In this photo, displayed at federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s Flickr feed, Brian Gallant addresses a rally in Fredericton. A new poll from Forum Research says Gallant stands a good chance of being New Brunswick’s premier.
Brian Gallant’s New Brunswick Liberal Party held a commanding lead over incumbent Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward as the province’s 38th general election opened, the first public domain poll of the campaign concludes.
Robert Ghiz, premier of Prince Edward Island, speaks with the media, as premiers Kathleen Wynne of Ontario (R), Philippe Couillard of Quebec (2nd L) and David Alward of New Brunswick (top, R) look on during their Council of the Federation summit in Charlottetown on Thursday. (REUTERS/Christinne Muschi)
Earlier this year, during the Quebec provincial election, two internal party polls were released to the media. They were widely reported on as much for their contents as they were for the selective nature of the data released and the motives for releasing the poll. Both internal polls were released by parties that were trailing in several media-sponsored public domain polls. The incumbent Parti Quebecois would be thumped at the polls on election day by Philippe Couillard’s Liberals while the third party Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) pretty much ended up where it started — well back in third.
Every media-sponsored public domain poll showed a steady march during the campaign of increasing voter support for the Liberals and a steady drop by the PQ.
The only late campaign poll to show that the PQ was leading was one the PQ itself released. The CAQ released its internal poll showing that it was closer to the leaders than public domain polls.
It was clear in both cases that the motive for both the PQ and CAQ to release what turned out to be over-optimistic (to put it politely) polls was to boost the morale of campaigns that, at the time of the release of these polls, was flagging. Successful campaigns need volunteers and money and both of those can be harder to come by if polls are showing a campaign is blowing up, as the PQ campaign, as it turned out, was. (Eric Grenier of 308.com does a nice job on the Quebec issue here.)
Today on the campaign trail, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant was talking about his job creation plan and hammering the government of incumbent Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward government because it “it lost 3,900 jobs since October 2010, lost, more specifically, 6,500 full-time jobs.”
That phrase “since October 2010” is an important qualifier but, in my view, an odd one as he and anyone else should be measuring the Alward government’s job performance record from September 2010, the month in which Alward was elected premier. In fact, as I point out in this review of the Alward government’s jobs record, the record is even worse if you start from September 2010 rather than October 2010.
The record on job creation for New Brunswick Premier David Alward — fighting for re-election right now — has been rotten. (KRIS SIMS/Sun News Network)
Campaigning with Justin Trudeau on the weekend, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant told reporters, “The plan of David Alward and the Conservatives is not at all concrete. When you look at their record on job creation, since 2010 we’ve lost 3,900 jobs.”
Not true.
It’s actually much worse. The province has lost 4,800 jobs since 2010. (I’m assuming that when Gallant says “since 2010” he means, “since the September 2010 election that Alward won”) Continue reading The Alward jobs record: Not good
New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant opened up the second day of the 38th General Election in his province in Rexton, talking about the Liberal plan to improve healthcare delivery. [Read the plan here]
2/4 By giving all NBers access to a family doctor in four years, by adding 50 new billing numbers for general practitioners #NBVotes2014 — Brian Gallant (@BrianGallantNB) August 22, 2014
New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant, seen above at the 2014 Liberal Party of Canada convention in Montreal, announce his party’s healthcare proposals on Friday. (JOEL LEMAY/AGENCE QMI)
Just as Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne tried to use Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a bogeyman early in her successful election campaign earlier this summer, so too is New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant quickly introducing Harper as a character in the just-launched New Brunswick election campaign. Gallant is way ahead in the polls and is trying to unseat incumbent Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward.
On Saturday, federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will campaign with Gallant and one would assume both Alward will be thrashed with whatever sins Liberals are accusing Harper of committing these days.
Alberta MLA Ric McIver (above), a candidate to be leader of his party, writes to his party’s president to urge him to ban free giveaways of party membership by other leadership campaigns. So far as we know, only the campaign of Jim Prentice has been covering the $10 cost of party memberships for those who will sign up to vote for Prentice. Here’s the letter: Continue reading McIver to PC Party of Alberta: Ban membership giveaways
In our newspapers Monday, I write about Finance Minister Joe Oliver’s visits beginning Monday through southwestern Ontario, an area of the country that’s been particularly hard hit by job losses, mostly in the manufacturing sector. You can read the column here.
But here, in this post, is some more background on what I’ll call the “Harper Jobs Record” based on data from Statstics Canada monthly labour force survey.
Economists, traders, and investors prefer to work in increments of “last month”, and “last quarter” but for the purposes of this post I will work mostly in political increments, i.e. since “last election” or since “Harper took over”. That said, we will, like economists, traders, and investors, find common ground in using a 12-month comparison for some data. Continue reading The Harper jobs record? Depends on how you slice it …
The Bloc Quebecois does not have official party status in the House of Commons. In the 2011 general elections, its ranks were reduced to 4 seats, a decline of 43 seats. Then, Claude Patry, elected as a New Democrat in 2011, decided to go sit with the Bloc. So they were up to 5. Then the big debate over the “Charter of Values” erupted in Quebec. The PQ government of Pauline Marois loved it but BQ MP Maria Mourani did not and said so. For that, she was booted from the BQ caucus by its leader Daniel Paillé (who didn’t have a seat in himeself in the House.) Mourani then said she didn’t believe in sovereignty anyhow and is sitting as an independent MP. So the BQ was back down to 4 MPs. Today, they are down to 3 MPs as Jean-François Fortin announced he, too, will sit as an independent. Why? The new BQ leader, Mario Beaulieu (who beat Fortin for the job), is too radical. Continue reading MP quits BQ, says new leader just too radical
