As this picture shows, Justin Trudeau is NOT Canada’s best hope to lead the Rebel Alliance. However, in the event of a cylon attack, Justin is the man. Last week, Postmedia ran the most awesome headline ever: Conservative government’s order of succession shows Canada isn’t ready for a Cylon attack
Continue readingAuthor: calgarygrit
Calgary Grit: Your Weekly OLP Leadership Update: Can Kennedy Restore a Liberal Camelot?
With the membership cut-off fast approaching, it seems likely we’ll have a good idea of the field of candidates to replace Dalton McGuinty within a few days. This week, Laurel Broten, Brad Duguid, and George Smitherman added their names to the list of those taking a pass, prompting a round
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Liberal Leadership Races Through History (Part 3): King Chooses His Heir
Previously: Prologue, The 19th Century, An Elected King He may not have been a career politician, but Uncle Louis could still stage one heck of a photo op. The last blog post in this series took place at the 1919 Liberal leadership convention, during the aftermath of the Great War.
Continue readingCalgary Grit: OLP Leadership Update
While Federal Liberal leadership aspirants are free to subject their candidacy to a year-long striptease before declaring, Ontario Liberals do not have the luxury of time. With the membership cut-off in just four weeks, there’s little time to play coy. Yasir Naqvi mulled it over for a few days before
Continue readingCalgary Grit: The Name Game – Part Deux
Don’t believe every piece of quantitative evidence ever produced! Quebecers HATE this man! I’ve read a dozen opinion pieces by Quebec columnists over the past few months like this one from Lysianne Gagnon: Is Justin Trudeau really the Liberals’ best option? If the Toronto Liberal intelligentsia believe that Justin Trudeau,
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Fat Katz
“I’m sorry little boy. This is an Oilers-only campaign.” It appears Daryl Katz has a thing for crumbling dynasties: Billionaire Oilers owner Katz gave $430,000 to Alberta PCs Billionaire entrepreneur and Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz gave Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives nearly half a million dollars – almost one-third of the
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Time To Return Those “Dalton4Leader” T-Shirts
I can’t imagine anyone seriously thought he would run, but Dalton McGuinty has made it official that he will not be entering the Federal Liberal Leadership Race. While the race will not officially kick off for another 3 weeks, with each passing day it becomes more and more clear that
Continue readingCalgary Grit: OLP Leadership Mad Dash
While the federal Liberals chose a lengthy marathon to replace Michael Ignatieff, their provincial cousins sounded the starter’s pistol on a mad sprint this past weekend. Heck, maybe “roller derby” is the more apt sports analogy. The next Premier of Ontario will be selected on January 25th, but the date
Continue readingCalgary Grit: After 16 Years of McGuinty, What’s Next for OLP?
Sixteen years ago, Dalton McGuinty won the Ontario Liberal leadership race at 4:30 am, after 5 rounds of voting. Always one to defy expectations, McGuinty worked his way up from 4th place over the course of 9 hours in what was truly one of the wildest leadership conventions in Canadian
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Liberalberta
A green flag looks nice, but a white flag might have been more apt Via Daveberta, comes news that the Alberta Liberals will be rebranding themselves as Liberalberta. The change is expected to include a new website, logo, and party colours. The shift from red to green is no doubt
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Great Moments in Political Analysis
You’ve got to love anonymous Liberals: A source in one of the developing campaigns for two Ontario Liberals who have been laying groundwork for a federal leadership bid for several months said initial activity by McGuinty organizers has included extensive public opinion polling. “I’ve heard from a couple of sources
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Dalton McGuinty
A toast to McGuinty or a toast to his departure? Every pundit, commentator, and Joe Schmoe with a Twitter account has weighed in on Dalton McGuinty’s legacy today. The range of opinions is vast, as you might expect for any leader who has been in power for nearly a decade
Continue readingCalgary Grit: The Changing Face of Provincial Politics
Gary Doer, Bernard Lord, and Dalton McGuinty With Dalton McGuinty’s abrupt resignation, Stephen Harper has now outlasted every sitting Premier in power when he took office. Hell, Alberta has seen two regicides during this period: John Hamm (succeeded by Rodney MacDonald in 2006, who was defeated by Darrel Dexter in
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Ready Or Not, Here He Comes
Xavier Trudeau (left) has quickly emerged as the 2051 Liberal leadership frontrunner. Today marks the 12 year anniversary of the first time Liberals recognized there was something special about Justin Trudeau. Justin’s moving eulogy of his father brought Liberals to tears but, Liberals being Liberals, it also made many of
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Vote Out Anders – Part 84
Only Rob Anders has this theory, because he pays closer attention to the House of Commons than anyone else. At least when Rob Anders is sleeping, he can’t say anything too offensive: And so, [Anders] has a theory. “I actually think one of the great stories that was missed by
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Trudeau’s Challenging Cakewalk
With victory almost assured, Trudeau can work on his form, rather than swing for the knock-out Now that we have confirmation about what we’ve known all summer, and now that we’ve exhausted every conceivable boxing-is-politics metaphor, we can begin speculating about what the Justin Trudeau leadership campaign will look like.
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Liberal Leadership Races Through History (Part 2): An Elected King
Previously: Prologue, The 19th Century Spoiler Alert: He sees dead people…or at least, got advice from them. In 2009, delegates at the Liberal Party convention in Vancouver voted overwhelmingly to choose the party’s next leader using a one-member-one-vote system. This effectively killed the grand old leadership convention, a system the
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Meet David Merner
David Merner, or as he will soon be known to Canadians watching Liberal leadership debates – “that guy standing next to Justin Trudeau” On Sunday, long shot Liberal leadership candidate David Merner sat down for brunch with a few Toronto area bloggers, for an informal chat about the future of
Continue readingCalgary Grit: The Table Stakes
Forget Mark Carney. We need “electable” candidates like Jim Karygiannis in this race! Now that we know who can run for Liberal leader (namely, anyone with $75,000 and 300 signatures), the question becomes who should run: “We have to be careful not to think that somebody who wants to raise
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Edgar Peter Lougheed 1928-2012
Peter Lougheed helped Alberta come of age in the 70s I’ll leave the extended eulogies for those who knew the man and lived through his heyday as Alberta Premier. What I will say is that Lougheed, despite being in politics long enough to make a lot of enemies, is one
Continue reading