Election 2015

[Edward Campbell]

The Ottawa Citizen also has a "How The Parties Differ" Platform Guide on their web site. It has a more comprehensive (than the Globe and Mail's) Defence and Foreign Policy section.

 

[Ostrozac]

Not knowing Dewar's riding, I'm not sure if it's a proper example; the question is this: was he the past beneficiary of voters who ordinarily support Liberals, or are NDP voters slipping away?

Ottawa Centre is two things -- transient and gentrifying. Government workers move -- more often than many people, and the new condo builds and rising home prices and rents in the downtown core, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Glebe and Westboro are changing the dynamics of the riding. Does that mean that it's absolutely lost to the NDP? Absolutely not. But all parties should realize that just because a riding was once held by Ed Broadbent doesn't mean that it is the NDP's by right forever -- many of the people that voted for Ed will now be living in the suburbs, and have been replaced by younger professionals.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen is an interesting look at the politics of the holiday long weekend:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/national/pass+politics+thanksgiving+weekend+plays+crucial+part+election/11430515/story.html

Pass the politics: Thanksgiving weekend plays crucial part in election as families gather to discuss voting

BRUCE CHEADLE, THE CANADIAN PRESS

10.09.2015

OTTAWA — It’s the burning question for Canada’s federal party partisans this Thanksgiving weekend: Which turkeys will get cooked?

Advance polls open Friday for voters wishing to get an early jump on the Oct. 19 election, but the real action may take place around dinner tables, TV sets and camp or cottage closings.

Since long before this 78-day election campaign began, the October holiday weekend has been circled on calendars as a crucible where the fortunes of Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau could be forged: Far-flung families gathering together to talk turkey, just as voters begin focusing on who should form the next government.

“Urban legend!” Tom Flanagan, Harper’s former chief adviser, barked in an email.

“I know of no evidence that holidays are important in elections because people talk about politics when families gather for a big dinner.”

John Duffy, a former adviser to Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, has a rather different take.

“Whenever friends and family gather late in a campaign the conversation can turn to politics and, if it does, the influence of family can be important,” the principal at Strategy Corp., said in an interview.

“It’s a commonplace that long weekends are resonating chambers.”

Duffy, who is not involved in the current Liberal campaign, has reason to know.

He was on the losing end in January 2006 when Harper’s Conservatives first took power following a long campaign that spanned the December 2005 Christmas holiday, during which public opinion turned decisively against the incumbent Liberals.

A bombshell RCMP release on Dec. 28 detailed a criminal investigation of alleged insider trading in the finance minister’s office. A cloistered, holidaying public with little other news and lots of opportunity to gossip kept the shrapnel ricocheting for days.

“It’s not just the family factor,” said Duffy. “There’s not a lot of news being made usually. So if you can actually get something through into the relative quiet of people’s lives during one of these holiday periods, it can have quite an effect.”

Author Paul Wells, in his 2006 book “Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism,” said Conservative campaign guru Doug Finley saw the holiday period as a decisive opportunity, even before the RCMP’s sledgehammer intervention.

“Finley thought that if the fundamentals were strong going into Christmas, and Harper kept popping up on TV screens, folks who were already sick of talking about the bundt cake would mention that this guy Harper might not be so bad — and hear some agreement around the living room,” wrote Wells.

Mike Marzolini of Pollara Strategic Insights, a former Liberal party pollster, says the Conservative platform was winning over engaged voters in late 2005.

“I knew that once Christmas was over, this 15 per cent of engaged electorate would swell to 50 per cent and they would be heavily influenced over the holiday by the opinion leaders/early adopters and by experiencing the same perceptions as they did,” he wrote in an email.

A similar dynamic, in theory, could also serve Liberal Leader Trudeau or possibly the NDP’s Mulcair this weekend.

This year’s 11-week campaign actually encompassed three statutory holidays. It began Sunday Aug. 2 on the Civic Holiday weekend, ambled through Labour Day and now will reach a crescendo on Thanksgiving.

Under the Conservative government’s controversial “Fair Elections Act,” an extra day of advance polls has been added this year, giving voters four days — through Monday — to cast an early ballot.

Andrew MacDougall, Harper’s former communications director who now lives in England and is not involved in the campaign, isn’t convinced Thanksgiving family confabs will be vote-movers.

“This notion that everybody’s just waiting to talk turkey over turkey is a bit far-fetched,” he said in an interview.

Still, this has been the last week for the various campaigns to effectively introduce any new ideas, he said, and this holiday weekend provides an ideal opportunity for a barrage of TV advertising — especially geared to live sports (Blue Jays, anyone?) that can attract family groupings.

“I imagine every party will have timed their ad buy to take full advantage of that,” said MacDougall.

All the political parties have also been blasting their supporters with Thanksgiving-themed messages, ramping up the urgency of closing the deal.

And Facebook partisans have been having a field day.

One typical jibe making the rounds shows a classic roast turkey with the caption: “Thanksgiving: An opportunity to talk your family out of voting Conservative. You’ll probably ruin dinner but you may just save Canada.”

Marzolini predicts what he calls “some interesting opinion changes” this weekend, but strongly warns against reading much into any holiday polls.

He’s been doing daily tracking of federal and provincial campaigns since 1985 and says he’s thrown out an entire holiday weekend of polling more than eight times.

“What I know from experience to be absolutely true is that all polls conducted over a family holiday weekend are wonky — without exception.”

The Conservative insiders, Tom Flanagan and Andrew MacDougall, seem skeptical about the weekend effect ... or are they just camping down expectations?

 

[Edward Campbell]

They had one of the student voting organizers on the news last night, she said that about 45K students had voted this week so far.  The young are apparently motivated to vote this election moreso than in the past.  I would expect that most of their votes would be going to the left vs the right side of the coin.  Despite the engagement of the kids (and that's fantastic in and of its own), it's the old bastards like me that are going to be the armoured fist in making an impact as “Quantity has a quality all its own.” ― Joseph Stalin.  Which way the grey wave breaks ashore will be interesting to see.

Factoid from David Akin of Sun News:

In #elxn41: Voter turnout 18-34: 42%. For all voters 35+: 64.8% : #elxn41 turnout rates pretty similar over last 4 elections.

We, they, whoever have to convince millions of younger Canadians to vote; 45,000 is a good start, 450,000 would have been better.

 

[Kirkhill]

I actually agree with you, but those words and phrases: "danger," "sneak," "steal" and "up through the middle" were direct quotes from a friend of mine who is well plugged into one of the campaigns ~ not the CPC one.

In the case of both the Liberals and the NDP, Ottawa-Centre is "theirs" almost by right (it's only gone Conservative once in most people's memory (Robert René de Cotret held it, for the PCs, in the 1970s)) and they would, indeed, regard a Conservative "up through the middle" victory, as theft ~ almost a case of a crime against nature. 

So it is supposed to be a toss up between the civil service unions or the civil service managers?

 

[Edward Campbell]

So it is supposed to be a toss up between the civil service unions or the civil service managers?

Actually, I think that the civil service unions will be disappointed with any of the big three. Civil servants are adequately to well to very well paid ... as a broad generality: the higher up you go the less great the pay is. Equally: the Conservatives and Liberals are friends of civil service management ~ the pressure on things like sick leave and so on is not purely political. Many, many civil service managers, especially senior managers, believe that the civil service needs to look more and more and more like the private sector, and that includes in compensation and benefits.

If M Trudeau becomes PM there will not be wholesale changes amongst the deputies and senior PCO staff. The very top of the civil service heap knows how to serve both the CPC and the LPC and would, fairly quickly, if the situation arose, adapt to the NDP, too. (And, in the case of the NDP, there would be some adaptation to the civil service policy culture in Ottawa.)

The ferociously smart, hard working Mandarins in sober "power suits" in Ottawa's political centre have a master plan for Canada. It can adapt itself to almost any policy notions that Conservative or Liberal governments might toss its way. The Mandarins may have to tack and temporise but, generally, broadly speaking, they get their way: their way is moderate, prudent, liberal in outlook and conservative in execution.

The vast majority of the civil service is ordinary, average, unexceptional, slightly overpaid, sometimes (not always) slightly underworked, and could be easily replaced, in most cases, if there was an outbreak of plague. The Mandarins are exceptional; I suspect every minister and prime minister, past and present, agrees with that; ministers may not like the Mandarins but they respect them.

 

[Edward Campbell]

There is an interesting article in the Globe and Mail by Doug Saunders who is not, in my opinion, a friend of Prime Minister Harper, about the ethnic/immigrant vote. Mr Saunders reports that:

    "There are three things political observers from other countries find surprising about Stephen Harper’s party.

    The first is that the Conservatives became a preferred party of immigrants and of many racial and religious minorities. In the 2011 federal election, the Tories attracted 42 per cent of the vote from foreign-born Canadians,
    higher than their 37-per-cent share among native-born Canadians ...

    The second is that after accomplishing this, Mr. Harper’s party has run a 2015 campaign built on ethnic and religious distrust, fear and divisiveness ...

    That leads to the third surprise: This does not appear to have cost the Conservatives support among immigrants and members of most minorities.

      And an expert in public-opinion analytics says that “there is no evidence that immigrants are becoming less likely to vote Tory as the campaign goes on. In fact, if anything, the opposite appears true.”

Mr Saunders goes on ... "It shows that the politics of intolerance, as well as the more benign social and economic appeals to small-c conservatism, are at least as likely to appeal to minority immigrants as they are to “white” Canadians." and, further that "David Cameron, Britain’s Tory Prime Minister, ran a re-election campaign this year larded with tough messages about detaining and sending back immigrants; he not only won a majority but also doubled his party’s support among ethnic minorities, attracting a million visible-minority Britons."

Mr Saunders calls this a "dangerous game," and concludes that "in Canada's system of democratic pluralism, those private divisions are kept in the background, subsumed under a larger values of mutual respect, cooperation and equal treatment. Playing on these histories for electoral gain goes against Canada’s basic values."

I think Mr Saunders misunderstands the two very large and very sophisticated minority communities that Prime Minister Harper has courted most assiduously: the East and South Asians. They, too, are afraid of extremism of any and all sorts, and some, especially in the South Asian communities have recent experience of it, right here in Canada. Prime Minister Harper isn't appealing to their worst nature any more than appeals to your or mine: he is raising concerns that many, many people have. You and I might wish that these concerns could go unspoken. but ...

 

[Edward Campbell]

And here is the latest Predictionator from David Akin, the Parliamentary Bureau Chief of Sun News:

The CPC seems, according to Mr Akin, to be gaining at the expense of both the NDP and the LPC.

The magic number for a majority in 338 seat House is 170.

How do you spell Liberal Momentum?

Take a look at the HUGE change to Davbid Akin's Predictionator:

Source: http://blogs.canoe.com/davidakin/politics/9-days-to-go-and-predictionator-has-a-narrow-liberal-minority/

And here's what he says about some Conservatives:

Fisheries Minister Gail Shea trails the Liberals in Egmont
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Bernard Valcourt appears to be a lost cause in Madawaska–Restigouche (lost to the Liberals)
Immigration Minister [size=14pt]Chris Alexander trails in Ajax in a re-match with Liberal Mark Holland.
Minister of State Gary Goodyear trails in Cambridge — also in a rematch with a Liberal who he’s beaten before, Bryan May.
Two weeks ago, I had Finance Minister Joe Oliver up by 7 points on Liberal Marco Mendocino. Now I have Mendocino up 7 on Oliver. Watch this space for more volatility!
Minister of State Ed Holder is down five points to the Liberals in London West.
Here’s something worth watching: I have Foreign Affairs Rob Nicholson down two points in a toss-up race in Niagara Falls. Toss-up with the Liberals. The NDP vote here, if it grows a bit, could be what Nicholson needs to survive. But right now …
Associate Minister of National Defence Julian Fantino is 7 points down to a Liberal named Sorbara (which in that riding is a big deal.)
Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay is trailing the Liberals by a hair in a toss-up race in Delta.[/size]

 

[Infanteer]

The TPP is "the" election issue, although I doubt many people realize it.  In a few years none of the other FUD being thrown up by all parties is going to matter.

Agreed, just like NAFTA was two three decades ago.  Too bad we are talking about niqabs....

 

[dapaterson]

Best prediction so far.

Andrew Coyne ‏@acoyne
My own current projection, based on elaborate guesswork/hunches:

Fascists 123
Airheads 131
Commies 77
Traitors 4
Ewoks 2
Unabombers 1

 

[vonGarvin]

That predictionator just made my stomach turn. Justin Trudeau as PM spells minor disaster.

But maybe he'll make it, fail at his budget, people will see him for the daft airhead that he is and in the subsequent election the adults will step back in.

 

[Good2Golf]

That predictionator just made my stomach turn. Justin Trudeau as PM spells minor disaster.

But maybe he'll make it, fail at his budget, people will see him for the daft airhead that he is and in the subsequent election the adults will step back in.

Using Ontario as a model, I think you may be wrong.  In fact, I might go as far as to say that he might have a multiple-run.

 

[vonGarvin]

Using Ontario as a model, I think you may be wrong.  In fact, I might go as far as to say that he might have a multiple-run.

I probably am. That guy is so daft I just cannot believe he's going to win.

But then again, Ontario went for Wynne.  :/

He's selling the future in order to buy the vote.  And my pocketbook just got lighter, and I say bend over, because as bad as the conservative government has been with foreign policy, this guy will take us from the top and turn us into a laughing stock.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Agreed, just like NAFTA was two three decades ago.  Too bad we are talking about niqabs....

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Economist, is about Germany but it highlights a broad thing about people, everywhere, and their anxieties and fears about "others." Many of us may wish that the niqab wasn't such a big deal because we find it just a wee bit distasteful that we, 85% of us, anyway, if recent polls are to be believed, care more about the people down the street or across town or in the next province than they do about (vitally important) trade deals ...

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21672296-after-historic-embrace-refugees-german-public-opinion-turning-merkel-her-limit

Merkel at her limit
After a historic embrace of refugees, German public opinion is turning

Oct 10th 2015 | BERLIN | From the print edition

WHAT a difference a month makes. On the night of September 4th Angela Merkel made the most dramatic decision of her decade as German chancellor: to suspend European asylum rules and allow tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary to enter Germany via Austria. It was a moral gesture that fitted the mood of the moment. As The Economist went to press, Mrs Merkel was considered a favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Germany, however, that altruistic embrace has caused a backlash that could weaken a chancellor so far considered all but invincible. Using uncharacteristically missionary language, Mrs Merkel said repeatedly that the right to asylum has “no upper limit”. But Joachim Gauck, who as president is expected to keep out of workaday politics, responded that “our reception capacity is limited even when it has not yet been worked out where these limits lie.” As though on cue, the political tone turned against Mrs Merkel. 

The numbers are dramatic. More than 200,000 migrants are believed to have arrived in Germany in September alone. For the year, official forecasts had already risen in August from 450,000 to 800,000. This week Bild, Germany’s largest tabloid, cited estimates that the number could reach 1.5m—equivalent to the population of Munich. New refugees keep pouring in, and those granted asylum have the right to bring family later. No end is in sight.

Processing centres exceeded capacity weeks ago. Local authorities are struggling to find housing, since temporary tent cities will not suffice in winter. The government of Hamburg has begun seizing empty office buildings to house refugees, raising constitutional questions. Berlin and Bremen are considering similar measures. Schools are struggling to integrate refugee children who speak no German.

Fights have broken out inside overcrowded asylum centres, often between young men of different ethnic or religious groups. There have been more arson attacks on migrant centres. In Dresden, a xenophobic movement called Pegida is growing again: about 9,000 protested this Monday against refugees.

Mainstream society is tolerant but edgy. In a survey by German public television 51% of Germans say that they fear the refugee influx, 13 points more than in September. Approval of Mrs Merkel dropped by 9 points to her lowest level since 2011 (though it is still a respectable 54%). In two other polls Mrs Merkel slid from Germany’s most popular politician to fourth.

The fiercest criticism of Mrs Merkel comes from within her own conservative bloc—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which she leads, and the Christian Social Union (CSU), which exists only in Bavaria and usually supports her. Horst Seehofer, the CSU’s boss and premier of Bavaria, called Mrs Merkel’s decision “a mistake that will keep us occupied for a long time”. In one meeting he threatened half-seriously to drop off busloads of refugees at the federal parliament in Berlin.

Gerda Hasselfeldt, a CSU parliamentary leader, wants to erect transit zones along Germany’s borders like those in airports. Markus Söder, Bavaria’s finance minister, has called for a fence. A group of Christian Democrats calling itself the “security club” debated closing Germany’s borders to refugees entirely. Another group has written a letter to Mrs Merkel charging that her refugee policy breaks the law.

In response Mrs Merkel’s government is scrambling to make changes. It has passed legislation that cuts pocket money to refugees, currently €143 ($160) a month, and replaces it with vouchers. More police and administrators are being hired. All Balkan countries have been declared “safe” so that their asylum applicants can be rejected and deported faster. On October 6th Mrs Merkel took charge of co-ordinating refugee policy, in effect demoting the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière.

None of this, however, will reduce the numbers of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are fleeing war. Nor will last month’s agreement by the European Union to allocate 120,000 refugees among member states. Mrs Merkel had lobbied fiercely for it, but the compromise will barely dent Germany’s refugee numbers.

She is now concentrating her effort on getting Turkey, whence most refugees cross into the EU, to intercept and keep more migrants. But Turkey already hosts more than 2m. It will demand concessions such as easing visa restrictions for Turks entering the EU. It will also expect Germany to tone down criticism of Turkish crackdowns on the press and on Kurdish separatists. It may ask for German help to create a buffer zone in Syria.

Meanwhile, Germans have begun to feel that the refugee crisis could change Germany even more than reunification did 25 years ago. Back then the task was to let that which belongs together grow together, as Willy Brandt, a former chancellor, famously said. Speaking on October 3rd, the anniversary of unification, Mr Gauck—like Mrs Merkel a former East German—said that today’s challenge is greater because “what should now grow together has so far not belonged together.” Germans worry whether Muslim refugees will accept German norms of sexual equality, secularism and Germany’s special responsibility towards Israel and Jews.

The backlash does not yet threaten Mrs Merkel’s hold on power. While extremist parties have become serious contenders for power in some other European countries, they remain marginal in Germany, and voters have faith that their government will restore order, says Timo Lochocki of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank. The chancellor faces no Christian Democratic challenger. The centre-left Social Democrats are internally torn. And the leftist opposition cannot attack her for a refugee policy they themselves support.

Mrs Merkel is under pressure as never before. Yet the crisis has brought out a new style of leadership in her. For years she has been accused of following public opinion rather than guiding it. Now she has found her moral calling. “If we start having to apologise for showing a friendly face in emergencies,” she says defiantly, “then this is not my country.”

Rest assured, neither a Liberal nor an NDP government is going to do much different about refugees or accommodation than the current, Conservative, government is doing, and that, CPC, government will do less than promised if re-elected. Why? Because two important groups don't want more done: the senior civil service, including the security services, are worried about a sudden influx of people who are ill-equipped to adapt to Canada and who may be being used as a smoke screen for terrorist deployments (but that's a secondary concern); and the Canadian people  (that 85% again) quite simply don't want them here. The latter matter.

The Conservatives are, indeed, exploiting an unseemly side of our national character, one that borders on pretty ugly racism but which is, mainly, a smug, self satisfied concern for ourselves. But it is we who are providing the ammunition ~ the Conservative campaign didn't invent this issue; it's here, in your town, on your street, maybe even in your home.

 

[Good2Golf]

I probably am. That guy is so daft I just cannot believe he's going to win.

But then again, Ontario went for Wynne.  :/

He's selling the future in order to buy the vote.  And my pocketbook just got lighter, and I say bend over, because as bad as the conservative government has been with foreign policy, this guy will take us from the top and turn us into a laughing stock.

Every time I flip a light switch in my house (in Ontario) and think of the insanely disproportionate increase in out of pocket expenses (electricity in particular, but there are many), I'm reminded of the success of this methodology, by one of the Young Dauphin's mentors, Mme Wynne.

:-\

 

[Edward Campbell]

CTV News has a summary of Pocketbook Issues, here, for those who are still making up their minds.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I probably am. That guy is so daft I just cannot believe he's going to win.

But then again, Ontario Toronto went for Wynne.  :/

He's selling the future in order to buy the vote.  And my pocketbook just got lighter, and I say bend over, because as bad as the conservative government has been with foreign policy, this guy will take us from the top and turn us into a laughing stock.

TFTFY

 

[Edward Campbell]

It wasn't just Toronto or even the golden horseshoe that voted for Premier Wynne; a substantial share of Ontarians voted against Tim Hudak, in some part because he and his ilk were around too long and in another part because of a well funded, effective anti-Hudak campaign organized and conducted by Big Labour.

Premier Wynne wasn't anyone's favourite, but Ontarians saw her, and appear, now, to see M Trudeau, as the best of a bad lot.

Still and all, there is one "long time in politics" to go, and "events" can still happen ...

 

[George Wallace]

It wasn't just Toronto or even the golden horseshoe that voted for Premier Wynne; a substantial share of Ontarians voted against Tim Hudak, in some part because he and his ilk were around too long and in another part because of a well funded, effective anti-Hudak campaign organized and conducted by Big Labour.

Premier Wynne wasn't anyone's favourite, but Ontarians saw her, and appear, now, to see M Trudeau, as the best of a bad lot.

Still and all, there is one "long time in politics" to go, and "events" can still happen ...

I think another problem there was that Hudak failed in clearly defending his position, leaving too many holes in his platform undefended.  He failed to clearly define his platform, nor defend it from the opposition's attacks on it.

 

[runormal]

Didn't see it so I figured I'd post it.

VICE News had a "Meet the Leader" session with Justin Trudeau roughly a week ago. 

You Can watch the video here.

http://en.daily.vice.com/page/vice-meets-justin-trudeau

"On Monday, October 5th, 2015 VICE Canada interviewed Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau live at the Great Hall in Toronto.

The event was MC'd by Damian Abraham, a member of Canadian punk band Fucked Up, and focussed on issues of importance to young Canadians like the environment, missing and murdered Aboriginal women, cybersecurity, LGBT rights, and, well, weed."


and in just a few a days a Similar Event will be happening with Tom Mulcair



"VICE Canada will be sitting down beard-to-beard with NDP leader Tom Mulcair at a town hall meeting Tuesday to discuss the issues that are important to young Canadians.

The interview, to take place at Toronto's Great Hall on Tuesday, October 13 at 5:30 PM EST, will be MC'd by Damian Abraham, VICE Canada host and frontman for punk band Fucked Up. It will be open to the public and live-streamed on the Daily VICE hub.

Members of the audience and VICE Canada staff will ask Mulcair where he stands on a number of issues we've been covering, including missing and murdered Indigenous women, Indigenous water access, weed legalization, Bill C-51, and transgender health rights.

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/vice-canada-to-meet-tom-mulcair-in-final-week-of-campaign

For the Conservatives

"This is the second event in VICE Canada's Meet The Leaders series. The Conservatives have declined our request for a similar event with Harper."

Seeing how the youth vote could have already voted in advance polls,  it will be interesting to see if Mr. Muclair can change any of the youth voters who are still on the fence.