NDP Leadership Power Rankings
Last month I looked at how NDP leadership candidates stacked up on various metrics, in a mostly futile attempt to handicap the race. With the Dippers’ vote a week away,…
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Alberta Poll Soup
The expectation in Alberta is that Alison Redford’s first budget will pass by March 21, with the writ dropped March 26 for an April 23 vote. As for the expected…
Time for a Full Inquiry, for Dean’s Sake
Dean Del Mastro, March 1: “We learned that Joe Volpe paid over $25,000 to Prime Contact, a calling company with offices in North Dakota. These calls were made on behalf…
The First Look at Redford’s Playbook
That sound you hear is the unofficial starting gun on Alberta’s 2012 election, as the PCs launch their first round of negative ads, under the familiar “Danielle Smith: Not Worth…
Extra! Extra! No New Taxes!
With an election call expected within weeks, the Alberta PCs are blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their pledge to not raise taxes. Well, let me rephrase that – the…
Dean Del Mastro: Knower of Everything
On previous episodes of Dean Del Mastro: Knower of Everything, Dean didn’t trust the survey results in a Peterborough newspaper poll, so he commissioned his own robo-push poll, in an…
The Dippers Vote
Ballots have arrived to thousands of NDP members, who now have until March 24th to vote for a leader. Originally, the field reminded me a lot of the 2006 Liberal…
Damage Control
It remains to be seen just how involved the Conservative Party was in Robocon, but it certainly doesn’t help that they can’t keep their story straight. It was all Michael…
The Six "S" of Scandal Stickiness
This time last year, the Tories found themselves engulfed in scandal – Carson, Contempt, In & Out, Oda… The opposition parties were licking their chops at the prospect of bringing…
Self Inflicted Wounds
With the return of Parliament, today was the first chance for the opposition to put the Tories’ feet to the fire on Robocon. Instead, it was the Liberals who would…
Demand Better
Whenever the opposition tried to raise “the democracy thing” during last spring’s campaign, the electorate responded with a shrug. Contempt of parliament, the in-and-out scandal, Bev Oda’s “not” problem…meh. People…
The Orange Trickle
According to Postmedia, NDP membership numbers have “skyrocketed“: NDP memberships skyrocket heading into leadership vote OTTAWA — The number of NDP members has increased by about 50 per cent in…
#TellVicEverythingExeptWhat’sInTheBill
After finally reading his own bill, it appears Vic Toews has decided to side with the child pornographers: Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he is surprised to learn that…
I love Canada…so long as I run it
Justin Trudeau raised a bit of a stir last week with his comments that he’d consider supporting Quebec separatism if the Harper government took Canada too far to the right.…
#TellVicEverything
The #TellVicEverything meme has exploded on Twitter today, in response to Vic Toews’ proposed legislation to force Internet service providers to monitor their customers’ online activities and turn the information…
The Drummond Report
The eagerly anticipated Drummond report has been released – if you’re into horror stories, by all means curl up by the fire and read the full 562 pages here. In…
Who will win the race for Stornoway?
Leadership races are tricky beasts to project, due to their insular nature. There are few meaningful polls, the media is being spun in twelve directions, and the air war rarely…
A Taste of the Danforth By Election
The by election in Toronto Danforth (or, as it must be referred to in every article on the subject, “Jack Layton’s old seat”) has been called for March 12 March…
This Week in Alberta: Redford’s First Budget
I’ve spent much of the past two days trying to draft a blog post on Alberta’s 2012 budget. After all, this was not only Allison Redford’s first budget, but a…
Mandatory Response
Lorne Gunter’s article on today’s release of short form Census data is so bad that it necessitates a response. Point-by-point: So the 2011 census results are being released today, or…