Month: December 2005

I’ve been on the road since this election began — two weeks with Conservative leader Stephen Harper and the last week with NDP leader Jack Layton. Tonight, I’m on board Layton’s plane, headed for Ottawa and my own bed. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up for my first week away from the campaign trail to my office overlooking the Parliamentary precinct in Ottawa. Jack and the NDP will jet away for Toronto and Winnipeg while Stephen and the Conservatives will head to Quebec City. So long, Jack — and thanks for the ferry ride!

The NDP have done a lot of travelling so far in this campaign: Just last week — a week in which we spent three nights in Vancouver for the debates — the NDP campaign touched down in six cities; was in the air for 12 hours; and flew 3,786 kilometres. In the first three weeks, the NDP has travelled a lot. I would say only the Conservatives have travelled more. Here are the NDP numbers so far on this campaign: 18 cities; 37 hours in the air; 20,240 kilometres.

Tonight, on the ride back to Ottawa, the NDP plane is a festive place. The Air Canada crew that staffs the plane has decked out the cabin in Christmas finery and we are all wearing Santa hats. (Some of us look better than others in these things.)

NDPers are feeling pretty good about their campaign as they head home to Ottawa. They feel that their guy, Layton, did well in the debates on Thursday and Friday nights.  The daily CPAC-SES poll out this afternoon shows that the NDP gained three percentage points. And, to top it off, an old NDP warhorse, Ed Schreyer, threw his hat in the ring trying to knock off Conservative James Bezan in the Manitoba riding of Selkirk-Interlake.

The Layton campaign started the day Sunday in Nanaimo, B.C. where we boarded a Convair 580 for the flight over the Rockies into the Castlegar, B.C. The Convair (pictured on the left on the tarmac in Castlegar) was first built in the 1950s and, though the plane we were on — rented for the day from Kelowna Flightcraft Ltd. from Kelowna, B.C. — proved to be entirely and perfectly airworthy, it did give some of the nervous fliers among the press gallery cause for concern.

The approach to Castlegar from the air is a tricky one because of the Kootenays. A pilot has to quickly descend into a valley with the mountains on either side and then, just before landing at Castlegar, has to make a sharp left turn on approach. It wasn’t so bad in the bright sunshine we had today but I imagine it’s more than a little exciting on a foggy day.

After Castlegar, it was back on the Convair for a short flight to Calgary where we changed planes to the Air Canada Airbus 320 that we’re on now as I type this. This aircraft is for charter use only — every seat is a first-class seat. I’m told it’s often used to fly the Edmonton Oilers around. In fact, an authority no less than Layton’s press secretary (his name is Karl Belanger and that’s him pictured on the left in front of Convair 580 waving a big Castlegar NDP welcome) tells me that the last person to sit in my seat was, in fact, a professional hockey player. I’m not sure who it was but if you’re an Edmonton Oiler and you were sitting in seat 15A on the way home after beating the Vancouver Canucks in overtime on Saturday night, drop me a line.

Now, I’ve never flown first-class and it’s a nice way to finish three weeks on the road. One other personal bonus — I won a hockey trivia contest the air crew organized once we hit our flying altitude between Calgary and Ottawa. I scored six out of eight on the following quiz. See if you can do better (and remember, we had no Google at 30,000 feet!):

1. What was the name of the only coach to have his team win by 15 goals?
1. Toe Blake
2. Ron Low
3. Jack Adams
4. Al Arbour
2. Which one of these players scored over 700 regular season goals without ever playing in the Stanley Cup final?
1. Ken Doraty
2. Marcel Dionne
3. Mats Naslund
4. Bill Mosienko
3. Who was the only player with more than 8 points in one game?
1. Luc Robitaille
2. Wayne Gretzky
3. Darryl Sittler
4. Paul Coffey
4. Which of these 4 NHL teams scored 200 more goals than they allowed over the course of a single season?
1. 1970–71 Boston Bruins
2. 1977–78 Montreal Canadiens
3. 1984–85 Edmonton Oilers
4. 1976–77 Montreal Canadiens
5. Which team during the 2000 playoffs would record only six shots in one game?
1. Toronto Maple Leafs
2. Ottawa Senators
3. Edmonton Oilers
4. Florida Panthers
6. Who coached the Philadelphia Flyers when they went undefeated for 35 straight games during the 1979–80 season?
1. Mike Keenan
2. Bob McCammon
3. Fred Shero
4. Pat Quinn
7. How many goals did the 1983–84 Edmonton Oilers score?
1. 476 goals
2. 456 goals
3. 446 goals
4. 436 goals
8. In December 2001, what team did Patrick defeat to record his 500th win?
1. Dallas Stars
2. Edmonton Oilers
3. New York Rangers
4. Calgary Flames

Answers: Kind of helps if you are, as I am, born in Montreal — so you love the Canadiens — but grew up in southern Ontario — so couldn’t avoid watching the Leafs. I think my big break was guessing right on question 7. 1–3 / 2–2 / 3–3 / 4–4 / 5–1 / 6–4 / 7–3 / 8–1

In Nanaimo this week, the president of Local 333 for the Canadian Auto Workers — that local represents transit workers in the city of Victoria — jumped up on stage to endorse Jack Layton and the NDP. This was noteworthy, of course, because of CAW national president Buzz Hargrove’s decision to apparently endorse Paul Martin and the Liberals.

In fact, what Buzz did was endorse the idea of a minority Liberal government with a strong NDP presence.  He called on CAW workers to work to elect an NDP MP in ridings where the NDP had a realistic chance. But in those ridings where there was no viable NDP opportunity, Buzz argued that CAW members ought to vote Liberal. Buzz then hugged Martin to the apparent despair of many of his members. The thinking of Buzz and the national CAW council on this voting thing might have been perfectly rational but, for many NDP activists and CAW members, it muddied the waters and made things more difficult for Layton and his campaign. One of the perennial problems for the NDP has been losing ballots because voters decide to vote ‘strategically’, i.e. they figure if their guy can’t win, they’ll vote for anyone that prevents the one they really hate from voting. One CAW worker in Nanaimo said that when he heard what Buzz had done, he wanted to tear up his CAW card and join another union. Layton, in his stump speeches of the last couple of days, has been pleading for voters to ignore this whole strategic voting argument. He’s been saying that a vote for the NDP this time elects an NDP MP.

On Saturday, Layton got a bit of help so far as this goes from Bill Young, the president of CAW Local 333. Young stood up to present Layton with a CAW jacket — a totem awarded only to those who are either CAW members or to those who are True Friends of the union. In fact, that was Layton’s fourth jacket since Hargrove gave a CAW jacket to Martin. CAW members have been popping up all over place on the NDP campaign to try to undo what Buzz did — i.e. leave the impression that labour and the CAW was deserting Layton.

In fact, some NDPers on the campaign say that Buzz may have actually mobilized the so-called union vote because his declaration for Martin raised the ire of many rank-and-file union members and may be the boost that’s needed to get them out on January 23rd to vote NDP.

 

Saskatchewan and British Columbia have already seen NDP leader Jack Layton and Conservative leader Stephen Harper twice so far in this election campaign and for good reason. The NDP, shut out in Saskatchewan in 2004 despite receiving roughly the same number of votes overall in that province as it did prior to 2004, thinks it can win some seats back in that province. (The Conservatives made almost a clean sweep of Saskatchewan, winning 13 of 14 seats there. Finance Minister Ralph Goodale is the only non-Conservative MP from that province right now.) Meanwhile in B.C., the NDP placed a close second in a handful of ridings and party strategists are hopeful of stealing a few.

In many of those close ridings in both B.C. and Saskatchewan, it was a Conservative candidate who narrowly edged out the NDP candidate. Here's a quick table of the ridings where the NDP candidate finished second in 2004 by less than a 1,000 votes.

Riding	Prov.	Winner	Party	Winner's Vote pct.	Votes by which the NDP lost
Western Arctic	NW	Ethel Blondin-Andrew	LIB	39.5	53
New Westminster-Coquitlam	BC	Paul Forseth	CON	32.9	113
Palliser	SK	Dave Batters	CON	35.9	124
Saskatoon-Humboldt	SK	Brad Trost	CON	26.8	417
Oshawa	ON	Colin Carrie	CON	33.2	463
Vancouver Island North	BC	John Duncan	CON	35.4	483
British Columbia Southern Interior	BC	Jim Gouk	CON	36.6	680
Trinity-Spadina	ON	Tony Ianno	LIB	43.6	805
Regina Qu'Appelle	SK	Andrew Scheer	CON	35.8	861
Hamilton East-Stoney Creek	ON	Tony Valeri	LIB	37.7	927
Kenora	ON	Roger Valley	LIB	36.2	986
Hamilton Mountain	ON	Beth Phinney	LIB	34.8	996

The Globe and Mail's Dan Cook was kind enough to mention this blog at his site but for those of you coming here from there, a reminder that most of my blogging during this campaign is over at CTV's site during the campaign.

In the runup to this election and duirng its first week, we've heard a lot about the middle class — how various parties will provide new programs for the middle class and tax relief for the middle class.

Today, Stephen Harper suggested a middle class household had income approaching $70,000 or $80,000 a year. Alexa McDonough, when she led the NDP, suggested individuals earning $60,000 were high-income Canadians.

I asked Statscan today to break down our population by household income level.

If we agree that there are three groups in Canada — low, middle, and high-income households — and if we agree that we should define these three groups such that each group is roughly the same size then we end up defining low, middle, and high income households this way,using the Statscan data:

• The lowest third of households, measured by average annual income, earns less than $35,000. 34.5 per cent of households earn less than this amount.
• The middle third has an annual income of between $35,000 and $69,900. This middle class accounts for 33.2 per cent of households.
• Finally, 32.2 per cent of households in Cananda have a combined annual income of $70,000. This would mark your high-income group.

Some other notes on this subject:

• 15.4 per cent of households in Canada have income greater than $100,000 a year.
• 13.1 per cent of households have annual income of less than $30,000.
• In 2003, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the average total income per household in Canada was $62,000. The median level was $49,300, meaning that half of Canada's households earned less than that and half earned more.
• Nfld and Labrador had the lowest household incomes (avg $48,900 / median $39,300).
• Ontario in 2003 had the highest household incomes ($70,700 avg /t $56,500 median)

 

My friend Greg Locke reports that Prime Minister Paul Martin's campaign is to touch down in St. John's on Monday night where he will give a speech to the local Board of Trade.
Over here on the Harper campaign — where we are enjoying a down day in Ottawa — my sources tell me that Mr. Happy's Flying Circus is bound for the Rock sometime late Monday afternoon for a Tuesday morning event in Canada's most easternmost provincial capital.
If my sources are, in fact, reliable and we end up in St. John's some time Monday evening, I will be trying to persuade my press colleagues aboard the Flying Circus to enjoy the hospitality at the Duke of Duck [front door of which is pictured on the left]followed, of course, by a late-night snack at Ches's. If you can, please join us and tell us what you think of this campaign.

Blogger Dan McKenzie reports that, at a panel discussion on “Liberalism, Imperialism, and Rights”, held last week at the University of Manitoba, panel member and former federal Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy referred to Michael Ignatieff, (left)  the star Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, as a “Bush apologist”.

[Read the full post at my new federal election blog at CTV's Web site]

Links to news stories about the Conservative health care announcement in Winnipeg as well as links and information about the primary documents sent by the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP to reporters covering the campaigns. [Read the full post at my new federal election blog at CTV's Web site]

WINNIPEG – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper unveiled another plank in his party's election platform. His government would work to immediately implement a Patient Wait Times Guarantee. He said his plan to cut wait times would “preserve the principles of the Canada Health Act and the . . . [Read the full post at my new federal election blog at CTV's Web site ]