Canada General Discussion: Trudeau II

[136or142]

The latest two polls for the Federal election have the Liberals crashing down like a meteor. What happened? Did that Fidel statement fiasco hurt Trudeau?

There is the Forum Poll, what is the other poll?

EKOS - 22 November

Thanks. Probably this is mainly caused by a reaction to Trump's win, that Canada would do better with Trump with the Conservatives in power here.

[136or142]

I have a question for those who support the pipelines but oppose the Saudi Arabia arms deal.

The explanation for the support of the pipelines despite the claims of environmental degradation and potential impact on global warming is: "if we don't sell the oil somebody else will and look at all the jobs."

On the Saudi Arabia arms deal it's also true that if we don't sell them the arms somebody else will and this deal will reportedly create about 3,000 jobs.

So, my question is: how do you explain to those 3,000 people why they shouldn't have a job due to some ultimately meaningless moral posturing?

There are slight differences in terms of selling into a Middle East that is already a powder keg and that Global Warming is more of a longer term problem and the effects of selling the oil can be partially mitigated through carbon pricing, but ultimately, given that the carbon pricing proposed by all the countries in the world if actually implemented won't get the world to the targets of carbon reduction that the scientists say is needed to stave off a not too distant world wide catastrophe, I honestly can't see any significant difference between the two.

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Well for one the pipeline is unlikely to be used to suppress Saudi dissidents.

And global warming won't lead to a lot of deaths?  So, deaths caused by government is bad but deaths caused by environmental destruction isn't?

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Well for one the pipeline is unlikely to be used to suppress Saudi dissidents.

And global warming won't lead to a lot of deaths?  So, deaths caused by government is bad but deaths caused by environmental destruction isn't?

Are murder, manslaughter and death due to negligence morally the same? That's the issue with equivocating rising sea levels and some poor Shia guy getting shot in the back of the head.

I think they are morally the same.  People who live right now in poor nations barely above sea level probably also agree with me.

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Potential Cabinet shuffle in the New Year.

Hmm, wonder who will be the Grits O'Connor or Bernier. My guess is Monsef.

I don't personally count the four who only hold positions that were previously ministers of state as full cabinet ministers, but yeah Monsef.

I'd say the other really poor performers are (listed by province from west to east,I hope I get the Atlantic provinces in the right geographic order):
1.Kent Hehr
2.Dominic LeBlanc
3.Laurence MacAuley
4.Judy Foote


Listening to Kent Hehr in interviews spouting the government's b.s talking points is just painful.  I'd say he's actually worse than Monsef, because at the very least she, at times, seems to acknowledge that she's made a mistake and tries to learn from it.  Of course, it's possible with her that everything she does is on the orders of the PMO.

In the case of Hehr, I don't want to be one of those who especially criticizes a Veterans Affairs Minister so that I can claim to be morally outraged over the treatment of veterans, but his performances are just embarrasing.

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LeBlanc won't be sacked unless there's a meltdown in his department. They've been close friends since childhood.

Maybe he'd take a major diplomatic posting if one is available.

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NBNDP leader Dominic Cardy quits after being fragged by the left.

In his open letter (or Facebook post) he complains about and says part of the reason he quit the NDP was his unhappiness that in being a member of the New Brunswick NDP he also had to be a member of the Federal NDP whether he wanted to be or not.

I was especially pleased to read that from him.

[136or142]

and now there are rumours he may join the PCs. Good riddance. I guess we can't trust moderate New Democrats? From the looks of it, he was trying to hijack the NDP as his own personal political vehicle, and almost succeeded because the party lacked any organization.

If he was upset by a minor group of vocal socialists or trade unionists or something, he could've as leader used his power to over rule them. I'm sure he would've had the backing of the majority of the membership, and could've done it using democratic means.

1.I don't think he was trying to hijack anything, he was up front when he first ran for the leadership that he regarded himself as a centrist 'third way' New Democrat. 

2.He commented in his open letter or Facebook comment.  I could get the exact quote, but he said something along the lines of "I could spend all my time fighting these people and I'm sure I would defeat them, but that would leave me no time to prepare for the next election."

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2.He commented in his open letter or Facebook comment.  I could get the exact quote, but he said something along the lines of "I could spend all my time fighting these people and I'm sure I would defeat them, but that would leave me no time to prepare for the next election."

Does he not realize that he alone does not have to do everything? This is why politicos have teams.

Yes, he realizes that, I wrote it wasn't an exact quote, but I was carelessly using the 'plural I' (Is that even a thing?)  "Royal we...."

This is the exact quote from that section:
"Today I have the resources to win a leadership fight, as I have won every fight before, or to win an electoral breakthrough. I cannot do both"


This is his full post on Facebook:

January 1, 2017

Fellow New Brunswickers,
When I ran for leader of the New Brunswick New Democratic Party I challenged my party to become genuinely progressive. To break the network of patronage and bailouts that has undermined our province. To make our province fair, free, and wealthy.

The NDP we built since 2011 attracted lifetime New Democrats, reform-minded Liberals and Conservatives, and others who had never been inspired to run for office. We spoke hard truths: Wasteful government spending threatens the poor and social programs we need just as much as reckless tax cuts. Giving handouts to companies while cutting education is not economic development, it’s social vandalism. We need a strong government, not a big government.

We worked across party lines and got NDP authored bills passed into law – a Canadian first for a party with no seats. With a team of young volunteers and dedicated staff we cleaned up a party massively in debt, chronically disorganized, and deeply undemocratic in its operations. Today the NDP is debt free, the most organized provincial party, and runs according to clear rules.

I am so proud of the work my team accomplished. We ran a team of outstanding candidates and ran on a platform widely acknowledged as the best in 2014. We won more votes than any NDP campaign in New Brunswick’s history. We earned equal billing with the Liberals and PCs. We spooked the Liberals to the point they ran ads against us: I’ll take that as a compliment! We did it all on a shoestring budget, showing we were serious about being good stewards of people’s money. But we could not break the two-party cycle.

Since the disappointment of 2014 I have been honoured to win a leadership review at convention and votes of confidence at Provincial Council meetings. However, some New Democrats unfortunately believe change and openness have had their time. They want to return to an old NDP of true believers, ideological litmus tests and moral victories.

Some of these people, with support from certain leaders of the province’s largest public sector union, have tried to bend and break the rules, abusing new members and trying to undermine the democratic will of the party. They have served notice that, no matter how many votes they lose, they will continue to organize. Not to win elections, but to fight endless internal battles.

As leader, this leaves me with a difficult choice: Reward bad behaviour and adopt a protest platform or marshal the team to win yet another vote. The first choice was never an option. I will not be part of offering our province another set of bad, discredited, ideas. The second choice would exact a toll on party volunteers and staff who have been subjected, from 2011, to unacceptable abuse.

Today I have the resources to win a leadership fight, as I have won every fight before, or to win an electoral breakthrough. I cannot do both.

Today the NDP faces a rerun of 2014. Limited time and energy is being wasted on infighting before the election. That contributed to our loss in 2014 as it will in 2018. Those same destructive forces continue their sterile battle, ignoring the will of the party they claim to champion, using language from the 1930s and policies from the 1970s. There is nothing progressive about this behaviour.

The NDP is a one-stop shop. When you join the provincial NDP you join the federal NDP, whether you like it or not. Recently the federal NDP abandoned its proud history of internationalism, declaring itself a pacifist party. In a world where liberal democratic values are under threat from religious and political extremism and Canada confronts challenges from aggressive authoritarian regimes pacifism is a dangerous, extreme, and immoral position. The federal NDP’s statement that the conflict in Syria is “not our fight” goes against everything I believe: we live on a small planet with a responsibility to look after each other.

I cannot lead a party where a tiny minority of well-connected members refuse to accept the democratic will of the membership. I cannot continue as a member of a party that has abandoned internationalism. Therefore, after a Christmas of reflection with family and friends, I am resigning as leader and as a member of the New Brunswick NDP, effective January 1, 2017.

I grew up in New Brunswick. I love this province. Being leader of this party, having the chance to meet people in every corner of the province, to share their struggles and successes, has been the best experience of my life. We have the people we need to succeed; we still need a political vehicle to drive us where we need to go. I had hoped the NDP was that vehicle and, alongside many talented and caring people, I did my best to build it.

I have always been clear that parties are less important than ideas. I am stepping away from the NDP but I remain a New Brunswicker who loves this province. I look forward to fighting for my team’s ideals in new ways. Thank you to the team who worked alongside me. Thank you to the tens of thousands of New Brunswickers who voted for our vision of a better province.
We did our best. Thank you for the chance to serve,

Dominic Cardy

– 30 –
For further information, contact: Kelly Lamrock
(506) 476-3807
info@nbndp.ca

https://www.facebook.com/dominic.cardy/posts/10157927890850545


There were 117 comments

That's more than voted NDP in New Brunswick in their last provincial election!!!! (That's not true at all, sorry.)

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Found on Facebook this report about the government fiscal projections:

http://www.ottawasun.com/2017/01/04/buried-government-report-reveals-looming-fiscal-crisis

First, i don't know how accurate the "Ottawa Sun" is, or if it is even accurate, but how bad can this government report be to the Libs and for Trudeau policies?

1.The debt/GDP ratio rising to 30.4% by 2021 is, I think, genuinely concerning, though not inherently unstable by itself.  (By 2021 we'd have a better idea of the expected rate out increase out to say 2030 and then be in a better position to judge.) However, it does further point to how ideal it would be to have the Liberals explain how they'll get the budget back into balance.

2.The deficit projections out to 2055 are absurd.  Nobody can predict essentially 40 years into the future with any accuracy. (Other than maybe Nostradamus, but he's dead.)

3.From skimming over the report that is linked to in the article, it reads to me like the main purpose of the report was to justify a fairly massive increase in the level of immigration.

An alternate possibility to increasing immigration is that the government reverses course on its decision to revoke the increase in the retirement age where they put it back to 65 from the 67 it was going to be raised to. To stop the projected deficit increases to, say 2030, they'd probably have to consider increasing the retirement age to around 70.  

Of course, by retirement age, I'm referring to the age when people can collect government pension benefits and the like, and, of course, I'm referring to this age being raised on people who are presently below a certain age, like 40 or 50.

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ELECTORAL "REFORM" IS DEAD!

Great news. Canada survives for a few more years, at least.

U.S democracy doesn't though with the election of Trump.

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About a year ago in this thread, I asked what Trudeau and his party campaigned on, what they wanted to accomplish, what the Canadian people were demanding.

What is the status of it all now?

(I vaguely remember some form of electoral reform that people thought was shaky even then, some infrastructure/environmental work with a small price-tag, a small budget deficit being reduced, and something about First/Native Americans)

TrudeauMeter is your friend. Deficits are gargantuan for the foreseeable future, Harper's GHG targets have been adopted and a federal carbon tax is coming. Aboriginal issues - inquiry into missing & murdered women (MMIW) held but otherwise not a yuge change from Harper, despite a better tone. Electoral reform is dead.

Thanks.

Though are those items I listed the "big promises"? Did I miss any "big promises"?
(223 is a lot to scroll through )

Kept the promise to make the Senate independent by forming an independent commission to choose the people to appoint.

Kept the promise on the (upper) middle class tax cut.

Brought in a new expanded child benefit that rolled some of the existing benefits into this one and eliminated others.  According to the Liberals, 90% of families will receive higher benefits.

Did away with the muzzle on government scientists and brought back the long form census.

Approved the Kinder Morgan Pipeline.

Also brought in a new law on assisted death after being mandated by the Supreme Court.

Prime Minister Trudeau has broken some promises and breaking the promise on electoral reform was pretty brazen, but overall I'd say this government is a major improvement in policy and tone and has significantly reduced the harshness and hyper partisanship from the Harper Conservative government. Not only is there no noxious person in the cabinet like Pierre Polievre but, in general, I'd say that the Liberal cabinet ministers are far more intelligent than the previous Conservatives.  

The overwhelmingly conservative mainstream Canadian media (at least in terms of the major editorials) has had to whine, for instance, that Justin Trudeau's line at some foreign event of "Canada is back" was nothing more than a boast of "The Liberals are back in power" when what Trudeau clearly meant was that Canada was going to engage in such things as climate change commitments and assisting the United Nations rather than taking disparaging shots at it after not getting a seat back on the Security Counsel.

Also, there will almost certainly not going to be a federal carbon tax as 8 of the 10 provinces and the three  territories already have or will have their own systems in place (either a carbon tax or cap and trade.)  We'll see what happens if Saskatchewan and/or Manitoba hold out (unless the Conservatives win the 2019 election), but I can't imagine whoever the Premiers of those provinces are by then would want to face the wrath of the other Premiers by forcing a national carbon tax.

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I love how Forum tries to spin a 416 tie as good news for Wynne. Last poll that had similar 416 # also had Brown +19 provincewide.

Why are pollsters so foolish when it comes to electoral commentary? Hatman is literally the only person I've heard who both works for a polling firm and understands political geography well.

Thanks

But a lot of professional pundits don't know anything about political geography, so it's par for the course.

Yes, that was odd reporting by Forum, something like "If the Conservatives want to form a majority government they need to be doing better than a tie in the city of Toronto."

How much can the Tories lose in the Toronto and still form a majority government?  Obviously the numbers can't be calculated in isolation, but my guess would be around by around 10%

[136or142]

I love how Forum tries to spin a 416 tie as good news for Wynne. Last poll that had similar 416 # also had Brown +19 provincewide.

Why are pollsters so foolish when it comes to electoral commentary? Hatman is literally the only person I've heard who both works for a polling firm and understands political geography well.

Thanks

But a lot of professional pundits don't know anything about political geography, so it's par for the course.

Yes, that was odd reporting by Forum, something like "If the Conservatives want to form a majority government they need to be doing better than a tie in the city of Toronto."

How much can the Tories lose in the Toronto and still form a majority government?  Obviously the numbers can't be calculated in isolation, but my guess would be around by around 10%

We also have to acknowledge that Forum is particularly awful when it comes to political geography, which is ironic, because they usually do the most geographically granular political polling. Sad!

Keep in mind though, knowledge of political geography is not needed for most of my job as a pollster. It comes in handy occasionally for sure, but it's not crucial in the industry.

How much political geographic knowledge does a person need to know that Toronto is normally a very liberal (and Liberal) leaning city?

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Didn't see it posted anywhere yet, so here's the latest Alberta poll from Mainstreet.

Topline numbers are 38/29/23/5/5

Edmonton: 43/26/21/5/4
Calgary: 38/26/22/7/7
Rest of Alberta: 48/27/16/4/4


The federal political temperature in Alberta is also taken. The topline results for that are 67/24/6/4

Edmonton: 48/39/9/4
Calgary: 64/26/5/4
Rest of Alberta: 74/17/5/4

The only way those numbers work is if by Edmonton and Calgary, they just mean the cities and not their suburbs.  That skews the numbers for the 'rest of Alberta' a bit I think, since the NDP hold all seven (or so) suburban Edmonton ridings.  There are only around 3 suburban Calgary ridings with Wildrose holding all of them.

NDP still look pretty decent in the city of Edmonton, but in the 2015 election, they received over 50% of the vote in all 19 city ridings.

I've been reading that the provincial ridings in Alberta are skewed in favor of rural areas as opposed to Edmonton and Calgary. There may be more rural ridings than is warranted by their population, but I don't see the big problem overall:

Total ridings: 87
Calgary and suburbs: 28
Edmonton and suburbs: 26
Smaller cities: 10
Rural: 23

Also, 7 of the rural ridings are large and remote northern rural ridings.

The 10 smaller city ridings are:
2 for Red Deer
2 for Lethbridge
2 for Grand Prairie
2 for Fort McMurray
1 for Medicine Hat
1 for Wetaskiwin-Camrose

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I posted this in OT, but you guys might like this too:

Which Millennial Tribe are you in?
 (geared towards Canadians, but could probably apply outside Canada too)

http://environicsresearch.com/insights/meet-millennials/

After taking the quiz, apparently I'm a "Critical Counterculturalist" (I don't think it's the best description of me, but whatever, it was a fun personality quiz)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The others are "Engaged Idealists," "New Traditionalists," "Bros and Brittanys," "Lone Wolves," and "Diverse Strivers."

I got the same result - that was an interesting quiz.

Michael Adams, the President of Environics gave a lecture at the Vancouver Institute on January 14, 2006 with similar ideas.  

 Dal Grauer Memorial Lecture
Mr. Michael Adams, President, Environics, Toronto, Ontario
Fire, Ice and American Backlash: Social Change Above the Rio Grande

The lecture can be heard here: https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/12708/items/1.0102938

The first seven minutes is for introductions.  The audio on the website froze up for me, but it can be heard by downloading.

The lecture is about 1 hour long with followed with about 30 minutes of questions and answers.  Usually the speaker repeats the question.

I believe at this lecture Michael Adams commented on American voters something like "You are most likely urban liberal Vancouverites who think Republicans and Republican voters are terrible.  If you think they're extreme, they're moderate compared to many of those who don't vote because they feel disaffected."

That was the first time I heard of the idea of the disaffected right wing extremist that clearly Trump tapped into and got out to vote, in many cases, likely for their first time.

I'm also a member of the critical counterculture.  I don't know if Environics/Michael Adams had the same names for the 'tribes' back in 2006 as he does now, but the 'person' who he had as the avatar for that sort of group back in 2006 was Lisa Simpson who he showed a graphic of.

Of course, this recording is strictly audio. I believe he mentions the names of all the avatars though.

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Didn't see it posted anywhere yet, so here's the latest Alberta poll from Mainstreet.

Topline numbers are 38/29/23/5/5

Edmonton: 43/26/21/5/4
Calgary: 38/26/22/7/7
Rest of Alberta: 48/27/16/4/4


The federal political temperature in Alberta is also taken. The topline results for that are 67/24/6/4

Edmonton: 48/39/9/4
Calgary: 64/26/5/4
Rest of Alberta: 74/17/5/4

The only way those numbers work is if by Edmonton and Calgary, they just mean the cities and not their suburbs.  That skews the numbers for the 'rest of Alberta' a bit I think, since the NDP hold all seven (or so) suburban Edmonton ridings.  There are only around 3 suburban Calgary ridings with Wildrose holding all of them.

NDP still look pretty decent in the city of Edmonton, but in the 2015 election, they received over 50% of the vote in all 19 city ridings.

I've been reading that the provincial ridings in Alberta are skewed in favor of rural areas as opposed to Edmonton and Calgary. There may be more rural ridings than is warranted by their population, but I don't see the big problem overall:

Total ridings: 87
Calgary and suburbs: 28
Edmonton and suburbs: 26
Smaller cities: 10
Rural: 23

Also, 7 of the rural ridings are large and remote northern rural ridings.

The 10 smaller city ridings are:
2 for Red Deer
2 for Lethbridge
2 for Grand Prairie
2 for Fort McMurray
1 for Medicine Hat
1 for Wetaskiwin-Camrose

I assume that the Calgary and Edmonton numbers are just for the cities proper. That said, remember that while the NDP do hold a number of ridings surrounding Edmonton, their holds on many of them are much weaker than Edmonton proper. For example, the NDP only won the largely-suburban riding of Leduc-Beaumont with 38% of the vote, while the suburban (but within Edmonton) riding of Edmonton-Ellerslie (directly north of Leduc-Beaumont) gave its NDP candidate 62%.

At 43% in Edmonton overall, especially with a divided opposition, the NDP would likely still win most or all of the seats in Edmonton. It's possible that a handful like Edmonton-Whitemud or Edmonton-South West would slip away, but I imagine they'd retain at least 15 or 16 seats from Edmonton alone. The NDP's challenge will be elsewhere - aside from a few ridings like Calgary-Fort, Lethbridge-West, and Spruce Grove-St. Albert, they don't have particularly strong holds on the rest of their seats. The pending redistribution may change this a bit, but not enough.

As for the rural skew, that's mostly a myth in the modern day, and is largely based on how things in Alberta used to be. Ridings are allocated to the three "regions" of Alberta before being drawn: the City of Calgary, the City of Edmonton, and the "Rest of Alberta." The 2009/10 redistribution gave 25 seats to Calgary, 19 to Edmonton, and 43 to the rest of Alberta, which would result in average population sizes of 42,618 in Calgary, 41,181 in Edmonton, and 39,737 in the Rest of Alberta. The only way (aside from "rurban" ridings in Calgary or Edmonton) that the populations could have been equalized more would have been to transfer one additional seat from the Rest of Alberta to Calgary.

That said, the rural-urban disparities did used to be much greater. Before the 1995/96 redistribution commission began their work, for example, the average riding populations were: 38,404 in Calgary, 34,239 in Edmonton, and 27,824 in the Rest of Alberta.

Yes, of the seven ridings suburban Edmonton ridings, the NDP only got over 50% of the vote in St. Albert and Sherwood Park.  Still, the NDP did much better in the other five suburban ridings than the 16% this poll has the NDP at in the'rest of Alberta.'

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Conservatives are ahead in a new poll by 2 points...The Trudeau government has officially failed.

That's a junk Forum Poll. And even worse, it was paid for by the Toronto Sun. 

Of course, if the Liberals fall in support, the Conservatives will rise against them, even in a relative way, but I've seen nothing that suggests to me the Conservative Party has done anything to appeal to anybody beyond it's 30-33% voter base.

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Speaking of Sun Forum polls, latest one claims Wynne's gonna be Campbelled. Like you, Adam, I have trouble taking Forum seriously.

Wasn't Forum notorious for overpolling the Liberals until recently? Why the change?

Forum also overpolled the NDP at the start of the 2015 federal election campaign.  The reason their polls are junk isn't because they overpoll a party compared to other polls (whether it's because that party or their supporters paid for that poll or not), it's because their polls are notorious for having fairly wide swings in support over short periods of time.

I don't know what Forum's problem is, but they have obvious problems with their methodology.  Without knowing anything about the firm, but having a background in economics, my best guess is that Forum is the low cost/low quality variety of polling firm, which would undoubtedly be especially appealing to media outlets these days.

From Wiki, these are the Forum polls at the beginning of the 2015 election. Again, that they showed higher support for the NDP and lower support for the Conservatives than any other polling firm is secondary.

August 02, Conservative, 28%, NDP 39%, Liberal 25%
August 11, Conservative 28%, NDP 34%, Liberal 27%
August 19, Conservative 29%, NDP 34%, Liberal 28%
August 24, Conservative 23% NDP 40%, Liberal 30%
Sept    01, Conservative 24%, NDP 36%, Liberal 32%

I suppose if you 'smooth out' these polls, the graph wouldn't be that far off, but, even then, the other polls during this period of the election campaign showed no real change in support for the three parties.
So, in this case, we see here the Liberals don't show any wide swing in support, but they show a 7% increase according to Forum during the month of August when the other polling firms showed essentially no increase or decrease for the Liberals.

Of course, it's also impossible to 'smooth out' a single poll.

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Came here to post the Forum poll, but I see it's already being discussed. Methodology aside, all I can say is LOL.

If these are the numbers heading into the campaign, you can bet the Liberals will erode even further, as left-Liberals swing to the NDP to try and (futilely) stop Patrick Brown. Maybe we can finally win Ottawa Centre back! I can see the NDP is barely ahead of the Liberals in Toronto, so you can tell there is a lot of room for the NDP to grow there, if voters can behind Horwath whose populism is a bit of a hard sell to the Downtown elites (same deal in Ottawa Centre, which is very similar to DT Toronto).

We were mostly discussing the federal Forum polls.

The Ontario Liberals are due to be seriously punished.  Jagmeet Singh for next Ontario NDP leader and Premier!

[136or142]

Came here to post the Forum poll, but I see it's already being discussed. Methodology aside, all I can say is LOL.

If these are the numbers heading into the campaign, you can bet the Liberals will erode even further, as left-Liberals swing to the NDP to try and (futilely) stop Patrick Brown. Maybe we can finally win Ottawa Centre back! I can see the NDP is barely ahead of the Liberals in Toronto, so you can tell there is a lot of room for the NDP to grow there, if voters can behind Horwath whose populism is a bit of a hard sell to the Downtown elites (same deal in Ottawa Centre, which is very similar to DT Toronto).

We were mostly discussing the federal Forum polls.

The Ontario Liberals are due to be seriously punished.  Jagmeet Singh for next Ontario NDP leader and Premier!

I'd prefer him as federal leader.

I appreciate that predictions are difficult, especially predictions about the future (I forget who came up with that line) but, not even seriously asking do you think Singh could lead the NDP to power federally.

Which do you think is more likely:
1.That Jagmeet Singh could help the NDP gain a significant amount of seats federally
2.That Jagmeet Singh could become Premier of Ontario

?

Because if he's more likely to become Premier, then he'd clearly be of more use to the NDP provincially than federally.

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I think the former is more likely, actually. Hard to see the NDP forming government in this province (not until everyone who was of voting age during the Bob Rae premiership dies off), but making seat gains federally? Not at all unlikely.

Funny the number of people in Ontario who will never vote NDP again due to the Bob Rae government, but hardly anybody seems to hold the Dalton McGuinty government against either the provincial or federal liberals.

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Albertan merger talks heating up, agreement might even happen this weekend, but plenty of moving parts. Rempel is considering challenging Nenshi for the Calgary mayoralty.

I like this part of the report on Michelle Rempel
"She has guts. She’s survived the idiots in Ottawa."

I think she is the biggest idiot in Ottawa. A hyper partisan who claims to decry partisan attacks, when not making nasty partisan attacks herself.  She's also an immature air head.

I hope she runs, resigns from Parliament and gets destroyed by Nenshi.  Addition by subtraction.

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Saskatchewan NDP have a 9% lead in latest poll
http://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/sk-party-fades-as-ndp-takes-9-point-lead/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/poll-lowest-sask-party-support-1.4077126

Brad Wall looks like he's aged a decade in the last 2 years.

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Could QS become a serious competitor? That would be great.

They will do as they always do, and gain one more seat (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve to be exact). At this rate, they will get a majority government in ~250 years.

In no way am I trying to play on the sleazy implication that all those on the left are no different than communists, but just to add to the joke here, in order to speed up the date of their majority government, QS should insist on elections being held using the same schedule as elections to the Russian Soviets in 1917: every two weeks.