Yesterday I drove through a neighbourhood in the northeastern part of the Willowdale. The lawn signs there were about 10 to 1 for the Liberals. This is despite the fact that the neighbourhood is in Tory candidate David Shiner’s municipal ward that he represents on city council. I’ve seen Liberal lawn sings in other parts of Willowdale as well. I really hope that Willowdale Liberal incumbent David Zimmer is able to win re-election over David Shiner.
The Election Projection Project has called Ajax—Pickering for the Conservatives and Oshawa for the NDP. I wonder whether the prediction for Ajax—Pickering is a little premature. The seat is Liberal federally. If provincially there is a Liberal majority government, shouldn’t Ajax—Pickering go Liberal? As for Oshawa, I think the prediction is based on lawn signs and reports on what is happening on the ground. I want the Liberals to win Oshawa. However, I’ve heard tell the provincial Liberals haven’t won Oshawa ever since Liberal Premier Mitch Hepburn tried to break up a strike in Oshawa in the 1930s. Between the NDP and the Conservatives, I’m not sure which I’d like better to win. The NDP candidate in Oshawa is Sid Ryan. He has already run several times previously for the NDP federally and provincially. He’s come close all but one of those times. In the 2006 Federal Election, Ryan ran in Oshawa and came within 5 points of beating incumbent Conservative Colin Carrie. In the 2004 Federal Election, Ryan ran in Oshawa and came within 400 votes of beating Carrie in an open seat contest. In the 2003 Ontario Election, Ryan ran in Oshawa and came within 1000 votes of beating Conservative incumbent Jerry Ouellette. In the 1999 Ontario Election, Ryan ran in Scarborough Centre and placed an above average but still distant third. He split the vote and allowed Conservative incumbent Marilyn Muchinski to be re-elected by a wide margin despite several other Tory candidates being defeated in the same election with higher shares of the vote than Muchinski received. Ryan is president of CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) Ontario. Ryan was born in Dublin, Ireland. He is considered something of a socialist. He may win in Oshawa. We shall see. But the Liberals need to focus not on Oshawa, but on Ajax—Pickering.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Outremont and Ontario Election
I’m as worried as ever that on Monday the NDP will win over the Liberals in Outremont. This would be a serious blow to my leader Stephane Dion and would make the appearance of the Liberals not having momentum. My understanding is that for the last couple weeks the Liberals have been running a spirited campaign, but I don’t know if it was enough to catch up to Mulcair. I can’t conjecture what the election results would look like. One conjecture seems as doubtful as the next.
I’ve now joined Michael Chan’s re-election campaign. I’ve also joined his re-election campaign group on Facebook. I’m afraid that there there are a few “wall” comments but not too much else content. Nobody is doing in depth discussion about how the campaign is going. I am, however, getting daily email campaign updates from the central Liberal campaign. Needless to say they highlight Liberal policy announcements and criticize the Tories and the NDP. Speaking of policy, the Green Party has announced that a Green government would put into place SIX new statutory holidays. These include Earth Day, “Ontario’s birthday”, Remembrance Day and provincial and municipal election days. What about times like this year when Earth Day falls on a Saturday or Sunday? I especially do not agree with statutory holidays on election days. That is too much of a disruption and does not necessarily encourage people to vote. The reason according to Green Party leader Frank De Jong is that workers in other countries who have more days off are more productive. I wonder if De Jong has the statistical evidence to back this up. This statutory holiday policy has a European feel to it. It is in many continental European countries that have an increased number of holidays and also often have election day as a holiday. Another thing about election day on a holiday is that there is one group of workers who don’t get the day off – election workers! Another problem is that on election day schools are a common source of location for polls to be placed. On a statutory holiday schools will be closed and unable to be used for polling locations, causing a serious administrative headache. That’s why I prefer Dalton’s single new holiday in February.
I’ve now joined Michael Chan’s re-election campaign. I’ve also joined his re-election campaign group on Facebook. I’m afraid that there there are a few “wall” comments but not too much else content. Nobody is doing in depth discussion about how the campaign is going. I am, however, getting daily email campaign updates from the central Liberal campaign. Needless to say they highlight Liberal policy announcements and criticize the Tories and the NDP. Speaking of policy, the Green Party has announced that a Green government would put into place SIX new statutory holidays. These include Earth Day, “Ontario’s birthday”, Remembrance Day and provincial and municipal election days. What about times like this year when Earth Day falls on a Saturday or Sunday? I especially do not agree with statutory holidays on election days. That is too much of a disruption and does not necessarily encourage people to vote. The reason according to Green Party leader Frank De Jong is that workers in other countries who have more days off are more productive. I wonder if De Jong has the statistical evidence to back this up. This statutory holiday policy has a European feel to it. It is in many continental European countries that have an increased number of holidays and also often have election day as a holiday. Another thing about election day on a holiday is that there is one group of workers who don’t get the day off – election workers! Another problem is that on election day schools are a common source of location for polls to be placed. On a statutory holiday schools will be closed and unable to be used for polling locations, causing a serious administrative headache. That’s why I prefer Dalton’s single new holiday in February.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Coming Throne Speech
I can’t deal with whether the federal government will fall on the coming Throne Speech. That seems too far away right now. I want to focus on the provincial campaign. There will be a lot of Throne Speech optics later. If we’re lucky, someone will find away to keep this government in power for now – Liberals in Ontario cannot have two elections so close together. I want this Conservative government out of office just as much as the next Liberal, but a 2007 election is not the way to do it. Bringing down the government only creates an election that the Conservatives could easily win with a minority or majority. Not for decades upon decades has the Governor General asked an opposition party to form government without an election victory for said opposition party. That just doesn’t happen anymore. If we could bring down the government in hopes of Dion simply being appointed Prime Minister on the spot, I’d go for it. But Governors General just don’t appoint new Prime Ministers on the spot following the loss of confidence of a government anymore. So it just is not a doable option. That is why we need to keep this Conservative government in power in the year 2007 and explore our options next year. That’s all the dealing I’m going to do on this topic for now.
But as a closely related aside I want to mention that Harper has been bold enough to say he won’t hold a vote on extending the combat mission in Afghanistan unless he thinks the government can win that vote. The implication is he may hold it eventually, as the current deadline of February 2009 comes close. But he will not hold such an early vote because he thinks he can’t win it. I seem to read signals from the government that the government was hoping certain Liberals would again break ranks and support the extension past 2009 in the same way that certain Liberals voted for the extension to 2009. I expect the government to be disappointed if they are hoping for this. Dion has more or less united the Liberals on this issue. In the spring there was a Liberal motion to end the mission in 2009. Individual Liberals did not break ranks and I wouldn’t expect them to in a future vote. We are now quite united on this issue. When it comes down to it, there cannot be an extension of the Afghanistan mission within the context of this current parliament. Harper would still need a majority government to push through such an extension of the mission. And even then, it would go against the type of “all-party consensus” that Harper has been promising.
But as a closely related aside I want to mention that Harper has been bold enough to say he won’t hold a vote on extending the combat mission in Afghanistan unless he thinks the government can win that vote. The implication is he may hold it eventually, as the current deadline of February 2009 comes close. But he will not hold such an early vote because he thinks he can’t win it. I seem to read signals from the government that the government was hoping certain Liberals would again break ranks and support the extension past 2009 in the same way that certain Liberals voted for the extension to 2009. I expect the government to be disappointed if they are hoping for this. Dion has more or less united the Liberals on this issue. In the spring there was a Liberal motion to end the mission in 2009. Individual Liberals did not break ranks and I wouldn’t expect them to in a future vote. We are now quite united on this issue. When it comes down to it, there cannot be an extension of the Afghanistan mission within the context of this current parliament. Harper would still need a majority government to push through such an extension of the mission. And even then, it would go against the type of “all-party consensus” that Harper has been promising.
Monday, September 10, 2007
I need some help
Somebody has made the claim on the electionprediction.com page that there were polls in and Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot showing a tight two way race in both ridings in the by-elections. The claim was that the poll was in the Toronto Star. I can find the poll absolutely nowhere on the internet and I have searched thoroughly. If anyone can point out to me where this poll is and what the numbers say I would be most appreciative.
Larry Zolf
Larry Zolf wrote an opinion piece in August about the 2007 Ontario Election (http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_zolf/20070806.html). There are some things he said that I would like to dispute. A general problem is that Zolf makes far too many generalizations. Here is one such generalization:
“Hampton represents the Rainy River-Kenora riding, which boasts a huge aboriginal community, effectively giving him the aboriginal vote of Northern Ontario.”
That may be true within Hampton’s riding, but I see no evidence of the NDP having the Northern Ontario aboriginal vote outside Kenora-Rainy-River. Each aboriginal voter makes his or her own decision and I expect a number of them choose to vote Liberal.
This next quote by Zolf I find incredibly strange and it makes little sense:
“Harper's stand on the war will cost him at Camp Petawawa and other military towns, and in rural Ontario.
The NDP stand on Afghanistan, on the other hand, will win seats for Hampton's party in large cities.”
What stand on the war of Stephen Harper’s is Zolf referring to? Harper is very popular in the military town of Petawawa and places like that. His pro-military stand makes that a given. So what is Zolf referring to? Is he referring to the fact that Harper will not extend the Afghan mission without a parliamentary consensus? In those military towns, some may wish for the mission to be extended, but voters there are hardly going to switch to the Liberals, who have a much clearer stand to end the combat mission in 2009. Besides, this is a provincial election he is supposed to be talking about. Is Zolf implying that this “stand” Harper has taken, whatever it may be, will be detrimental to John Tory in those military towns. That whole first sentence from the quote I just cited makes no sense whatsoever. And even the second sentence has little logic either. This is a provincial election. At the provincial level, Afghanistan has not been an issue at all in this provincial campaign, and I see no evidence that Afghanistan will become an issue at all in the provincial campaign. I also do not see Howard Hampton campaigning on the federal NDP’s stance on Afghanistan; instead Hampton is opting for provincial issues.
As an aside, here are the four federal parties positions, as I see them, on Afghanistan:
Conservative: Would like to extend combat mission past 2009 if that were politically possible and if there were an all-party consensus.
Liberal: End combat mission in 2009.
Bloc: End combat mission in 2009, but did not support the extension to 2009 in the first place. Bring down government unless it commits to end mission in 2009.
NDP: End mission now and bring troops home, but support the government’s official position by voting against Liberal motion to end mission in 2009.
The Liberal position as you can see is actually the simplest. Contrary to popular belief, the Liberals have not waffled on this issue since Dion took over. Dion has long been quite clear about the 2009 exit date. We are not hypocrites for wanting the mission to end in 2009. I know it was our previous Liberal government who sent the troops in, but that does not mean we did not want the combat mission to end at some point.
I am getting sidetracked from Larry Zolf’s article. To me, Afghanistan could not be more irrelevant for this provincial campaign.
There are another couple quotes from Zolf that I take issue with. Here is the first:
“Hampton is no pal of Buzz Hargrove, leader of the Canadian Auto Workers' union. (He realizes that Hargrove wants to reward McGuinty for all his auto industry efforts.) But Hampton will do well in Oshawa, Oakville, St. Thomas and other auto union towns regardless.”
I can agree with Oshawa. The Oakville riding, on the other hand, has long had among the absolute lowest results for the NDP both federally and provincially despite the presence of a Ford plant. This has been true even at the height of NDP popularity. For example, the NDP was third in Oakville South in the 1990 election, 4000 votes behind the second placed Liberal candidate, who in turn was only 100 votes behind the PC candidate. Hampton’s party has never done well in the Oakville riding before; I see no evidence of that changing now. I also have trouble seeing the NDP doing well in St. Thomas, which is the political base of Liberal MPP Steve Peters, who prior to his election to the legislature was the popular mayor of St. Thomas. St. Thomas is in Elgin—Middlesex—London, where the NDP has also never done well.
Here is the next quote from Zolf’s article that I take issue with. This sentence in Zolf’s article is referring to Howard Hampton:
“He also has the gay and lesbian vote in Ontario.”
That is a sweeping generalization if I’ve ever seen one. Tell that to George Smitherman’s gay voting base in Toronto Centre. I think Dalton McGuinty is the most gay-positive Premier in Ontario history. In my opinion, McGuinty has actually focused more on gay rights than Howard Hampton has. People who are gay don’t vote only on the single issue of gay rights. They also will evaluate the government’s record on health care, education, and other issues. They will make their decision based on many issues. People who happen to be gay will not vote in bloc for the NDP, and never have.
Zolf concludes by predicting a surefire minority government. The most recent Ipsos-Reid poll showed the NDP at 16%. That is not likely enough to make a minority government happen. We won’t know for sure anything about majorities or minorities until we are much closer to election day.
“Hampton represents the Rainy River-Kenora riding, which boasts a huge aboriginal community, effectively giving him the aboriginal vote of Northern Ontario.”
That may be true within Hampton’s riding, but I see no evidence of the NDP having the Northern Ontario aboriginal vote outside Kenora-Rainy-River. Each aboriginal voter makes his or her own decision and I expect a number of them choose to vote Liberal.
This next quote by Zolf I find incredibly strange and it makes little sense:
“Harper's stand on the war will cost him at Camp Petawawa and other military towns, and in rural Ontario.
The NDP stand on Afghanistan, on the other hand, will win seats for Hampton's party in large cities.”
What stand on the war of Stephen Harper’s is Zolf referring to? Harper is very popular in the military town of Petawawa and places like that. His pro-military stand makes that a given. So what is Zolf referring to? Is he referring to the fact that Harper will not extend the Afghan mission without a parliamentary consensus? In those military towns, some may wish for the mission to be extended, but voters there are hardly going to switch to the Liberals, who have a much clearer stand to end the combat mission in 2009. Besides, this is a provincial election he is supposed to be talking about. Is Zolf implying that this “stand” Harper has taken, whatever it may be, will be detrimental to John Tory in those military towns. That whole first sentence from the quote I just cited makes no sense whatsoever. And even the second sentence has little logic either. This is a provincial election. At the provincial level, Afghanistan has not been an issue at all in this provincial campaign, and I see no evidence that Afghanistan will become an issue at all in the provincial campaign. I also do not see Howard Hampton campaigning on the federal NDP’s stance on Afghanistan; instead Hampton is opting for provincial issues.
As an aside, here are the four federal parties positions, as I see them, on Afghanistan:
Conservative: Would like to extend combat mission past 2009 if that were politically possible and if there were an all-party consensus.
Liberal: End combat mission in 2009.
Bloc: End combat mission in 2009, but did not support the extension to 2009 in the first place. Bring down government unless it commits to end mission in 2009.
NDP: End mission now and bring troops home, but support the government’s official position by voting against Liberal motion to end mission in 2009.
The Liberal position as you can see is actually the simplest. Contrary to popular belief, the Liberals have not waffled on this issue since Dion took over. Dion has long been quite clear about the 2009 exit date. We are not hypocrites for wanting the mission to end in 2009. I know it was our previous Liberal government who sent the troops in, but that does not mean we did not want the combat mission to end at some point.
I am getting sidetracked from Larry Zolf’s article. To me, Afghanistan could not be more irrelevant for this provincial campaign.
There are another couple quotes from Zolf that I take issue with. Here is the first:
“Hampton is no pal of Buzz Hargrove, leader of the Canadian Auto Workers' union. (He realizes that Hargrove wants to reward McGuinty for all his auto industry efforts.) But Hampton will do well in Oshawa, Oakville, St. Thomas and other auto union towns regardless.”
I can agree with Oshawa. The Oakville riding, on the other hand, has long had among the absolute lowest results for the NDP both federally and provincially despite the presence of a Ford plant. This has been true even at the height of NDP popularity. For example, the NDP was third in Oakville South in the 1990 election, 4000 votes behind the second placed Liberal candidate, who in turn was only 100 votes behind the PC candidate. Hampton’s party has never done well in the Oakville riding before; I see no evidence of that changing now. I also have trouble seeing the NDP doing well in St. Thomas, which is the political base of Liberal MPP Steve Peters, who prior to his election to the legislature was the popular mayor of St. Thomas. St. Thomas is in Elgin—Middlesex—London, where the NDP has also never done well.
Here is the next quote from Zolf’s article that I take issue with. This sentence in Zolf’s article is referring to Howard Hampton:
“He also has the gay and lesbian vote in Ontario.”
That is a sweeping generalization if I’ve ever seen one. Tell that to George Smitherman’s gay voting base in Toronto Centre. I think Dalton McGuinty is the most gay-positive Premier in Ontario history. In my opinion, McGuinty has actually focused more on gay rights than Howard Hampton has. People who are gay don’t vote only on the single issue of gay rights. They also will evaluate the government’s record on health care, education, and other issues. They will make their decision based on many issues. People who happen to be gay will not vote in bloc for the NDP, and never have.
Zolf concludes by predicting a surefire minority government. The most recent Ipsos-Reid poll showed the NDP at 16%. That is not likely enough to make a minority government happen. We won’t know for sure anything about majorities or minorities until we are much closer to election day.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
No Proportional Representation
I will vote for the status quo on the electoral reform referendum. Firstly, I, as do many, dislike the idea of having list MPPs that parties can select in an elite manner. MPPs in danger of defeat who are high-profile could simply be added to the top of the list to prevent their defeat. We could also experience the phenomenon whereby MPPs can run both locally and on a list, so that when defeated locally they are still elected on a list. This happens all the time in New Zealand and I don’t agree with it. The second problem is that proportional representation would result in perpetual minority governments. Proponents of proportional representation counter that these minority governments would be stable coalition governments. But I don’t like the idea of the Liberals having to make a semi-permanent coalition with the NDP. As it is, the Ontario NDP is fiercely anti-Liberal in nature. How we could ever make any kind of alliance with them I’m not sure. The NDP never has anything good to say about the Liberals. I don’t see how that could change in the context of minority governments.
As far as the coming election is concerned, based on my experience at the federal level, I fear that a minority Liberal win would be almost as bad as losing outright. Once again, people say the Liberals would need the NDP to stay in power in this situation. But the NDP dislike the Liberals so much I don’t see how any kind of alliance could be formed. I expect that the minority government would be unstable. I can just see now both opposition parties announcing they cannot support the 2008 budget, causing the government to fall in 2008. I foresee a Liberal minority as a disaster. But sometimes I wonder whether the talk of minority government is only being used to sell more newspapers. A 5, 6, or 7 point lead could just as easily translate into a majority government.
The Ontario Liberal Party has nominated all its candidates and exceeded its goal of nominating females in half of ridings not held by the Liberal Party. And overall the party has one third of its candidates women. This is excellent. This includes Helena Jaczek in Oak Ridges—Markham, the riding neighbouring mine.
I am impressed by the candidate running for the Liberals in Hamilton Centre. His name is Steve Ruddick. He is a CH (Hamilton’s local television station) weatherman and is a media personality who is also a news reporter and journalist. The Liberals pulled out of their hat a candidate much stronger than I expected (I feared the Liberal candidate would be much lesser known after Judy Marsales announced she wasn’t going to run again). I wish Steve Ruddick the absolute best of luck.
As far as the coming election is concerned, based on my experience at the federal level, I fear that a minority Liberal win would be almost as bad as losing outright. Once again, people say the Liberals would need the NDP to stay in power in this situation. But the NDP dislike the Liberals so much I don’t see how any kind of alliance could be formed. I expect that the minority government would be unstable. I can just see now both opposition parties announcing they cannot support the 2008 budget, causing the government to fall in 2008. I foresee a Liberal minority as a disaster. But sometimes I wonder whether the talk of minority government is only being used to sell more newspapers. A 5, 6, or 7 point lead could just as easily translate into a majority government.
The Ontario Liberal Party has nominated all its candidates and exceeded its goal of nominating females in half of ridings not held by the Liberal Party. And overall the party has one third of its candidates women. This is excellent. This includes Helena Jaczek in Oak Ridges—Markham, the riding neighbouring mine.
I am impressed by the candidate running for the Liberals in Hamilton Centre. His name is Steve Ruddick. He is a CH (Hamilton’s local television station) weatherman and is a media personality who is also a news reporter and journalist. The Liberals pulled out of their hat a candidate much stronger than I expected (I feared the Liberal candidate would be much lesser known after Judy Marsales announced she wasn’t going to run again). I wish Steve Ruddick the absolute best of luck.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Prorogue????
Harper prorogued parliament. When I think about it I'm not surprised. He wants to start his government fresh and is willing to risk an election that he thinks he'd win anyway by having a new Throne Speech. I'm not sure how much emphasis on the environment this throne speech will have. The government says its Clean Air Act won’t be one of the killed pieces of legislation to be resurrected. However, the numerous justice bills that reached the Senate shortly before summer and thus could not be passed will be resurrected at the stage at which they were previously. I don’t know how this works. I can only assume that they have to renumber the bills the match the new parliamentary session. Apparently private members bills don’t die when parliament is prorogued. I was under the impression that ALL bills died, including private members bills. It must be different somehow at the federal level. Recently, I saw some articles referring to a private member’s bill to implement the Kyoto Protocol. These articles said that this was a private member’s bill and thus it would not die when parliament is prorogued. But that bill has already received Royal Assent, so not only does the bill not die, it is already law! I’m not sure where the misconception that this bill had not yet received Royal Assent came from. One of the articles I read said that there is a group (I forget what it was called) that is thrilled parliament was prorogued because doing so temporarily kills the age of consent bill. This group opposes this bill. One argument they make is that teenagers under the age of consent are less likely to speak out and seek health information regarding sexual relationships. Maybe that is true in many U.S. States, with their mishmash of age of consent laws. However, I’m hoping it would be different in Canada because 14 year olds under the new law are not prohibited from having sex. Having sex with someone as much as four years older than them is still legal. So as long as their sexual partner is of the right age there should be no disincentive to seek health information. If however, the partner is more than 4 years older than the 14 year old, then there may be a case of not seeking information in hopes of not being caught. This leads to the group’s other argument against the bill, it limits sexual freedom for young teenagers. Now this is true to a certain extent. The maximum limit of 4 years may have been too few. Any attempts by the Senate to change this, however, will be swiftly rejected by the government as the government is want to do. At least if this Bill is resurrected, it can also receive a fair examination in the Senate before being passed.
I have a bit of political humour. The NDP candidate in my riding of Markham—Unionville for the upcoming provincial election is Andy Arifin. But currently on the NDP website, I can get information on him only in French! Clearly that part of their site is a work in progress. Here is the humourous translation of Arifin’s blurb into English using the Google translator:
Andy Arifin is enthusiastic with the idea to insufflate a new energy with the Ontarian policy. Inspired by the optimistic vision of Howard Hampton of the future of Ontario, it is happy to represent the district of Markham-Unionville in the name of the team of the New democratic Party.Andy always lived in Markham. While it finishes a baccalaureat specialized in political sciences at the York University, it finds time to militate actively.As a student, Andy saw closely how the badly advised policies of Dalton McGuinty as regards education postsecondaire push a number growing of students to be involved in debt always more. Following the deregulation of the expenses of the professional training schemes, a measurement of the McGuinty government, certain students cannot consider higher education any more or to continue their program of studies.Andy impatiently waits the moment to represent the families of workers as new deputy of the district of Markham Unionville in Queen' S Park.
“New deputy” means new MPP. If Arifin wants to be the new MPP for Markham—Unionville, he has his work cut out for him. After all, I think that if the NDP were to win 106/107 seats in the province, Markham—Unionville would be the one seat that didn’t go NDP.
I have a bit of political humour. The NDP candidate in my riding of Markham—Unionville for the upcoming provincial election is Andy Arifin. But currently on the NDP website, I can get information on him only in French! Clearly that part of their site is a work in progress. Here is the humourous translation of Arifin’s blurb into English using the Google translator:
Andy Arifin is enthusiastic with the idea to insufflate a new energy with the Ontarian policy. Inspired by the optimistic vision of Howard Hampton of the future of Ontario, it is happy to represent the district of Markham-Unionville in the name of the team of the New democratic Party.Andy always lived in Markham. While it finishes a baccalaureat specialized in political sciences at the York University, it finds time to militate actively.As a student, Andy saw closely how the badly advised policies of Dalton McGuinty as regards education postsecondaire push a number growing of students to be involved in debt always more. Following the deregulation of the expenses of the professional training schemes, a measurement of the McGuinty government, certain students cannot consider higher education any more or to continue their program of studies.Andy impatiently waits the moment to represent the families of workers as new deputy of the district of Markham Unionville in Queen' S Park.
“New deputy” means new MPP. If Arifin wants to be the new MPP for Markham—Unionville, he has his work cut out for him. After all, I think that if the NDP were to win 106/107 seats in the province, Markham—Unionville would be the one seat that didn’t go NDP.
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