Category: Politics

Green Party parties on debate night

The Green Party is organizing debate parties in pubs and restaurants across the country for the English language leaders' debate on Thursday night.

The party just published this list of watering holes at which Greens will gather to cheer on their leader:

Victoria
The Paisley Restaurant, 880 Esquimalt Road
West Vancouver
Taso's Restaurant, 1337 Marine Drive      
Calgary
The Common House, 402 – 30th Ave NE  
Edmonton
Tony's Pizza Palace, 9605 – 111th Avenue  
Saskatoon
Joe Dogs, 345 2nd Ave North 
Winnipeg
LUXALUNE Gastropub, 734 Osborne Street
Toronto
Maverick's Restaurant and Pub, 804 Danforth Avenue 
Beaches-East York
McArthy's Irish Bar, 1801 Gerrard Street
Toronto Centre
The Green Tymez Café, 117 Dundas Street East                    
Orangeville
Campaign Office, 75 Broadway           
Guelph
The Fox and The Fiddle, Old Quebec Street Mall
Brockville
Brock Pub, King Street East       
Ottawa
Sir John A Macdonald Pub   , 284 Elgin Street
Windsor
The Sanctuary Cafe Lounge, 1735 College Ave     
Peterborough
Red Dog Tavern, 189 Hunter Street West
New Glasgow, NS
Elizabeth May Campaign Office, 121 George Street

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Abortion comes to the campaign

You can set your watch to it. With two weeks left in campaigning, the abortion issue has once against surfaced on the Conservative campaign. The issue came up at the same time in 2006 and in 2004.

This morning at a press conference in Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked why, as a conservative, he would not be in favour of changing Canada's abortion access laws.

Here's his response:
“I've been clear throughout my entire political career. I don't intend to get into the abortion issue. I haven't in the past. I'm not going to in the future. Yes, there will be people in the Conservative Party who wish I would and there are some in the Liberal Party who also wish I would. But I have not done that in my entire political career and I don't intend to start now.
We have a lot of challenges in front of the country … That has to be the focus of government. And I simply have no intention of ever making [abortion] a focus.”

Conservative advisors knew this was coming. It was one of the reasons, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson abruptly announced a few days before the election that the government was co-opting a private member's bill from Edmonton Conservative MP Ken Epp, re-writing it to make sure, as Nicholson explained, that it could be not be interpreted as having any impact on Canada's current abortion access laws.

Epp introduced his bill to essentially make it a special kind of crime to assault a pregnant woman. Those who opposed this measure believed that it was the thin end of the wedge: If the law provides for special crimes and punishments for harming a woman and fetus, then surely the law recognizes the fetus has some kind standing under the law and, presto, you're down the road to banning abortions …

Nicholson said the government agreed that harming a woman who is pregnant should require some additional sanction or punishment but, as he stressed time and again at an August 25 press conference, his bill “leaves no room for the introduction of fetal rights.”

Nicholson may well in fact believe that but the his announcement was also a strategic one, designed by the Conservatives to try to insulate themselves from what they believe were going to be the inevitable charges from the left that they have a hidden agenda to roll back abortion access rights.

“What is on our agenda is being tough on crime and punishing criminals, and what is not on our agenda is re-opening a debate on abortion,” the prime minister's director of communication, Kory Teneycke, said at the time. “That clarity I think is helpful for Canadians, especially as we go into a period where they might be forced to make a choice.”

And, for the record, the Conservative grassroots itself voted in support of resolution in 2005 to not do anything on abortion.

Now Canadians are free to believe politicians when they make these promises but if the sole issue motivating you as you cast your ballot is to prevent abortion access rights from being rolled back, then you should cast your ballot for either an NDP or Bloc Quebecois candidate.

Though no leader likely to be prime minister — neither Harper nor Dion — would introduce any abortion law in the next Parliament, there are MPs on both sides of the House who have in the past and can be expected to again in the future introduce private members bills that address abortion. Liberal Paul Steckle had just such a bill introduced in the House in 2007. He wanted to to make it a criminal offence to have an abortion in the 21st week of pregnancy or later.

And if it did ever come to a vote, NDP and BQ MPs would be “whipped” to vote against any changes. That means NDP and BQ MPs would risk explusion from their caucuses if they voted to change abortion laws. (In late 2005, NDP MP Bev Desjarlais did just that, voting against same-sex marriage laws. She subsequently was stripped of her official critics role and then resigned from the caucus.)

If, on the other hand, you are hopeful of restricting abortion access then you to ask both your local Liberal and Conservative candidates who they would vote. There are a number of sitting MPs from both those parties who would, in fact, vote to restrict abortion access rights.

In fact, so far as we know, it is only MPs from the Liberals and the Conservatives who make up a parliamentary anti-abortion caucus. Many members of this caucus appear each year at a rally held on Parliament Hill to oppose abortion but, we are told, that there are some MPs who prefer to keep their membership in this caucus a secret.

A spokesman for the Liberals calls to say that, if there were a vote on a bill that would restrict a woman's right to choose, then Dion would, like Layton and Duceppe, whip his caucus to vote against such a bill.
And Kory Teneycke, the prime minister's chief spoksman, said that Harper would whip his front bench — i.e. his cabinet — to prevent an abortion bill from becoming law though backbenchers would be free to vote their conscience.

Now what about the Green Party? Leader Elizabeth May was asked – by a nun, no less – about this issue during a byelection she ran in London, Ont. You can review her complete answer here, but she did refer to “a frivolous right to choose” and told her audience that she is against abortion and that she has talked women out of having them. That said, the official line of her party is to preserve abortion access rights as it now stands. May was in the air when I phone the Green Party war room. They expect to have her answer on this issue later today.

UPDATE: Here is the response from the Green war room:
“Ms. May would not vote to erode a woman's right to choose and she  would expect all Green MPs to vote with her on this issue. There would  be serious expectations of solidarity on such a vote, but no tossing  MPs from caucus for voting out of personal conscience.”

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Polls, Pollsters and politics

I had a piece in a lot of papers today that reported on the latest results of our Ipsos Reid poll. Ipsos has the Conservatives at 40 per cent and has the Liberals at 23 per cent. (My friend Tonda M. reports on a poll today her paper commissioned that has the Liberals doing even worse: tied with the NDP at 21 per cent)

A grumpy Facebook friend wrote in to say:

“Why isn't anybody doing a story about how wrong the polls were last election, and how seriously flawed they may well be again?”

This complaint comes up a lot and is often followed by accusations from the misinformed that report on polls as a replacement for “old-fashioned reporting.”

Personally, I've written probably 12-15 'old-fashioned' election-related stories over the last two weeks, of which precisely one was a poll story.

Canwest isn't unique: There's a helluva lot of reporting on the issues but at some point we have to rely on an electorate that actually wants to learn about the issues and will seek out reportage on a variety of topics. If all you read are the poll stories and you ignore others, what can the MSM do about that?

Poll stories, it seems to me, are a perfectly legitimate complement to overall election coverage. Political parties have sophisticated overnight polls using large population samples which they would never in a million years share with the public. Why shouldn't media organizations hire pollsters so that we can report on what backrooms of each political organization know but won't tell us?

But back to my grumpy Facebook friend. As I messaged him, in 2006, the pollsters weren't that far off. Nik Nanos, whose firm was then known as SES Research, got it pretty much spot on with a poll that finished its work on Jan. 22, four days before E-Day. But other pollsters were close enough on the main issue, that Stephen Harper was going to win a minority government.

Conservatives, climate change and carbon taxes

Jim Manzi assesses U.S. conservatives, climate change, and carbon taxes and neatly states the political problem for carbon taxers on either side of the border right up front:

. . . no matter how much global-warming activists feel as if they have won all the debates in think-tank meetings, editorial pages, and faculty lounges, it is going to be a tough battle to convince the voting public to make huge sacrifices based on the evidence that we have now. After all, Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates has estimated that implementing even the limited emissions abatement envisioned for the United States under the proposed Kyoto Protocol would cost the average U.S. family about $225 per month. Ongoing polling conducted by researchers at M.I.T. suggests that the median U.S. family would be willing to pay $21 per month to “solve global warming.” That’s quite a bid-ask spread.

Manzi believes a carbon tax, even if it were to be implemented globally, would be ineffective in actually solving the problem (he would find well-reasoned opposition to this position from many academics) but this paragraph, though written with John McCain and the Republican Party in mind, could have been written for Stephen Harper's Conservatives:

. . . conservatives should keep in mind a few central facts. First, global warming is real—but it is a problem that is expected to have only a marginal impact on the world economy. Second, while it is economically rational to reduce (slightly) this marginal impact through global carbon taxes, such a global carbon-tax regime would be very unlikely ever to be enacted—and even if it were, the theoretical benefits it might create would probably be more than offset by the economic drag it would produce. And finally, a far better course—one much less costly to implement and much more commensurate with the likeliest risks—would be to invest in new technologies that could help avert the worst potential impacts of global warming.

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Are politicians committed to open government?

Of course, all politicians will say they're committed to open government but, when the rubber meets the road, there always seem to be exceptions and exemptions. The Harper government, to its credit, did increase the number of federal institutions that are subject to federal access-to-information laws. That's a good thing. But a lack of resources to handle ATI requests combined with the current administration's attempts to control all communications from the Prime Minister's Office has gummed up the ATI system to the point of being worthless. That's a bad thing.

And while Liberals are to be lauded for introducing the concept of proactive disclosure for contracts, for  hospitality and travel expenses of senior bureaucrats and politicians, and  so on, the data is presented in a format that makes it difficult to compile and analyze.

In fact the whole issue of getting data the government holds in a format that lets journalists, citizens, and researchers analyze remains a problem at the federal level.

So while I, as a reporter, try to stay on the sidelines when it comes to endorsing any third-party's policies, I'll make an exception for this one:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Candidates Challenged to Support Greater Government Transparency
Montreal, Quebec: Candidates running in the federal election are being challenged to take the 'I Believe in Open' pledge.

The pledge, created by the non-partisan VisibleGovernment.ca, challenges candidates to commit to five key improvements in government transparency, including making campaign promises measurable, publishing their MP schedule on the internet, allowing public access to government scientific and survey data, and making it easier for Canadians to obtain government information.

The campaign website, ibelieveinopen.ca, will collect pledges from MP candidates supporting the call for greater government transparency. ibelieveinopen.ca is also calling on voters to register their support for the goal of increased transparency in their federal government.

“Few Canadians believe campaign promises, and even fewer know what their governments do on a day to day basis. Our goal is to open up government and let citizens see what their taxes are paying for,” said Jennifer Bell, Executive Director of VisibleGovernment.ca.

“Per capita, Canadians are the most web-savvy people in the world, yet our federal government isn't using web 2.0 technologies to open up government to Canadians. It's time to change this,” concluded Bell.

ibelieveinopen.ca is modeled after the wildly successful change-congress.org campaign in the U.S., founded by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi. In fact, ibelieveinopen.ca received moral and technical help from them. The site collects signups from voters, who
choose which pledges they support. The site also shows running totals of provinces and ridings where voters 'Believe in Open'. Candidates are notified when the number of voter sign-ups in their riding passes set levels, and voters are notified when candidates in their riding take the pledge.

VisibleGovernment.ca is a newly established non-partisan, non-profit organization promoting online tools for government transparency in Canada.

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Crime data and politics

The crime issue is back in the news after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced plans yesterday to change the Young Offenders Act. Among other things, the changes would have the effect of being able to lock up a 14-year-old for life.

Harper has another crime-themed announcement this morning during a campaign stop in Saskatchewan, the province which just happens to have the highest overall crime rate in Canada and the highest incidence of violent crime.

Meanwhile, the parties are back and forth on this.

The Conservatives say the NDP has no credibility on crime issues. [No Web link available at this writing]. The NDP fires back saying the Conservatives are “dishonest on crime”.

And the Liberals feature Conservative broken promises on crime.

Some data to frame this discussion, courtesy Statistics Canada:

Canada's national crime rate, based on data reported by police, declined for
the third consecutive year in 2007, continuing the downward trend in
police-reported crime since the rate peaked in 1991.
The 7% drop in the national crime rate was driven mainly by decreases in
counterfeiting and high-volume property offences such as theft $5,000 and
under, break-ins and motor vehicle thefts. ….

After rising in 2006, the overall crime rate among youth aged 12 to 17
declined slightly in 2007. While non-violent offences committed by youth
fell, youth violent crime remained stable.

Crime rates continue to be highest in Western Canada and the territories.
Among the provinces, Saskatchewan once again reported the highest overall
crime rate as well as the highest violent crime rate . . .

[source:  

Go head and say it, Prime Minster: You want a majority

There was a subtle but significant shift in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's stump speech in Oakville, Ont. tonight, a sign, his advisors say, that the Conservative campaign is trying to prepare the Canadian electorate to choose a majority Conservative government.

His campaign staff are not, I should be clear, not using the word “majority”.  And when the PM himself was asked today about the likelihood of a majority,  he said:

“I'm not predicting a majority. I'm running to get re-elected, to get a strong mandate. I am concerned that I think in a time of economic uncertainty, the country needs a strong government that is able to govern.”

Fair enough. But this new phrase “I need a strong mandate” is creeping into a Harper's speeches and his responses to reporter's questions with increasing frequency.

Also, today, he made his clearest statement yet that it is not just the Liberals who would raise taxes and increase spending; it is all of them.

Speaking to a reporters in Mississauga, he said:
“All of the opposition parties, all four of them, have essentially the same philosophy. It's all about high-spending, about spending ourselves into oblivion, either through deficits or through raising one tax or another. It's all the wrong direction and my concern is that, going forward, we have a government that can govern and not a government that's going to be sabotaged by a bunch of parties that don't want our economy to be sucessful.”

Then, later today, in his stump speech, he went further:

“All of the other parties are running on the same basic agenda. The details may differ. But it’s all big-spending promises and its about raising some kind of tax to pay for them. They will all want to work for that agenda in the next Parliament.”

Now it's quite a different thing if opposition parties are holding up government initiatives. That's what happened from time to time in the last Parliament. But it's quite another thing if the opposition is ganging up to advance their own agenda.

And that's why he said:

“We need a mandate, a strong mandate to continue to lead this country.”

So follow the logic through: If the opposition parties will work on a common agenda to raise taxes and start spending, the only antidote to that is “a strong mandate”, i.e. a majority.

And that, perhaps, is one reason why Harper also included this line tonight his stump speech, the first time this has appeared in his campaign:

“Don’t be distracted by [the polls]. Don’t take anything for granted. We need every vote we can get. We need every seat we can get.”

Harper in London: Not quite like 2006

The Harper rally in London, Ont. Monday night drew the biggest crowd yet for the Conservatives during this still-young campaign. By my count — and I do actually count — there were about 800 people in a downtown conference centre to hear Harper give what has become a pretty standard stump speech.

Still, even with 800 people present, the hall wasn't full and the event didn't have much energy. That's not Harper's fault necessarily. Barack Obama, he is not. But his stump speech is always competently delivered and his speeches are generally well crafted. What Harper needs from rally supporters his energy and tonight, in London, despite the crowd it wasn't there.

Now that, by itself, is not a big deal.

But it was a rally in the very same hall in early January of 2006 that first got the national press corps travelling with Harper beginning to sense that a change was about to happen.

In the last general election, the Conservatives had ran a disciplined campaign before Christmas, full of policy announcements, including the GST cut. But according to the polls, Harper's campaign wasn't winning much support and the Liberals, at Christmas, were still ahead.

Then, over Christmas, the income trust investigation broke and Harper returned to the road in the new year with new wind in his sails.

And so, on a Friday night in the first week of January, 2006, we ended up were we were tonight. The weather was much worse then. Dark, cold, windy winter weather then; a warm, pleasant summer evening tonight.

In 2006, about 1,200 supporters crammed into the very same hall that just 800 were in tonight. (And, again, I was there in '06 and I counted them then.)

Until that point, the biggest crowd we'd seen for a Harper rally was about 500 people.

But that night in London in 2006, it was the first hint to those of us watching the campaign that perhaps Harper did indeed have what it takes to topple Paul Martin. Shortly after that, we were starting to see huge crowds at Harper rallies, including 1,000-plus turnouts in downtown Montreal during the last week of the campaign.

But tonight, it wasn't the challenger that everyone had come to see. It was the prime minister. And perhaps there isn't the same urgency or desperation among Conservatives that there was in 2006. This time, Harper came to London well ahead in national polls; in 2006, he was behind.

Still, there is a new poll out today from Nanos Research that shows Conservative support ticked down slightly. And tonight we saw some evidence, in a sense, that Harper and the Conservatives still haven't ignited the kind of passionate political love that can propel a party to a majority victory.

Harper v. Layton

On Sunday afternoon, a senior Conservative campaign advisor briefing reporters about the week ahead. Among other things, the advisor said that the focus of the Conservative campaign would shift and would include more attacks on the BQ, the Green Party and the NDP.

The NDP, for its part, spent all of last week harping at Harper. Indeed, as NDP strategist Brad Lavigne told me, the decision to have Jack Layton campaign in Calgary Southwest – Harper's own riding — was a symbolic statement that Layton wants Harper's job. On Sunday, Layton was in Gatineau, Que. for a rally and he continued his focus attacking Harper.

From a strategic viewpoint, the NDP and the Conservatives are united in one sense: A weak Liberal vote helps each of their cause with one important caveat for the Tories: The Liberal vote can't be too weak. That's because, in some regions of the country, such as suburban BC, votes on the left and centre-left, tend to split among the NDP and Liberals and that can help a Conservative candidate who might win with 30 per cent of the vote, if the Libs get 25 per cent and the NDP gets 20 per cent. But if the Liberals weaken too much and those votes fall to the NDP, then there is a chance that an NDP candidate could get more than 30 per cent of the core Tory vote and steal a victory.

So at this stage in the campaign, the Conservatives believe they have had a good weak weakening the Liberal vote but now it's important for them to hammer Layton in order to keep the vote on the left fractured, so that it doesn't coalesce around one party or another.

This morning in Ottawa, at Harper's daily (and only) media availability, Harper was asked about the NDP's campaign which, in some respects, is looking a bit like the Conservative campaign. Here's some excerpts:

I think where there is some similarity I notice with the NDP campaign is that they are trying to target on the needs of real people as opposed to theoretical schemes. Where there is a difference is tha, obviously, we're a fiscally conservative government that knows we have to operate within a budget. We're making modest but affordable promises that we know we can deliver on. I'm not so sure the NDP is making sure any of this adds up and some of their promises are very very big.

The NDP approach has many of the same problems as the Liberal approach mainly that it's not costed. The Liberals are at least going to cost their promises by taxing everyone to death through a carbon tax. The NDP, it's far from clear where they would get all this money to spend billions of dollars at a time of economic uncertainty. That is a pretty clear difference that this party has with all of the opposition parties. We understand that we have to operate within a budget. We understand that our promises have to be doable, affordable and believeable. And I think all of the other parties are promising lots of things, some of which sound good, some of which don't – the NDP promises always sound good — but at the same time the economy has to be able to afford them.