"Liberals Unleash David McGuinty"

I'm sure every Tory MP lies in bed every night wide awake, afraid that one day they might have to face David McGuinty in the House of Commons. By appointing him House Leader, Mike Ignatieff is sending the message "they want to play tough they should watch who they wrangle with" or so a Liberal official told Jane Taber. He replaces Ralph Goodale, one of the most aggressive and vocal partisans in Parliament. From what I have seen in the legislature David McGuinty is a laid back nice guy compared to Ralph. If I were a House Leader, I would much rather negotiate with the hapless McGuinty than the vitriolic Goodale. I'm not exactly sure what John Baird is supposed to be afraid about.

Also, I am mourning the loss of John McCallum as Finance critic. I thought it was really awesome to have the speech slurring drunk in one of the opposition’s most important roles. Whatever requires Johnny to speak in public the most often, the better for the Tories. I also wonder what took Iggy so long to replace Ujjal as Defense critic. Do you think Bob Rae is disappointed that he wasn't named deputy?

Which Coalition Partner Has The Advantage?

Today's poll question is which coalition partner has the greatest advantage heading into the fall session of Canadian Parliament? The Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc stand plausibly poised to form government if the Conservatives win a 3rd minority term after the next election, or the less likely event that the Liberals manage to pull out a slim minority. Terms of agreement have already been negotiated by party elders, but it is unlikely that all three agree on the timing of the next election. The question is which has the most to gain if there is an election in the near future? If Jack thinks he can hold his existing seats or add new seats, he would be likely to risk an election in a confidence vote. I am uncertain what the polling numbers would have to be or how long the Liberals would have to sustain them before Ignatieff begins actively trying to collapse the government. I think the Liberals would need to be leading, and sustain it over a few weeks of polling by more firms than just Liberal donor Frank Graves.

Environmental Equilibrium

Have you noticed lately that every time there is any variance from expectation in the natural world, suddenly the voices on television are attributing it to climate change? Dolphins spotted off Vancouver Island, climate change. Bad sockeye run last year, great sockeye run this year, climate change. I'm wondering if these people appreciate that nature rarely exists in steady state equilibrium? Virtually all ecosystems cycle through good times and bad, good weather and bad, and just because something happens that you did not expect does not mean that the world is coming to an end. Dynamic mathematics shows that most natural data oscillates around equilibrium, it rarely stays locked in steady state. It warms, it cools, it warms, it cools, and so on and so forth. Seeing dolphins in Nanaimo doesn’t mean that New York will be 30 feet under water in 50 years.

The Green Party will not win a seat in the next election whenever it is. I would bet money on that.

Layton And Ignatieff

I will be most curious to see how NDP polling numbers evolve now that a number of pundits have been proclaiming Iggy's summer tour as a success that will have a lasting impact. Will the Liberals eat away at NDP support, or does Lucky Jack remain a bigger threat to Iggy than visa versa? If you see a poll with the Greens over 12%, I would not take it seriously. They have been losing membership amid internal turmoil, and Liberal donor Frank Graves remains the only pollster who seriously believes the Greens could win a seat right now.

But if Iggy is indeed going to see a Summer Tour bump in his polling numbers, how steady will Jack's numbers hold? He has a really good excuse for not doing a summer tour, as he has been fighting prostate cancer. One has to wonder if Jack's feel good story will eat away at the Liberal's compassionate left flank?

How Much Did The Liberal Summer Tour Cost?

One question that I don't hear many pundits asking as the Liberal bus tour draws to an end; is how much did this little adventure cost? Many are agreeing that the Liberal leader is better off having done the tour than had he vacationed in France. Shaking hands with thousands of Canadians should lead to a bump in the polls, but whether that's temporary or permanent remains to be seen. Iggy pop has a terrible polling record when Parliament is in session as Liberal leader, so his ability to sustain any momentum into day to day politics is rightly questionable. It is easier to show up at a BBQ than it is to whip your caucus into voting for your party's bill to fund foreign abortions.

Does anyone know how much was spent this summer by the Liberal Party? Were elected members able to expense any part of the Liberal tour to taxpayers? How much did they pay for that small bump in the polls? Can the Liberals hold at or near the 30% level into November and December? That will be the best indicator of whether or not we will face a spring showdown on the budget. I maintain my position that there will not be an election in 2010.

Trouble At The NHLPA?

If anyone else was paying attention yesterday when the National Hockey League Player's Association bowed to NHL demands to close the front-weighted salary loophole; you may be convinced as I am that there are big problems with the hockey player's union. They should have been fighting to allow these contracts to continue and could have fought a class action lawsuit on behalf of its members had the NHL voided previously approved contracts. The advantage to the players for allowing these contracts is very clear; it maximizes the amount of actual cash they can extract from a contract by front loading the payments. Their members would leave less money on the table when they retire before the expiration of the long-term deal should the loophole have been allowed to continue.

Some sportstalk radio conspiracy theorists are even suggesting that the NHL timed this to take advantage of the union's weakness, which may not be as crazy as it sounds. Something is wrong with the NHLPA that they did not fight a battle to continue this practice. I don't believe that the NHL ever intended to void Luongo's contract or Hossa's contract a year after they were approved. They threatened to void Marc Savard's contract, which was signed before he sustained a serious concussion and now his long term value has changed; and Savard's agent threatened to sue. I think that the NHL threatened to void those contracts to scare the union into accepting the terms of an amendment to the salary cap rules.

It is the only thing that makes any sense.

The Atwood Hypocrisy

Let me get this straight, Margret Atwood told the Globe and Mail that she supports censorship of a potentially right leaning Canadian news organization because of "what she sees as Mr. Harper’s pattern of silencing the voices of his critics". She wants to silence voices that have a different opinion than she does about politics because of what she perceives as our Prime Minister silencing the voices of those who do not agree with him. If that is not a steaming heap of hypocrisy, I don't know what is. The creation of a news network that favours one party over another is not silencing any voices, it is creating more voices. There will be more opinion in the public sphere, and artists should be encouraging free speech instead of demanding censorship just because they disagree with an opinion. There are plenty of voices favourable to the Liberal Party in the national media. I don't hear Margie demanding that their voices be silenced.

This network would create more jobs for media members and more competition in the media market. When the establishment blowhards like Don Newman come out attacking more voices in the national conversation, it isn't about principles it is about ratings and competing for audience share. Isn't it bad enough that the CRTC mandates that people must get the CBC? Subscribers have to have the CBC in their cable packages. That's the law. They make you buy it. But giving people the option to purchase a product that they want watch because it is more likely to be consistent with their opinion; suddenly the sky is falling?

Why are "artists" supporting censorship?

Gemini Award Nominated Evan Soloman

Congratulations to the CBC's Evan Soloman for being nominated for Best Host or Interviewer in a News Information Program at the 2010 Gemini awards. If you are anything like me, your first reaction to this news might be "if E-Solo was nominated, I wonder who his competition is?" The answer is all fellow CBC employees. Other Canadian networks do the news, but the CBC is the only one that matters to the Gemini awards. If you read through all 28 pages of nominations, you will see many categories dominated by the CBC, which ironically is one of the worst rated Canadian networks (certainly when weighted against the number of Canadian televisions that have access to it). Needless to say there are many frivolous awards available, with a whole lot of nominees that I had never heard of before.

If this is seriously the list of our best hosts of news information programs in Canada, then what does that say about the quality of news information in Canada? With a list of nominees this weak, it does say something that Jane Taber couldn't even get nominated for Question Period. I do like Amanda Lang, though I confess that it is not because of her excellence in journalism...

Best Host or Interviewer in a News Information Program

Heather Hiscox - CBC News Now
Erica Johnson - CBC News: Marketplace
Amanda Lang - The Lang & O'Leary Exchange
Bob McKeown - CBC News: The Fifth Estate
Evan Solomon - Power and Politics

Liberals Need To Reset "Harper Quebec Clock"

Yesterday as Jane Taber was regurgitating Liberal talking points in another asinine editorial at the Globe and Mail, she (or Ignatieff whom she was paraphrasing) made an error. "The Liberal Leader criticized Mr. Harper’s lack of ubiquity this summer, noting the announcement the Prime Minister made in Quebec Wednesday was the first time he’d been in the province in 110 days (not that he’s keeping track)." This summer the Prime Minister did something that he very rarely does, he took a vacation at the end of July. Where in this whole wide beautiful country did he decide to spend his vacation? The Province of Quebec. They are trying to suggest that he is neglecting Quebec and doesn't want to spend any time there, despite the fact that he spent a very rare vacation in the Province among Quebecers.

"This is the first time he'd been in the province in 110 days" is not an accurate statement. How many times is Jane Taber going to repeat this talking point as she sets the agenda at the Globe and Mail?

Liberal Comedy Retreat

Once again September is upon us, where Liberal Leader Mike Ignatieff is celebrating the end of his summer comedy tour by gathering with his esteemed caucus to perform a few more stand-up comedy shows before Parliament resumes. You may recall that last year at the Liberal comedy (err caucus) retreat he performed a hilarious satire of a responsible leader when he personally decided that he wanted to try and force and election less than a year after the last one. The end result of that failed strategy was pie in his face, as he was completely ignorant to the fact that he and Rick Mercer were the only people in Canada who wanted an election. He is out of touch, which ironically is what he accuses the Prime Minister of being.

After his performance last year that resulted in the entire country laughing at him, Iggy certainly has to be under enormous pressure to repeat that level of entertainment. How can he possibly top "Mr Harper, your time is up" on the comedy scale? Now he is claiming that his party is the "inclusive, responsible, compassionate alternative" versus the Tories that he alleges are mean and divisive. So when Mark Holland accused Helena Guergis of "assaulting airport security" and Marlene Jennings accused her of being a drug dealer, is that responsible compassion? When Bob Rae was on the Soloman Show and told Canadians that they would die of pig flu and it would be the government's fault, was that responsible compassion? Iggy accuses the Tories of governing by inspiring fear, and yet he leads a party that is very much guilty of fear mongering. Do as he says, not as he does.

We know that Iggy supports torture (sorry, "coerced interrogations") to extract information from enemy combatants, which is very compassionate of him; then he turns loose his former NDP Premiers to accuse our soldiers of being complicit in torture in violation of the Geneva conventions. The politics of compassion or the politics of hypocrisy? Then trying to re-open the abortion debate, the most divisive issue in the country, following the advice of Liberal pollster and donor Frank Graves who encouraged him to start a culture war to divide the country. The Liberals understand the politics of division all too well.

And of all the lofty platitudes and empty promises that we have come to expect from this Liberal leader, the funniest of all is that he seems to think he has a chance at a majority government. The Liberals would need to rise roughly 10% in the polls for any shot at a majority, and the probability of that size a shift with this disingenuous tourist as leader is very small. The most likely way for Iggy to wiggle his way into the Prime Minister's office is a minority coalition government.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, isn't an act but a habit."

-Aristotle