There’s no doubt that the trumped-up story about Nycole Turmel’s one-time Bloc membership reflects the inevitable first real pile-on against the NDP in its new role as Official Opposition. But it’s worth noting that the NDP also has an opportunity to t…
Continue readingTag: quebec
RedBedHead: Nycole Turmel & The Media’s B.S. Loyalty Test
This is a story that isn’t a story.
NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel has a long history as a union activist and progressive. She was president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada for a number of years and can point to a significant victory for …
Continue readinggay persons of color: Watch: Pink Balls in Montreal’s Gay Village – Summer 2011
This is a fantastic video highlighting landscape architect Claude Cormier’s “Les Boules Roses” (The Pink Balls), 170,000 pink resin balls fastened to wires strung out at different levels and through the trees forming a long pink canopy suspended for su…
Continue readingTrashy's World: Quebec or Bosnia : who has safer public infrastructure?
Honestly, after reading this, I think I’d take Bosnia over one of the Montreal bridges, overpasses or tunnels… What a shame. And disgrace. But look y’all, before we in the RoC start feeling all smug-like, start looking at the condition of some of the streets etc. in your neck of the woods. Many of us […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On non-news
No, it isn’t news that the Cons tried unsuccessfully to recruit Thomas Mulcair around the time when he decided instead to run for the NDP. But for those looking for an actual topic worth discussing, what does it say that the Cons’ idea of a “gotcha” is…
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Over 400 “Friends for Life” to thank as they cycle along the shores of my gene pond, river, and canals!
There is some hope that this near-historic hot weather will return to “normal hot” by Sunday. I have no doubt that this will be a great relief to all involved in the annual Friends for Life Bike Rally which leaves Toronto that morning on …
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Maybe We Should Have Gone in 2009
I’ve been thinking aloud recently about whether or not the Liberal Party would have been put into a better position post-election if said election was held during the fall of 2009, rather than the spring of 2011.You of course remember what that was, ri…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: A Canadian Republic (with a new anthem to boot)
It is worth remembering, every once in a while, that Canada remains a constitutional monarchy. Precisely because the monarchy has no de facto power, most of us – myself included – rarely give it much thought and when we do it is of a mild form of bemus…
Continue readingArt Threat: CTV’s Quebec City bureau chief Kai Nagata tells why he quit his job
Kai Nagata was CTV’s bureau chief in Quebec City at 24 years of age. That was until he left the world of centrist journalism earlier this week and revealed his reasons and his criticisms of the state of mainstream news in Canada on his blog Freedom 24 . His bold truth-telling hits to the core of how Canadian […]
Continue readingDeSmogBlog - Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science: Canada Causes Cancer: Government & Industry Collude to Keep Asbestos Off UN Hazardous Chemical List
asbestos-bangladesh.jpg
Last week, the Canadian government successfully and unilaterally stonewalled efforts to list chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous chemical at a United Nations conference in …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Fund-Raising Review By Province – NDP
Following up on my previous post, let’s take a look at the NDP’s partial fund-raising numbers from 2007 to 2010. (I’ve kept the 2010 data in the chart as an FYI, but a keen-eye reader notes that we shouldn’t compare to previous years’ data since it reflects quarterly returns rather than annual ones.)
Prov/Reg | 2007 $ | 2007 % | 2008 $ | 2008 % | 2009 $ | 2009 % | 2010 $ | 2010 % |
AB | $307,001.80 | 10.31% | $406,575.72 | 9.23% | $307,350.79 | 10.01% | $143741.94.50 | 9.44% |
BC | $805,217.20 | 27.04% | $1,109,104.94 | 25.18% | $680,108.02 | 30.22% | $504,443.60 | 33.13% |
MB | $148,937.94 | 5.00% | $251,361.54 | 5.71% | $174,442.71 | 5.68% | $64,005.27 | 4.20% |
NB | $34,410.77 | 1.16% | $42,393.92 | 0.96% | $38,635.19 | 1.26% | $13,144.86 | 0.86% |
NL | $13,894.00 | 0.47% | $22,273.00 | 0.51% | $22,290.00 | 0.73% | $11,340.00 | 0.75% |
NS | $105,734.34 | 3.55% | $155,442.45 | 3.53% | $110,203.00 | 3.59% | $37,112.50 | 2.44% |
NT | $7,146.00 | 0.24% | $21,542.00 | 0.49% | $9,433.00 | 0.31% | $2,150.00 | 0.14% |
NU | $2,830.00 | 0.10% | $2,420.00 | 0.05% | $4,018.00 | 0.13% | $2,040.00 | 0.13% |
ON | $1,199,357.72 | 40.28% | $1,841,233.15 | 41.81% | $1,364,679.90 | 44.46% | $583,063.67 | 38.29% |
PE | $7,145.00 | 0.24% | $8,300.82 | 0.19% | $5,952.00 | 0.19% | $2,470.00 | 0.16% |
QC | $94,120.42 | 3.16% | $120,570.19 | 2.74% | $65,811.41 | 2.14% | $30,502.58 | 2.00% | SK | $243,518.12 | 8.18% | $411,029.18 | 9.33% | $278,655.30 | 9.08% | $124,664.37 | 8.19% | YT | $8,300.92 | 0.28% | $11,703.92 | 0.27% | $8,174.92 | 0.27% | $3,887.34 | 0.27% | Total | $2,977,614.23 | n/a | $4,403,950.83 | n/a | $3,069,754.24 | n/a | $1,522,571.13 | n/a |
The NDP received $23,019.67 in other donations included in La Presse’s dataset; as with the Cons, that extra amount looks to consist generally of donations from Canadians living outside the country. And another $1,237,818.50 was linked to a province but not classified by year.
I’ll note that the above chart doesn’t include one of the ways I played around with the data, which was to compare the parties’ 2008 donations to their votes in each province. Based on the Cons’ numbers alone I wasn’t entirely sure what to look for, but there are some rather interesting comparisons to be drawn between the Cons and the NDP:
– Both parties posted their top fund-raising take per vote in…the Yukon, with the Cons raking in $11.85 per vote and the NDP $9.17. The Northwest Territories also rank near the top of both parties’ lists, but Nunuvut breaks the territorial trend as the Cons’ lowest per-vote source of income.
– The Cons’ most efficient province for fund-raising is predictably the one where they hold a stranglehold on the popular vote, with $4.53 finding its way into party coffers for every vote won in Alberta. Next in line were B.C. ($3.89), Ontario ($3.69), Manitoba ($3.52) and Saskatchewan ($3.36).
– For the NDP, by far the most efficient province for fund-raising compared to votes received (and the lone one where it exceeded the Cons on that measure) was Saskatchewan, with $3.83 raised by the NDP for each vote it won. Surprisingly to me at least, Alberta ranks second at $2.52, followed by B.C. ($2.37), Manitoba ($2.24) and Ontario ($1.96) – making the fund-raising bases substantially the same for the NDP and the Cons, even if they’ve had varying success in cultivating them.
– Meanwhile, the NDP had two provinces far below the rest in dollars raised per vote. In Newfoundland and Labrador ($0.34), the party’s vote was itself based largely on Danny Williams’ ABC campaign, making for an obvious explanation for the disconnect. But even that effect couldn’t win the bottom place on the NDP’s list of dollars raised per vote – which leads us back into the discussion of the NDP generally.
While I noted that the Cons’ returns in Quebec has always been less than impressive, the NDP’s (at least for the years covered by La Presse’s data) have been substantially lower…and declining by the year as a proportion of the NDP’s overall fund-raising. And even in the 2008 election which saw the party make modest gains with a 12% showing at the polls and its first ever general-election seat, the NDP raised only 27 cents for every Quebec vote it won.
Which isn’t to say that the NDP can’t indeed build up its capacity in Quebec now that it has 59 MPs and a majority of popular support to work with. And one can’t say that the model of working toward winning votes based on relatively soft support which doesn’t yet reflect a donor base has been anything but a stunning success.
But there’s an awfully long way to go for the NDP to turn what had previously been its least efficient fund-raising generator into a national power base. And I’ll be highly curious to see whether the party’s fund-raising base shifts substantially based on its Quebec success.
I’ll note one other trend in the NDP’s data, as the close relationship between the NDP and its provincial sections looks to have a significant influence on how the party raises its money. The 2007 and 2009 years offer an ideal basis of comparison since the dollars raised are such a good match, and they show an almost unbroken pattern: where a provincial party faces an election (including Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in 2007, and B.C. in 2009), the federal party’s fund-raising is lower for the year.
And the exception that proves the rule is Nova Scotia – where despite the euphoria of winning a provincial election for the first time and the added attention from hosting the party’s federal convention in Halifax, the federal NDP improved on its 2007 fund-raising numbers by less than $5,000.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On direct representation
In discussing how the new Parliament has functioned so far, Charlie Angus makes an important point which hints at how the Bloc lost touch with Quebec – as well as where the NDP has a massive opportunity:NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) ag…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Riding the wave
A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that the NDP’s level of Canada-wide support is in line with other parties who have been seen as national contenders for government, in direct contrast to the Canadian Alliance at the point when it saw a merger as ne…
Continue readingImpolitical: Quebec fallout still unfolding
According to this report last night, another PQ MNA, Benoit Charette, is about to leave the party and that will be announced today: “Au tour du député de Deux-Montagnes de quitter le PQ.” He is said to be close to Francois Legault. For non-Quebecers,…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Still Progressive and family friendly: evaluating Québec’s income tax policy
University of Sherbrooke economist and fiscal specialist Luc Godbout with Suzie St-Cerny and Michaël Robert-Angers has just published a timely research paper evaluating the net fiscal impact on households of Québec’s income tax system.Timely because, as discussed here be Armine Yalnizyan recent data from stats can shows that though globally income inequality has risen during […]
Continue readingQui est pour un référendum sur la réforme du Sénat?
Qui aurait bien de retour en mai, après que les conservateurs du Canada baigné dans leur glorieuse victoire sur les libéraux autant haï dans l’élection fédérale, que l’un des plus grands thèmes de confusion et de désaccord interne au parti ser…
Continue readingThey Call Me "Mr. Sinister": Another Gee I Wish Quebec Would Go Post
From a right wing columnist. This is becoming a recurring theme. If only Quebec wasn’t included and man the Conservatives would really have a majority! These guys are the PQ’s natural allies.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On shocking transformations
I suspect it’ll be quite some time before we see an end to stories about how the NDP’s Quebec breakthrough means that it’ll have to radically change direction. But let’s put the spin in perspective.In their first opportunity to introduce bills as Offic…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Gerald Caplan has a modest suggestion to ensure the Senate doesn’t do any more avoidable harm to Canada’s democracy:That we have no need for a second house of Parliament of any kind is the first proposition h…
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: PM Inspects Quebec Flood Zone
Inspired by these stories: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Harper+miss+historic+moment/4900101/story.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/06/harper-quebec-flooding.htmlhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/05/mic…
Continue reading