(1)Growing voter volatility means, other things equal, there is a greater margin of error; (2)lower turnout means you have to determine whether voters surveyed intend to vote; and (3) changing…
After last week’s speculation about an “ideal” election result, it is perhaps time to come down to Earth and realize that after a week of Christy Clark doing what she…
Last year’s provincial election in Alberta, and the 2011 federal election, show that the science of election polling is a bit like weather forecasting: something that is being knocked backwards…
I thought it was simply a stunning revelation last week that a mere graduate student, 28-year-old University of Massachusetts student Thomas Herndon, could so easily un-cover the economteric failures of…
I thought the prime minister gave an excellent speech in memoriam for Ralph. http://o.canada.com/2013/04/05/prime-minister-stephen-harpers-remarks-at-ralph-klein-memorial/ . BUT I am still right to ask: Did Martha and Henry completely pay off their…
As recently as 2009 B.C. Liberals were voting 80% against electoral reform , because they had become convinced that the system worked well for them: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/07/08/WhoKilledSTV/ It is difficult to…
I have three questions for Ralph Klein’s admirers in both of our major provincial parties. First, wasn’t it a good investment for federal and provincial governmentsto lavish money upon the…
I have seen several federal budgets cause more commotion than the one that came down in Ottawa last week. Yet there are several things about it that I find deeply…
Regardless of who wins the next provincial election, the subject of the Gateway pipeline will not go away. 1. Dix Will Need the Money. Current budget balance not assured of…
I am afraid that this may be the most significant result of the Liberal leadership contest: a leader who is not committed to changing the electoral system. As a young…
Yesterday’s awful Alberta budget, which pussyfoots around the deficit issue by dividing the budget into three separate accounts, avoided both raising taxes and having massive across-the-board cuts by going into…
Today’s call by Gordon Campbell’s former Chief of Staff Martyn Brown for Christy Clark to resign in order for the Liberals to rebuild raises an interesting question: how much difference…
{This was submitted as a column to the Anahim-Nimpo Messenger last month.–MC} Christy Clark could have won the May 2013 B.C. provincial election. I know that sounds strange—both because it…
“Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.” – Stephen Harper to a conservative American lobby group, in 1997.…
When asked what explained National Public Radio‘s successful growth of over 80% in viewership of its web page over the last year, Zach Brand, the organization’s Senior Technology Director, credited…
A scant 25 years ago, commercial considerations were viewed as “contaminating” the Olympic ideal. Now, they are viewed as being more important than 28 centuries of Olympic history. Consider this…
{The following column was originally written for the February Anahim-Nimpo Lake Messenger–MC} Are “Idle No More” protestors complaining too much? Cariboo-Prince George Conservative MP Dick Harris certainly seem to think…
Robert Fulford’s year-end musing in The National Post, “2012, the year when money somehow became unpopular” contains a predictably jaundiced view of two recent scholarly works about contemporary capitalism, What…
“The Defense Department is Bloated” “There is a Jewish Lobby” “The Iraq War was a Mistake” Such straight talk is surely to be welcomed in American defense policy. President Obama…
2013 will mark a decade since the Bush administration enacted the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Given the growth of the economy between 2001 and 2005,…
