Midway Results

With just over half of the results in now, it looks like Ignatieff will come in first on the first ballot, but still well short of the number of delegates needed to win the race. Here are the results as follows

Ignatieff - 30.8%
Rae - 19.3%
Dion - 17.3%
Kennedy - 16.3%
Dryden - 5%
Volpe - 4.1%
Brison - 3.9%
Hall Findlay - 1.1%
Undeclared - 2.3%

235/467 meetings reported

Ignatieff has a pretty substantial lead so I would be very surprised if he doesn't come in first on the first ballot. But he still needs to pick up a significant number of delegates on later ballots, so I don't think it is by any means a guarantee he will win. Rae has moved into second, followed by Dion, and then Kennedy. With these three very close together and having the ability to pick up support on later ballots, I think all three of them have a decent chance at winning the leadership. Dryden, Volpe, Brison, and Hall Findlay will likely drop off on early ballots if not the first so it will be interesting to see who they go to. Still with these three having enough to clearly push Rae, Kennedy, or Dion into a strong second, they could ultimately determine who will face Ignatieff on the final ballot. Off course in the case of Brison, I wouldn't be surprised if he decides to go to Ignatieff. The fact Volpe can still get 4.1% despite all his sleaze is just truly astounding. Hall Findlay and Brison are far more deserving candidates of being Liberal leader than Volpe. Anyways I'll give my final analysis once all the results have been tabulated.

Early Results

Now that the first day of the Liberal super weekend has been completed the results are as follows

1. Ignatieff 28.9%
2. Dion 17.3%
3. Rae 16.1%
4. Kennedy 13%
5. Brison 9.2%
6. Dryden 6.8%
7. Volpe 4.1%
8. Hall Findlay 2.3%
Undeclared 2.3%

82/465 meetings held so far, so with just under 20% completed, it looks like Ignatieff will have a healthy lead on the first ballot, however, he still has a long ways to go before he can clinch victory, meaning he will need to pick up support from other contenders. I am pleased to see Dion to do so well. I think with the current numbers, he just might be able to pull it off, but considering that Rae and Kennedy or nipping at his heels he could fall to fourth by the end of the weekend and likewise depending on how the lower candidates go after dropping off earlier ballots, its much too early to say what his chances are.

I am glad to see Rae in third. While I think he has a lot of support from certain segments of the party, I think worries about his electability, may explain why he is not doing as well as some earlier polls suggested. In fact in Ontario, he is down at only 12.3% so far. Kennedy is trailing in fourth, but is still very much in the race.

I am surprised to see Brison do as well as he has. While he has little chance at winning, he may very well do better than some expected. For Dryden obviously a disappointing start and looking at the numbers now, I don't think there is any plausible way of him winning even if he does better tomorrow and Sunday. That means the race is down to four: Ignatieff, Dion, Kennedy, and Rae.

I am glad to see Volpe at only 4.1%. This means he thankfully won't be able to play kingmaker. The fact the guy has any support is simply astounding to me. While I would have liked to see Martha Hall Findlay do a little better, the numbers are not unexpected.

I'll have more on the results tomorrow night.

Liberals fine Volpe $20,000

For anyone thinking the Liberal party is a corrupt organization that tolerates sleazy behavior think again

Kudos to the party for showing leadership and telling Volpe and his sleazebag organization that his unethical behavior won't be tolerated. Since it looks like Volpe won't pay the fine, maybe we can get rid of him after all. One thing this whole episode has shown is that Volpe has greater loyalty to his own self-ego, then he does to the party as a whole and that is why he doesn't deserve to even be considered as leadership material.

More on Spending Cuts

After first hearing about the spending cuts my reaction was largely based on the opinions given from the different parties, who as usual will always take the position which helps them the most politically. The Tories will talk about being responsible fiscal managers, while the Liberals will call it cruel and heartless, but at the end of the day the changes were not the big to get too riled up either way. I am still unhappy about cancelling the Court Challenge Program, but I don't believe it will be the end of the world. Most of these programs work out to less than 20 cents per Canadian so hardly something to be overly upset about taxpayer's money being spent there in the first place. Likewise those complaining about the cuts have every right to be mad, but I ask them to now step up to the plate. Always wanting the government to do everything for you is not the kind of society I want. Individual initiative and making a positive difference to help those who are less fortunate should be encouraged. I also don't believe every problem automatically requires another government program to solve it. Unlike some who complain about the Court Challenge Program being cancelled, I will say right here that if some private organization sets up a similiar organization, I would happily donate to it. In fact I have already donated to Egale on the Same-sex Marriage issue, so for those Conservatives complaining about me wanting to suck up taxpayers' money to promote left wing causes, I will point out, unlike some on the left, I put my money where my mouth is. Perhaps if we all did this, maybe we could do away with many government programs. And perhaps if we treated our minorities better there would be no need for the Status of Women and Court Challenges Program. Ultimately I hope a day comes when these programs are truly redundant, but that day still hasn't yet come.

A Petition for Volpe to resign from Liberal leadership

For all you Liberals embarassed by Joe Volpe's continuous sleazy behavior, I've created a petition, to demand he quit the Liberal leadership race before he embarasses the party more.

here it is

Conservative Spending Cuts

Well today the Conservatives have announced where they will cut to find $1 billion in savings. Now to start off I am all for spending cuts where programs are not delivery value for money. Indeed the Liberals did this in the last budget and all previous budgets. However, I am very concerned that rather than going after programs that don't work, they seem to be directed mainly at those who are not Conservative supporters as a form of punishment for not supporting them. If we faced a deficit, I wouldn't complain about cutting these programs, provided there were large spending cuts elsewhere too. But considering there wasn't spending cuts elsewhere and we face a healthy surplus, this seems inexcusable. I will say though I fully support debt repayment so I will give the Conservatives credit where it is due.

- 78.8 million from cancelling visitor GST rebates. I am not sure whether this is a good idea or not. If it reduces tourism the loss in terms of dollars contributed to the economy may be greater than the savings.

- 5 million for Status of women. I would have to see their balance sheet to say definitively whether this is the right thing or not since I don't know whether they are an efficient organization or quite wasteful. Still this won't help their popularity and I do have my concerns.

- 4 million for medical marijuana research. This seems more ideological driven than driven by practicality. While it is not something that I feel strongly about one way or another, I question the motives here.

- 11.7 million in used pine beetle funding. Again I cannot see this helping them in BC. Luckily our economy in BC is strong enough the provincial government will be able to pick up the slack if necessary.

- Eliminating the court challenges program. This is probably the one I am most against as this seems to just play into the idea the Conservatives oppose minority rights.

- Elimination of Youth International Partnership. Another bad idea in my view

Now most of the cuts were simply due to greater efficiencies that might have been done under the Liberals. Glancing through Finance Canada's webpage, many of them sound reasonable, but the few I pointed out are troubling and as someone who has watched politics, you tend to suffer more politically for the unpopular cuts than you gain for the popular cuts. Also without great detail on what each program does and how well they operate, it is sometimes tough to make a judgement. Hopefully in the coming days from hearing from the opposition from the Liberals and NDP while support from the Conservatives, I can make a better judgement on which cuts were right and which were wrong. Since parliament will have to vote on this in a ways and means motion, hopefully the opposition can pull out all the bad cuts in committee. Thankfully with a minority government, these cuts can be stopped where they don't belong, whereas with a majority government they couldn't. Since the Liberals have gone through this exercise many times, I am confident they will be fair and reasonable in what they pull out and what they leave.

Volpe Stays In, Fry Drops out

Well as we all expected, Joe Volpe was going to confirm today whether he would stay in or drop out. Unfortunately he has chosen to stay in. I believe this is an unfortunate case, however I hope we don't hear anything more from Volpe since everytime he makes news, it seems to always be damaging to the party.

The other news is Hedy Fry has dropped out and endorsed Bob Rae. Considering how few delegates she had, I am not the least bit surprised she dropped out. I am also not surprised she endorsed Bob Rae either, although considering he has picked up all three candidates who have dropped out, I have wondered whether it is his willingness to keep in contact with other camps or is it the Desmerais and other powerbrokers promising to pay off the others debts in return for support. I hope the former is the case. Unlike Maurizio Bevilacqua and Carolyn Bennett's support, which was a huge boost for Bob Rae, I am not so sure Hedy Fry will be. According to the poll amongst Liberals by the Strategic Counsel (it should be viewed with great Scepticism)her and Volpe have the highest negatives. So this might actually be a drawback to Bob Rae. Also she has very few delegates to begin with. Now the question is will any others drop out. Martha Hall Findlay is the only other one who might, but I hope she stays on since whoever she goes to after the first ballot will get a huge moral boost.

Its time to go Joe

It seems everytime you put Liberal leadership and the word scandal together, it always points to one candidate, which is none other than Joe Volpe. If the strategic counsel poll hasn't already shown Joe that he cannot win, I don't know what will. I hope when he makes his announcement on Monday he says two things

1. He is dropping out of the leadership race

2. He will not endorse anyone

If he was more concerned about the Liberal party of Canada than his own self-ego thats what he would do. Somehow I doubt it will happen, but I hope it does. Unlike Martha Hall-Findlay or Ken Dryden who would be a great boost to whoever they endorse, Joe Volpe will be a huge liability to who he endorses. I can just see the Tory attack ads going after the eventual Liberal leadership if that leader relied on Volpe's support. Hopefully that won't happen.

New Blog

As we approach the Liberal leadership race and ideas are beginning to be debated, I have found it difficult to write on all the issues I feel passionate about since often there is no major event, which I can use in the context to write on. I also felt it would be best to have one blog that would be largely partisan and another that would be more issue based since I do disagree with the Liberals on many issues, however they are still without question my preferred party over the Tories and definitely over the Dippers. My new blog can be found at Miles' Views where you can find my general views on various issues. Unlike this blog, which is highly partisan and will remain so, this will be a strictly non-partisan blog. I welcome comments from anyone, but I would ask that people who comment on it debate the topic rather than the typical mudslinging we see from politicians.

Liberals win in New Brunswick

My congratulations to Shawn Graham on his fine victory. Back in 2003 when he was first Liberal leader, no one thought he had a chance at every becoming premier, so obviously he and his team have much to be proud of. I was hoping for Bernard Lord to win myself, but considering that the two parties aren't too far apart, I could really live with either party winning. Unlike their federal counterparts, the New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives are pretty close to the centre much like the old PCs, while the New Brunswick Liberals are more or less the same as the federal Liberals. With the closeness of the race, it appears this was about it being a time for change instead of deep dissatisfaction with the Lord government, although interestingly enough it appears that Bernard Lord may have won the popular vote, but due to the fact it was more concentrated than the Liberals, it prevented him from winning the election. If the final results show this happening, this will not be the first, but a series of such results such as BC in 1996, Quebec in 1998, and Saskatchewan in 1999. This will off course bring up the idea once again whether we should go to proportional representation or not, but that is a totally different debate. Another interesting note, is both parties saw their share of the popular vote increase, while the NDP fell in the popular vote. Even in the normally polarized British Columbia, the BC Liberals only got 46% of the popular vote, compared to the 47% both the NB PCs and NB Liberals got, so talk about a two party system at its finest. In terms of federal politics one shouldn't look too much into these results as I almost positive the NDP will do much better in the next federal election in New Brunswick than they did provincially, so unless New Brunswick goes heavily one way or another, I doubt either the Liberals or Tories will get 47% in New Brunswick. The one thing that should be interesting to see is if Bernard Lord decides to run federally. Certainly I think he would be a far better prime-minister than Stephen Harper, although considering all the Randy White type neanthandrals still left in the Conservative caucus, I am not sure how united he would be able to keep the party.

UPDATE:

Final results have shown that Bernard Lord did win the popular vote despite losing the election. It will be interesting to see people's response on this, since this is not the first time this has happened in Canadian politics. I can just see the calls for scrapping the first past the post system reving up a notch.

Gun Registry should still be scrapped

In reaction to the recent shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, many have called for Harper to not scrap the gun registry including the Liberals and premier Jean Charest. While I am no fan of Stephen Harper and I will continue to disagree with him on many issues, I do believe he is right on the gun registry. I don't support US style gun laws, but at the same time I don't think British style gun laws which go to the other extreme work well. I am not against the idea of the gun registry per se, however I don't believe it is the most effective tool in fighting crime. If the gun registry cost only a fraction of what it does, I would argue the benefits outweigh the costs, however, I would argue based on its costs, the costs outweigh the benefits. Every dollar we put into the gun registry is one less dollar we could put elsewhere. The reality is criminals rarely register their guns and most gun crimes are committed with handguns, which are rightfully heavily restricted. Most long-gun owners are farmers and people from small towns who use it for hunting and target shooting. Rather than going after law-abiding citizens, I believe putting them money into more border guards in order to step up border checks and more police officers is a more effective way of dealing with gun crime. Now I am not against the idea though of banning certain types of weapons, however we should not rush, but rather look at the issue once the dust has settled and look at it methodically. In reaction to two terrible killing sprees in Australia and Britain, gun laws were tightened, yet gun crime continues to rise. We must ensure that stricter gun control laws are done because they work, not to score political points.

I must say though it will be interesting to see how Harper handles this file as the gun registry is very popular in Quebec so scrapping it will just make winning a majority even more difficult considering his position on the environment, Afghanistan, and SSM has already alienated many Quebeckers. Likewise if he fails to keep his promise here, I suspect many rural voters won't be happy. While I think the West aside from the Lower Mainland will stay mostly Conservative, his failure to scrap the gun registry could cost him a few rural Ontario ridings if enough of those who voted Conservative based on that issue stay home on election day.

Anyways I will have more on the New Brunswick election later tonight.

Carolyn Bennett drops out and endorses Rae

Well it looks like the Liberal leadership race has dropped further to 9, with Carolyn Bennett dropping out and throwing her support behind Bob Rae. I am not surprised she dropped out considering she had virtually no chance at winning, but to see her throw her support behind Bob Rae was a bit of a surprise. While they both come from the left side of the party, she ran as a Liberal in 1995 against the Rae government, so I was surprised she would endorse him. I thought she would have thrown her support behind Gerard Kennedy who she supported in the 1996 Ontario Liberal leadership race and also has similiar viewpoints to her. This is definitely good news for Bob Rae as each supporter in Ontario he picks up, he can point to this as a reason that he is electable in Ontario, though I still have my doubts.

I have no doubt if Bob Rae becomes leader, most Liberals will have no trouble supporting him and we won't see very many if any defections. However, gaining the support of hard-core partisans is one thing, but being able to appeal to the average swing voter is quite another thing. The polls so far suggest his time as premier in Ontario isn't hurting him much in the province, however one should note he hasn't been attacked harshly by any of his opponents, which makes sense considering they may have to work with him if he wins. But, if he is chosen as Liberal leader, one can be sure the Tories will do everything possible to remind Ontario voters of his time as premier. And lets remember he got reduced to 17 seats and barely over 20% of the popular vote in the election that brought Mike Harris to office. As someone who has watched politics closely, parties rarely get decimated that badly, unless people are very unhappy. Even Ernie Eves in 2003 still managed to get a respectable 35% of the popular vote. Now it is possible his strong debating skills may overcome this weakness and also possible people might see the Tory attacks as just negative campaigning. However, what if the Tory attacks on Rae do work and we lose 20-30 seats in Ontario, is this a risk we are willing to take. I am not willing to take this risk, which is why I won't be endorsing Bob Rae. I would rather choose a safe candidate who I think can win and if they don't win, they will for sure at least hold Harper to a minority. Had Rae been a Liberal member of parliament for the last four years, I would be far more open to endorsing him as he could have shown he has learned from his mistakes.

9/11 Anniversary

Today is the fifth anniversary of the terrible attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon, and the failed attack that resulted in a plane crashing in Pennsylvania. I still remember that morning when I woke up to head off for me 8:30 tutorial and the shock when I heard the Twin Towers had been attacked and had collapsed an hour later. I also remember once visiting the Twin Towers on a High School Trip to New York back in 1999. They were one of the highlights of the New York Trip and in fact I found them to be a better viewing point of the whole city despite being less visited than the Empire State Building. Considering New York has no mountains like Vancouver does, the Twin Towers were the best view of the city where one could get a full 360 degree view and see for over a 100 miles on a clear day in any direction. I feel fortunate to have been up these buildings, but it is also in some ways kind of scary knowing that had I been in the exact same location on 9/11 I wouldn't be alive today since I was above where the planes struck and only four people who were above where the plane struck survived.

In the past, I have been quite critical of American foreign policy, however, no matter how much one disagrees with a country's foreign policy, that never gives someone the right to randomly attack and kill innocent civilians. Such behavior is unacceptable and should never be tolerated no matter what the circumstances. I would also like to point out that most Muslims are good people who share the same shock the rest of us do towards those attacks so we should blame the religious extremists, not ordinary Muslims who are peace loving people and don't believe in such an attack. Osama Bin Ladin and his ilk represent a small minority who use a peaceful religion to justify their own hatreds.

On today's fifth anniversary, I send my full condolences to all families who lost loved ones and to the American people.

Layton's Military Proposals

This weekend there has been a lot of talk about Layton's proposal to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan. While I support this as a long-term goal, I am very disappointed the way the NDP has handled this. The Nanaimo-Cowichan EDA resolution calling our soldiers terrorists was unacceptable and Layton must condemn this immediately. Whether one agrees with our presence in Afghanistan or not, calling our soldiers terrorists is unacceptable. These are young men and women who are putting their lives on the line for our country.

Now when it comes to the main thrust of his resolution which is Canada should pull out of Afghanistan, I generally agree here, however I don't think it should be done immediately. Rather we should consult our NATO allies on how best to have the most orderly pull-out. In Italy, Romano Prodi unlike his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, opposed the Iraq War, but the pull out of Italian troops will be done over 1 year not immediately. Even Zapatero in Spain took two months after being elected to pull a much smaller contigent of Spanish troops out of Iraq. This is the responsible way to handle the pull out. I would also support keeping our troops in Afghanistan but moving them to Kabul or elsewhere and having them take on a humanitarian or peacekeeping role as opposed to combat role. I am not opposed to us being in Afghanistan, I am simply opposed to Canada being involved in a combat role.

100th Post

Well after blogging for 10 months, I have now reached the milestone of 100 posts. That means I am doing an average of one blog every three days, so not bad, although not terribly active.

Stephen Harper's Senate Reform

It is not too often I have anything good to say about Stephen Harper, but I do applaud him for looking into senate reform. Although my ideas for senate reform are probably much different than his, I do believe the status quo is unacceptable. I also applaud Jack Austin's efforts to see that Western Canada has more seats in the senate and support Stephane Dion's idea of 6-8 year limits for senators. I however, am disappointed some Liberals have condemned senate reform as bad since it is too American, because we need a Liberal dominated senate to block Tory legislation when Canadians accidentally elect a Tory government, or because it will make it harder to make government larger (I by the way believe government needs to be smaller not larger). I am totally against the idea of either blindly supporting or blindly opposing an idea simply because it is American, instead we should look at each issue on a case by case basis. Leave the blind Pro-Americanism to the Tories and blind Anti-Americanism to the NDP. I also am a believer in democracy and whether I agree or disagree with a party, I think if a party runs on a certain platform and is elected, they should be able to implement it. If voters dislike it, they can turf them at the next election.

My preference for senate reform is to simply abolish the senate or at the very least make it only an advisory board with no powers since they do some good reports. Our provincial legislatures function just fine without an upper house so why do we need one federally. And for those who comment we need it for regional balance, I would like to point out that just as a person in St. John's has different interests than a person in Vancouver, a person in Fort St. John also has different interests than a person in Vancouver, which is why we have constituent representatives to represent them. However, if we must have an elected senate, I propose we adopt the Australian as opposed to American model. Under the Australian model senators are elected by proportional representation so the House of Commons would be elected the same way it is now, but the senate would be elected based on proportional representation. This would achieve many of the goals of a Triple E senate since this would mean Toronto would have Tory senators and Alberta would have Liberal senators therefore any policy that unfairly targeted one region would likely run into opposition in the caucus. At the same time this would avoid the idea of some votes being worth more than others. Under a triple E senate, a voter in Prince Edward Island's vote is worth 100x as much as a voter from Ontario, which I see as undemocratic in a representative democracy. I realize the dangers here is we would have consistent minority governments, but I believe our problem with minority governments goes more to the attitude of the parties than it does to them being dysfunctional. In Germany, they have had stable coalitions for many years and there isn't the same adversarial attitude between parties as there is here in Canada. In fact opposing parties will often co-operate for the good of the nation rather than just blindly opposing their opponent to score cheap political points. However, I am not so optimistic that either the Tories or Liberals would ever be willing to work together for the good of the country.

Finally any senate reform would involve constitutional changes, which can be quite messy. I believe the solution to this is any senate reform should be put to a national referendum whereby it would require 50% + 1 support in 7 of the 10 provinces with at least 50% of the population, thereby bypassing the messy negotiations, but still ensuring all regions are heard. I also believe the current distribution of seats is totally unfair. I think Paul Martin was right when he said British Columbia should have more seats than New Brunswick and therefore believe electing senators under the current distribution, would make Western Alienation worse, not better since the West is even more under-represented in the Senate than House of Commons.

Safe Injection Site to stay open for now

For the last little while the Conservatives have waffled on whether to keep the Safe Injection site on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside open or not. Health Minister Tony Clement has announced it can stay open until December 31, 2007, which is somewhat of a relief. While some Liberals may condemn this, I should remind them that there will likely be another election before then, which I believe the Liberals can win so it may not even be an issue by then.

In terms of my views on the safe injection site, I initially opposed the idea since I was worried it would lead to more crime in the area, but since my fears have not turned up and it has worked well, I believe it should stay open. I don't support right wing ideologues like Randy White who believe in a US style War on Drugs of locking every drug addict up, which has proven to be an abysmal failure. Even former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who was a Republican, argued it was a failure and should be ended. While I don't condone drug use, people make bad decisions and we should focus on treatment rather than punishment. On the other side of the coin, I don't support those on the left who believe we should have a safe injection site in every community across the country. I would not be keen on having a safe injection site next to where I live, but considering the Downtown Eastside (I know this area well since I drive through it regularly) was already plagued with drug addiction and many were dying due to unsafe needles and overdoses so it made sense in that case. That is why I believe the federal government should allow communities that wish to have such a site have one, while those that don't shouldn't be forced to have one. The role of both the federal and provincial government should be to fund them and establish parameters, but not to decide whether one is allowed to operate or not. I should note not all right wing politicians oppose the idea. In fact former mayor Philip Owen, current mayor Sam Sullivan, and BC premier Gordon Campbell all support insite despite all being centre-right in their political philosophy, so it is not some wacko left wing idea as Randy White likes to label it as. Even Harper's ideological soulmate John Howard, has a safe injection site in his country.