Quotulatiousness

May 3, 2011

Conservatives win majority, NDP break through to official opposition

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:26

A political earthquake in Canada, as the Liberal party vote collapses across the country and the separatist Bloc Quebecois vote collapses even further in Quebec. The result of division on the left is a majority for Stephen Harper’s Conservative party.

As I’m writing this post, the current numbers are:

  • Conservatives — 167 seats
  • New Democratic Party — 103 seats (historic high)
  • Liberals — 34 seats (with leader Michael Ignatieff losing his own seat)
  • Bloc Quebecois — 3 seats (below “official party status”, with leader Gilles Duceppe losing his own seat)
  • Greens — 1 seat (historic high, as party leader Elizabeth May wins the first Green seat in parliament)

As I posted in a Twitter update a few hours back, this is the same situation that allowed Liberal leader Jean Chretien to win three straight majorities: a divided opposition. This time, instead of the Progressive Conservatives fighting the Reform Party on the right, it’s the Liberal Party fighting the NDP on the left.

The test facing Jack Layton is how to manage his hugely inflated caucus in the new parliament (with new Quebec MP’s in the majority) and perhaps finding ways to keep the rump of the Liberal party willing to work with his new official opposition.

It must be a great day to be an NDP supporter, with historic gains for the party and new respect for leader Jack Layton.

April 24, 2011

Duceppe throws down the gauntlet: “This election is a battle between… Canada and Quebec”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:20

The rise of the NDP in Quebec is forcing Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe to take a much stronger line against Jack Layton:

The NDP’s newfound status proved jarring enough for Duceppe to make a strident, emotional appeal to his base Saturday:

“This election is a battle between… Canada and Quebec,” said a message Saturday from the Bloc leader’s Twitter account.

He later erased that note and replaced it with a toned-down appeal for all sovereigntists to back his party. The message is a clear departure from previous campaigns that saw Duceppe work to broaden his appeal beyond sovereigntist voters.

“This election is not a left-right battle, but a battle between federalists and sovereigntists,” said the later message from Duceppe’s account. “Between the parties of the Canadian majority and Quebec.”

There are even anti-NDP attack ads, including a new one from the Liberals featuring a yellow traffic light and the message, “Not so fast, Jack.”

The Liberals have been forced to pay more attention to the NDP than they had planned, especially with the parties in a statistical tie in the latest polls. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was even booed loudly at at hockey game last night, which has only been lightly mentioned in the media. His low personal popularity is starting to be seen as a big reason for the Liberals’ plight in the polls — although it can’t be the only reason.

The NDP’s financial promises are one area the Liberals can safely attack:

The Liberals are pointing out a series of alleged exaggerations in the NDP platform, saying the promises are based on invented revenues like a supposed $3.6 billion that would come in the first year of a climate cap-and-trade system. The Liberals call it, “fantasy money.”

The Liberals also heaped ridicule on the NDP promise to hire 1,200 new doctors and 6,000 nurses for the bargain-basement rate of $25 million.

They said the NDP promise to save $2 billion by slashing subsidies to the oil sands overstates the possible savings by four times, and that the math is similarly wonky on the NDP’s pledge to crack down on foreign tax havens.

“It’s time to take a close look at what Jack Layton’s saying to the Canadian people. The numbers add up and up and up,” Ignatieff said.

“Mr. Layton has got a platform that when you look at it closely has . . . $30 billion of spending, which we think is not going to be good for the economy and he derives it from sources we just don’t think are credible.

“He’s got a cap-and-trade system that’s going to deliver $3.5 billion in the first year. We don’t even have a cap and trade system. It’s science fiction.”

April 21, 2011

News topic for today: the rise in NDP support in Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:04

It may be just another blip in the polling, or it could really be the NDP benefitting from weaker BQ numbers. Lots of trees will be consumed in this debate, and many electrons will be inconvenienced. The national numbers don’t show the pattern all that well, but the NDP may finally be close to that popularity breakthrough they’ve been hoping for since the brief taste of power they got in the Trudeau years. Instead of asking the Liberal leader how many NDP cabinet seats he’d need to give to Jack Layton, we might be asking Jack how many Liberal cabinet ministers he’d have in his coalition.

Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party has surged past Gilles Duceppe’s faltering Bloc Quebecois and is now in first place in Quebec, according to an Ekos public opinion poll released exclusively to iPolitics.

The poll, conducted earlier this week, found the New Democrats have jumped 10 percentage points since the eve of the leaders debate to 31.1% while the Bloc has dropped like a rock by 7.4 percentage points to 23.7%.

The Liberals are steady at 20.6% while the Conservatives have dropped slightly to 16.9%.

While the margin of error is higher at the city level, in Montreal the NDP is at 32.9% while the Bloc is at 29.7%.

Nationally, the NDP is now in a statistical tie with the Liberals at 24.9% to 25.8%. Both lag well behind the Conservatives who were preferred by 34.5% of respondents.

Update: Jane Taber has more on the regional breakdown:

Atlantic Canada now is shaping up to be a three-way race, with the NDP gaining every day for the past seven days. The Tories are at 36.3 per cent followed by the Liberals with 33.1 per cent and the NDP at 28.3 per cent. (There is a margin of error of plus or minus 9.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 in the regional sample.)

In British Columbia, the Liberals have dropped significantly — Mr. Ignatieff has seen his support decrease from 33.5 per cent Monday to 22.7 per cent Wednesday night. The Conservatives have 43.5 per cent support and the NDP are at 29.6 per cent, up from 24.7 per cent the night before. (The margin of error in that province is plus or minus 7.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)

In Quebec, Mr. Layton remains strong although the Bloc is still in first place with 32 per cent support compared to 23.4 per cent for the NDP, 20.8 per cent for the Liberals and 17.5 per cent for the Conservatives. “At 32 per cent it would be the worst ever showing for the BQ in a federal election,” Mr. Nanos said, noting that their previous worst showing was in 1997 where they won 37.9 per cent of the vote.‬

If all of this isn’t just a blip, it’s terrible news for Michael Ignatieff. That grinding noise you hear is the knife-sharpening back at Liberal HQ.

Update, the second: If the initial news was promising for Jack Layton, the poll done for La Presse must have been like a big shot of adrenalin:

A new poll by CROP for La Presse suggests that the enthusiasm for Mr. Layton is such that the NDP has now overtaken the Bloc Québécois in voting intentions for the first time in Canadian history. The online poll suggested that the NDP is now first choice for 36% of Quebecers, compared to 31% for the Bloc, 17% for the Conservatives and a mere 13% for the once mighty Liberal Party.

Having heard the NDP boast about “historic breakthroughs” over the years, I’m loath to get too carried away until these numbers are confimed by other pollsters. In 2008, Mr. Layton was in a statistical tie with Stéphane Dion two weeks before election day but ended up trailing by eight points and 40 MPs.

Yet there are signs this time might be different. In Quebec in particular, the Liberal brand is damaged goods and the Bloc is looking like a tired, one-trick pony. There is nowhere else to go for left-of-centre voters.

Update, the third: Forum Research says that the NDP is already in second place nationally:

“The Tories are ahead everywhere except Quebec, it’s all going to come down to what happens in Quebec,” says Mr. Bozinoff, noting the tradition of Quebec voters to move en masse when they have sharply changed preferences in past elections.

The survey of 2,727 voting-age Canadians was conducted Wednesday evening. It was an interactive voice response survey with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 per cent 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for regional and provincial breakdowns is slightly higher, but in such a large survey, with 348 citizens reached in the GTA alone, it is a reliable indicator of election trend lines.

Nationally, the survey gave the Conservative Party support from 36 per cent of decided and leaning voters, 25 per cent for the NDP, 23 per cent for the Liberal party, and six per cent each for the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. A separate Forum Research analysis, based partly on ridings won and lost in the 2008 election, suggest the survey results would give the Conservatives 149 of the 308 Commons seats if an election were held today, with 71 seats for the NDP, 64 for the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois would have 24 seats.

My occasionally updated percentage tracker, now (thanks to commenter request) with a graph to match:


April 13, 2011

Leaders’ debate provides no significant changes

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:26

I didn’t bother watching the first debate on TV last night, as I didn’t think there would be any purpose in doing so. Lots of people seem to have felt the same way, as polling immediately after the debate showed little change in support:

It was Stephen Harper’s debate to lose — and he did not.

It was Michael Ignatieff’s debate to win — and he did not.

A poll done exclusively for QMI Agency immediately after Tuesday night’s English-language debate shows that English-speaking Canada was, by and large, unmoved by the two-hour duel among the four party leaders.

Asked who won the debate, 37% of those surveyed by Leger Marketing said Harper was the victor. About 21% said Ignatieff won.

Those numbers roughly mirror voter support in polls Leger has done before and during the election campaign.

April 2, 2011

QotD: The nature of Harper’s “slap in the face” to Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

I labour over this history to place in context the astounding, even outré, comments offered by Canada’s First Separatist, Gilles Duceppe, on hearing of the proposed arrangement — which, I hasten to mention, is merely a $4.2-billion loan guarantee from Ottawa, not some massive outright subsidy. Mr. Duceppe, with a logic that can only belong to a man who gets paid to be a separatist by the government he’s trying to extinguish, called the deal “a direct attack on Quebec.”

What really bothers Mr. Duceppe and other separatists is that they want to retain Quebec’s monopoly on southbound power sales to the United States — something the Lower Churchill project, including its 1,100 km of underwater transmission cables, would threaten. “By financing the Newfoundland project, Stephen Harper has given Quebec a slap right in the face,” the BQ leader declared.

It’s one of the continuing risibilities of the Canadian federation that we cosset and pamper and pay for the separatist faction in the House of Commons, and go along with the pretense that they’re parliamentarians like any other. They are not. They displace the natural balance of the federation. They have a vested interested in seeing the parliament they attend not working. And they leap to any perceived or manufactured imperfection in our system as evidence of dark perfidy or contempt for Quebec. They warp the system. Nowhere do these observations meet with greater validation than these ludicrous comments by Duceppe on the proposed assistance to the Lower Churchill.

Rex Murphy, “Newfoundland’s three-gigawatt insult to Gilles Duceppe”, National Post, 2011-04-02

March 23, 2011

Harper government teeters on the edge

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

Tasha Kheiriddin thinks this has been a deliberate trap laid by the Tories and that the opposition have tumbled right into it:

The Foyer of the House of Commons turned into a beehive on speed. Within the next hour came reports that the NDP and Liberals were moving staff into their war room. Mr. Layton, gaunt but with a glint of steel in his eyes, strode stiffly by the CBC booth, leaning on his cane, turned to a group of journalists and smiled: “Looks like an election”. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff tweeted the first slogan of the coming campaign “An out-of-touch budget from an out-of control government.”

But Mr. Ignatieff is dead wrong — on both counts. This is very much an in-control government, which played its cards brilliantly in the face of not one, but two confidence motions this week. By falling on the budget instead of the contempt of Parliament motion, the Tories escape the stigma of being the only government to ever have been found in contempt by the House. This gives the Opposition less mud to throw their way, which is helpful in light of the brewing Carson scandal, and puts the focus back on the economy, the Tories’ campaign issue of choice.

It is also a very in-touch budget — in all the ways that benefit the Conservatives. The Tories have reached out and touched most of their key voter groups: homeowners, families, seniors, the military, and rural Canadians. They ignored less promising sectors of the electorates, including Quebec, though it is likely they are saving a Quebec HST announcement for the campaign. Had they included it in the budget itself, the Bloc would have been force to support it, which would have meant no election — yet another sign that the Tories were more interested in going to the polls than getting a deal.

Lots of pundits have (correctly) called the budget a “boutique”: small but attractive lures for many of the key constituencies, so that the Tories will have lots of opportunities on the campaign trail to characterize the Liberals as “taking away” promised benefits. It may never have been intended to be implemented: it works far too well as a campaign paper.

To the despair of small-c conservatives, the budget does not address the things that matter to that market. As Kelly McParland points out, it’s really a Liberal budget in a blue wrapper:

[The Toronto Star] is a big [Liberal party] supporter. It would like nothing more than to help orchestrate a return of Liberal hegemony to Ottawa. Yet it’s having trouble finding bad things to say about the budget over which the Liberal leader is determined to force an election.

Here are Wednesday’s headlines from The Star:
Page 1: “2011 Federal Budget Highlights: A Sprinkling of Cash for Almost Everyone”
Page 6: “Budget Promises $300 Tax Credit for Family Caregiver”
Page 8: “Tories Blueprint Looks a Shade of Liberal Red”
Page 9: “Low-income Elderly to Get Supplement Boost”
Page 9: “Tories Revive Retrofit Funding”
Page 9: “Job Creation Still Key Priority in Federal Budget”

Yes, the Star managed to editorialize against the budget, arguing it “fails [the] nation’s needs,” but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty could happily stand at the Toronto GO station handing this newspaper to commuters and seeking their support.

March 22, 2011

Starting election watch now

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:55

With the opposition parties unified in their denunciations of the federal budget tabled today by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, we’re now looking at the strong possibility of a May general election:

The minority Conservative government tabled a 2011 budget Tuesday that was quickly rejected by its political opponents for falling short in helping the middle class, setting the stage for an election campaign that could begin any day.

The leaders of the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and NDP said they could not support the budget as presently written — even though Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to appease the left-wing party through a series of modest, symbolic initiatives.

“We’re forced to reject the budget and we are also forced to reject a government that shows so little respect for parliamentary democracy and our democratic institutions,” said Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader.

Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Quebecois Leader, said his party “can’t support what has been offered here.”

And Jack Layton, head of the NDP and viewed as the person most likely to lend the government support, said the budget fell short of NDP expectations.

I have to admit that I’m surprised that the NDP and the Liberals appear to be ready to force an election at this moment: neither party has had much of a “bounce” in recent polls from government scandals (both real and imaginary). Perhaps they’ve got something held in reserve to release during the campaign that they think will cause voters to turn away from the Tories.

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