76 Search Results for wildrose

You were the first political party I joined, back in 1980. I did so because you were the only sane political party around.

Thirty-five years later, you still are.

• Wildrose will sell itself for a few trinkets, and think government shouldn’t do anything.
• The NDP hate Alberta’s main job-creator, and think government should do everything.
• And the Prentice PCs? They’ve lost their way. They don’t have any values.  And they couldn’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag.

I’ll be with you this weekend in Edmonton, pitching for change – not radical change, like Wildrose and the NDP favour.  Smart, sensible change – change away from a governing PC party that has become cynical and corrupt and complacent.

More details are here.  There’ll be a talk on Saturday night, and a private seminar on running the best possible war room on Sunday morning.  I look forward to meeting each and every one of you!

Sincerely,

Warren

Comments (19)

The great thing about living in a democracy is, well, living in a democracy.

Characteristics of a democracy include things like power exercised by citizens, or officials elected by citizens. Majority rule, but with human rights, equality, freedom of media, speech and religion. And – most significantly, for the purposes of this morning’s civics discussion – free and fair elections.

Elections are good. But, surveying the aforementioned media, some days, you’d never know that.

Take, for example (please), Ontario. In a couple days, an election is about to get officially underway in Ontario. And that is a good, good thing.

Many hacks and the flaks, however, don’t think so. Kathleen Wynne is one of them. Wynne was selected as Ontario Liberal leader by a few hundred Grit delegates more than a year ago, but she hasn’t been elected by millions of Ontarians in a general election. Despite that, she very much gave everyone the impression she wanted to continue in that role – Selected, not Elected – for the foreseeable future. The pesky Opposition, however, decided to vote against her 2014 budget. The arrogance!

Mortified, Wynne later appeared at a Toronto bar to sound mortified. “We would have loved to have had the opportunity to immediately implement that budget, but [NDP Leader] Andrea Horwath and [PC Leader] Tim Hudak decided they want an election,” she said, with a straight face. Behind her, Liberal staffers held up prepared signs reading “WHAT LEADERSHIP IS,” apparently unaware that, grammatically, you should never end a sentence sounding like Yoda. (Or, politically, raise a question you can’t answer.)

Wynne’s candidates were also in high dudgeon over the Opposition, you know, opposing. For example, the Liberal candidate for Algoma-Manitoulin, Craig Hughson, has been getting ready for an election for months. But there he was in the Manitoulin Expositor over the weekend, professing his shock and horror that democracy has unexpectedly broken out. “I am surprised but ready for this unnecessary election,” said Hughson, an authority in sucking and blowing at the same time.

So too some media. The Toronto Star’s biggest front-page story in Sunday’s paper huffed that the Opposition’s desire to have an election was “backfiring,” quote unquote. “Forcing” Wynne into the June 12 election, as the Star put it, was somehow a bad thing. Why?

Well, because a poll told them so. The Liberals were going to win again, decreed the pollsters, so why bother? Left out of the Star’s analysis was disclosure that the polling firm in question, Forum, had previously declared that the Wildrose Party would win a huge majority in Alberta in 2012 (wrong), the Parti Quebecois would win a huge majority in 2012 (wrong), and that the B.C. NDP would win a huge majority in 2013 (wrong).

But the message – from the selected Premier, the unelected candidates, and some feckless media – was the same: elections are unwanted. They’re “unnecessary,” even.

Sorry, but that’s a damnable lie. Every day, in every part of the world, millions of people pray that they could have what Canadians have. They risk life and limb to get here, in fact, to live in a democracy. And, at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, they know that you cannot have democracy without elections.

The likes of Wynne and Hughson deserve to be condemned for implying that democracy is unwanted. It isn’t.

They, however, may well be after June 12.

.

Comments (23)

Now that the plague that is Rob Anders has ended – fittingly, and Biblically, just as Holy Week and Passover commenced – let us give thanks and praise to God. And analyze what it means.

Anders, as a long-mortified Canada will know, has represented Northwest Calgary and environs for nearly two decades. As a Reform MP, an Alliance MP and now a Conservative MP, Anders has been a pestilential blight on Canadian public life, more horrible than a week-long Justin Bieber retrospective.

He called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist,” quote unquote. He fell asleep in the House of Commons. He attacked veterans, who had objected to the fact that he fell asleep in a meeting with them.

He implied Thomas Mulcair somehow responsible for Jack Layton’s passing – saying that Mulcair “arm-twisted” the former NDP leader into campaigning in 2011. He was hired as a “professional heckler” by a Republican candidate. He authored a private member’s bill, indelicately referred to as “The Bathroom Bill,” which was aimed at eliminating the threat to children by transgendered people in public washrooms. (He had an unusual degree of interest in what people do in their bedrooms, too.)

He was a fool, in other words. He was the worst Member of Parliament in a singularly undistinguished House of Commons.

Anders’ blessed departure from the national stage – he will probably now take up residence in the Wildrose Party, where he belongs – is welcome news. But what does the news portend for his enablers, like Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney and John Baird?

For years, Messrs. Harper, Kenney, Baird et al. had looked the other way while Anders rolled around in the gutter. Harper quietly endorsed Anders in the Signal Hill Conservative nomination battle. Kenney, meanwhile, was far less subtle, and openly called on local Conservatives to rally around Anders.

And Baird – in between partying with friends at the fancy taxpayer-supported digs of the Canadian High Commissioner in London, and the Consul-General in New York – has professed to be a progressive Conservative. While doing precisely nothing about the toxic presence of Anders in the Conservative caucus for year after year.

Anders’ defeat in Signal Hill is not the first of such defeats for Harper, Kenney, Baird et al. In recent months, the number of Harper acolytes who have ended up under the proverbial bus – from Nigel Wright to Mike Duffy to Marc Nadon – has grown exponentially. (They may soon require a new bus to toss people under, in fact.)

Part of the reason for all of this Conservative unhappiness, to be fair, is a natural consequence of being in power for a long time. When you have been in power for nearly a decade, you become sloppy. Thus, Baird and his unnamed pals partying it up in the High Commissioners’ apartment – or Kenney and Harper endorsing a troglodyte like Anders, who is going down to certain defeat.

With the passage of time, governing parties lose touch. They spend too much time with bureaucrats and each other, and not enough with real folks. They start representing Ottawa to home – instead of representing home to Ottawa.

Rob Anders’ defeat isn’t just his. It’s the defeat of his party’s leaders, too – and it matters.

Comments (8)

1. Calgarians have again shown the world – viz., Calgary Centre, Wildrose wipeout, etc. etc. – that they aren’t just moving to the centre. They are in the centre.

2. Jason Kenney will never be the leader of the Conservative Party.

You’re welcome.

.

Comments (11)

Can public opinion polls suppress voter turnout? Of course they can.

Do they? Yes, a lot, a lot.

If a poll shows the electorate evenly split, turnout typically surges — because people feel energized by the notion they might help to cast a pivotal, deciding vote.

On this, studies abound.

In Israel, where tight races are common, a Hebrew University study concluded that “closeness in the division of preferences induces a significant increase in turnout.”

But, not surprisingly, the Israeli study also found that, if a particular political choice is way ahead, there will be “an important decrease in participation” by folks favouring that choice.

“Why bother,” to employ a less academic lexicon. “My vote won’t make a difference. He/she is going to win anyway.” Makes sense, right?

Closer to home, the experts find the same thing. One fairly recent study done for Elections Canada looked at vote rates in Canadian elections, and found that participation has been plummeting since about 1984.

One the biggest reasons for lack of turnout?

“A widespread feeling that political participation is meaningless,” the study found.

Which brings us, in a roundabout kind of way, to last week’s much-watched byelection in Brandon-Souris in Manitoba.

It was much watched because the Manitoba riding had been held by Conservatives for most of the last century. It was much watched because the Liberal party came fourth in the 2011 federal election, with a pitiful 5% of the vote.

And it was much watched because, the day before the vote, an outfit called Forum Research released a poll stating the Liberals had a nearly 30-point lead in the riding.

Thirty points! The resulting big headline in the Winnipeg Free Press: “Liberal candidate holds 29-point lead in Brandon-Souris byelection: Poll.”

Forum’s methods are “amazingly accurate,” said Forum’s media-friendly president, who became quite shy when this writer (a friend of the Liberal candidate, full disclosure) sent him a number of questions about his firm’s methods.

“Amazingly accurate.” That’s what he said.

Except, well, they weren’t. Not in Brandon-Souris; they were a joke. On election night, my Liberal pal lost by less than 400 votes — but, it should be noted, he lost.

About two percentage points separated the Liberal and Conservative candidates. Not 29.

Who paid for that poll, which landed like a bomb in Brandon-Souris, and mere hours before polls were to open? Forum didn’t say. Did the Conservatives? After all, Conservative backroomers are pretty smart, and they know all about the gist of the aforementioned academic studies.

They know that too many Canadians often regard their participation in elections as “meaningless,” and a poll that tells Liberal voters their guy has already won — well, such a poll might certainly have the effect of causing “an important decrease in participation,” to quote the Israelis.

But again, Forum — in other circumstances, always ready to provide a clip to the media — has become a bit less available, post-Brandon. They didn’t respond to my questions by deadline.

Is it important? Yes, actually, it is. Forum is the same polling firm that said the NDP would win a big majority in B.C., Wildrose would do likewise in Alberta and the Parti Quebecois would seize a majority in Quebec.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

None of it would matter if people didn’t pay attention to media polls, and if their behaviour wasn’t affected by polls. But they do, and they are.

In the case of Brandon-Souris — and in the case of B.C., Alberta, Quebec and not a few other cases — I don’t actually blame Forum Research for this appalling situation.

I blame the media (including Sun Media, sometimes) who regurgitate bogus numbers without ever employing their critical faculties.

In Brandon-Souris, we will likely never know if a poll persuaded some folks to stay home. But, based on what the experts say, it seems likely.

If you care about democracy, that should worry you.

A lot.

Comments (29)

Asked how his firm got the Brandon-Souris by-election wrong by THIRTY PERCENTAGE POINTS, here’s the whopper offered up by Forum’s president:

“I know people are going to say ‘Oh, your polls wrong, you don’t know what you’re doing,’” said Bozinoff. “But in my mind, the Liberals kind of dropped the ball and the Tories just, you know, beat them at their ground game and got their supporters out.”

Really? Seriously? Actually, Lorne, that’s a pile of horseshit.  Your “poll” was ostensibly measuring voter intention – not Get Out The Vote strength.  There’s a difference.  Even my dog Roxy could figure that one out.

This steaming turd of a quote has sufficiently motivated me to write an entire column about how Forum got it so wrong (as they have many times before).  Here are some of the questions I intend to ask them:

• That poll would have the effect of suppressing Liberal vote in Brandon-Souris.  Did the Conservative Party, or any related entity, in any way subsidize that poll?
• Do you give your polls to the media because you are aware that no media organizations will pay for them? Are you giving them away because someone else, whose identity you do not disclose, has paid for them?
• The methodology you use, IVR (a.k.a. robo-polling), has been condemned by many reputable pollsters.  Why do you keep using it?
• In metropolitan centres, where huge numbers of citizens no longer have land lines, how do you ensure you are reaching people who will give you a representative sample, and the right results?
• You predicted a B.C. NDP majority, a Wildrose majority and a Parti Quebecois majority, among others.  Why will you not apologize for those errors?

There are lots of other questions, and I suspect my friends Wright and Bricker have a few.  Feel free to add yours in comments, so I can send them to Forum sometime today.

Thanks.

Comments (50)

It’s (finally) summertime, when the political speculation is easy.

Heretofore, the subject that no longer seems as crazy as it once did: Will Stephen Harper quit before the next federal election in October 2015?

There are plenty of reasons why he shouldn’t, or why he won’t.

But there are 10 very good reasons why he just might, too. Here they be:

1. Ten years is a long time: By the time the next election takes place, Harper will have been in power for nearly a decade. Very few last that long, and those who overstay their welcome inevitably end up regretting their decision. After that much time has gone by, voters start to get sick of your face.

2. He could lose. As pollsters have been saying for months, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is the real deal. By now, it is clear that his popularity is no passing fad. For the first time, Harper needs to consider the possibility that he could to lose to someone he clearly considers his inferior. He doesn’t want to do that.

3. His party is getting restless. As Alberta Wildrose supporter Rod Love once observed: “When the water dries up, the animals begin to look at each other differently.” So too in politics. Harper’s backbench is no longer afraid of him, and rebelling. His PMO is heartily detested throughout the Conservative hinterland. To many Conservatives, Harper is being quietly regarded as a liability, and not an asset.

4. Leadership shenanigans abound: Jason Kenney has been running a leadership campaign for months; Peter MacKay is warning he will quit the party if he doesn’t get his way on leadership selection rules. Harper, mindful of what Jean Chretien endured, may be persuaded to choose discretion over valour.

5. He is not a wealthy man: Harper and his wife own their Calgary home, but not much else. And, as Calgary Conservative legend Harvie Andre once queried: “Why is it more profitable to know Harvie Andre than to be Harvie Andre?” Harper, knowing this, may decide he needs to build up a retirement nest egg while he still can.

6. He’s a young man: Not even 60, Harper has many prime earning years ahead of him — as a corporate rainmaker, as a member of lucrative boards, as the giver of big-ticket speeches. Why wait until he can’t enjoy the fruits of his labours? Why not go while the getting’s good?

7. Everything starts to look the same: After 10 years in the same job, new files aren’t as exciting or as challenging as they once were. Things develop a sameness to them; boredom and sloppiness start to set in. When that happens, it’s time to go.

8. The Cons don’t stand for anything anymore: Even the party faithful are admitting the mission statement is long forgotten. They have become, in effect, what they came to Ottawa to destroy. Even Harper, a policy wonk and partisan, would be hard pressed to express his party’s raison d’etre. Canadians sure can’t.

9. The job is done: Harper wanted to do three things. One, reduce the Liberal Party to a shadow of its former self. Two, unite conservatives as a single political force. Three, make conservativism a less radical political choice. He has indisputably done all three. His legacy is achieved.

10. Him: Watch him. Listen to him. There is no joy in the job for him anymore. There is no challenge. He looks unhappy.

Will he go?

Who knows?

But no one should be surprised, now, if he does.

Comments (35)

In politics, body language is important.

In particular, the body language of Messrs. Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau.

One of them does not seem worried; the other two look like they are taking nothing for granted.

Some pollsters, naturally, tell a somewhat different tale. If you believe successive polls — and after the industry’s dramatically wrong prognostications in elections in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and (to an extent) nationally — no one should anymore.

Notwithstanding that, myriad pollsters insist Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are ascendant, and cruising towards a colossal majority victory in 2015. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are locked in a downward spiral — while the New Democrats will be lucky to hold on to much of what they’ve got.

One much-quoted outfit, Forum — which predicted gigantic Wildrose and New Democrat wins in Alberta and B.C., respectively — told The Globe and Mail: “Of those surveyed, 44% said they supported the Liberals, 27% said they supported the Conservatives and 20% said they supported the New Democrats.”

If Forum’s numbers are right, Justin Trudeau should be lolling in his seat in the House of Commons, eating bonbons and playing Angry Birds.

But he isn’t.

Nor, for that matter, is Thomas Mulcair, who presides over the biggest opposition caucus in his party’s history, and who is allegedly within striking distance of the governing Conservatives.

Trudeau and Mulcair are working hard, pushing Harper in question period and pounding the pavement outside Ottawa.

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper looks irritated, but not at all terrified, by the ongoing Senate scandal.

His party is preparing to do what it always does in times of crisis: Toss assorted staffers and parliamentarians under the proverbial bus and walk away. It has worked in the past, and it may well work again.

The body language of our three federal leaders, then, speaks volumes.

None seems to be too preoccupied with what the pollsters and the pundits have to say about the future, near or long-term.

The reason relates to bodies, not body language. At present, Harper has a commanding lead in bodies occupying parliamentary seats. And Mulcair knows he cannot hold on to many of the ones he’s presently got — whilst Trudeau needs many, many more to get to where he needs to be.

The May 2011 general election resulted in the Conservative Party taking 166 seats, 23 more than they had at Parliament’s dissolution, and more than enough to seize power in a 308-seat Commons.

The New Democrats won 103 seats, an astonishing result, given they had only 36 when the election commenced.

The Liberals, meanwhile, ended up with less than the NDP had at dissolution — 34 seats, losing half of what they had. Michael Ignatieff and his oxymoronic brain trust led the once-great Grits to their worst showing in history.

Polls might lie, but the above numbers don’t: To do what some pollsters like Forum say is doable — that is, a big majority — Trudeau needs to find at least 130 seats.

To be sure, scandal, factionalism and ennui are chipping away at Harper’s coalition. He will lose some seats, and the recent Labrador byelection suggests that he may even lose a lot.

So, too, Mulcair. He knows that his party’s historic May 2011 achievement was entirely due to the appeal of the much-loved Jack Layton, now gone. He will lose MPs, too, mostly to Trudeau in Quebec.

But, as I regularly ask bright-eyed Trudeaumaniacs who will listen: “To win a majority, you need to shake loose 130 seats. That’s a huge number of bodies. Where are they, right now? Name the ridings.”

And they can’t.

Thus, the tale’s moral: The polls say one thing. But the body language — and the parliamentary bodies — say something else entirely.

Comments (51)

After the B.C. fiasco, Canada’s polling industry is — once again — engaged in a painful existential debate about what they do and how they do it.

Because, make no mistake, they were dramatically mistaken about last Tuesday’s British Columbia election result.

Going into the month-long race, every single pollster declared the NDP was far ahead of the governing B.C. Liberals — in some cases by as many as 20 percentage points.

While the gap narrowed during the campaign, not one pollster foresaw a majority Liberal government. Not one.

Gullible pundits (like me) uncritically quoted the pollsters ad nauseum and, accordingly, let our readers down.

For that, we owe you — the reader — a full and sincere apology.

We, and the pollsters, owe you an explanation, too. In the past week, countless column inches have been published about what the reasons might be: Poor methodology, low voter turnout, new polling technology, respondents lying to pollsters about their voting intentions, and so on.

All of those explanations have some merit, but I don’t think they begin to capture the full extent of the problem.

The problem, you see, is the chattering classes have been missing out on a conversation between citizens.

It’s like we’ve been in a different room entirely, while Joe and Jane Frontporch carry on a discussion that does not involve us anymore (or ever did).

In the past two years, it’s happened no less than five times.

Federally, when the tall foreheads did not foresee the once-mighty Liberals sliding to third place, and Jack Layton seizing a strong second in the May 2011 election.

In Alberta just over a year ago, the Angus Reid Group said Wildrose was “poised to make history” and crush Alison Redford’s PCs — when Redford ended up crushing Wildrose and forming another majority government.

In Manitoba, The Globe and Mail declared the May 2011 election would be “the closest in more than a decade” — except it wasn’t, and the New Democrats easily secured a fourth majority term.

In Quebec, the National Post’s pollster, Forum Research, said the day before the September 2012 election that the Parti Quebecois had “a large lead” — even though they didn’t, and the separatists eked out a bare minority, less than a percentage point ahead of the Liberals in popular vote. And now B.C., where every “expert” got it wrong.

What’s happening? My suspicion, increasingly, is that the conventional wisdom is neither. Politicos have grown too reliant on methodologies that are fraught with frailties, and the media have simply gone along.

In the meantime, the public has grown ever more cynical about politicians and reporters, who they see as charter members of the same elite group.

The Occupy Movement, the Tea Party, the Reform Party and successive election results show the public are literally withdrawing from the body politic. Declining voting rates reflect this, of course.

But there’s more to it than that. The commentariat is, more than ever before, wildly out of sync with the public’s real agenda. We profess to know what real people think, but we don’t.

All of this has the potential to reshape politics, if political people are willing to change how they do things, and to reconsider the conventional wisdom.

Until we do, we’re doomed — like the pollsters — to irrelevance.

Comments (9)

I will use this opportunity to shamelessly point out that I, unlike everyone else, predicted the re-election of Premier Redford.  Here.

Also, I will use this opportunity to point out that, in the days that followed April 23, 2012, I delighted in mocking the many folks who got it wrong.  Here and here and here.

Comments (1)