As the Conservative caucus is part of my beat here, I’m trying — lunch by lunch and coffee by coffee –– to meet all 99 members of the Conservative caucus. (If you’re a Conservative MP, feel free to phone me up if you’re looking for a lunch date today!) Today, in setting up some time to meet Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia MP and Conservative health critic Steven Fletcher (left), I made the happy discovery that Steven and his staff maintain a blog. I now know of three MPs who keep blogs. Steven’s caucus colleague Monte Solberg has one and so does Liberal MP Carolynn Bennett. (If you know of more MP blogs, or even of blogs by provincial politicians, I’d love to hear about them.)
Fletcher’s blog, though, has some much better features than Solberg’s or Bennett’s. At Fletcher’s blog, readers can add their own comments. Moreover, Fletcher’s blog can also handle trackbacks.
Saskatchewan MP Jeremy Harrison has a sorta-blog (no permalinks, trackbacks, or evidence of a “real” blogging tools being used to make the thing), although it hasn't been updated in about six weeks.
http://www.jeremyharrison.ca/weblog.html
I've been trying to track down blogs from B.C. provincial candidates; I've found a few Green ones, but none yet from NDP or Liberal candidates. Liberal contender Virginia Greene's website (virginiagreene.ca) does publish an RSS feed although it is not a weblog. B.C. Marijuana Party campaign manager Kirk Tousaw mantains his party's campaign blog at http://www.bcmp.blogspot.com/
Neither of the two major parties have a campaign blog or even an RSS feed for their news releases. What is this, 2001?