Author: William Norman

The Liberal Scarf: "Limiting information" on oilsands probe demonstrates Harper government problems with both openness and the environment

This story out of The Star hits at two major problems of the Harper government – an inability to take environmental concerns seriously, and a desire to limit access to critical information by the media and citizens. “Environment Canada’s enforcement branch asked a spokesman to “limit information” given to reporters about

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The Liberal Scarf: "Limiting information" on oilsands probe demonstrates Harper government problems with both openness and the environment

This story out of The Star hits at two major problems of the Harper government – an inability to take environmental concerns seriously, and a desire to limit access to critical information by the media and citizens.

“Environment Canada’s enforcement branch asked a spokesman to “limit information” given to reporters about how long it took to launch a federal investigation into a serious Alberta oilsands leak last summer.

The comments were included in more than 100 pages of emails obtained by the Star that were generated in response to questions from journalists last summer about the mysterious leak in Cold Lake, Alta., that now totals about 1.2 million litres of bitumen emulsion, a mixture of heavy oil and water.
The incident itself was not publicly disclosed until a report by the Star in July 2013. More than 100 animals died near the site of the spill, which continues to release heavy oil above the surface, one year later….
Liberal environment critic John McKay said the case seems to be another example ofHarper’s government favouring one industrial sector over others, while attempting to keep news about spills and environmental damage “secret” for as long as possible.
“It is upsetting that the Harper government’s lack of transparency and disregard for our wildlife, water and environment is something we have come to expect,” said McKay, who represents Scarborough-Guildwood in Parliament.”
It is absolutely critical to develop Canada’s and Alberta’s natural resources in a responsible way to help grow the economy. But stories such as these do nothing to help the Harper government’s reputation as uncaring towards the environment, which has had a significantly negative impact on Canada’s trade relations with the United States and the ability to market Canada as a responsible energy power. Canada will not see it’s full economic potential from natural resources until we have a government that doesn’t see the economy and the need for strong environmental regulations and social licences as enemies, but as complimentary to ensure prosperity for all Canadians. 



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The Liberal Scarf: Joe Cressy: "[the next election] is going to won or lost based on seats where you’re taking on Tories." I agree, so let’s check the numbers

This graph has been making the rounds on social media to show growing support for the federal Liberals in by-elections across Canada, including Trinity-Spadina, where I was happy to do a bit of volunteering for Adam Vaughan.

Speaking of Trinity-Spadina, I’ve quoted NDP candidate Joe Cressy above from this article where the NDP tries to spin the rather negative by-election results it’s had under Mulcair.

Cressy’s full quote is:

“The next federal election will not be won or lost on the basis of a couple of seats in Canada where it’s the Liberals and the NDP squaring off. Rather, it’s going to won or lost based on seats where you’re taking on Tories,” Cressy said.

“The focus has to be and should be on taking out Harper, not focusing on the Liberals.” 

So, with that in mind, why don’t we actually look at the vote changes from the 2011 elections in by-elections in Conservative held seats since the last election?

Calgary Centre

NDP: -11%
Lib: +15

Con: -21%
Liberal vote shoots up 15%, to make the Calgary Centre by-election the best Liberal result in Calgary since 1997, as the Tory vote goes way down and the NDP vote declines by 11%, as they get less than 4% of the vote.
NDP: +5%
Lib: -1%
Con: -4%
Congrats NDP, you managed to increase your vote by 5% (still finishing 24% behind) during a by-election held when the federal Liberals were leaderless and the provincial Liberals were in the middle of a leadership race leaving the local campaign short of volunteers. Worth noting the provincial Liberals would go on to win the seat in the Ontario election, with the NDP back in third. 
So those two by-elections were held when Mulcair was leader, but the Liberals were still without a permanent leader. Let’s see what happens when Trudeau becomes leader:
NDP: -1
Lib: +9%
Con: -7%


The NDP vote dips slightly, but the Trudeau Liberals shoot up almost 10% and actually take a seat back from the Harper Conservatives.

NDP: -10
Lib: +23%
Con: -12%
In the ultra safe Conservative Provencher seat, the Liberal vote goes up by 23%, as the NDP vote crashes 10%, finishing with a deposit-losing 8.2% of the vote.
NDP: -18%
Lib: +37%
Con: -20%
Grit vote sky-rockets as a Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party goes from 4th place and 5% to coming within a few hundred votes of winning the riding. NDP vote absolutely craters to 7% for another lost deposit – despite the NDP holding one of the Brandon seats provincially for decades.
NDP: -6%
Lib: 13+%
Con: -9%
Another ultra-safe Conservative seat to be sure, but the Liberal vote share goes from less than 4% to 17%, while the NDP barely finishes ahead of the Christian Heritage Party for 4th place –  Mulcair’s NDP candidate only 3 votes ahead of the CHP with 4.2% of the vote.
NDP: -2
Lib: 25%

Con : -25%


Not quite the nail-biter as Brandon-Souris, but Liberal candidate Kyle Harrietha pulls in a solid 35% of the vote on a 25% increase, the best Liberal result in the riding since 1968. NDP at least manages to hang onto it’s deposit this time (a rarity with Mulcair as leader in Tory held ridings as we’ve seen) but the NDP does decline.

So what does that leave us then, when looking at the seats where the Liberals and NDP are going up against the Tories?




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The Liberal Scarf: Joe Cressy: "[the next election] is going to won or lost based on seats where you’re taking on Tories." I agree, so let’s check the numbers

This graph has been making the rounds on social media to show growing support for the federal Liberals in by-elections across Canada, including Trinity-Spadina, where I was happy to do a bit of volunteering for Adam Vaughan. Speaking of Trinity-Spadina, I’ve quoted NDP candidate Joe Cressy above from this article

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The Liberal Scarf: Assorted thoughts from the ground from a Liberal majority

Well, having had a few days to think about it, I had some scattered thoughts about the Ontario political scene in the aftermath of a Wynne majority government. I am so happy to have played a small part in it in York South-Weston. In no particular order, here are some things that have I’ve been thinking about since the election, with one point largely about each party.

  • People judge governments economic credentials and reliability based on job creation, not being deficit hawks for the sake of deficit hawking

“Jobs Not Cuts” was a simple but effective slogan the Liberal campaign was quick to start using to hammer Hudak once he announced he would be cutting 100,000 public service jobs as part of his platform. Balancing the deficit and bringing down the debt is important, as Kathleen Wynne and Charles Sousa have stated many times, but Ontario can’t afford to put people out of work and slash public services just to bring the budget to balance a year earlier, as Hudak promised. Liberals were able to tell a good message: vote Liberal, and you’ll have a government that protects health care and education as well as protecting good paying jobs that help the economy. This will benefit you and your family. Vote Hudak, and you’ll have a government that slashes services that impact your family, with no immediate benefit in your everyday life. Hudak’s math errors in the “Million Jobs Plan” didn’t help his economic credibility, neither did his attacks on “corporate welfare” while praising companies that had in fact partnered with governments (including Harper’s Conservatives) to create jobs. And speaking of Harper…

  • Hudak ran on a hard-right platform that was designed to fire up his base…it ended up firing up moderate voters to vote against him en masse

Paul Wells, while explaining why he supported the PC’s in this election explores some of the difference between Hudak’s conservative pitch this election which failed pretty spectacularly, and Stephen Harper’s conservative pitch, which won him a majority largely based on the kind of seats Hudak either failed to win from the Liberals or actually lost to the Liberals:

“Hudak, on the other hand, had to keep impressing the Ayn Rand League, thanks largely to his ever-shaky command of the party’s leadership. That’s why he put a big number on his public sector job-cut target, because he decided his target audience was people who think eliminating public sector jobs is always excellent. Compare and contrast: During the 2011 federal election, I worked hard to get a succession of federal Conservatives — Jim Flaherty, John Baird — to give me any indication of the scale of public sector job cuts the Harper government had in mind…

Nobody seriously doubts Stephen Harper is a conservative, so he can tell conservatives they have to wait. That’s why I saw Alison Redford’s Alberta Conservative victory over Danielle Smith’s Wildrose party as a vindication of the Harper style, even though a lot of Harper Conservatives supported Wildrose: because politics isn’t about scratching your swollen id. Harper’s conservatism is a broad and not always internally coherent coalition, and it spends a lot of time wondering when something exciting will happen. “

Stuff like this is also at the core of Wells’ The Longer I’m Prime Minister, basically arguing that Harper can afford politically to not govern as a Reform Party conservative because as long as it keeps delivering electoral results, the base will more or less be happy. Harper’s relative moderation and embrace of economic interventionism allowed him to campaign to a majority in 2011 with a message to Ontario voters that he could be trusted on the economy because he wasn’t radical, had created jobs, etc. Hudak instead campaigned on an unabashed vision of shrinking government that Harper has largely abandoned in the successful pursuit of electoral gain. Quite simply, the coalition of voters that would support Hudak’s hard-right, fiscal hawkishness simply isn’t big enough to form government, and Hudak’s assumptions that his own base would turn out were swamped by moderates who were turned off enough by his platform to get out to vote against him.

  • Horwath tried to expand her voter coalition a step too far, and while she made gains in some parts of the province, lost others
Looking at how much NDP results in Toronto fell, the letter that some NDP stalwarts send to Horwath mid-campaign can’t be judged as something trivial – plenty of traditional NDP supporters in Toronto 
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