• Wake the hell up, Ontario!

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    What the hell is wrong with people in this province? According to the latest polls, the Liberals are riding a surge in support in these last few days before the election. This Liberal government could potentially be rewarded for 11 years of corruption and mismanagment with a minority government this coming Monday.

    What the hell is going on? Doesn’t anybody realize that a minority Liberal government would likely be propped up by the other two parties on the left, the NDP and the Bloc? We’ll have tax-and-spend governing not seen since the NDP under Bob Rae ruled Ontario.

    Guess I won’t be needing this silly wallet anymore…

  • Thoughts on the debate

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    So the english language Leaders Debate was held in Ottawa tonight. Just a few thoughts..

    Overall, not much of a debate… more of a series of speeches and a lot of ignoring. The moderation was pretty poor, and the leaders rarely seemed to listen to what others were saying and rarely got into any real meaningful discourse.

    I think Stephen Harper did quite well. Whereas Paul Martin was often on the defensive and even seemed to get frustrated and flustered in debate, Harper was overall collected and clear in his arguments.

    For a guy who was so obviously over-coached and instructed to stick to a very specific script, Martin made a lot of references to other leaders’ (specifically Layton’s) handlers. I’m not so sure that Martin’s boys at Earnscliffe have much to be proud of in their boys’ performance tonight. He never really faced off with any of the other leaders, always choosing to address his remarks to the camera, ostensibly to make a connection with the voters. Personally, in a debate, I’d like to see the leaders addressing each other and responding to each other. And to me, his tactics just came off as transparent and forced.

    Stephen Harper had a great line at the beginning about how this election is about choosing a government, not a country, at which point he turned to Martin and said, “we’re all Canadians here…” I think he made some good dents in Martin’s “Campaign of Fear.”

    Layton really just comes off as a car salesman. I kept waiting for him to say, “What’s it going to take for me to get you into this car today.”

    I always enjoy Duceppe in the debates. He had a few great moments tonight calling Martin to task about the sponsorship scandal and his government’s credibility.

    I would have liked to have seen Jim Harris of the Green Party included in the debates, if only because it really gets me that a group of broadcasters can get together and decide who will be heard in one of the pivotal moments of an election campaign, especially in a year when the Green Party has representation in just about every riding and look to be poised to take somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5% of the popular vote. He was a guest on Mike Duffy’s Countdown on CTVNewsNet after the debates and had some great contributions to that discussion. I’ve had a look at the Green platform, and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with them and think that in a decade or two, they could well be a contender on the national stage.

  • Ambushed

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    I’ve been pretty busy these past few days, and today is no exception. So today, I’ll just reprint an editorial I read this morning in the local Sun newspaper. For all the flak this paper takes, I find it a refreshing change from the predominantly-liberal media elsewhere in this city (hell, in this country).

    They must really be getting nervous in the back rooms of the Liberal Party.

    With a series of recent polls — the latest one done for Sun Media — showing support for the Grits in freefall, the party’s marquee candidates, including two cabinet ministers, have taken to showing up at rallies for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper to heckle him and try to embarrass the official Opposition.

    Normally at this stage of an election campaign, big guns like Veterans Affairs Minister John McCallum and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro would be working to shore up support in their own ridings, and making guest appearances on behalf of other Liberal candidates who are in tough fights.

    Instead, as the Harper bus rolled into Ontario, a Liberal mainstay in recent elections, there they were, shouting questions and doing their best to grab the media spotlight.

    Normally that kind of attention-seeking is left to mobs of nameless, faceless party supporters, who heckle from the background and try to get their candidates’ signs in the newspaper and television pictures.

    At the rate this campaign is deteriorating, we’re beginning to wonder what we can expect next. Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan tossing a pie? A challenge to step outside to settle the election in the alley?

    Prime Minister Paul Martin attempted to defend his cabinet ministers yesterday, attributing the altercations to simple frustration. He said Sgro and McCallum were annoyed with Harper because he is avoiding a debate on issues like abortion and the economy.

    We believe that about as much as we believe Martin’s claim that the two ministers showed up in a spontaneous act initiated by themselves — a contention that was almost immediately shot down by a top party official who admitted Sgro and McCallum were actually sent by the Liberals.

    Is it any wonder that Canadian voters have been tuning out from the whole political process in record numbers? We have a right to expect more than schoolboy hijinks from candidates who are asking for the right to run the country.

    An election campaign lasts just five short weeks — time which should be spent providing the electorate with an understanding of party platforms so voters can make an informed choice when they go to the polls June 28.

    Instead the Liberals are resorting to acts of desperation as they contemplate life without limos, executive jets and the other perks of power.

    Shame on them

  • Seeing Red

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    There are way too many Liberal and NDP lawn signs in my neighbourhood. I think it’s time to put in a call to my local Conservative representative and order up a giant blue sign. Just to mix things up a bit.

    The Liberal signs seem to be a favourite of local vandals, who’ve taken to cutting out Paul Martin’s face. And I’m not sure why I find it so funny, but I’ve been getting a kick out of Ed! “I put an exclamation mark after my first name” Broadbent’s signs.

  • good question…

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    I was talking this over with a friend last night. Andrew Coyne hits it with this:

    “All in all, it would be hard to pick a worse time to call an election, as far as the Liberals are concerned: divided internally, stalled in the polls, in the midst of the biggest scandal in modern Canadian political history. All of which raises a troubling question: Why are they calling an election? How much worse are they expecting things to get? If, as bad as things are for them at the moment, they would still rather go now than wait until fall or even next year — if this is the best-case scenario — what on earth do they fear is waiting down the road?”