power to help power the oilsands, and it got me thinking a bit more about nuclear.

From what I've seen, it seems that lots of people are divided about the power of nuclear. Many see it as a nice, emissions-free power source, that seems to be a logical step to move us away from coal and gas fired plants. Others see it as a major problem source, which is unsafe and causes waste which we cannot dispose of. Now, as with any issue, the answer is in the middle, but I'm surprised in most of the talk about reaching our carbon goals, the matter hasn't been brought up further.

Personally, I think we should be investigating the issue more. I don't think I'm ready to switch over fully to nuclear, but I definitely do see that there's lots of potential there. If the global warming alarmists are right, then the excess CO2 in the air will be even more damaging than whatever waste that nuclear produces, and as we explore more about nuclear, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find more and safer ways to store the spent fuel.

And contrary to what many people believe, it is relatively safe. I mean, apart from 3 mile island and Chernobyl, there haven't been any big problems with nuclear. As a nuclear lobbyist I heard talk this winter say, the fact that we still hear about the big problems is a good sign that it's safe. I mean, we don't really hear too much about accidents and problems in other power plants, since they happen often. Just like many people are surprised to hear that planes are the safest mode of travel even when we hear about plane accidents around the world every few weeks or months.

Now, I still know that nuclear isn't perfect, and before we were to commit a significant amount of resources in building more plants, we need to make sure that storage is improved, but it is something that I feel we shouldn't be as scared about. For once, I agree with something the PCs are proposing, and I do hope that they vote to investigate its uses even more.

Why do people care about Doan?

I know he may have made a bad comment 2 years ago, and I'm a bit late in commenting on it now, but does anyone really care about this? Parliament has tons of stupid things that they investigate and do, and the waste plenty of time on it all the time. Just like the bigfoot petition, there's plenty of wasted goings-on that we just have to deal with. You know it's a slow news week when these type of stories make news for more than 5 minutes.

So what do we have to talk about? Oh, just a few stories about Afghanistan, and some polls that are showing the Liberals bouncing back. The Afghanistan story is an interesting one, since the government still doesn't quite know its own story on what is going on. Sometime, I'd love to see a government just admit that they were wrong, or didn't know all the details. I think it would be great for us if we had that sort of honesty from our officials, but I know that's probably a pipe dream.

And about these polls showing some stuff, I maintain my dislike for this excessive polling. Sure, we're up this week, but I'll bet that next week the Conservatives will pull back to being 3-4 points ahead, and everyone will be claiming it's all because people love their policy on bigfoot or whatever else, even when the actual numbers really haven't changed.

So what have I really said here? Nothing really, but it sure does seem we're getting into our summer lull. Barring something crazy like the Conservatives bringing their environmental plan to a vote, it's looking like we're in for about 4 months of nothingness before we start talking heavy about the Ontario election in the fall.

Lots going on

Well, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to write too much the last few days, as I've just gotten back into town and haven't had an internet connection at home.

So, to catch up:

-Congrats Justin on the nomination. He's got the organization, and even some grudging respect from Antonio, so looks good so far. He may just be more than a pretty face, but we still need to see more from him.

-EcoFraud! Beautiful!

-Afghanistan: Conservatives seem to be changing their mind constantly, and are rightly being taken to task over it. There's nothing that they can do to really defend this without a complete about-face, so they're pretty screwed by it. And while it would be nice to take them to an election over this, my next point will stop us.

-Ouch. I know many Liberals are tapped-out from Leadership, but we still have been low on donations for years, since the new rules have come in. We have close to if not the largest voter base, more than twice the number of voters as the NDP, and many of our supporters are middle-class citizens, and we need to figure out how to adequately raise money. It's hard getting people to give, but if we can't figure it out, no matter how good our policies and ideas are, we won't be able to get out and reach people with the message.

Provincial Matters

Well, I came back today to KW and got to attend the KW Provincial Nomination Meeting. It happened to be the first contested provincial nomination meeting, and this one was to elect the person to hopefully replace Elizabeth Witmer in the upcoming provincial election (yeah, I know, it feels weird to be talking about provincial politics, especially with a somewhat larger nomination meeting held today), but it never hurts to start thinking ahead to the election which will probably still be before the Federal one.

So anyways, unfortunately my choice for candidate, Jeff Henry, didn't quite win, but he did put up an excellent battle. I have a feeling lots of people in the room got their first impressions of him today, and I think they were truly impressed. So now our candidate in KW for the next election will be Louise Ervin, who I know we are all now hoping will be able to knock of 'Liz, and help make the Kitchener-Waterloo area a much stronger Liberal area in the next McGuinty government.

Democrat Debate

Well, in what feels way too early so far, the Democrats had their first debate tonight. A good chance to see how the candidates stack up against each other, and find out where they stand. Obviously, Iraq seems to be the top topic, and it is interesting to see everyone try to defend their initial positions on the war, their decisions to fund the war, and anything else involved in that.

I haven't watched it all yet, and I may comment more once I've seen it and seen some analysis, but it definitely still seems to be a 3-person race. I don't see any of the minor players having any real chance, since none of them even seem to have any position that is strikingly different from the others. If anything, they're not setting themselves up in any position that gives them a shot. I mean, they all seem to be even more Liberal than the main 3, which doesn't really give them any spot on the spectrum to really grab a foothold.

*UPDATE:
Watching some post-debate recap, it seems to be universal that Clinton was the best one. The main talking points are that she was poised, she answered solidly, and showed that she could be presidential. Obama was a bit slow in his answers, and wasn't overly great in it. However, it'll be interesting to watching him in the next few debates, to see if he can pick it up. Edwards wasn't great in it, and he needs to get his views out, but I do still think that he has the best policies.

Better late than never

Well, the Conservatives appear to have an environmental plan, which will meet the Kyoto targets... by 2020. Or maybe 2025. But eventually, they will be met.

So, it's obviously not a perfect plan, since the targets won't be met for a long time from now, but at least it is a plan. While it would be better to target for only a few years late (maybe reaching targets by 2015, say), the big question now is if it will actually be enforced.

It's better than nothing, and the Globe seems to think nobody will overly like it. It is a plan, at similar to the Afghanistan vote for the NDP, it's a choice whether to accept a target that's later than you like, or continue holding out for something better, which won't be coming.

*UPDATE: Well, thanks to Scott for pointing it out, but it appears that the Greens have a statement saying how these targets are weaker than the previous ones. Now, I won't take everything the Greens say at face value, and I do feel that targets for 2020 are better than targets for 2050, but there is still the point that the Conservatives are trying to use different baselines (2006 vs 2003), and that it really doesn't come too close to the Kyoto commitments, even by 2020. I still feel it's better than nothing, and that it could be used as a starting point. We just need to push the Conservatives to do more.

Impeach Cheney

Well, looks like one of the long-shots for '08 has made a play, with Kucinich introducing a motion to impeach Cheney. Now, he basically has no real supporters of this yet, but we'll have to see how far it goes.

Afghanistan motion

Well, the motion was defeated today by the Conservatives and NDP, one saying it went too far, the other not far enough.

Now, I would need to actually read the motion, but it still seems weird the NDP not liking it. I mean, I guess they're trying to make the argument that it would be similar to saying they want Kyoto targets by 2012, so they would vote down a plan that meets the targets by 2015 (or 2050, as the Conservatives would put it). Really, if they don't like it and object to the mission, would it not make even more sense for them to simply abstain from voting? That way the bill would at least pass, and I can't see how they could argue that life without the bill further advances their cause than life with the bill, unless if they think that the Conservatives will pull a "We were going to propose withdrawing them now, but now that we already have a date, it's too much trouble to change it" type of philosophy.

Oh well, it's the NDP's loss. Apart from the hippy group that already likes the NDP, I can't see them gaining any votes from this. And even if they voted for the motion, they could still publicly rally that they want the troops out now, and that if they can't have them out now, then as early as possible (which would be right after we've legally agreed to). Unless if they're secretly in some sort of "now or never" type of clan, which I would have lots of trouble with.

Be interesting to see if this is held over his head if/when we go to an election. I'd like to hear his justification, or at least see him squirm trying to argue that no date is better than a date.

April Fool's Day?

Well, in what could only be conceived of as an April Fool's joke 3 weeks late, comes this little gem courtesy of everyone's favourite little news aggregator:

"Let me boil it down for you", notioned the hangdog, "there are some within Dion's grey matter and some within May's green matter who are cooking up a plot to merge the two parties."

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

Hopefully the Conservatives will enjoy the spirit of the day and decide to actually do something positive for the environment.

Fruity cocktails good for you

It's true.

A fruity cocktail may not only be fun to drink but may count as health food, U.S. and Thai researchers say

The study did not address whether adding a little cocktail umbrella enhanced the effects.

So with that, have a great weekend all, and remember, drink healthy!

Coalition of the Willing [parties]

Well, the Green-Liberal deal last week caused some controversies, and now it looks like the scope is enlarging, with a new possible deal in St. Catherines. Unfortunately the Liberals aren't exactly running the most progressive candidate in the riding, so it's exactly the greatest thrill to welcome back Walt to the HOC, but we can live with a few bad apples.

Now, I'd tend to think we probably won't be seeing too many more of these type of deals, but overall, I really don't mind. I would personally not mind seeing more deals of the sort, all over the place. I'll give up a candidate in some ridings in BC where it's really a 2-way race between the NDP and Conservatives. For me, I want the HOC to have the best split possible, and in general, that means that I'd rather see NDP, Green, and Liberal MPs over Conservative ones. I don't yet feel like we need any sort of official deal where we end up with a combined flag or anything of the like, and I do think we still need to not entirely give up in some areas (the whole 307/308 riding strategy), but a doing a few small deals here or there to steal a couple conservative seats isn't much trouble.

Although to be honest, most of this would be useless with a STV system where candidates are ranked. Even the MMP system which Ontario will vote on would be something, although I will want to look at it more this summer when I have some time to fully decide whether I will be willing to go fully proportional.

Gun Laws

Well, as the stories that are coming out now are stories of what was lost, one of the more common things for people to think of is "How can we prevent this?" Our work mailing list is up to about 150 posts, in what started out as someone complaining about guns. It has obviously veered off a bit, but the debate about gun controls is definitely still very alive (especially here in the States, where many people cling to their 2nd amendment rights).

Luckily, I haven't seen too many large press stories of people trying to make some political gain from this story. And hopefully we will keep it that way, since there really isn't much that can be said. I've heard arguments from people on both sides of the fence: some say that we should take this as a sign to go further to ban guns; some as a sign that we need to loosen legislation, since at least then if this crazy guy started shooting, maybe someone would have been able to shoot back before he got to his 30 victims.

But for me, I hope no political party tries to go to those cheap political points, since they're both mostly useless in this case. Sure, I'll support tough gun control rules, but you really can't stop these type of situations with those rules. These type of incidents are rare, and will still happen no matter what rules are in place. We do need to find ways to stop this sort of act from occurring again, but the solution to that doesn't have to deal with gun laws.

Charter snub

Well, everyone's rightly upset at the fact that Harper is absent from Charter celebrations. I mean, we all know there are certain parts of the Charter that they don't like, but why in the world would they snub the ceremonies? I mean, I could see it if the Bloc or PQ decided to skip it on the whole "Quebec never signed it" nonsense, but for the PM? That shouldn't happen.

And a big reason why he would go even if just for political gain? People like it. I mean, even thinking purely politically, wouldn't showing up and celebrating it go a long way to try to calm people's worries that he's trying to dismantle it? By skipping out on the ceremony, all it does is give the opposition more fuel to go after him about.

So today, let's take a moment to reflect on the Charter and all the good it's done. If only Harper would do the same sometime.

VA Tech

Terrible. Just terrible.

Very local politics

Well, I thought I would share some very local politics news today, in that I was just elected as the new VP Policy and Planning of our local University of Waterloo Young Liberals Club. I'm very excited for this new opportunity for me, and hopefully in the next year I'll be able to bring forward some good policies on behalf of our club (and hopefully we won't be too caught up in elections to be able to).

Deal with the Greens

Well, I'm actually surprised at this move to not run a Liberal in Central Nova, in an effort to hope that Elizabeth May wins her seat. I never thought we would actually go ahead with it, and instead run someone not very strong and rely on an underground movement to tell people to vote for the Greens, similar to what the Liberals did in calgary centre many years ago to help Joe Clark out (at least, I assume that's what happened when the Liberal vote in the riding dropped by 20% overnight).

And this one is one that makes sense. It certainly will get people talking about how close Dion and May's views are on the environment, and that will certainly help overall. And it's not like we would actually win the seat, so it's not like we're really giving up an MP for it.

Glen also has a nice post up, comparing it to Hargrove's deal with Martin. He finishes it up with a good line as well:

now we just have to hope that May doesn't tacitly endorse the seperatists like good old Buzz did...

Darfur and Paille

No, even if Paille has been accused of many things, saddling the Darfur crisis on him is not what I intend by the title (I just seem to have the habit of always having a few separate topics to mention when I write up posts. Think of it as getting 2 for the price of 1).

First up, Wells has a good link to the Gazette article digging up some stuff about Paille, the new guy investigating the polling scandal (PollScam?) The good news from that is that it seems in the past Paille has been a fan of under the table money, and giving contracts to people who give positive reviews of the government. Maybe he'll be friendly to our old shady dealings?

Secondly, some Google news which I found interesting. It seems that Google and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum have teamed up to let people know what's going on in Darfur. Called Crisis in Darfur, it's a bunch of markings on Google Earth showing the destruction going on in Darfur. A nice initiative that will let people know that maybe it's not all rosy everywhere.

Belinda and PR

Well, everyone has their comments about Belinda's decision to call it a career in politics. Truly a sad state to lose someone of her, uh, intellect. She will be missed dearly (mostly by the blogging community, and at conventions for those who like free booze). Although honestly, if she was going to quit, shouldn't she have had the decency to do so before Martha got nominated somewhere else? I'm sure we'd all have a bit more respect for Belinda if she stepped down and paved the way for Hall-Findlay.

For something else, Greg from DemocraticSpace has another post up on Proportional Representation which will be a secondary focus in the next election. Currently the debate is whether to have it regional or provincial representation (ie. your PR vote would go towards a provincial tally to divvy up candidates or a regional list), and whether it be open-list or closed list (you pick which regional rep you want vs voting for the party and having them run down their list). For all Ontario voters, I'd definitely recommend a stop by there now to get familiar with the topic. I confess to not knowing too much about the different systems, but 15 minutes browsing down his posts gives a great refresher on some basics of it.

And that brings up another matter of its federal implications. In the past, we've seen some talk by a few different parties about some forms of PR, most notably the old reformers (part of their populist appeals) and the NDP more recently (since they want more seats). Obviously now that they're in power, the Conservatives won't be too thrilled with it, but it would be interesting to see if they lose the support of the Bloc, would the NDP say they'd support the Cons with an increased support of some MMPR?

Yay polling numbers!

Some have the Cons and Grits in a statistical tie. Some say that Canadians think Harper is nearly 3 times a better PM than Dion, who is practically tied with Layton. Both are from the same polling firm. Some people took the first as a sign of Liberal increases. Some people look at the second as a cause for concern.

To be honest, I've gotten bored with polling numbers. It's obvious now that people change their minds wildly nowadays, and that based on what sample of people you poll, it's hard to compare. Right now, the only poll numbers I would consider trusting would be if a company came out with one poll number today, and then asked the exact same people 2 weeks or a month from now to see how they've changed. Right now, that's the only way I would consider drawing conclusions, since the margins of errors on these polls are just way too large to pick up the little differences (I mean, +/- 3.1 percentage points? That means one poll could have the Cons at 39% and a majority and another can have them dead tied with the Liberals at 33%, and both be "accurate").

Now, the leader percentages gives some trouble, and that is something that we need to look at. As much as we hate to admit it, Harper gives off the aura of being more Prime Ministerial than Dion does. We have to learn to live with it and overcome it. The numbers themselves should only tell us that Dion needs to work on his demeanor, and that we need to focus our campaigning efforts on the ideas, and not about the people. We all know our ideas and vision are the better choices, so we need to run on that. We also need to think up our retorts when Harper comes hard after Dion when Dion gets uppity to defend his record. The numbers from the poll alone mean nothing, but they will determine how the campaign will be run.

So, does this all mean that we will or won't have an election soon? At this point, these numbers are useless to figure out. Everyone has internal numbers which are a much safer indication of intentions. They'll be looking riding by riding to figure out how stuff is going. I'd still say that we will avoid an election this spring, since I don't see a good chance for the Tories to go to war on it. I obviously wouldn't be surprised to see one, but really, I think the Conservatives will probably feel that they can wait and still be fine. If they can keep their lunatics muzzled, I don't see why they wouldn't try to put in 2 decent years of government and get people used to their style. I mean, nothing serious has gone wrong to the average person so far, so another year of it and the average person won't mind letting them stay on for longer.

A few notes

I had a fairly decent-sized post written up about calculators and computers in classrooms in response to this story, but it got eaten. Let me quickly point out my conclusions which were that we should avoid an over-reliance on electronic aids in school early on, since I don't think it teaches people how to do stuff (there should be no mathematical knowledge which is taught with an electronic aid until it's mastered by hand first).

Next, hope everyone has a good Easter or Passover or weekend, depending on your religious views.

Third, Go Habs Go! Massive game coming up tomorrow, and it should be exciting. Montreal needs to win to clinch, or just make it to OT if NYI doesn't win both their games left. It would be sweet to have it tied late and for Montreal to score the game winner into an empty net to clinch.

That's all I've got to say for now.

Alanis Morissette's My Humps

If you haven't seen this, it's a must to watch.

Liblogs video

Well, when I first got the message last week from Cherniak saying that he was urging all us Liberal bloggers to make some videos to counter the new Tory attack ad and try to get some press, my first reaction was, "hahaha, come on. Can a few of us posting videos on a website actually get any MSM coverage?" I initially took it as a stunt that I figure would at best fail, and at worst, blow up in our face if nobody made videos and we only had like 1-2 videos to "brag" about.

But Jason seems to have pulled it off. Hope we can continue to make videos and keep the grassroots involved with this!

New Conservative Ad

Well, the Conservatives have decided to launch a new ad (the "citations" one). In it, it's basically saying:
1. The Conservatives have solved the fiscal imbalance
2. Dion doesn't believe in the fiscal imbalance
3. If elected, since Dion doesn't believe in the fiscal imbalance, he will take Quebec's money away.

Now for me, I don't see how you make the jump from #1 and #2 to get to #3, but I guess an ad doesn't really have to make sense. I haven't lived in Quebec for a long time, so I'm not sure how it will play. The Conservatives really are trying to hammer home their messages, especially for a party that says they "really don't want an election".

April 2 quick links

I was away over the weekend, but a few quick links:

• Yesterday was April Fools' Day. Pranks are best when they're semi-believable. Some are decent because they are kinda stupid (although I love the comment differentiating labels and folders). And for me, some are just too full of crap to be too funny.


• Devils Fire Julien. What team fires a coach when they have home ice 3 days before the playoffs start? Lou is playing a risky game here.


• Finally, I need me one of these.

Falling on the Climate Change bill?

Media speculation is ramping up about whether the Conservatives are planning to make the climate change bill a confidence measure, and plan to fall on it. Now, if their poll numbers really are 17 points up on the Liberals, then this is a great plan, since they should be able to win over anything.

But if their numbers aren't that high, then it seems incredibly stupid to fall on a bill toughening environmental standards. It's not like the bill calls for crazy action that obviously will destroy the country, so I can't see them wanting to go to war on it, unless if they suddenly found that 40% of the country doesn't like the environment, or something like that.

On a side note, it appears Blogger has a news feed widget now that you can add to your sidebar to show news stories from Google News. If anyone has suggestions for other keywords to add on, let me know and I can add those on.

US to withdraw from Iraq

...in 2008, if Bush doesn't veto the bill which passed the Senate today, and actually follows through on it. I'd say there's as much chance of that happening as us seeing Dion lead the PQ in the next Quebec election.

But it is still nice to see the Senate continue to put more pressure on Bush, even if it's simply a non-binding symbolic resolution. However, I really find it insane how they force so many different resolutions into one. But I guess it makes sense to have a timeline for withdrawing, more money for Iraq and Afghanistan, more money for marines, money to track down sex offenders, and money for spinach farmers all in one. I mean, they're all related, right?

What about the bloc?

The globe has an article out today examining what the Bloc should do next. Do they keep the hardline stance, or do they shift to try to take up the ADQ's view, and get rid of the referendum notion, like the PQ is thinking about. Especially with the rumours of Duceppe switching to lead the PQ, it means both the PQ and Bloc will have to think and decide what their positions will be for their respective parties.

If the Bloc can't hold the seats that the ADQ won, then they'll be relegated to obscurity. A 20 to 30 seat bloc would be pretty useless, overall. Especially with a showing like that, it would probably be at the hands of a Conservative majority. But with the PQ at an all-time low, and if we keep the rumours of Duceppe swapping back provincially, then it would be tough to convince voters to vote for them.

And going forward, if the Bloc is seriously slumping, that leaves the Liberals as the party of opposition in Quebec to prevent a Conservative majority. We have to bring our message to Quebeckers that the only true way to prevent a Conservative majority is to vote Liberal. We have to reinforce the notion that the Bloc can't defend Quebec's interest against the Conservatives if they have a majority, and the only way to stop that is by electing a Liberal government.

Now this is all assuming a Bloc in rubble, and an election coming up soon. If we end up waiting on an election, then lots can change, but as long as the Bloc is weakened and still slightly directionless (or even worse for them, keeping their hard-line stance on a referendum), I think we should be able to steal back a couple seats. Not a lot, but every little bit counts.

But yesterday's poll said...

Courtesy of Farn and Wide, we have 2 seaprate polls showing completely different stories. One has the race almost neck and neck. The other has the conservatives over 40% (but still lots of undecideds).

I'm sure in the next few days the rest of the polling firms will have new numbers out, and next week we'll start seeing the post-Quebec election numbers roll in, the Conservatives do appear to be a bit ahead. Combine with a strong ADQ showing in Quebec that they'll hope to capitalize on, the big question is what knife are they going to throw themselves on?

But they did get a bit screwed since Charest sucked, so it might not be so obvious. I'm still leaning to thinking that the Conservatives will wait a bit on the election, but I could still see us voting sometime in June. Definitely still not a guarantee either way.

More to life than politics

Well, I started out saying I would comment on matters other than politics, and a while back I abandoned that. However, with today being Super Tuesday in the East Playoff race, I thought I'd mention it.

6 teams compete - only 3 will make it in. All 6 in action tonight. We could see stuff tighten up even further today, or we may see stuff spread out a bit.

The Habs may also be getting some good news, with Huet possibly returning this week, although the way Halak has played, Huet doesn't seem as necessary.

The Isles get some bad news, as Dipietre suffers post-concussion syndrome. Always sucks when guys get hurt, but at this stage, it's a big break for the others in the race.

So how will it all end, with only a couple weeks left in the season? Nobody knows, but it will surely be fun to watch. Hopefully the Habs can keep their run here and make their historic collapse a little less historic.

Day after the vote thoughts

Well, as we all sit back to analyze, a few quick links.

• Boisclair to stay on


• Knives coming out in Liberal party?


• Scott Tribe muses about a PQ/ADQ coalition


• Antonio muses following the "bittersweet win"


• Coverage in DC!


• Cherniak says the federal libs need to take over the provincial ones

Generally, seems like a sobering experience all around. Should be interesting to watch the dynamics of it over the next few months.

Live blogging the results

I'll make a few notes as I listen in online: (all times PDT)

5:46 - ADQ tied with the Liberals? WTF? Antonio's not going to be happy at all
Greens up in 1 riding. Do we have our surprise riding, like Andre Arthur in the last federal election?

5:47 - ADQ ahead? What is going on here?

5:49 - 45-42-34 right now. Nice to see the PQ down a bit, and I can't see them winning it with this, but could the ADQ actually hang on?

5:50 - 46-44-33

5:52 - SRC has it a bit nicer: 48-36-28-1 for Lib-ADQ-PQ-QS

5:54 - Although on their minute-by-minute results, they have it 46-44-33, same as CBC. I don't think anyone predicted the ADQ would be in this tight.

5:56 - ADQ actually polling ahead of the PQ in total votes so far. Either it's going to be a stunning defeat for the PQ or else ADQ regions are faster to count.

6:00 - Charest is trailing in his own riding. Man would it be huge if both the PQ came in a stunning loss AND Charest lost his own seat. Politics would be crazy in Quebec

6:02 - CBC predicts a minority. Geez, you think, based on how it's been so far? At this point, it may even end up within 10 seats from first to last

6:06 - CBC's website has the ADQ ahead of the Liberals in total votes!!!! Has the world gone tipsy-turvy?

6:12 - I thought it was temporary, but the ADQ is still ahead in votes as well. I think we'll be going late to figure out who's going to end up in the lead.

6:15 - Elected numbers stand as 31-20-17 for Lib-ADQ-PQ. So the ADQ has already had 15 seat gain elected

6:17 - Still only 40% of the riding in, but Charest is down 2482-2277 in votes in his riding.

6:29 - Well, I think I'll call the PQ being stuck at about 34-36, so we've got 90 seats to split between the Libs and the ADQ. CBC's got the Libs up by a few seats now.

6:38 - CBC.ca's got a PQ guy on who was trying to claim that it wasn't a loss for separatists. Okay, that's like saying that the Conservatives winning the Federal election is good for left-wing voters of the country

6:40 - Liberals back ahead in seats, 46-43/44 (depending who you watch). Charest still losing. If the Liberals win in seats, but Charest loses his seat, does he step down?

6:53 - Liberals 4 seats ahead of the ADQ, with only 15 seats still in the air. Liberals looking like they should actually hold on.

7:01 - Liberals now elected in more ridings than the ADQ are leading and elected in, so looking a lot like they should be staying in power. However, barring a miracle, Charest is gone from his riding. You also have to watch out, since CBC now has the PQ only 2 seats behind the ADQ, so with a last push by them, it would be interesting if they got back to tie with Dumont.

7:06 - CBC predicts Liberals win.

7:09 - Looks like the PQ isn't close in any of the undeclared ridings, so they'll stay in last. Also, Calgary Grit has musings of Charest stepping down and running federally for Harper. Certainly should make for some good chatter in the next few weeks.

7:20 - Well, stuff seems to have calmed down now. 46-41-38 right now. I think I'll sign off for now and head home now. The PQ doesn't end as bad in seats as they looked earlier, but 28.35% of the vote is horrible for them. CBC just declares that Charest lost his riding, so expect lots of hounds over the next few days for both the Liberals and the PQ.

9:12 - In a move that shocks everyone except Antonio, it seems Charest actually won his riding. That should probably stop the load of people calling for him to quit.

Election time in Quebec

Well, if you're reading this blog now, and are not aware from the election in Quebec going on today, then welcome back from your vacation of the past, oh, 5 weeks.

It's the big day. All the polls are saying the split will fall right close to even in votes, and it all depends how the parties get their people out, and where the votes fall. Right now, I'm still hanging on my prediction from before the election call, saying that the Liberals will still take it in a minority. It's going to be close, but I think the Liberals will be able to squeak out enough to get the edge in seats. However, it will be interesting how this plays going forward, to see how long they last there. We might end up seeing *another* election in the next year if the parties can't work together.

Another budget

Well, even if we're still dealing with the fallout from the Conservative budget, the Ontario government has released its budget today. Another pre-election budget, but this one doesn't seem to be crazy. I doubt we'll see too many Liberals turning on Dalton for this one. Overall, I don't see anything to complain about. A child benefit that pays out to the needy, low-income folk, instead of to rich parents. A balanced budget. Funding for education.

Nothing huge and crazy, but lots of spending where it's needed. Opposition can't even point to anything to be overly unhappy with.

Edwards continues on

Well, in some sad news for John Edwards, it appears his wife's cancer has returned. Hopefully she can go on with the treatment and continue to live a full life. Edwards has stated that he will still continue his race for the White House.

First budget victim: Comuzzi

Well, when a party member breaks ranks to vote on a budget, hard to see how anyone could be upset when that person is kicked from the caucus.

Also, as much as I disagree with Antonio on many issues of the fiscal imbalance and many matters Quebec-wise, he does provide some good arguments over on his site about these issues, and about the optics of Charest cutting taxes after getting a bonus from the government. This was in response to a very good debate on the blogger's hotstove between him and Dan.

Budget Day!

Well, gather round folks, since it's budget day today! Everyone can get in line for their little goodies. Everyone gets something, unless if you happen to be poor or aboriginal. Looks like some Quebecois are happy and will vote for it.

So now the main questions are:

1. How will this affect the Quebec election, with the Bloc voting in favour of it now?

2. Will we be seeing a federal election soon? Not necessarily that it will cause one, but is it strong enough for the opposition to go to war on, or strong enough for Harper to defend?

Only time will tell, but at least from first glance, it's not a full goody-bag of stuff that nobody in their right mind could refuse.

*edit: after a bit of reflection, and after reading A BCer in TO's recap, I have to say that there's really nothing in there that you can complain about directly. No big income tax cuts for large corporations, or direct tax hikes for the poor (we still have the indirect hike from rolling back the Liberal tax plan, but it's not explicitly mentioned). We'd all like to see some money go into something else, and less money go into that fiscal imbalance (although if it really end the problem for good, then I'll be happy), but it's not something that will be keeping me awake and worried about what the government is doing to us. Definitely not enough to go into an election war on, but still enough to be able to reject it without looking bad.

More reasons why Edwards should win

Well, perusing the political chatter mailing list, I came across a link to this post, talking about the US candidate's views of homosexuality and gay marriage. Really interesting to see the difference between Canada and the US, where the views of Clinton and Obama are even further right-wing than Harper's. But there is one candidate who seems open to it, and that's Edwards. As the article points out, he's still in the "civil union" mode instead of fully endorsing gay marriage, but does admit that the next generation would probably be favour of it.

Good on him for being open about the topic. The more I see of him, the more he looks like a much better candidate than the others.

California wants in

Well, apparently California has decided to move up its primary date, in order to be included in the action to pick the nominees for the next election. This means that, assuming other states like Florida, Texas, and New Jersey do likewise, we'll have less than a month from the first primary to when everything is decided, likely coming within only a couple weeks from Iowa and New Hampshire.

So, while we still have many months until the votes themselves, it's gonna be a packed winter next year, with all the states wanting to be "in on the action." Nobody wants to be the "BC" of the primaries, with the contest over before they finish voting. At least those in BC can still be happy that they won't get to know the results of Canadian elections early.

Anders

How a man who has called Nelson Mandela a terrorist can continue to win a seat in parliament astounds me, at least he'll have to face an actual nomination fight now that a judge has overturned his sham of a nomination race. While Anders may benefit us Liberals politically by his insane comments and views, and while he may be the best chance the Liberals have to win a seat in Calgary, I think people would be overly happy to see him ousted. Now, please Glen, don't switch back now that the Tories are forced to be democratic!

"But I said it in French!"

So, according to Mr. Boisclair, 2 phrases which mean the same thing could be racist in one language, but not in another. Apparently, "slanty eyes" is offensive in English, but in French, it's perfectly acceptable. Can someone please explain that to me?

This denial is a classic case of a guy who needs to take a media relations class. What you say when you're alone with friends and what you say in a public stump speech need very different levels of control about what is permissible and what isn't.

It's statements like that that I'm not surprised that we'll soon see the PQ in 3rd place in polling data. That one linked to has all 3 parties in a statistical tie. It's coming down to the wire. While I do think that Dumont will fall a bit once the allegations from his bridge attack see more light, right now, it seems like it will probably come come right down to the federal budget.

Tories kill climate change group

I guess it makes sense to axe a group who works on stuff you don't believe in, and it might just be a standard re-org, as the Cons want us to think about, but it certainly isn't good optics cutting away the Environment Canada Climate Change Policy Directorate. Up next for them? Environment Canada itself. "No, the same number of people will be working on stuff related to the environment, but now, they'll simply be working in the Ministry of National Resources office."

In other completely unrelated news, Obama has said that he won't campaign on his rivals' personal lives. It's a bold move. If everyone stops mentioning this stuff, we might sometime, gasp, elect someone who's been divorced to the highest office in the land. How terrible would that be!

Courting the Klingon vote

Now, I know everyone's constituencies vary slightly, and you will often see some politicians trying to court some minority votes by having their pages in Mandarin or some other language. But for Jyrki Kasvi, he has the interests of another minority in mind: Klingons. I guess it's not so weird, seeing as Google has had their homepage translated to Klingon, Pig Latin, and even that ever-widely spoken language of Bork, Bork, Bork for years now.

"Some have thought it is blasphemy to mix politics and Klingon," said Jyrki Kasvi, an ardent Trekkie. "Others say it is good if politicians can laugh at themselves."

-CNN article

Raising taxes

It's always big news when a government decides to raise taxes, so we'll see how this works out for Shawn Graham in NB. Nice to see them balancing their budget.

Also, today is when we get our first report on the 2006 census. With my quick scan through, a few cool facts (to impress those ladies):

• Toronto is now over 5M people in its metro area
  
• Two new millionaires in Calgary and Edmonton
  
• KW came very close to cracking the top 10, being only 6000 people smaller than London now, and with its larger growth, should pass London soon. Waterloo itself is only 2500 people away from 100000. However, the KW urban area is larger than London's.
  
• The 6 largest federal election districts are all in Toronto, with Brampton West being the largest, at 170000 (the average is at 102000).
  
• Stratford is the most densely populated agglomeration, with Red Deer closely behind.
  

Lots of information there, but basically, Canada is growing, with Alberta and Southern Ontario leading the way.

(*hat tip to Calgary Grit)