Month: September 2009

You don't think the possibility of an election is in the air? Take a look at my daytimer for tomorrow, Thursday, Sept. 10 (left) If you wanted to, you could tune in to 12 press conferences or speeches by a Conservative MP or minister across the country tomorrow. Liberal MPs are staging 5 events and Jack Layton is hanging out with the kids at the University of British Columbia.
Oh and the Bank of Canada will have an interest rate announcement first thing in the morning (the overnight rate is staying put and Bank watchers are looking for language that hints at when they'll get back to raising rates from where they are now which is at zero.)Here's your political scorecard for Thursday, in chronological order (all times Ottawa time. You'll have to adjust for local time) If you're at one of these events, do let me know what you think.:

• 0900: Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan in Halifax
• 0930: ACOA Minister Keith Ashfield in Fredericton
• 1000: Minister of State Gary Goodyear in Tilsonburg, Ont.
• 1000: Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt in Woodbridge, Ont.
• Liberal MP Rob Oliphant talks about pensions on Parliament Hill.
• 1130: Ontario Conservative MP Gord Brown makes announcement at Wolfe Island, Ont.
• 1130: Liberal MP Frank Valeriote talks about the economy in Kitchener, Ont.
• 1200 (approx) Minister of State for Seniors Senator Marjory LeBreton holds media avail in Edmonton.
• 1230: Edmonton Conservative MP Peter Goldring has an announcement in Edmonton
• 1300: Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt again with a conference call on Arctic mapping
• 1300: Minister of State Gary Goodyear again with an anti-crime announcement in Cambridge, Ont.
• 1400 Liberal MP Rob Oliphant again in Toronto on pension fund investment panel
• 1500 Liberal MP Anita Neville talks about stalled infrastructure in Winnipeg
• 1515 Liberal MPs Alexandra Mendès and Marc Garneau talk about aerospace in Montreal
• 1530 Minister of State for Tourism Diane Ablonczy holds presser in Toronto
• 1530 NDP Leader Jack Layton chats with students in the party room at UBC, Vancouver.
• 1550 Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gives a speech and answers reporters questions in Victoria.
• 1900 Trade Minister Stockwell Day gives a speech in Iggy's riding in Etobicoke, Ont.
• 2200 NDP Leader Jack Layton again interrupts pub night at UBC, Vancouver.

Journalists in Ottawa – after a very long day — will be gathering to raise a glass to our friend Brian Laghi, who is leaving his job as The Globe and Mail's bureau chief.

It is often very difficult to get the Conservative spinners, MPs and ministers off of their talking points (come to think of it, it's tough to get spinners and MPs of all political parties off their talking points but I digress …) but, if you happen to engage a Conservative in discussion about a potential federal election this fall, let me suggest a few questions for that Conservative who would argue that an election is a “stability” risk that threatens public safety, the economic recovery or any number of issues:

1. Canada held general elections in 1917, in 1940 and again in 1945. In both those years, Canadians were making incredible efforts and incredible sacrifices to fight world wars. We managed to win those wars — and hold general elections. You don't think the Canadian public nowadays can handle a general election and little old economic recovery at the same time?

2. Had Prime Minister Stephen Harper not broken his own fixed election date law, we would be in the midst of a campaign right now for an election to be held on Oct. 19. It's right there in the statute the Tories themselves wrote: “Each general election must be held on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election, with the first general election after this section comes into force being held on Monday, October 19, 2009.” So, [fill in name of Conservative person you're talking to here] are you in favour of your fixed election date or not? Surely you contemplated that fixing an election date might mean an election is held in the midst of a recession, a world war, or other times that might otherwise be considered inconvenient?

3. Speaking of breaking fixed elections dates: As the recession was beginning, last fall, the prime minister called an election – despite the absence of any confidence vote and despite a fairly clearly worded section in the Canada Elections Act fixing Oct. 19, 2009 as the date of the next election. After that election, the government tabled a fiscal update in November which exhorted Canadians to tighten their belts because of worsening economic times and did so by cutting off federal funding of all political parties and unilaterally undoing some civil servant wage hikes. When it was clear those two measures were not going to help Canada through a recession – and after an extraordinary series of political manoeuvres by your opponents and by the prime minister, your government tabled a budget in late January which did, as you now claim, do much to alleviate the worst of the recession. So: If that budget was the solution, what took you so long? Wasn't the election you called last year and that partisan economic update “destabilizing”?

If any of you get some decent answers to these questions, please don't keep them to yourself!

On Friday, September 4, the federal government issued 13 press releases announcing a combined $24.1 million in funding commitments. On Saturday, Sept. 5, the #ottawaspends total was 3 announcements for $2.4 million. Here's your breakdown for Sept. 4:

And here's your summary for Saturday:

So you're planning on being a candidate in Canada's 41st general election, are you? Congratulations! Like tens of thousands of would-be MPs before you, you're going to have the time of your life. Really!

Over here in this corner of the vast conspiracy known as the National Media, I'd like to be your new best friend (at least for the next 6-10 weeks) and, to that, end, I'm putting out the call today to all those on the blue team, red team, orange team, green team — even the light blue team who doesn't want to play on Canada's team — to send along a few lines to tell me (left, freezing my butt off during a campaign stop in 2008 in Iqaluit, Nunavut) about yourself.

I want this information because I'm a political reporter and this information is very likely to be useful stuff as we prepare to write about the 41st general election, otherwise known as The Election Nobody Wanted.

And, while you're sending me that stuff, tell me how I can reach you if I need to talk to you. And your campaign office number is not good enough (though you should send that to me too). There's a good chance I'll likely be on a leaders' bus or plane and, when we touch down in your town or city at 10 p.m. the night before a campaign rally, that's when we're going to want to talk to you. So we need your personal cell phone number and your personal e-mail – the co-ordinates that will help us find you after-hours and on weekends. If you're on Twitter, let us know your Twittername. If you're on Facebook, let us be your friend. Any other ways to reach you — we want to know about him.

And on the other side of the ledger, feel free to contact me any time of the day or night at any of the numbers/co-ordinates listed at my home page. And, despite what the communications people will tell you at your provincial or national campaign offices, it's always OK to call me up or send an e-mails with whatever is on your mind. Take their advice with a grain of salt. Do what your gut tells you to do, not your head. Reach out and touch me! A caution before you do that: If you're sending something to me, I will assume I can attribute the information to you and can quote from it. If you are seeking to pass along some information on a confidential basis, contact me before you send it so we're both clear on the ground rules for the use of this information. We'll both be better off for being clear about that.

Well that's about it. To summarize: Send me your contact info as soon as possible. Tell me a bit about yourself. Stay in touch — I have never and will never complain about getting too many e-mail messages. And good luck!

Immigration MInister Jason Kenney was on Dave Rutherford's radio show this morning. Here's some extracts from their conversation. The best bit (for me, anyhow) comes when an avowed Alberta separatist calls in and says that an Ignatieff government is just what he wants. Read on to find out why!

Kenney on Liberal arrogance:

I see yesterday John McCallum, the Toronto banker who is their finance critic, says the Conservatives, they can beat us because the Conservatives waste a lot of votes in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Waste votes? Albertans are wasting their votes by, by voting for the Conservative government? Like, this kind of continued arrogance towards the west in general is, it’s still there. They haven’t learned, they haven’t learned any of the lessons. You know, my advice to my Liberal friends is, is take a breather. Just chill out. Think about why you’ve lost the last two elections, why the last election result was your worst in history since Confederation. Try to come up with some policy ideas that make sense and that you can present and in due course your moment will come. But this notion you have to rush Canadians back to the polls . .

Later in the show, Rutherford asks if the Conservatives would make a deal with the NDP:

RUTHERFORD: So, what, what is, is the likelihood of the NDP of getting something from the Prime Minister in some sort of promise Jason, some sort of pet project that would get fixed up, and then they would vote with the government. Is that possible?

KENNEY: No, I don’t think so. Look, we’ve always tried to demonstrate willingness to cooperate with the opposition parties and we did in the last budget. But, we’re not for sale to the highest bidder, least of all the NDP. They never deal with real people’s money. It’s all an abstraction for them. And at and end of the day it’s not in the NDP’s interest to have an election. They’re down in the polls. So are the Liberals. But, [the NDP]s a party of hardcore left-wing ideologues Dave. It’s not like a moderate, centre-left party. These folks, they drink their own Kool-Aid. Right? So I don’t think we can see a realistic arrangement with the NDP. I still hope that cooler heads will prevail. I have to tell you. I know a lot of Liberal MPs who think this is absolutely ridiculous, that know voters don’t want an election, that know the Liberals are unlikely to win an election, that results are unlikely to change.

And finally, Rutherford opens the phone lines:

RUTHERFORD: Okay. Jason, a couple of calls. Don, hello.
DON (Caller): Hi. I want an election because I’m a western separatist and Stephen Harper and the Conservative government have basically been a distraction. So, I would like a corrupt, pro-Al Qaeda Liberal government to energize my base. And to top if off, the ultimate would be if Justin Trudeau could be the minister of natural resources and institute the carbon tax to rape the treasuries of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

UPDATE: Looks like Rutherford will give Bob Rae a chance for a little comeback on his show Thursday morning at 0930 MT.

One of the challenges for me — or anyone, for that matter — in maintaining this database is that there is no one-stop shop for finding all government, federal agency, or Crown corporation press releases. I track probably a dozen different sources for these releases and was fairly confident I was getting a global view of government press releases and, hence, government spending announcements.

Earlier this week, I reported that the federal government has, since it was elected, published more than 1,500 press releases for funding commitments totalling more than $70 billion. A database I've been maintaining for two years that tracks federal spending announcements was the key tool in making this calculation.

I have now learned that I had missed one very important department in that database: the Federal Economic Development Initiative in Northern Ontario or FedNor. This omission was brought to my attention through some discussions with very helpful researchers at the Library of Parliament who were interested in my work.

FedNor does not appear to use private sector news release distribution service like Marketwire or Canada Newswire nor does its material show up at the Government of Canada Newsroom site.

A FedNor official indicated that its releases are distributed only to newsrooms in Northern Ontario in the belief that those are the newsrooms likely to have an interest in FedNor's activities.

FedNor, which is an agency within Industry Canada, does publish press releases on the Web but, unlike many other press release pages at government Web sites, you cannot sign up for e-mail distribution of those releases nor can pick up an RSS feed off that site. So, if you want to see a FedNor press release you have to go visit the Web site every day or hour. (Or be a real geek and write some sort of Web-scraping script ..)

All of which is to say: I'm now – sigh – combing through a year's worth of releases from FedNor and adding them into my database. The bottom line is unlikely to change much — the Conservative government has still made (as of Wednesday) over 1,600 annnouncements since they were elected detailing funding commitments of over $70 billion. It might, however, change where Tony Clement, who is both Industry Minister and minister for FedNor, ranks on a list of cabinet's biggest spenders.

As soon as I finish updating my dataset, I'll be publishing the results.