IN MONTREAL As a self-employed worker, a full-time student, and a mother with a child in a provincially-run daycare, I can see myself in many of the campaign promises each of the parties is making. But Stephen Harper lost me when he trotted out the Tory savings to the “typical” Canadian family. In his world, […] More »
NDP candidate Nicolas Thibodeau with his bike PHOTO DOMINIQUE JARRY-SHORE While the party leaders have all (except for Stephen Harper) made very public efforts to run a carbon neutral election campaign, it’s safe to bet the hundreds of lesser-known candidates running in ridings across the country have not. Running a campaign office and getting to […] More »
It’s been a busy week, with the election and the stock market drops and the announcement that Britney will put out a new album in December, so it was easy to miss the Tuesday release of a study commissioned by the Canadian Urban Transit Association, a group that represents the public transit industry, that looks […] More »
I once remember Andrew Sullivan, that tireless blogger and commentator on American politics, distinguishing government from politicts in a very interesting way. Government, he said, is an incremental process involving detailed legislation and backroom negotiation. Politics, on the other hand, is something more theatrical and personality-driven. It is about convincing people to share in a […] More »
I spent the earlier part of this month blogging about celebrities, kind of hoping those in town for the Toronto International Film Festival would drink too much, say something stupid and get in a fistfight caught on a cellphone camera then put up on Youtube for everyone to see. Turns out members of the Conservative […] More »
On Sunday I decried that the election so far had focused on political foibles, not policy. Three days later, it’s clear that the politicians have been reading the This blog. Yesterday Layton pledged $100 million in skills training; Dion said he’d pay $900 million over four years in pharmacare; Harper thought that self employed workers […] More »
David Miller indirectly endorsed the Green party yesterday when he praised their national transit plan and their promise to increase funding for municipal infrastructure. Although he did not officially endorse the party, he did say it had the best plan for cities in a radio interview yesterday. He also contrasted this thinly-veiled endorsement with some […] More »
An elderly New Brunswick woman who died last week is the 17th person whose death has been linked to the listeria outbreak, it was confirmed late Tuesday–the same day that the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published an editorial blaming the Conservative government’s change in policy for the severity of the listeriosis outbreak. “Listeria is […] More »
Let’s play a game – guess the voter turnout for the 2008 federal election. First, let’s take a look at the voter turnout from the last few times we hit the polls (for more numbers, stop by Elections Canada): November 21, 1988 – 75.3% October 25, 1993 – 71.8% June 2, 1997 – 67% November […] More »
IN EDMONTON Things political start to stink when they stagnate. Conservatives have typically had a lock on fiscal prudence, portraying the other mainstream parties as tax-and-spendthrifts who cannot be trusted with the public purse. Canadians have long accepted the presumption that Conservatives would keep tighter control of public finance than any other party. Those days […] More »
IN EDMONTON Hello? Can anybody hear me? Probably not. According to the political compass test I just took my politics are libertarian-leftist, which apparently puts me in the same camp as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. I have no idea what that means in our national election climate, but in Alberta it means […] More »