The New Democratic Party's leadership race is over. The membership have spoken and elected Thomas Mulcair as the next leader. Mulcair's main challenge is to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election and position the NDP to form a new government. He must build on the NDP's 2011 electoral success by holding on to Quebec and expanding support in the rest of Canada.

Mulcair brings a number of strengths to Stornaway and Parliament Hill including:

- previous cabinet experience

- former NDP House co-leader

- well-known "native son" of Quebec and fully bilingual

- excellent public speaker in both official languages

- detailed understanding of the environment file

- widespread support from the labour movement

While I've done some mental flip-flopping on the NDP leadership race (With Peggy and Nathan at the top of my list), I am sticking with my original intention to support Peggy as my first choice. Peggy brings a wealth of knowledge and varied experience. She knows how to listen, negotiate and find solutions. She remains connected to the "movement". She has put proportional representation central to her plans for the next election and beyond. She has run a very positive campaign which reflects on the kind of leadership she will provide and team she will put together. And this will likely be her only leadership run. So if she's "offering", we should take her up on the offer. Go Peggy!

I've been working on some research into the voter suppression phone call scandal in which voters were misdirected to non-existent polling stations. I hope to have some of the detailed results published on the weekend. I've looked at the Elections Canada financial records of 96 Conservative candidates (including most of those listed by the Sixth Estate) with a particular eye on the "research and survey" lines. I also looked at the financial reports for all 55 Third Party campaigns.

In 2010-11 I was co-ordinator for the Catch 22 Campaign -- a national strategic voting campaign designed to try and defeat the Harper government in 2011 "from below" and raise awareness about the need for Canada to scrap its antiquated first-past-the-post voting system in favor of a democratic system in which all voters have equal and effective votes and a Parliament that proportionately reflects the views of the electorate. Proportional representation (PR)/equal votes is the path bringing Canada to the status of a representative democracy.

One didn't have to go far in Toronto to run into Jack Layton. Over the past three decades Jack personally crossed paths with tens of thousands of people. I'd like to share a few of my own experiences working with Jack on a variety of political projects and activities in Toronto. None of them were electoral campaigns.

Toronto City Hall

by John Deverell

Stephen Harper, you are either remarkably inventive or arithmetically challenged. You want a majority government and you'll happily accept it, without majority popular support, as "the will of the people."

If you're held to a Parliamentary minority, as you were in 2006 and 2008 -- you'll trumpet that too as the automatic right to govern, "a democratic mandate." If the majority of MPs in the next Parliament somehow manages to pry you loose from the PMO and 24 Sussex Drive; you'll say that is "wrong" and "undemocratic."

The Harper Conservatives presented their budget today. From the initial reaction of the opposition, it looks like a spring election is likely. The opposition remains behind in the polls but the situation is very fluid. Catch 22 has been "harpering" away for over a year about the government's many abuses of power and the need to advance, not regress, democracy in Canada. The reaction to the prorogation in 2010 showed that many Canadians do care about fairness, co-operation, competence and democracy.

Some interesting polling

In "The backro

Canadians were surprised to learn that a little known Order in Council passed in December by the Privy Council, changed the country's name from "Canada" to "Harper." The change was prompted by several phone calls to the PMO insisting that "Canada" is an antiquated vestige from the 19th century and the country was long overdue for a modern name. Privy councilors loved the idea and readily agreed. The new name was chosen by PM Stephen Harper.

Cons rebrand Gov't of Canada as 'Harper Gov't'

Public input and regulation of the "airwaves" is one of cornerstones for a well-functioning democratic country. We learn much of what we know about the world around us from the mainstream media. We are even more in tune with what's going on with the advent of the internet.