Federal Liberal Candidates

I think your quote from the article is too long for copyright purposes.

Debater wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

Richard Mahoney is hoping third time is the charm. Instead of challenging Paul Dewer for Ottawa Center, he has changed tactic. He is now going to take on John Baird in Ottawa West-Nepean.

Are you sure about that?  That's news to me.  There are already 2 women candidates running for the Liberal nomination in Ottawa West-Nepean (one of them being Deborah Coyne).  And I thought John Baird was leaving that riding for a newer, more conservative one more in the Nepean/Kanata area.

Didn't know that John is switching ridings, but Richard Mahoney is going to fight Deborah Coyne for the nomination.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/the-gargoyle-mahoney-confirms-rum...

A retired Canadian general who hopes to be elected as a Liberal MP next year believes Israel's military forces fired "indiscriminately" on Palestinian women and children in the recent Hamas-Israel conflict.

"Casualties are caused by the Israelis using very heavy weapons systems, firing indiscriminately onto Palestinian women and children," Andrew Leslie said at an event on Aug. 19.

Leslie, who plays a key role as co-chair of a group of international affairs advisers to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, made the comment as part of an extended response to questions from a woman who attended a roundtable on veterans issues he hosted in Ottawa-Orleans, the riding in which he hopes to become the next Liberal candidate.

Liberals say the woman who asked the questions is a Conservative political staffer, Alexandra Constantinidis.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2014/09/20140902-...

Veteran seeks Liberal nomination in Peter MacKay's riding

Tuesday, Sep. 02 2014

A Canadian Forces veteran, who served for 27 years in such hot spots as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, wants to take on veteran Conservative MP and former defence minister Peter MacKay in his Central Nova riding, setting up a tense dynamic for the 2015 general election.

David MacLeod is seeking the Liberal nomination in the northern Nova Scotia riding, which Mr. MacKay, now the Justice Minister, has represented since 1997.

“My name’s David and he’s my Goliath,” Mr. MacLeod, 49, said in an interview Monday. He believes he can defeat the senior Stephen Harper minister with a campaign focusing on riding issues, such as job creation, but also on the plight of Canada’s military veterans, many of whom believe they’ve been mistreated and betrayed by the Conservative government.

“Peter does know the defence portfolio quite well and as such he should know the veterans’ portfolio equally well,” Mr. MacLeod said. “I think that Peter is going to have a bit of hard time with the veterans’ issue.” He said veterans from across Canada have contacted him and offered their support – “That will make things difficult for Peter.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com//news/politics/veteran-seeks-liberal-nomi...

Anyway, Peter MacKay is likely still the favourite to win the riding unless the non-Conservative vote really coalesces against him this time.  Elizabeth May tried to beat MacKay and couldn't do so, even with no Liberal candidate on the ballot under her friendship agreement with Stéphane Dion.  And the NDP placed a strong 2nd once or twice, but also couldn't beat him.

Central Nova (aka Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough) is historically conservative, luckily for MacKay.  It was his father's seat, and it's a riding that only goes Liberal in wave elections (eg. 1993).  In 1997, when the PC's came back under Charest in the Maritimes because of anger towards Chrétien over the unemployment insurance cuts, the PC's won it back.  And MacKay won with a good margin in 2000, even though the PC vote tanked and the Liberals came back in the Maritimes.  The Liberal vote has been declining in that area since 2004, and with the NDP taking a chunk of the vote, and Liz May throwing herself into the mix, it has favoured MacKay since.

Trudeau is polling at 50% in the Maritimes and so the Liberals are poised to make gains in 2015, but that doesn't necessarily mean MacKay's seat will be one of them.  I'm rooting for the veterans to pull this off (the candidate running is actually one of the guys that CPC MP Rob Anders called an 'NDP hack').  But they will really need to get the traditionally conservative veteran's vote to switch against MacKay if they want to do this.

I don't think Peter MacKay is safe at all. If this veteran runs a good campaign with the kind of help I expect him to get I think MacKay could lose.

trotwood73 wrote:

One of the worst kept secrets in Montreal politics.... 2013 Montreal Mayoral candidate Mélanie Joly has just stepped down as leader of her municipal party. Rumour has it that her whole municipal campaign has always been nothing more than a very elaborate publicity stunt to give herself media exposure to launch her federal political career. I have heard that the LPC had been delaying a few investitures in the Montreal area to give her a chance to give her a chance to make the leap to federal politics. http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/lorraine-pag%C3%A9-to-replace-melanie-joly-as...

Is there any chance she runs for the NDP? Has she specified her federal party affiliation?

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I don't think Peter MacKay is safe at all. If this veteran runs a good campaign with the kind of help I expect him to get I think MacKay could lose.

I'm not saying Peter MacKay is safe.  I agree it's possible he could lose.  I'm just saying that I give MacKay an edge for now based on family history in the riding, historical voting patterns & several other factors.

If MacKay loses, I will obviously be pleased.  He's one of the people who allowed Harper to kill off the Progressive Conservatives and sneak into the PM's office through a much more right-wing party.  It would be nice if he was held accountable.

.

Oh, please Arthur.  It was meant as a funny little comment, and I added a little wink to it.  There was nothing mean about it at all.  You have no sense of humour and take comments personally that don't even involve you.

And it wasn't an 'argument', btw.  I answered a question about Melanie Jolie by providing some info that to the best of my knowledge she has not officially declared yet, but that the clues point in the direction of her running for the Liberals.  That's why I provided the link above to her being a guest at this year's Montreal Liberal Convention.

terrytowel wrote:

Debater wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

Richard Mahoney is hoping third time is the charm. Instead of challenging Paul Dewer for Ottawa Center, he has changed tactic. He is now going to take on John Baird in Ottawa West-Nepean.

Are you sure about that?  That's news to me.  There are already 2 women candidates running for the Liberal nomination in Ottawa West-Nepean (one of them being Deborah Coyne).  And I thought John Baird was leaving that riding for a newer, more conservative one more in the Nepean/Kanata area.

Didn't know that John is switching ridings, but Richard Mahoney is going to fight Deborah Coyne for the nomination.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/the-gargoyle-mahoney-confirms-rum...

Thanks for the link, Terry Towel.  It confirms you are right that Richard Mahoney plans to run in Ottawa West-Nepean.

The article also confirms the situation involving John Baird moving to another riding as I mentioned above:

With a redraw of riding in place before the next election, Baird has elected to leave OWN and instead run in Barrhaven, an area where he currently lives and which he represented earlier in his career as an Ontario MPP in the Mike Harris era.

I think Baird could have a hard time even there. You can bet that the public service unions will paint a target on his back. The NDP might not even try to hard there as they likely will have a better candidate in Ottawa West Nepean.

Debater I guess you don't live near Ottawa or visit here much but Barrhaven is NOT rural. The new riding of Nepean is anything but rural. It is suburban. And where do those people work? Many work for the federal government.

The riding could be considered tough, not becuase of being rural but becuase it is a well-off riding. It is, however, the type of riding Trudeau has to win to become PM. If this one, here in Ottawa with a large number of civil servants, stays Conservative, Trudeau will have a hard time winning government.

Even Nepean Carleton which was a majority rural riding has usually gone Liberal when the Liberals win government and this is the more Liberal friendly part of the riding and the part that is suburban with the rest being majority rural.

On Redistribution, the vote in 2011 (hardly a good year for the Liberals) was 50% conservative 26% Liberal and 17% NDP (to contrast Nepean Carleton had nearly 55% Conservative).

If the Conservative vote overall goes down from 40 to 30% (25% loss) and the Liberal vote goes from 19% to 36% (90% gain) those numbers would be: Conservative 37% Liberal 49% -- or not even close. Were the Liberals and Conservatives to draw even at 35% each that would represent a 12% drop for the Conservatives and an 85% gain for the Liberal party. In that case the riding would be closer but Liberal by a 10% margin:  44% for the Conservatives and 48% for the Liberals

I would expect the rural part of Nepean Carleton will be a hold for the Conservatives but would not bet much if the Conservatives drop to 30% nationally.

The old Nepean Carleton was a riding the Liberals could win when they had a majority (Gaffney and Pratt) and lose with a minority. This split will likely guarantee the remainder goes Conservative even if the Liberals win but this part should go Liberal if Trudeau gets over a third of the vote nationally.

By the way this is the fastest growing part of Ottawa and even the demographics of 2011 would have been changed by 4 years of growth.

BTW -- I live next door in Ottawa South and know the riding well. If you have not been there in a while you would not recognize it.

Debater wrote:

Sean, I do live in Ottawa.  But I live close to downtown, so I don't make it out to Barrhaven very often.  I guess what I meant by rural was that it is not an urban area within the city core or within the suburban ridings.  It has grown along with the rest of the outlying areas of Ottawa like Nepean, Kanata, etc.  But it is more Conservative-leaning than say Liberal or NDP, and has a different composition than ridings like Ottawa Centre, Ottawa South, Ottawa Vanier, or even Ottawa-Orleans or Ottawa West-Nepean.

You make a valid point that there has been a lot of growth in those areas around Barrhaven which is probably why those of us that don't go out that way often wouldn't recognize it much now compared to how small it was several years ago.  There was just an article in the Metro paper for Ottawa last week where Councillor Jan Harder was talking about how many high schools the area now has and the need for more to be built because they are already filled up and overflowing with students.

And yes, you are right that the Liberals do need to become competitive again in ridings like this, but so do the NDP.  As Chantal Hébert wrote recently, Mulcair has not been performing well in the Ontario suburbs (eg. Scarborough-Agincourt, where the NDP fell below 10%).  It needs to be more competitive in ridings like this if it wants to challenge Harper.

The NDP have done better in the very downtown centres-- of course the NDP would also need to do better in seats like this to get a government. At this point though if we are talking about Trudeau in the high 30s this riding is actually in reach-- even if the rest of the old riding wasn't.

I know this riding well and I can still get lost if I don't pay attention -- the building going on there is so fast you can lose track of the new streets. But at this point there is nothing rural left in the riding -- it is all filled and the new developments are well past it. That's why I said this is definitely not rural-- it is quite well built up.

If the Liberals are polling in the 30s they are likely ahead there-- they had 26% in this riding in the last election when their national numbers were below 19% if they are close to 40% now -- you can see the math.

The Ottawa ridings have always been very good bellweathers.

More controversy and stupidity from the Liberals.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-nomination-complaints-lead-to-mo...

Arthur Cramer wrote:

Pondering wrote:

Another dispute over the nomination process:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/09/09/liberal-nominations-resignations...

"This goes explicitly against what [Justin Trudeau] has said in terms of free, open, transparent nominations. We've had something that was distinctly closed and very, very opaque," said Bryan Kerman, who quit the board of the Brant riding association after 40 years as a Liberal....

In the case of Brantford-Brant, members of the riding association allege the Liberal Party favoured the only officially registered candidate, Danielle Takacs, by abruptly called a nomination vote.

There were at least three other candidates preparing to contest Takacs, Kerman said. However they never got the opportunity, because an e-mail was sent out on Aug. 5 saying the deadline for applications was just two hours away.

Takacs won the riding by acclamation on Aug. 21....

A spokesperson for the Liberals said the regular nomination process was followed in Brantford-Brant. Nomination papers have been available since January and anyone is welcome to apply, said spokesman Olivier Duchesneau....

Kerman's claims are supported by riding association president Edward Chrzanowski.

"Two people have technically now resigned. I might expect more," said Chrzanowski, who has not resigned his position, but says he is considering not voting Liberal in the next election.

He is particularly frustrated because the riding association was asked by party officials in Ontario to set up a committee to find new candidates. He said they successfully found several people who were gearing up to run, but the party's sudden decision to impose a deadline prevented them.

"In our riding it was not fair and open. Period. We had other candidates. They were not allowed to submit," he said....

Takacs wants to focus on campaigning for the next election, rather than the controversy. She wouldn't say whether she thought the process was fair and open.

"I'm not one to comment on that. I just played by the rules that were presented," she said.

Still, she questions whether any one else was really in a position to submit an application.

"It takes a lot more than two hours and I would say it takes a lot more than even a month. So it's a real big, serious decision that people have to make well in advance," she said.

Takacs points out that the Liberal application process includes a criminal background check, a financial record check, signing up supporters, fundraising and submitting all published work.

The Liberals better start communicating with riding offices better. This could seriously hurt them.

This won't hurt them; voters are being swept up in Trudeaumainia.

FWIW: Internal dissension in the Quebec Offices of the LPC:

A senior Quebec member of the Liberal Party of Canada has resigned in protest, Maclean’s has learned. Yves Malette has been director of operations with the party’s Quebec wing since September 2013. In a letter to Quebec party president Linda Julien, which Maclean’s has obtained, Malette cites a decrease in party resources devoted to Quebec—as well as the party’s increasing Ontario-centric power base.

“For some time now, the LPC’s priorities have been geared toward building and supporting the top of the pyramid, and the structures and resources have been centralized in Ottawa and Toronto, as opposed to being accessible to the membership, the organization and those running on-the-ground operations,” reads the letter dated September 2.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/key-quebec-liberal-leaves-trudeaus-fold/

That is the problem with politicians, that they all seem to think that people want to be governed by them. 

Peter Fonseca, former Ontario cabinet minister & MPP for Mississauga-Cooksville, and the federal candidate in 2011, won the LPC nomination tonight for 2015.

He would have won the riding in 2011 had it not been for the Orange Wave in the GTA that gave many seats to the CPC.

Hopefully he will boot out the CPC MP in 2015!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fonseca

Debater wrote:

Peter Fonseca, former Ontario cabinet minister & MPP for Mississauga-Cooksville, and the federal candidate in 2011, won the LPC nomination tonight for 2015.

He would have won the riding in 2011 had it not been for the Orange Wave in the GTA that gave many seats to the CPC.

Hopefully he will boot out the CPC MP in 2015!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fonseca

Debater, why can't you just be honest. You know full well Blue Libs elected the Tories. I remember watching the TV come on with the results in 2011 at 8PM in Winnipeg and the first though I had was damn blue LIbs. You guys will give it to Right Wing Tory governments any day befoere you'll let people see what would happen with an actual Progressive NDP governmetn. Debater, you are ONLY about power; its all people like you care about. If you want to rebut what I just wrote, "DEBATE" with me. After all, that's YOUR handle. So far you have "REFUSED" to tell us why you vote Liberal or are even here. Why is that? Maybe because you know that if you can't tell untruths, quote press articles and releases, or dance over the latest pollling news, you are incapable of "DEBATING", anything! Go ahead and prove me wrong, "DEBATER". I still say you should change your handle. Your continued and onngoing refusal to debate shows you would sooner insult all of us here, then show whether where it comes to your posts, "there's there, there". It doesn't seem to bother you all showing your insulting and continued disdain for us.

janfromthebruce wrote:

Actually, it was shown in Conservative Liberal races in the GTA that it was "blue liberals" moving to the Conservative column that won those races, and not any increase in vote for the NDP in those select ridings. In fact, it was also shown that it was also increase vote from "non voters" moving to the Conservative columns. 

This data was analysised by political staticians and thus I prefer to rely on science rather than mindless Liberal propaganda. To end, one can thank Blue Liberals who voted for their pocket book and Harper. 

http://www.punditsguide.ca/2011/05/mommy-they-split-my-vote/

 

Jan, that argument proves why the Liberals are better-positioned to defeat the Conservatives than the NDP.  Thank-you for making it so concisely. 

You said it yourself:  Blue Liberals don't usually vote NDP.  They will usually choose Conservative before NDP.  That's the whole point of why the Orange Wave was a negative phenomenon in Ontario.  It drove Blue Liberals away from the Liberal Party and into the hands of the Conservatives.  I completely agree with you.  I've been making that same point for a long time.

Blue Liberals were scared of an NDP Government and chose to block Layton by going to Harper.  Red Tories did the same, and many undecided voters did the same.

As Chantal Hébert has written in her columns lately as a cautionary note to the NDP, the same thing could happen in 2015 if the NDP goes too heavily after Trudeau.

Sean in Ottawa wrote on another thread that the 2nd choice of Liberals is Mulcair.  That's not quite the case.  Those are the left of centre Liberals who prefer the NDP to the Conservatives.  But they don't matter as much because they aren't swing voters.  The voters in the Ontario suburbs (eg. the 905 where Layton didn't win any seats) are mainly red tories & blue liberals.  And as Hébert has said, Justin Trudeau has suceeded in attracting many of them back into the Liberal fold.  So when NDP supporters keep hoping for a Trudeau 'collapse' in 2015, they risk driving away those voters to Harper again, and recreating the 2011 conditions all over again.