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notyoueither
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of naught
Aug 2001
time: 22:36
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Very interesting article. I'm not sure who the writer is, but he has the Bloc laying seige to the Liberals in and around Montreal. Yikes.
Additionally, if any of you are looking for a nice item on your resume, they seem to be in need of copy editors. 
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/ind...ersichilli/&c=1
quote:
The Hill Times, May 31st, 2004
BACKROOMS
By Angelo Persichilli
Libs to lose some strongholds
Keyes, Goodale, Phinney, Lastewska and Valeri in tough battles to hold onto seats
TORONTO--Paul Martin's strategy for this federal election was based on a simple concept: he knew the Liberals were going to lose some seats in Ontario because of the merger on the right, but thought he would gain more seats in Québec because the Bloc Québécois was dead. His Liberal strategists also hoped they would win more seats in British Columbia where Paul Martin was much more popular than Jean Chrétien.
Well, it looks like their theory was right in one place. In Ontario they're going to lose seats. Unfortunately, the Grits will also lose some Liberal strongholds.
Former Jean Chrétien Cabinet minister Sheila Copps declared to me on my CHIN radio program: "In Hamilton, they can lose all five seats to the NDP and the Conservatives."
Of course, that's the worst-case scenario and there's some sour grapes there. But, even some people close to the campaign admit that Revenue Minister Stan Keyes' riding "is gone to the NDP." Even the powerful electoral machine of Transportation Minister Tony Valeri has been working overtime to retain the lead. This is almost the same area where the provincial Liberals lost to the NDP in a recent provincial byelection. And it's the same area the provincial Liberals had won in October with Domenic Agostino who did not wage a serious campaign. Mr. Agostino died last March and when the Libs returned to the polls, they lost badly to the NDP, and it was even before the provincial budget!
Federal Liberal MP Beth Phinney, first elected in 1998 and who won her riding with 50 per cent of the vote in the last election, is also in trouble in Hamilton Mountain.
The same "disease" is spreading out in the entire Niagara Peninsula.
In St. Catharines, Walt Lastweka, first in elected in 1993 and who won the riding in 2000 with 44 per cent of the vote, is facing fierce competition from a renewed Conservative Party. In the past, this was a Tory stronghold with the popular Joe Reid. Just to give an idea of the problems the Liberals are facing in the Niagara Peninsula, Mr. Lastweka won in the 2000 election with 20,992 votes over the Alliance candidate Randy Dumond who took 15,871. However, the then Conservative candidate Ken Atkinson won 6,522 votes: it takes a simple mathematical calculation to draw your own conclusions.
Next week, I will examine in detail the entire picture, however, I can say right now that there are almost 30 ridings across the country where the Liberals are facing the same challenge as Mr. Lastewka. Also in Ontario, Liberal MP Joe Jordan, first elected in 1997, won by only 55 votes in Leeds-Grenville and with 39 per cent of the vote. He's in trouble.
Yukon Liberal incumbent Larry Bagnell, first elected in 2000, won by only 70 votes and with 32 per cent of the vote.
In New Brunswick, Liberal incumbent Andy Savoy, first elected in 2000, won by 147 votes and with only 33 per cent of the vote in Tobique-Mactaquac.
In Alberta, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, who won with 38 per cent of the vote in Edmonton West in 2000, is in a tough battle.
And in Saskatchewan, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, who won the last election by 1,752 votes and 41 per cent of the vote, is also in a tough slog.
There are some tough street fights also in Toronto with the NDP and the Conservatives poised to make gains. One of the ridings to watch closely is Toronto-Danforth where the Liberal incumbent, the very popular Dennis Mills, is up against two national leaders: NDP Jack Layton and Green Party's Jim Harris.
Mills, along with Maria Minna in Toronto's Beaches-East York riding and Tony Ianno in Trinity-Spadina are trying to form the Maginot line against the NDP. The Conservative are aiming at a couple ridings in the downtown-East End of the megacity: in danger is Foreign Minister Bill Graham, and John Godfrey. Jean Augustine faces stiff competition from Conservatives in Etobicoke Lakeshore. Another Liberal stronghold, the riding represented by former minister David Collenette, might well be going to the Conservative candidate, former provincial Tory minister Dave Johnston. It looks like Mr. Collenette doesn't even have a Liberal sign on his home lawn.
But it's not just in Toronto, where the Conservatives are shopping for new seats. The Liberals can easily lose Elinor Caplan's riding of Thornhill as well as some seats in Mississauga were the in-fighting from the hastily-organized and nasty nominations have eroded internal support for Liberals. Paul Szabo and Carolyn Parrish have to work overtime in order to retain the seat for the Liberals and Belinda Stronach has a good chance of winning the Markham riding for the Conservatives. Also in danger for the Liberals are the ridings in Pickering and Oak Ridge.
In Québec, the Liberals are facing huge challenges. The nomination process has damaged the Liberal chances to win the next election more than the organizers believe. Paul Martin's policy to address the so-called democratic deficit has miserably backfired. Opening all the ridings to challenges has destroyed the delicate internal balance in many ridings fuelling divisions and feuds that, at best, will leave a lot of the Liberal voters at home.
Furthermore, the initiatives of Liberal organizers to parachute candidates in some ridings has killed the credibility of the policy to make nominations more democratic. In Montreal, the sudden resignation of Yvon Charbonneau in the new riding of Honoré-Mercier and the parachuting of Pablo Rodriguez has upset local Liberals who feel betrayed and fooled by the central organization. There are rumours that a prominent Canadian Italian Liberal in Montreal will be the candidate for the Conservatives in the same riding: "We will not win but we will take away enough votes to make the Bloc candidate win," one Conservative source told The Hill Times.
This is one on the safest Liberal ridings in Québec. The same source told The Hill Times that in Montreal there are "only a few seats that can be considered safe. Amongst them the one represented by [Massimo] Pacetti, [Denis] Coderre and [Paul] Martin. All the others need immediate attention."
Immediately outside Montreal, the Liberals are exposed to the attacks from the Bloc. According to some, incumbent Liberal Nick Discepola has to work hard to win his riding of Vaudreuuil-Soulanges, Que., and the riding of former prime minister Jean Chrétien -- Saint-Maurice -- might go to the Bloc. In the 2000 election, Mr. Chrétien won with 23,345 votes against François Marchand of the Bloc who took in 16,821 votes. However, at that time, the NDP got only 359 votes and the Conservatives 966 votes. And, most of all, they had a prime minister running. This time around the music might be very different.
Name recognition will also be a problem for the Liberals in other parts of Canada: At least 30 well-known MPs and Ministers are not running in this election and in all those ridings there is an opportunity for other parties to make inroads into Liberal territory.
The campaign is still long and many things can happen. There are still 28 days remaining as of Monday, May 31. Many voters are still undecided, and, even those expressing a preference, are leaving a lot of space for changes. If the Liberal support is not solid, the Conservative and the NDP vote is not either. Things can change in either direction, and, there are two televised debates the leaders have to go through. However, it looks like, at least at the beginning of the campaign, neither of the four parties seems to have a creative agenda able to capture the imagination of the voters. This means that the election will be decided by the mistakes made by the opponents, more then the creativity of their own strategists.
And speaking about creativity. It was a stroke of creativity that made Conservative incumbent Scott Reid last week muse about the redundancy of bilingualism in Canada. The Liberals immediately jumped on it and Stephen Harper was quick to put out the fire by firing Reid as the party's critic for official languages. However, statements like those are more problematic for the Liberals than they are for the Conservatives: according to the response from the public, the policy of bilingualism is not very popular in Canada, including in Québec. The Conservatives might gain votes saying what many Canadians believe on this subject.
Angelo Persichilli is political editor of Corriere Canadese, Toronto's Italian language daily newspaper.
Persichilli@corriere.com
The Hill Times |
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Jon Miller
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what is the actual distribution
JM
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notyoueither
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of naught
Aug 2001
time: 22:36
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Ontario
Conservatives 35%
Liberals 32%
NDP 23%
Mentions of Mulroney vs Turner are cropping up. 
Also, Harper's and Layton's positives continue to climb nationally. Martin's continues to plummet.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNe...?hub=TopStories
quote:
Ont. pushes Conservatives toward minority: poll
CTV.ca News Staff
The Conservative Party is within striking distance of forming a minority government, says a new poll. It is essentially tied with the Liberals nationally, and leads in Ontario for the first time in 19 years.
"The Liberals are falling through the floor. In effect, we have a new frontrunner," said Craig Oliver, CTV News's Ottawa bureau chief.
"Liberals have not done this badly in Ontario, where elections are won or lost, since 1984 when Brian Mulroney swept aside John Turner's Liberals."
The Ipsos-Reid poll, conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail, asked respondents: Thinking of how you feel right now, if a federal election were held tomorrow, which of the following parties' candidates would you, yourself, be most likely to support?
The Liberals and Conservatives are in a virtual tie, with 32 per cent and 31 per cent support respectively. That is down two points for the Liberals and up one percentage for the Conservatives since the last poll released Monday night.
The last time the Liberals were at 32 per cent in the opinion polls was in January 1991.
Jack Layton's New Democrats are up one point at 17 per cent. The Bloc Quebecois have 11 per cent of the national decided support. In Quebec, the Bloc is up one point at 45 per cent, while the Liberals are down one point, to 28 per cent.
Jim Harris and the Green Party are unchanged at six per cent decided voter support. In British Columbia, the party has gone up two points to 13 per cent support. As well, the seat-projection model prepared by Ipsos-Reid suggests it has the potential to take two seats there.
Three per cent of those polled said they would vote for some "other" party and 11 per cent were undecided or would not vote, down one per cent.
If the election were held tomorrow, a seat projection model prepared by Ipsos-Reid based on these numbers suggest the potential for:
Liberals: 115 to 119 seats
Conservatives: 110 to 114 seats
NDP: 17 to 21 seats
Bloc: 56 to 60 seats
Green Party: two seats
A party would need to get a minimum of 155 seats in the House in order to form a majority government.
Ontario stronghold
Ontario, once a Liberal stronghold, has now become Conservative territory. It holds about one-third of all 308 seats, and could possibly decide the outcome of the June 28 vote.
According to the poll, the Conservatives are at 35 per cent, down one point, while the Liberals are down four points to 32 per cent -- a plunge of 17 per cent in three weeks. The NDP is up two points at 23 per cent.
This is the first time since June 1985 that the federal Conservatives appear to lead the federal Liberals in Ontario.
The seat-projection model prepared by Ipsos-Reid suggest the Conservatives would get between 46 and 50 seats in Ontario, compared to the Liberal projection of between 49 and 53 seats. The NDP would get between 5 to 9 seats.
The Liberals continue to hold a commanding lead in Atlantic Canada, with 46 per cent of the decided vote, down two points. The Conservatives follow with 31 per cent of decided voter support and the NDP is third with 21 per cent support.
Momentum
With respect to respondents' opinions of various parties and their leaders, they were asked: Now, overall would you say your opinion of this party leader has improved, worsened, or stayed the same over the last few weeks?
For Harper and the Conservatives: 32 per cent said their opinion had improved over the last few weeks; 18 per cent said it had worsened; 40 per cent said it "stayed the same"
For Layton and the NDP: 28 per cent said it had improved; 13 per cent said it had worsened; 44 per cent said it "stayed the same"
For Martin and the Liberals: 13 per cent said their opinion had improved; 48 per cent said it worsened; 34 per cent said it "stayed the same"
For Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc: 23 per cent said it had improved; seven per cent said it worsened; 61 per cent said it "stayed the same"
Layton appears to lead the other leaders in highest gap momentum. This is calculated by subtracting the percentage of people who say their opinion has worsened over the last few weeks from the percentage who say their opinion has improved over the last few weeks.
Layton: +15 points
Harper: +14 points
Martin: -35 points
Duceppe: +16 points in Quebec
Layton and the NDP have the strongest momentum in Atlantic Canada, while the Conservatives are building on their lead in Alberta. Martin and the Liberals have negative momentum in every region of the country.
"It's not as if Mr. Martin has been campaigning badly; on the contrary, he's been campaigning well," Oliver said.
"It's just that nobody is paying any attention. They're not paying any attention to Martin's good days or Harper's bad days. They're focused on anger and they're focused on the need for change, and Harper doesn't scare them."
The fight is shaping up to be one of two visions of Canada: "It's a question of big government versus small government, if you like," he said.
"I think if that begins to focus itself ... the Liberals can hope their social agenda will be preferred and they've got a chance. But it's not looking very good for them tonight," Oliver said.
Should the Liberals lead?
Respondents were also asked: Now, some people say that in the up-coming federal election the Liberal Party deserves to be re-elected under the new leadership of Paul Martin, others say that the Liberal Party does not deserve to be re-elected and it's time for another Federal political party to be given a chance to govern the country. Which statement is closest to your opinion?
Three in ten Canadians, or 29 per cent, said the Liberals do deserve to be re-elected. That number is unchanged from the previous poll.
In comparison, 64 per cent of Canadians responded that the Liberals do not deserve to be re-elected, down two points from the previous poll.
Agreement with the statement that "the Liberal Party does not deserve to be re-elected" is highest in Quebec, with 70 per cent, followed by Alberta with 69 per cent.
Respondents in Atlantic Canada were most likely to say the Liberals do deserve another chance, with 40 per cent, followed at 36 per cent by Saskatchewan/Manitoba.
This telephone survey was conducted between June 1st and 3rd. A representative randomly selected sample of 1,000 adult Canadians was interviewed. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population.
With a report from CTV's Tom Clark |
PS. I think Craig Oliver is ready for the glue factory.
Anyone who says Martin is running a good campaign should have his head checked.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
quote:
Originally posted by Tingkai
In the US Senate, 26 of the smallest states with 18% of the US population holds a majority of senate seats.
So even if 80% of Americans wanted a law, this tiny minority could block it. |
Do you know the probabilites of all that minority being united? It includes not only the midwest, but Hawaii, Alaska, and a few northeastern states...
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Dude, if you're going to post threads in a Canadian politics threads then you need to:
a) Learn about the politics of your own country;
b) Learn about Canadian politics;
c) Learn about basic politics.
The smallest states can band together to form a voting block. Why would they do this? Obviously because they know the power that comes from being united. As a voting block, they demand special priviliges for their member states. Rhode Island gets this, Alaska gets that and so on.
quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
quote:
And the minority abuse their power. If you want a law passed, you need their support and that's going to cost money. |
Using their power at all is an abuse of it?
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Why should they have that power at all? Any system that allows 18% of the population to have control over government decisions is flawed.
quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
quote:
After 9-11, the US federal government gave money to state governments to create terrorism response programmes. Wyoming got more money per capita ($38.31) than New York State ($5.47) and 48 states received more federal funding per capita than New York State, even though New York was ranked as most likely to be hit by a terrorist attack. |
Perhaps because needed terrorism funding doesn't really have ANYTHING to do with the number of people in the state? It has to do with the facilities that need to be secured.
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Read the linked story. The US government listed New York and California as been the top two most likely terrorist targets. But funding was split on a state by state basis. So Wyoming got the same amount as New York State.
Why did this happen? Because of the regionally based senate. In order to get the bill passed, the proponents had to get the support of the smaller states. Those states would not support the bill unless they got money, even though their states didn't need the money.
quote:
Originally posted by Kucinich
quote:
With the first past the post system, the minority who are actually in control is even smaller than 18%. Effectively, 10% of the American population can control which laws are made and the composition of the US supreme court. |
Assuming a massive conspiracy amongst this 10% to specifically live in these states with just enough to elect the candidate of their choice to office... put on your tinfoil hat.
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See if you can follow this:
The American political system is dominated by two parties, the democrats and the republicans. To win a senate seat, a candidate needs 51% of the vote.
These small states represent 18% of the Americans. The senators from the states are elected by a simple majority (51%). What's 51% of 18%? Round that number up and you get 10%.
So the senators from these small states have majority control of the senate even though they are effectively elected by only 10% of the population.
This isn't about conspiracies and tinhats. This is about basic politics 101.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:36
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quote:
Originally posted by notyoueither
Nope. But they stand to lose votes if the old stand by is trotted out and people buy it.
Vote Liberal to prevent the Western Barbarians from bashing down the gates. |
So you think that Canadians want to elect a rightwing nutcase?
Because you're saying the Liberals will lose votes if they call Harper a rightwing nutcase and the voters believe it.
And you're crazy if you think Liberals or the NDP have said that Westerners are barbarians, or that all Westerners are rightwing nutcases.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:36
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quote:
Originally posted by notyoueither
I think the Tories are winning in Ontario because people are not stupid enough to buy the Martin crap of saying 'Harper says...' when a back bencher voices his opinion. Nor are they stupid enough to ignore the actual abuses of the Liberals while the Liberals attempt to pull the cloak over the mess and scream while pointing at what the 'bad guy' might do. And I think that Harper's clarity and sticking on message is exactly the way for him to fight this campaign.
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From what I see, the voters are saying "we don't want the Liberals."
The danger for Harper is that people will start putting his promises together and realising they add up. He promises billions in tax cuts and says it will come from existing surpluses then he turns around and promises buillions in new spending and says it will come from existing surpluses.
Eliminating the middle income tax bracket will cost $16 billion a year. That by itself eliminates any budget surplus.
So how is Harper going to fulfil his other promises of more spending on healthcare and defence plus lower corporate taxes, lower EU premiums.
As for clarity, what the hell is a modified maritime carrier?
Promises, promises, promises.
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notyoueither
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of naught
Aug 2001
time: 22:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Tingkai
Dude, if you're going to post threads in a Canadian politics threads then you need to:
a) Learn about the politics of your own country;
b) Learn about Canadian politics;
c) Learn about basic politics.
The smallest states can band together to form a voting block. Why would they do this? Obviously because they know the power that comes from being united. As a voting block, they demand special priviliges for their member states. Rhode Island gets this, Alaska gets that and so on. |
Dude, since this is a Canpol thread, one should stay focused on Canada. No way - no how, could 18% of the population hold up didley in our Senate.
In fact, if Ont, Quebec, and BC vote for a measure it passes. That leaves 7 other provinces stuck sucking their thumbs. That is the worst case. 3 out of ten with 22 out of 29 million population being blocked by 7 out of ten with 7 out of 29 million.
[Sorry, I misstated that. Quebec, Ont, and BC are a majority in the Senate (54 of 105). The minimum blocking vote would be Nfd, PEI, NS, NB, Man, Sask, Alta, and BC) representing 54 seats and 8 provinces with 11 million out of 29 million people.]
Those don't seem to be the same odds you want to debate skywalker on.
If the majority of regions with the majority of the population (Ont, Que, and the West; or Ont, Que, and the Maritimes; or Que, the Maritimes and the West; or...) the issue is a done deal and would pass.
Can we elect them now?
Last edited by notyoueither on 05-06-2004 at 11:40
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05-06-2004 06:41
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