2013 The Year Of Trudeau

As the Liberal Party prepares to begin it's latest leadership race, polls show that Justin Trudeau could win a majority government in the next election if he is crowned leader. This all but guarantees his coronation this spring. The other leadership candidates would be advised not to borrow too much money in a futile race with an all but certain outcome. While I might have trouble believing these polling results, their mere existence will unquestionably be enough to put Justin over the top. He'll get the lion's share of the media spotlight for the foreseeable future, probably more than NDP leader Thomas Mulcair.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of these 40% of Canadians who would vote for a Trudeau led Liberal Party are saying so just on the nostalgia of name recognition, and how many have actually been following Justin's career in parliament? Many of us who have been following his career in the House of Commons closely have unfavourable opinions of the kid. He has a temper, a tendency to speak of himself in the third person, and he holds policy positions that are farther to the left than most viable candidates. If he had a dog named Kyoto, it wouldn't surprise me.

How will Thomas Mulcair handle a Trudeau victory? The two will never need to work together to collapse the government, since we have a majority and the next election will be on Stephen Harper's terms. There is no question that a resurgence of the Liberal Party will take a giant bite out of the NDP caucus, and one assumes that Mr. Mulcair would indeed like to become Prime Minister. Does Tommy Boy play nice, or does Tom play to win? Your guess is as good as mine.

In the meantime, I'm assigning a 95% probability that Justin Trudeau will be the next leader of the Liberal Party. Who wins the next federal election? That is still too far away to start making predictions.

CRTC Fines Liberal Party For Illegal Robocalls

It is nice to see that the Liberal party has been fined for making illegal and misleading robocalls during the last election in the riding of Guelph, breaking election rules. Interesting though that the penalty is coming from the broadcast regulator, and not the electoral regulator (which did not consider the matter worth investigating). Elections Canada is far too pre-occupied with the hunt for Pierre Poutine to actually reprimand the third place party for breaking the rules. The CRTC seems to take the enforcement of rules and regulations more seriously. But hey, what's wrong with paid partisan phone calls pretending to be from a regular citizen and not from a political party? Some might call that fraud, others might call it an accidental misunderstanding.

Don't forget, Valeriote had the biggest vote gain of any Liberal in Canada over 2008. He jumped from 32% to 43% while his party was decimated, his leader defeated. Whatever Frank did, you can't argue that he got strong results. With Liberals collapsing all around him in apocalyptic fashion, Frank gained ground. Good job Frank.

Judge Overturns Etobicoke Election Result

The results of the 2011 federal election has been overturned in the riding of Etobicoke Centre by an Ontario judge because Elections Canada workers at one specific polling location had inadequate knowledge of Canadian electoral law. The people trained by EC made up their own rules, and now the Conservative who won is paying the price. Less than 100 people were allowed to vote at the wrong location, but because the riding was won by less than 100 votes, the result has been thrown out. It should be noted that we have no idea how these people voted. They could very well have all voted for the defeated Liberal candidate, but tens of thousands of votes have now been thrown in the trash because EC workers f**ked up. This is a black eye for Elections Canada, and if we're going to start challenging the competency of their workers nationally, this is only the tip of the iceberg. This ruling should be appealed to the Supreme Court before we go and throw out thousands of legal votes because EC botched 79 registrations.

Fraud was not a factor in the judge's decision; "we need to be assured that those who vote are qualified to do so. We need to be confident that those who receive a ballot have been identified as persons who are on the official list of electors or who have registered". So if election workers in several ridings also circumvented the vouching/registration rules, do those results also need to be discarded before Canadians lose faith in their democracy? As the judge said "if we give up these foundations of our electoral system, we are risking a loss of confidence in our elections and in our government". Personally, I haven't lost faith in the government, I've lost faith in Elections Canada and their ability to teach electoral law to their army of temporary workers.

Overturning Election Results

One year after Canadians elected a Conservative majority government,there is one court challenge trying to overturn the results in one riding, Etobicoke Center, which was won by the Tories. The basis for this legal challenge is not allegations of Tory robocalling or fraud, but rather the incompetence of Elections Canada workers who did not properly understand our country's electoral law. The law says that you must vote at a designated poll location on election day, but there is a common misconception that you can show up to vote anywhere of convenience. This can lead to naive (though often well intentioned) election workers attempting to circumvent the law allowing them to vote in the wrong location. Typically this would be done either by an improper registration/revision or illegal vouching.

In Etobicoke the registration forms are either missing or never existed. Allegedly people were also being told at that location that they could vote in the box with the shortest line, and if people were doing so than many were voting in boxes where their name was not on the list; which would require corroborating incompetence by the DROs,  poll clerks and poll supervisors in addition to the information/registration officers. Now a Conservative MPs victory is being challenged in court because election workers did not do their jobs properly. The Tory has the most to lose, but make no mistake, it is Elections Canada on trial.

Has a judge ever overturned a federal election result? I'm not sure that you could just void all the results from that specific poll location, throwing away thousands of legal votes because of a few dozen improper registrations/vouchings. Can a judge force a byelection in a riding because workers at a given location screwed up? If that's the case, there's probably 100 other MPs who should be concerned for their jobs. In a perfect world, election workers would know election rules and perform their duties accordingly. Unfortunately when dealing with a large temporary workforce assembled and trained in a short period of time, you are going to get mistakes, in some place more than others. Is this sufficient to force a byelection?

Tory Majority; One Year Later

As we reach the one year anniversary of the Canadian Conservative party winning majority control of parliament, how would you rate this first year of Tory majority government? Do you approve, disapprove, or are you neutral? Much has been accomplished, and there is still 3 years remaining with lots of time on the agenda. Some would argue that democracy is being slowly ripped away from us, others would say the government is doing a far better job than the alternative ever could. Kind of depends who you talk to.

Lessons For British Columbia's 2013 General Election

The BC Liberal Titanic is slowly sinking, as the NDP easily won 2 byelections in the province on Thursday. When you break down the numbers, the Liberals lost votes to both the NDP and Conservatives. Christy Clark will certainly try to blame this result on the Tories while attempting to scare monger for the next election, but the truth of the matter is that her party is bleeding votes in all directions, right and left. People like Chuck Strahl and Stockwell Day endorsing Christy's party have only delayed the inevitable Liberal demise, they can't stop it. After 3 straight majorities, the people are growing sick of the governing party. People want change. If Day and Strahl want to play the roles of the band playing the happy music as the Titanic slowly sank, the people of BC are going to pay a price because not enough people will get onto a life boat before it is too late.

The BC Conservatives saw a substantial increase in their vote totals over the last election, so anyone trying to portray this as a "disappointment" for the fledgling party set the expectations too high. The Tories went from 7% and 0% to 25% and 15%. But hey, if people want to call massive increases in vote totals as a "disappointment", then so be it, even when the party bleeding votes in all directions has struck an iceberg. Chilliwack and Port Moody, both went Tory federally with 58% and 55% respectively in the 2011 federal election. The BC Tories are growing while the BC Liberals are dying. If you are a pragmatic right winger in this province, to which should you look to for hope next year? The answer certainly is not Christy Clark. The party which brought us the carbon tax and the HST needs to be replaced.

BC Byelections Thursday

Just a reminder to the people of Chilliwack-Hope and Port Moody-Coquitlam to get out Thursday and vote in those BC provincial byelections for the Conservative candidates. These are strong right leaning ridings who otherwise vote Liberal provincially out of fear of the NDP, but the Christy Clark party is mortally wounded and doomed to lose the next general election. The sooner you abandon ship for a fresh new start, the better. It starts Thursday. Advance polls saw a significant increase in turnout, which tends to be a bad sign for the incumbent party. It's time for all the former Socreds to pick up and move to a new home with the BC Tories. The Liberals have passed their expiration date, and are surviving on borrowed time. Christy originally wanted a quick election to get a mandate from the people, until she discovered that the people don't much like her, now she'll delay as long as possible. Let's send a message.

Boneheaded Election Mistake

A piece of advice to anyone running for public office, there are smart things to say and incredibly stupid things to say. For example; going on the radio and saying that the colour of your skin gives you an advantage over your opponent is among the dumbest things any candidate could do in an election campaign. That's what happened today yesterday in Alberta, which has a chance to derail Wildrose momentum. I'm a fan of Danielle Smith. I think she'd make a great Premier and a strong candidate to one day run for federal Tory leadership. I'm willing to bet she's mightily pissed off at Ron Leech for his comments, which could jeopardize their chances of usurping a provincial political dynasty. The media has already been trying to paint her as a Canadian Sarah Palin, which is ridiculous (one is a Libertarian, the other is a hardcore social conservative). Even clowns like John Ibbitson have been on television saying "having an arch-conservative in Alberta is bad for Stephen Harper", which is asinine. How on earth is a Redford better for the Prime Minister than Smith?

When Alberta does go to the polls, I'll be cheering for Danielle to be the next Premier, but I'd like to see Leech taken off the ballot if it is not too late to name a replacement.

Pierre Poutine Recorded "Vote Liberal" Message

In an interesting turn of events, the infamous "Pierre Poutine" (allegedly responsible for the supposedly "greatest electoral fraud in Canadian history") also recorded a message supporting Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote in Guelph. I'm not sure why a Conservative operative would want to encourage people to vote Liberal, but the recording is attached to the account. Batman and Robin (aka Maher and MacGregor) have theorized that the purpose of the call (which was recorded but never sent out) was intended to annoy Liberal supporters. This argument is a bit hypocritical considering the Liberals themselves sent out thousands of robocalls encouraging people to vote Liberal, not all of which were legal according to election law. If sending out robot calls saying "vote Liberal" will discourage liberals from voting, then why would the Liberals send out their own robocalls encouraging people to vote Liberal?

The true identity of Pierre Poutine remains a mystery, at least to the public. Supposedly Elections Canada already knows who he is and aren't releasing his identity until they have completed their investigation.

Regardless, this story just got a lot more interesting...

Good Luck To Bob Rae In Toronto-Danforth

Today the former riding of Jack Layton is holding a byelection, and I'd like to offer Bob Rae the best of luck. Isn't he the candidate? Funny how there are giant billboards advertising his face throughout the riding, meanwhile he's only supposed to be the "temporary leader". I'm willing to wager that there is not a single Nicole Turmel billboard in Jack's old stomping ground, which the NDP are likely to win no matter how often Bobby's ugly mug shows up on campaign ads. That's some kind of interim leader. Make a guy who promised to step down in a year the face of the party. Granted, some of us never believed Rae when he promised his leadership was only temporary. He wants to be Prime Minister. That's why he joined federal politics and defected to the Liberals. He's the man. He will be the Liberal leader in the next election, which I believe is what he wanted all along.

31,000 More Like 700

Anyone who had been confused into thinking there were 31,000 specific allegations of voter fraud from the last Canadian election, be aware that number is actually more like 700. The other 30,300 are just spam complaints from a left wing online form letter filled out by people who want an election mulligan and do not refer to specific incidents. The statement today by Elections Canada that they were investigating 700 "similar" complaints had several media members very excited that there are indeed some real allegations on top of just spam. Terry Milewski was pretty jazzed up when he reported the "new" information; and I say "new" with caution because we don't know when exactly all of these specific complaints were collected. There were dozens, if not hundreds of complaints to the Guelph EC office on election day regarding misleading calls. They have been investigating this for a while now.

Considering that Pat Martin has already informed us that 10,000 robocalls (which insiders would call a "blast") costs less than $200, that 700 number could and should be much larger, whether Pierre Poutine ordered multiple blasts or just one. The excitement shown by Batman and Robin (et all) was due largely to the confirmation that real complaints exist, and that it's not all just spam (even if 700 is less "sexy" than 31,000). Be careful not to hold your breath waiting to find out how many of the 700 "similar" allegations are actually complaining about real fraud.

Today In Robogate: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The latest conspiracy theory (so exciting only one Canadian news agency would report it) is that anonymous Conservatives have been trying to frame a young former staffer of being the infamous Pierre Poutine, which must surely be evidence of a systematic voter suppression campaign cover up. The left's new favourite investigative journalists Maher and MacGregor have found a "source" who speculates that the kid could not have acted alone, and had to have been helped by those now trying to frame him. It's all a bit contradictory, they propose either he's innocent of any wrong doing and guilty Tories are trying to frame him; or he's guilty and needed help from the Conservative Party (who then tried to turn him into a patsy, the next Lee Harvey Oswald). This suggests that Maher has no idea who Pierre Poutine is, he's just laying out alternate theories, keeping the story alive. The National Post was the only news organization that would publish this speculative garbage. If there were any truth to this Tory conspiracy story, the CBC would have been all over it like flies on shit.

Personally I think we should let investigators investigate and leave the poor kid alone. It is borderline irresponsible to engage in this kind of specific allegation before we know the facts. It would not be a surprise if Maher got a phone call from the young staffer's attorney today. The original article was altered in the middle of the day, or at least the headline was. The talking points remained largely the same. I feel sorry for the kid.

Are Maher and MacGregor writing all their work together now? Somebody in Blue Like You's comment section referred to them as Batman and Robin, which gave me a good laugh. That's awesome. I'm considering calling them Batman and Robin in all future blog posts on the subject.

Robogate Absurdity Continues

Guy Giorno really said it best tonight when he Tweeted to Stephen Wicary and Susan Delacourt "You assume we have records of things we didn't do. Elections Canada can take what it wants but CPC can't volunteer what it never had." This coming on the heals of the Liberals handing over phone records earlier this afternoon, which does seem an appropriate gesture considering they have already confessed to breaking electoral law regarding partisan phone calls during the writ. It would be interesting to know how much paper was shredded today in the office where these records were produced. The sooner EC completes its investigation, the sooner we can get to the bottom of these Liberal dirty tricks. I want to know if Frank Valeriote stole the election in Guelph.

The Conservatives have already voted unanimously with the opposition to increase Elections Canada's investigatory powers, and are not withholding any information from them. As of yet, the only party proven to have engaged in illegal activity in Guelph are the Liberals, despite what fake confessions you might have seen on Youtube today. So many people wanted so badly for Pierre Poutine to be a Conservative office worker that they jumped all over the fake clip before finding out its lack of authenticity. Even a Blogging Tory wrote a premature post "Pierre Poutine is Michael Sona". Come on people, this is getting ridiculous.

Who Benefited From Robocalls In Guelph?

There have been allegations of large scale "voter suppression" in the riding of Guelph in 2011, and the interesting question is who benefited the most from this alleged fraud? Of all the Liberals who ran in the last election, which candidate experienced the largest increase in popular vote? That's right, none other than Frank Valeriote in Guelph, who had 32% of the vote in 2008 and 43% in 2011, an 11% rise, the single largest increase of any Liberal in the country (while the party was plummeting nationally). Only 21 out of 308 Liberal candidates experienced a net gain (Central Nova doesn't count because they ran no candidate in 2008), and only 2 of those won their seat. So while 287 Liberals (93% of the party) experienced declines in popular vote, Valeriote hit a long home run with an 11% gain? Meanwhile in neighbouring ridings Cambridge and Wellington the Liberal vote fell 8% and 6% respectively. When you look at the statistics, Valeriote is the Barry Bonds of the Liberal Party.

Boy, if the Conservatives were trying to suppress the Liberal vote in Guelph, they sure did a phenomenally terrible job at it!

Robogate Protests: The Diminishing Returns Of Crying Wolf

The Canadian left's ability to attract protesters to their little gatherings sure has fallen a long ways since Prorogate (remember the outrage when we delayed the start of Parliament by a few weeks to host the Olympics) where the most lofty estimates guessed hundreds of thousands of demonstrators coast to coast to coast. This weekend they tried to organize a similar protest about allegations of Conservative voter suppression, and attendance barely even made a whimper. On Parliament Hill, about a dozen people showed up.

Ladies and gentlemen, your "Canadian spring"! Thank you to Richard Madan for snapping that picture from the CTV studio. This helps to illustrate that the people who have been continually pumping and promoting idiotic protests are experiencing the diminishing returns of turning issue after issue into a major national crisis. Eventually people stop listening to you. Even Occupy Canada drew less of a crowd than the prorogue protests, though it did attract a small number of young clowns who wanted to hang out for a camping trip to complain about capitalism and maybe shoot a little heroin. We're almost at the point where the number of media people covering the protests are outnumbering the actual protesters. Did "Stop Harper" girl even show up? Just a suggestion, perhaps the left should dial down the feigned outrage, otherwise if a wolf actually shows up, the average Canadian is not going to take you seriously.

Bob Rae Is Cool With Robocalls

Saturday Liberal leader Bob Rae was on the Roy Green Show to make it perfectly clear that there is nothing wrong with Robocalls. He's all in favour it, and defended the illegal robocalls made by the Liberal campaign in Guelph (where the caller pretended to be a regular concerned citizen, not a paid representative of the Liberal Party). Bob also backed off accusing the Conservative Party of wrongdoing; he simply wants what everyone on both sides wants, to find out who misdirected voters to incorrect voting locations. Anyone planning to show up to a Robogate protest with a sign "Democracy, not Robocracy", know that the Liberals are cool with Robocracy (even if the calls violate election law), so long as it is issue based.

To be fair, Roy Green did not handle the interview particularly well. He kept quoting Dean Del Mastro and then when Bob tried to debate the points, Roy kept say "I'm just telling you what he said" instead of engaging him in a conversation. I suppose Roy was trying to get Rae to respond to what Del Mastro had said earlier on the program, and Bob kept answering questions with questions; except to say that he was entirely in favour of robocalling during a campaign. So if anyone out there is upset that they received a robocall in the last election, the opposition parties are not proposing making robocalls illegal. They are only outraged about specific robocalls of which no evidence currently exists is connected to the Conservative Party. Bob might have been premature calling this a "Nixonian moment" for Stephen Harper. The "if anybody did it, it's these guys" argument alone is not adequate ground for a conviction in a court of law.

The Liberals have said that Elections Canada is aware of their illegal calls. I'm interested to know if there was a fine or penalty issued? Did they raid the Liberal campaign office?

Liberal Illegal Robocalls Not As Big Of A Story

Interesting that the Liberals have been caught making illegal robocalls in the controversial riding of Guelph, but the story is noticeably absent from the CBC Politics page. The big headline is a request to investigate Julian Fantino's election finances. It would appear that confessed Liberal "dirty tricks" just isn't as interesting a news story as allegations of Tory "dirty tricks". Then again, the Liberals are in 3rd place and not promising to cut the CBC's budget by 10%, so I can see where they might get bumped down the priority list. Does anyone care about the Liberal Party anymore? Perhaps when the story broke this afternoon, the CBC online editors had already gone home for the weekend? Somehow I doubt that Evan Soloman will be leading his show with this on Monday. We'll see how many of the 31,000 "complaints" (if we can call them that) collected by Ian Chapstick and friends were actually "complaining" about robocalls ordered by the opposition parties.

Protests have been planned for this weekend in cities across the country. The Robocall protests to date have not mustered much attendance, but we'll see if this new information on Liberal dirty tricks helps boost the numbers. Will there be any signs demanding an end to Liberal dirty tricks? I won't hold my breath...

Today's poll question, should there be a byelection in Guelph, where the Liberals won handily by using dirty tricks?

Is The Media Slowly Uncovering Elections Canada Incompetence?

Over this past week the opposition and the media have been hammering the Tories with allegations and speculation of large scale election fraud, and their relentless "digging for the truth" may be about to uncover large scale election incompetence by Elections Canada's army of temporary low wage workers. For example, CBC's Terry Milewski reported today on several hundred incomplete or bogus registration forms in the riding office of Eglington Lawrence, where Joe Oliver defeated Joe Volpe (of course you might remember Joe Volpe, who formerly registered dead people to support his Liberal leadership campaign). The accusations that the Conservative candidate was responsible for sloppy paper work in the EC office started flying before anyone thought to point out that Elections Canada is responsible for ensuring that registration forms are properly completed with proof of ID provided before they add that voter to the list of electors. This is not Joe Oliver's fault, but that inconvenient truth is absent from Milewski's investigative report.

If Elections Canada registration forms are suddenly going to fall under the media's watchful scrutiny, be prepared for errors and mistakes numbering in the thousands (I'd recommend looking into the riding of Libby Davies in East Vancouver for starters). EC would much rather investigate allegations of misleading robocalls than expose their own mistakes. That is not to paint all election workers with the same brush, but we are talking about a work force of thousands with varying levels of competence. There's an idiot in every room and election law is complex and continually evolving. If we start a full investigation into botched or incomplete registration forms, this is going to extend far beyond a single Toronto riding, and the black eye will belong to Elections Canada, not the Conservative party. If we find that most of this "greatest electoral fraud in Canadian history" was actually primarily Elections Canada f**k-ups; I won't hold my breath waiting for an apology from Pat Martin or any of the other dipshits so eager to jump to conclusions before there exists any evidence of wrong doing by the Tories.

I don't often recommend people read Milewski's work, but if you scroll down and read the comments, it just might make you sick to your stomach.

The Sanctity Of The Voter Information Card

For those who do not already know, that Voter Information Card you receive in the mail that tells you where to vote is printed out in the first week of the election campaign. They print out a whole bunch of mailing labels, a whole bunch of cards with poll locations all them, and then bring in an army of low wage temp workers to stick the proper label on the proper card. There are thousands of workers sticking labels on millions of VIC cards in a rush to get them to Canada Post by the end of week two, and mistakes happen. Thousands are returned by the post office to EC riding offices for a variety of reasons, be it incorrect address or the elector being deceased. Most of the temporary workers are efficient and effective workers, but there is always at least one absent minded, seemingly competent, worker in that room.

During the last election, Elections Canada changed 127 poll locations during the campaign (and at a national average of about 900 voters per location), that would mean that roughly 115,000 voters (give or take 10,000) had their poll locations changed mid election. How did EC inform all of these people that their polls had changed? They can't call everyone because they don't have every voter's phone number (that is not mandatory information, and many people don't want to volunteer it). The best thing they can do is mail out new VIC cards, hope they arrive in time and that the elector shreds the old one. It does seem strange to instruct the parties not to call people to inform them that a poll location had been changed. That doesn't help get the vote out. Changing any poll location will create a mass of confusion among those affected, so when you had the media last week reporting on alleged "massive electoral fraud", anyone who received a phone call they didn't like or were informed that poll locations had changed, suddenly thinks they might have been the victim of attempted fraud (with the real kick in pants being that the overwhelming majority of complainants actually did get to vote).

The Curious Case Of "Pierre Poutine"...

Today's poll question; Who is Pierre Poutine? He's the anonymous figure who seems to be at the heart of Robogate. As the authorities conduct a proper investigation we should find out his true identity. If and when that becomes public, who will he turn out to be? A Conservative, Liberal, Dipper, Anarchist, Marxist, Media member, Green, foreign spy, Al Qaeda, Taliban, an American activist, or do you think that we will never know? The hyperbole regarding Robogate has been insane. The allegations warrant an investigation by the proper authorities, more the police than Elections Canada, and I'd like to know more about the EC riding office in Guelph last April. Something smells fishy, in my professional opinion.

So who is Pierre Poutine? Might as well make a prediction before we find out the truth, assuming we ever do. I'm voting he's a random Anarchist. I'd be shocked if he were a prominent Tory insider.