Why leak the Trudeau debate prep info? Now the media will know he's been prepping for months. Those low expectations may not be so low come September/October.
Federal Election: started March 21, 2015
Tue, 2015-05-19 13:33
#452
Tue, 2015-05-19 15:00
#453
Arthur Cramer
I think we should all be very cautious about Trudeau not doing well in the debates. I don't think he necessarily has to do all that well, he just has to look as though he can hold his own, and that will probably be enough. I don't know if that means the Libs will win, as there is going to be a campaign, but depending on how it breaks, it could be trouble. Especailly if Trudeau sounds half way intlelligent and thoughtful. It could be big trouble.
Tue, 2015-05-19 16:51
#454
Agree that Trudeau can probably do fine in the debates. They tend to be very rigid and highly scripted. The moderator will ask everyone a question about jobs / health care / foreign policy, and they'll all get to spew their talking points. It's not like question period, where you'd be able to grill someone with questions. And even if you could, the person doing the grilling would probably come off as more negative than the person being grilled.
I'd be concerned about the Bloc and the Greens teaming up on the NDP, since their best/only chance of winning seats are in regions held by the NDP.
Tue, 2015-05-19 18:27
#455
Mulcair is potentially vulnerable on C-51 and the coalition issue, too, but in the opposite way from Trudeau.
Trudeau is vulnerable with progressive voters who are angry at the Liberals voting to support Conservative legislation, and Mulcair is potentially vulnerable with red tories & blue liberals who may not want to support the NDP if they think it's too soft on terrorism, security, etc.
I have no idea how the much-talked about swing voters (eg. voters in the Ontario suburbs, the 905, etc.) are going to ultimately vote on all of this.
Tue, 2015-05-19 18:30
#456
Thomas Mulcair emerging as the real agent of change
Tue May 19 2015
Tim Harper
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/19/thomas-mulcair-emerging-as...
Tue, 2015-05-19 22:02
#457
The rightwing is scared, they're taking cheap shots at Mulcair's morgage.
Tue, 2015-05-19 22:26
#458
The rightwing is scared, they're taking cheap shots at Mulcair's morgage.
This is an interesting choice.
Mulcair may have used the refinanced money for many reaons -- to help his kids, medical expenses, buy other properties, reduce interest on other financing.
He has never been a bankrupt and he has a mortgage and has refinanced it as part of managing money.
Sounds like he has more in common with Canadians than those who never need a mortgage becuase they were born rich.
I wonder if this story will have any legs in the campaign and if it backfires.
Wed, 2015-05-20 00:23
#459
Another 10 Senators being referred to rcmp
Wed, 2015-05-20 00:36
#460
Another 10 Senators being referred to rcmp
Need to keep the pressure up until C-51 is passed.
Wed, 2015-05-20 01:43
#461
Mulcair is potentially vulnerable on C-51 and the coalition issue, too, but in the opposite way from Trudeau.
Trudeau is vulnerable with progressive voters who are angry at the Liberals voting to support Conservative legislation, and Mulcair is potentially vulnerable with red tories & blue liberals who may not want to support the NDP if they think it's too soft on terrorism, security, etc.
I have no idea how the much-talked about swing voters (eg. voters in the Ontario suburbs, the 905, etc.) are going to ultimately vote on all of this.
You misunderstand swing voters. There are Rob Ford voters who voted for the Federal NDP a few months earlier, and there are Wildrose voters who switched to the Alberta NDP. There are huge numbers of swing voters who are neither red tories nor blue liberals. The fact that the Liberal party wastes so much time chasing these mythic people speaks to why their fortunes have depleted over the past 20 years. It speaks to how horribly their Bill C-51 "have it both ways" strategy has backfired.
The NDP can swing voters from any region and any party. New NDP support could come from hardcore civil libertarian, small government, tea party sympathizers who might be against the largest expansion of government power in Canadian history. New support could come from working class anti-GST voters who have voted Reform and Conservative to undo decades of centralized government, only to see Harper centralize power in a much more terrifying way. Or support could come from the so-called free enterprise voter that the BC Liberal party depends on, who sees bill C-51 as a threat to our business climate.
Think beyond red-and-blue. The electorate isn't aligned as neatly as the self proclaimed "centrists" wish it was.
Wed, 2015-05-20 02:03
#462
Mulcair is potentially vulnerable on C-51 and the coalition issue, too, but in the opposite way from Trudeau.
Trudeau is vulnerable with progressive voters who are angry at the Liberals voting to support Conservative legislation, and Mulcair is potentially vulnerable with red tories & blue liberals who may not want to support the NDP if they think it's too soft on terrorism, security, etc.
I have no idea how the much-talked about swing voters (eg. voters in the Ontario suburbs, the 905, etc.) are going to ultimately vote on all of this.
You misunderstand swing voters. There are Rob Ford voters who voted for the Federal NDP a few months earlier, and there are Wildrose voters who switched to the Alberta NDP. There are huge numbers of swing voters who are neither red tories nor blue liberals. The fact that the Liberal party wastes so much time chasing these mythic people speaks to why their fortunes have depleted over the past 20 years. It speaks to how horribly their Bill C-51 "have it both ways" strategy has backfired.
The NDP can swing voters from any region and any party. New NDP support could come from hardcore civil libertarian, small government, tea party sympathizers who might be against the largest expansion of government power in Canadian history. New support could come from working class anti-GST voters who have voted Reform and Conservative to undo decades of centralized government, only to see Harper centralize power in a much more terrifying way. Or support could come from the so-called free enterprise voter that the BC Liberal party depends on, who sees bill C-51 as a threat to our business climate.
Think beyond red-and-blue. The electorate isn't aligned as neatly as the self proclaimed "centrists" wish it was.
Debater is hardly the only one who thinks along these lines, virtually everyone here places people in neat ideological boxes. They do that probably because people here are politically involved or at least aware. Most people are not so ideological. In the AB election the NDP picked up more WR voters than the PCs did.
Wed, 2015-05-20 09:35
#463
How the three main federal parties compare in support for families
http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/5634073-how-the-three-main-fe...
Wed, 2015-05-20 09:39
#464
Ignore the experts because they are not.
Ignore the experts, identify the risks
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/business/Ignore+experts+identify+risks/110...
Wed, 2015-05-20 11:27
#465
Who funded Harper's rise to power? And other questions about election financing
.BY LINDA MCQUAIG | MAY 20, 2015
As the renowned Republican backroom operator Mark Hanna noted back in the late 19th century, "There are two things that matter in politics. One is money, and I can't remember the other."
Indeed, the fantastically wealthy Koch brothers proved in the recent U.S. congressional vote that organizing billionaires to buy elections is a lot easier than herding cats.
The Kochs raised $290 million from America's mega-rich to win control of Congress, and are now raising a further $889 million in a bid to buy the Oval Office.
Here in Canada, we have tougher rules restricting the role of money in politics. But the Boy Scout aura surrounding our election financing laws appears to have lulled us into a bit of a coma.
With a federal election looming, two pressing questions involving the role of money in Canadian politics are attracting surprisingly little media attention.
The first: who owns Stephen Harper?
This isn't a philosophical enquiry. It's a straightforward question about the identity of the secret donors who paid the bill for Harper's rise to power, first as leader of the Canadian Alliance and then the Conservative party.
Donors contributed more than $2 million to the prime minister's two leadership bids, but the identities of some of the major donors have never been publicly disclosed, according to Ottawa-based corporate responsibility advocacy group Democracy Watch.
The group notes that there was nothing illegal about the donations under the election laws of the time. But anyone who believes that those secret donors don't have a favoured place in Harper's heart (such as it is) probably also believes that Mike Duffy has always lived in a little cottage in P.E.I.
In the 2002 Canadian Alliance leadership race, Harper disclosed some of his donors but kept secret 10 of the major ones. A list of donors to Harper's Conservative party leadership race two years later was at one point posted on the party's website but has since been removed.
At the time of those races, it was legal for leadership contenders to receive unlimited donations from corporations, including foreign-owned businesses operating in Canada.
"Big business and [its] executives could have given Harper hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations," says Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher, who is currently a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Political Studies.
Although there's no legal requirement for disclosure, Conacher argues that Harper should divulge the names of his donors for the same reasons of ethics and transparency that he so loudly trumpeted in his first election campaign.
Shouldn't Canadians know, for instance, if Harper's early leadership bids were significantly bankrolled by, say, the Koch brothers, who are among the largest lease-holders of Alberta's tar sands and therefore have a huge financial stake in preventing Canada from limiting greenhouse gas emissions?
Have Harper's radical policy departures in areas like energy, the environment and the Middle East been unduly influenced by large donors? And if not, why the secrecy?
On another election financing front, there's been little outrage over the fact that the Harper government just eliminated a key law that was aimed at countering the power of Big Money in Canadian politics.
The law -- under which Ottawa paid political parties a small $2 subsidy for every vote they received -- was widely recognized as by far the most democratic aspect of our election financing framework, since it ensured that every vote cast in a federal election had some impact. Even if someone voted for a party that didn't win, that voter managed to direct a small government subsidy to his or her chosen party. These subsidies added up to millions of dollars and were a key source of political funding, having the effect of giving equal weight to every vote no matter how rich or poor the person casting it.
So, naturally, Harper scrapped it. The next federal election (expected in the spring or fall) will be the first in which this quintessentially democratic aspect of our election financing laws no longer applies.
Of course, poorer folks still have the full legal right to take advantage of other government subsidies in our election financing system -- except that they lack the money necessary to do so.
Individuals making contributions to political parties receive generous government subsidies through the tax system. An individual donating $400, for example, gets $300 back in tax savings. But you have to have a spare $400 in order to play this game.
That's why only 2 per cent of Canadians make political donations. Not surprisingly, most of these contributors are in the upper-income brackets.
So the bulk of the tax subsidies -- which totalled $20 million in the 2009 election -- go to this wealthier group, which enables them to increase their influence over our elections.
In fact, all aspects of our election financing system involve government subsidies. But only one -- the now-removed pay-per-vote subsidy -- distributed the subsidy in a way that didn't favour the wealthy.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/05/who-funded-harpers-rise-to-power-and...