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Election 2015

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I believe JT is pretty safe here in Atlantic Canada, for much the same reason you don't see the PM paying much attention here.  SH will not gain much if any ground come the election and I believe will lose more than they presently enjoy at present.  If anything is a real threat here to the Liberals it will be the NDP, not the CPC.
 
George Wallace said:
Is he making a calculated assumption that he does not need to visit the Maritimes and Newfoundland Labrador, or a mistake?


I think he's being smart (or, at least, I think Gerald Butts, his guru, is being smart). He must overtake the NDP, first, only then can he go after Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. He needs a firm base; traditionally the Liberal's base has been in Central and Atlantic Canada (the last time the Liberals won most of the West was in 1953 when Louis St Laurent defeated George Drew's Conservatives); he has to regain than base, which is now in NDP and Conservative hands, first.

As the article says, urban Montreal ought to be easy pickings, but the rest of Quebec will be harder. The Conservatives will fight very, very hard in suburban Ontario and BC, so M. Trudeau's first target must be the NDP in urban Toronto and Vancouver.

He'll have to go back and shore up Atlantic Canada, personally (his campaign will be all about personality, not policy), but, for now, he is very strong there (40%+ according to recent polls) and he can afford to leave it to good lieutenants like Scott Brison and Dominic LeBlanc.
 
The 39th General Election was held on 23 Jan 06. Stephen Harper won a minority, unseating Paul Martin.

Stephen Harper has been prime minister of Canada for over nine years. That, not anything about Thomas Mulcair or Justin Trudeau or their policies (or lack of policies), may be the biggest problem facing the Conservative Party of Canada in 2015.

(Macdonald was PM for 18 years (in two different ministries split (1873-78) by Mackenzie), Laurier was PM for 15 years; Borden was PM for nine years; King was PM for 22 years (in three separate ministries); St Laurent for 9 years; Trudeau for 15 years (in two separate ministries); Mulroney for 9 years and Chrétien for 10. The modern trend is for shorter (9 or ten years or even fewer) mandates.)

Canadians my decide that Stephen Harper has been PM long enough; that he's "stale," out of ideas; and that, very simply, it's time for a change.
 
That knife probably cuts both ways Edward. The voters may decide, during these unsettled and troubled times, finance and terrorism, etc to stay with the Captain that's led them through storm after storm and kept them off the rocks and reefs. At least till they move into a sheltered bay. Then, without looking back and becoming bored with the idle life, they turf the one that led them there, overboard. 
 
recceguy said:
That knife probably cuts both ways Edward. The voters may decide, during these unsettled and troubled times, finance and terrorism, etc to stay with the Captain that's led them through storm after storm and kept them off the rocks and reefs. At least till they move into a sheltered bay. Then, without looking back and becoming bored with the idle life, they turf the one that led them there, overboard.


Very good point and, I suspect, a large part of the CPC's campaign.

Maybe something like:
John_A_Macdonald_election_poster_1891.jpg

                                  The Conservative's 1891 election poster
 
Brad Sallows said:
>f so, then the next time Quebeckers ask why they’re a part of this country, what will the rest of us tell them?

Because we have a stronger dollar than the Quebec franc (or whatever) can ever hope to be, and the nation of Quebec will not include Ungava.

Dont forget that major portions under control of Native Americans have clearly stated they will not seperate from Canada.
 
Shaping the battlespace: the CPC version. Can't wait to hear how the NDP is planning to shape the battlespace for their campaign (we already know the LPC's shaping campaign is "Nice Hair </snark>)

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/terence-corcoran-is-joe-oliver-leading-a-tax-revolt

Terence Corcoran: Is Joe Oliver leading a tax revolt?
Terence Corcoran | April 9, 2015 1:40 PM ET
More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran

Just when it seemed like there would be no hope for a new Canadian tax revolt, along comes Finance Minister Joe Oliver with budget plans that suggest Ottawa may well be ready to lead a modest anti-tax movement. While the Harper Conservatives may not quite tear down any walls of tax, they do seem determined to reshape the national political contest over the fiscal and economic responsibilities of government.

Formal balanced-budget legislation, as announced by Oliver in Toronto Wednesday, may not be foolproof or iron clad, but such a law would at least focus public attention more sharply on the risks and dangers of running government on a no-limit credit card.

Politically, the Harper government also clearly intends to turn its April 21 balanced budget, and its spending plans, onto the ideological battlefield — not just with the opposition parties but with the media as well. The incessant calls for “more stimulus” to boost a sagging economy, a staple on the CBC talk circuits, are about to get some serious push-back.

Related
Joe Oliver: This is not a Pierre Trudeau-era budget
With little wiggle room, hard work begins for Joe Oliver on long-delayed budget

The entrenched bias throughout the media-policy environment for more spending, more taxes and more deficits was in evidence last week after the Prime Minister went out of his way to talk up balanced budgets and throw some political jabs at the Liberals. The days of rising federal deficits are finished, Mr. Harper said. “I can remember as a boy, once the small deficits started to be run in the early ’70s by the Trudeau government, and it went on for a generation.”

At CBC’s The National, somebody had the bright idea that Mr. Harper’s claim about the fiscal legacy of Pierre Trudeau was perhaps not much worse than Stephen Harper. On the news that night, a graphic plotted  federal deficits back to the 1960s in current dollars, misleading viewers to conclude that the Harper and Trudeau years were not much different. Said Peter Mansbridge: “The federal deficit did indeed begin to pile up under the Liberal Government of Pierre Trudeau, but the Conservatives continued the trend in the 1980s as Brian Mulroney operated even deeper in the red. It was the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin who eventually brought Canada back into surplus territory. After the recession of 2008, the country went back into deficit under the Harper Government.”

The finance minister’s balanced budget plan set to install historical reality in Canada’s deficit debate

There is, in fact, no equivalence between the different deficit run-ups going back to the 1960s. The operating deficits of the Liberals under Prime Minister Trudeau in the mid to late 1970s set the stage for a national deficit and debt spiral.  As the graph nearby shows, the Harper record looks clean by comparison, its deficits appearing to be carefully calibrated to avoid the excesses of the earlier years.

In his speech in Toronto, Oliver accurately summarized the record: “Between 1969 and 1979, federal spending tripled, buoyed by temporary highs in commodity prices. This was not a response to economic crisis. It was driven by the ideology of the man at the wheel… and on the reckless assumption that commodity prices would remain high. When they inevitably dropped, Canada lived through some of the worst federal budget deficits in peacetime history. “

The major post-Trudeau deficit explosions took place under Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives, in part because his government had to contend with soaring interest costs that had built up around the the Trudeau debt. Between 1973 and 1980, the federal debt had soared from $22-billion to $92-billion. As a proportion of GDP, federal debt jumped from 20 per cent to 30 per cent.

Today’s federal debt is now back down to the 30 per cent range, a major achievement following decades in to 50 and 60 per cent range.

Joe Oliver’s proposed bill would create a ‘culture of fiscal prudence’

Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced what economists called largely “symbolic” legislation Wednesday that would require the federal government to keep a balanced budget in prosperous years.

The point of the Oliver-Harper balanced budget campaign is to install a bit of historical accuracy in the continuing Canadian policy wrangling over taxation, spending, deficits and stimulus spending. It’s a position that sets the Harper government in direct competition with its political rivals. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says he is dead set against deficit budgets, but plans to raise corporate and other taxes to supply a flow of cash for new spending.

As for the Liberals, it’s hard to tell how firmly they stand against stimulus deficit spending. Former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, who does not speaking for current Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, appeared on another CBC talk show, The House, on Radio 1 last weekend and waffled his way through the question from host Evan Solomon.

Evan Solomon: “Is this the time to run up deficits?…”

Paul Martin: “I’m also saying it’s a way you make sure you have a healthy balance…”

The Martin waffle—and perhaps the Liberal view–is that spending deficits today are necessary to make sure the government has balanced budgets in the future. But it is Joe Oliver’s view that such thinking is exactly what got Canada into its past federal debt-and-deficit spiral.

The contours of the fall election are taking shape. While it may fall short of laying the ground for a full-scale tax revolt, Mr. Oliver’s balanced-budget campaign has outlined a clear fiscal outlook that challenges both opposition parties and Canadians to look squarely at the historical record.
 
“The federal deficit did indeed begin to pile up under the Liberal Government of Pierre Trudeau, but the Conservatives continued the trend in the 1980s as Brian Mulroney operated even deeper in the red. It was the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin who eventually brought Canada back into surplus territory. After the recession of 2008, the country went back into deficit under the Harper Government.”

Misleading bullshit underlined.  (Actually, my first thought was, "you lying fu<k", but I doubt the quoted person wrote the copy, and strictly speaking Brian's team was "in the red" although it did not "operate in the red" if you distinguish between "operating" and "net" balance.)  Here we go again, from 2014 Fiscal Reference Tables (in millions of dollars):

YearOperatingPublicNet Balance
BalanceDebt
Charges
1984–85-12,28024,887-37,167
1985–86-5,73227,657-33,389
1986–87-1,12428,718-29,842
1987–882,20631,223-29,017
1988–897,58535,532-27,947
1989–9012,10341,246-29,143
1990–9111,13545,034-33,899
1991–9211,54243,861-32,319
1992–932,31341,332-39,019

Operating balance is (revenues - program expenses). Notice that it is mostly a surplus, and is a net surplus over the period shown - the government took in more than it spent.  The reason for the (big) net deficits is the cost of servicing all the debt run up in the prior years.  No prize for guessing who created that debt.

To repeat what I've written many times: the government that spent in deficit is responsible for creating the total cost of servicing that debt until the debt is discharged.
 
"...is that spending deficits today are necessary to make sure the government has balanced budgets in the future."

Really?  [Note: statistically, we are probably nearing the next recession.]  Then that would make this the Liberal position: spending deficits are necessary during a recession, after the recession ends, during the interval of recovery/growth between the immediate aftermath of a recession and start of the next one (where we are now), and then during the new recession...

Bunts.
 
And Justin Trudeau's tactical decisions come back to haunt his election strategy, in the form of Eve Adams, as explained in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/liberals-latest-angst-its-all-about-eve-adams/article23887309/
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Liberals’ latest angst: It’s all about Eve Adams

JANE TABER
TORONTO — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Apr. 10 2015

Floor-crossing MP Eve Adams’s bid to run for the federal Liberals in Toronto is causing a rift between local party supporters and Justin Trudeau’s team in Ottawa just as the federal election approaches and the party looks to the GTA to pick up much-needed seats.

Some federal Toronto Liberals, who raised money for Mr. Trudeau and his team and worked to help him win a couple of key by-elections, are dismayed they weren’t consulted about the decision to bring Ms. Adams into the Eglinton-Lawrence riding. They question why Mr. Trudeau would bill her defection as such a triumph after the Conservatives told her she couldn’t run for them after alleged misconduct in a nomination race last year.

One senior Liberal organizer, who has been active on the federal front and asked that his name not be used, describes the decision to embrace Ms. Adams as “stupidity,” especially given that Mr. Trudeau “ran around” saying nominations were open and he would not appoint people.

He says he may sit this election out – and some provincial Liberals feel the same way.

Mike Colle, the long-time Eglinton-Lawrence Liberal MPP, has helped his federal counterparts in past general elections – but says he “won’t go near her” if she becomes the candidate.

In fact, he’s not talking to her or her campaign manager, Tom Allison, a successful and respected Liberal organizer. Mr. Colle says Mr. Allison lectured him about being loyal to the party. “‘You’re using that word loyalty in terms of Eve Adams?’” Mr. Colle says he said to Mr. Allison. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

This angst in the ranks is playing out against the backdrop of vote-rich Ontario – the province is gaining 15 seats under redistribution and will elect 121 of the 338 MPs in the coming election. The Liberals, who are the third party in the Commons, are focusing a lot of their effort in the Greater Toronto Area, which has close to 50 ridings. Strategists believe they have a big opportunity in the GTA, which is evident given the amount of time Mr. Trudeau is spending in the area.

A united front with all Liberals working together could help their election prospects.

But Mr. Colle says parachuting Ms. Adams in from the Tory ranks where she has been the MP for the suburban riding Mississauga-Brampton South since 2011, and directly into a riding where she has no close connection is an “affront” to all the Liberals there.

Mr. Allison, meanwhile, says he would be an “idiot” to try to lecture an elected official. “What I actually asked Mike was would he ever accept Eve’s call or return her call, or should she stop trying to speak to him. He smiled and walked away from me,” Mr. Allison wrote in an e-mail.

There has been speculation among some local Liberals that Ms. Adams’s campaign is being helped by the Trudeau team in Ottawa. But a spokesman for Mr. Trudeau says Ms. Adams chose to run in the Eglinton-Lawrence riding and has to organize herself and the nomination process is open.

However, not every prospective candidate is welcomed by Mr. Trudeau on national television. In addition, her campaign manager, Mr. Allison, is a top organizer in the region. He managed Kathleen Wynne’s 2013 Liberal leadership campaign and John Tory’s successful bid last year for Toronto mayor.

Helping out, too, is another Toronto Liberal heavyweight, Alexis Levine, a lawyer and supporter of Mr. Trudeau. He was a senior strategist on Toronto Centre MP Chrystia Freeland’s campaign – she was hand-picked by the Trudeau team to run – and he is now introducing Ms. Adams to some of the local Liberals in the riding.

Ms. Adams is no stranger to controversy. She is engaged to Dimitri Soudas, one of Mr. Harper’s strategists, who served as his spokesman and later, as executive director of the Conservative Party. He left his position amid allegations that he interfered in her nomination for the riding of Oakville North-Burlington.

ff0e9e0d-eac3-4798-a072-3877a642a0b2_JDX-NO-RATIO_WEB.jpg


She and Mr. Soudas, who helped broker her move to the Liberal Party, would not return calls or respond to e-mails.

Despite her savvy campaign manager, it’s unclear whether Ms. Adams will win the nomination. She is running against Marco Mendicino, a lawyer, who has lived and worked in the riding for almost a decade. He has been campaigning – knocking on doors and signing up new members – for the past eight months.

Mr. Mendicino, who was a prosecutor on the Toronto 18 terror case, won’t comment directly about his opponent. Rather, he says, he is an optimistic person and believes Mr. Trudeau when he said that the nomination process will be “open and fair.” He adds that people in the riding are “thrilled to have the choice of supporting a strong local Liberal.” Mr. Colle has endorsed him.

Rocco Piccininno, president of the Eglinton-Lawrence federal Liberal riding association, says Ms. Adams’s candidacy brings “a lot of attention to the riding and attention is good.”

He denies her presence is causing a rift – “Mike’s Italian,” says Mr. Piccininno about Mr. Colle’s comments. “We’re upset one day. We’re drinking together another.”

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, meanwhile, are watching the Adams saga unfold with some amusement. Privately, they are hoping she will win the nomination, believing Joe Oliver, the incumbent MP and Finance Minister, would easily beat her in the federal election.


I remain convinced that the Tories will want to keep reminding Ontarians about Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne ...

   
r-JUSTIN-TRUDEAU-KATHLEEN-WYNNE-PRIDE-large570.jpg


          ... but I guess Ms Adams is a bonus.
 
Saw the article and couldn't help but wonder if Soudas is still working for the Conservatives....
 
Kirkhill said:
Saw the article and couldn't help but wonder if Soudas is still working for the Conservatives....
I'm not sure our political class has the depth to play that kind of game, but it sure would be funny if it's a false flag operation  :nod:
 
Good new for the Liberals in this story which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-liberals-poised-to-make-great-election-gains-in-ontario-poll-finds/article23892369/
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Federal Liberals poised to make great election gains in Ontario, poll finds

ADAM RADWANSKI
The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Apr. 13 2015

One of the most ambitious public polls taken in Ontario in the runup to the federal election suggests Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are ascendant in the country’s largest province – but not yet enough to give them a good shot at winning government.

Surveying 3,000 Ontarians through a combination of land lines and cellphones, from late February through the end of March, Innovative Research Group found the Liberals with 39-per-cent support among decided voters. The Conservatives were at 37 per cent, the NDP at 17 per cent and the Green Party at 7 per cent.

Those numbers would represent a major turnaround for the Liberals after bottoming out in the 2011 election, when they received 25 per cent of Ontario’s popular vote and won just 11 of its 106 seats. By the estimate of Greg Lyle, Innovative Research’s managing director, the Liberals would be on pace for between 49 and 62 of the 121 Ontario seats on the new federal map that will be used for this year’s vote.

Such results would likely be enough to deny Stephen Harper’s Conservatives another majority government. But at the lower end of that spectrum they would need to be accompanied by significant gains elsewhere to even assure the Liberals of forming Official Opposition, let alone laying claim to the most seats nationally.

Owing to its large sample size, the survey offers a window into how the parties stack up in different regions of Ontario. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Within the city of Toronto, where a total of 646 voters were surveyed, the Liberals appear to be dominant, with the poll showing them supported by 50 per cent of decided voters next to 30 per cent for the Conservatives and just 15 per cent for the NDP. Further breakdowns show those gains coming primarily from the NDP in the city’s core, and from both the Conservatives and the New Democrats closer to the city limits. With Liberal support seemingly consistent across the city, they appear well-positioned to win the vast majority of its 25 seats, although the margin of error is larger for the regional breakdowns.

In the Greater Toronto Area, widely considered to be the single most important electoral battleground in the country, the picture is more complex. In the western section of the GTA, which most notably includes the cities of Mississauga, Brampton and Oakville, the Conservatives appear to remain strong, polling at 44 per cent to the Liberals’ 34 per cent and the NDP’s 15 per cent. But in the northern and eastern parts of the GTA – which among other municipalities includes Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham and Ajax – the Tories and Liberals are shown to be in a virtual tie with Conservatives slightly ahead 43 per cent and 40 per cent. (Sample sizes for the two areas were 377 and 365, respectively.)

Considering the unpopularity of the governing provincial Liberals in the economically hard-hit southwestern and south-central corners of the province, where there are 30 federal seats, Mr. Trudeau’s party fared surprisingly well among the 791 Ontarians polled there – running even with the Conservatives at 35 per cent each among decided voters. And the Liberals and Conservatives are in another virtual tie in eastern Ontario, at 43 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.

In a poll with plenty of cause for concern for the NDP, responses in Northern Ontario provide more of it – showing Thomas Mulcair’s party sinking from 41 per cent in the past campaign to 25 per cent now, the Tories slipping less precipitously from 36 to 27 per cent and the Liberals rising from 19 to 34 per cent. There, though, a small sample size of 198 respondents means findings have a large margin of error.

Despite their improvements elsewhere in the province, though, it’s in the Toronto area where the Liberals’ have by far the most potential for gains – something borne out by Innovative Research looking at groups of ridings that had similar results in the past election. “The key change is that now most close races in Toronto and GTA are being won convincingly by the Liberals,” Mr. Lyle said in an interview, “and even some seats won by the Conservatives with wide majorities last election are now competitive.”

Still, there is potential for a lot of narrow Liberal misses, and Conservative strongholds in more rural areas of the province largely appear safe.

“Depending on how many seats they win from the NDP in Ontario, the current Ontario results may not be enough for the Liberals even to surpass the NDP without gains elsewhere, particularly from NDP seats in Quebec,” Mr. Lyle said.


The key issue, I think, is the "efficiency" of the Liberal vote, whatever it is. An 'efficient' vote is one which is "just enough" in many, many ridings; an 'inefficient' vote (which Liberals have had, in recent years, in Toronto and Montreal, especially) is where you have lots of votes but they are concentrated in a few places. One wants to win a many races with, say, 35% of the vote, while three or four opposition candidates split the other 65% between them; some parties (Liberals in Montreal and Toronto, Conservatives in many Alberta ridings) win with 60% or more of the vote: very inefficient.
 
There are still many out there that will equate the federal party with McWynnety's provincial one and vote against on that reason alone.

Pollsters will poll the area that will give them the results, i.e. the 905 belt, and we know where their priorities lie already.
 
So, the Supremes have shot down another Conservative pet (but seriously flawed)* policy, mandatory minimum sentences for illegal gun possession are unconstitutional.

I don't think this does any harm to Prime Minister Harper, in fact, as with Senate reform he can say to the 'law and order' segment of his base, "Sorry, I tried, I tried hard, but the Supremes have said 'No!' and I must respect their decision. The issue is now off the table."

____
* I don't like political intrusions into purely judicial matters. There are, properly, sentencing guidelines in the Criminal Code that reflect society's general views on the nature and seriousness of crimes (as expressed by society's representatives in parliament). But the guidelines are just that: guidance for judges who have, as I believe they must, considerable discretion to make the punishment fit both the crime and the criminal.
 
I understand the reasoning in that one consequence of minimum sentences could be a 5 year sentence for what is essentially a licensing infraction.  But - Canadians have 3 times elected a government that campaigned on law and order issues.  Harper should have used his melon a bit more on judicial appointments and chosen people with a conservative viewpoint.  I could have given him a list of lawyers that would have filled the bill.  Perhaps he's learned.
 
I think this may actually be a bit of a double win. He can say to his base that he tried, but he can also say to the gun control crowd that he tried. He actually gets to eat his cake and have it in this instance.
 
Two points here: First, Harper has now appointed the majority of the Supremes, so he has the court he allegedly "wanted".

Second, this case is a bit on the special side: What was found invalid under the charter is not the minimum sentence (3 to 5 years) that was in the law - in fact the Court of Appeals and the Supreme both concluded that in this case, the 3 years sentence was appropriate for the criminals at bar and sustained that punishment - no, the problem was that the act could be prosecuted as a summary conviction, in which case it carried a punishment of maximum one year. If the sentence had been the same for both type of infraction (wether pursued as a criminal act or a summary offence), there is a good chance it would have survived the legal challenge to its validity.
 
This is the internet.  Stop inserting thoughtful comment and analysis.


And where are the cute cat pictures?
 
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