BC Election, Ontario PC race, and Liberal convention
BC Election
On May 12, 2009, British Columbians will go to the polls to decide whether to re-elect Campbell for a third term or put the NDP back into power. As someone who joined the BC Liberals back in 2001 and has never waivered on my support, I fully support the re-election of the BC Liberals. Being in the midst of the worse recession since World War II, putting a party in power whose economic credentials are quite poor would be disastrous. If the economy was doing well, we might be able to get away with electing an NDP government although it would still be a bad choice. Campbell is far from perfect and has made his mistakes, but clearly BC is far better off than in 2001 and he is taking the province in the right direction. In 2001, he promised to balance the budget and cut taxes and turn BC's economy around and he never waivered even when his poll numbers fell and there were massive protests. After being re-elected he offered signing bonuses for unions who signed contracts ahead of schedule, which helped bring about labour peace in a province where labour strife was quite common. And this was done after the fact many of those unions spent millions of dollars trying to get him defeated. Unlike Harper, he didn't try to punish those who opposed him. On the environmental front, he showed leadership with his carbon tax. Campbell is truly a leader as when he says he is going to achieve something, nothing will stop him from following through and this is the kind of leadership BC needs. By contrast Carole James may be a nice person, but her policies are completely out to lunch. She wants to scrap the carbon tax and replacing it with a cap and trade system which works but not as well. Has no plan to balance the budget when the economy starts to turn around. She wants to put a moratorium on independent power producers despite the fact these create jobs and help meet BC's energy needs and tries to put the whole fear of private power when the BC Liberals have not privatized BC Hydro and will not. Besides the NDP had no problem with IPPs in the 90s, so this smacks of pure populism and opportunism, not sound policy. She plans to tax the exports of all raw logs when in reality this is being dishonest as only logs harvested on provincial crown land can they control. Those harvested on private land fall under federal jurisdiction. While I am no fan of raw log exports, I do think we should be allowed to export our surplus (otherwise what can be produced locally should be, but what cannot can be exported). I will have more on the BC election as we got closer to voting day. The BC Liberals have a solid lead in the polls, but it would be very foolish to automatically assume they will win. They have a definite advantage, but an NDP win is still possible. For starters, the NDP base is far more motivated to show up and they are far better at bring their supporters to the polls, so it is important the BC Liberals get every supporter they can out. As for the BC Conservatives, they could be a bit of a problem in the Interior, although in the ridings they ran in last time around, the Liberals performed worse than the surrounding ridings, but so did the NDP so I suspect a good chunk of their vote will come from those who wouldn't vote otherwise. For example in Okanagan-Vernon, the BC Liberals got 43%, BC Conservatives 10% and BC NDP 33%, so yes the BC Liberals did worse, but the combined right vote was 53% which was higher than either Kelowna riding and both Kelowna ridings are more conservative than the Northern Okanagan Valley. Likewise in the two Cariboo ridings which went NDP in 2005, the Combined Liberal + Reform vote in 1996 was in the high 50s, as opposed to the BC Liberal support of high 40s suggesting not all Reform voters from 1996 went to the BC Liberals.
As for BC STV, I will have more on it later, but I voted No in 2005 and I would emphatically vote No again if I still lived in BC. If it is too confusing for a political junkie like me to understand, it is probably too confusing to your average voter. When I cast my ballot, I don't want to second guess how it was counted, which is exactly what happens under STV. Under FTFP, there is no ambiguity as to how one's vote is counted.
Ontario PC leadership Race
Below is a summary of the four candidates running for the Ontario PCs and my view on each
Christine Elliot:
She is best known as Jim Flaherty's wife and undoubtedly this will be a liability towards her chances. I am myself quite skeptical of having someone related to Jim Flaherty in power at another level, that being said being married to someone doesn't mean they have the same views. Marriage is about love, not about one's political preferences and in fact even in my family, not all members vote the same way and nor do they all have identical views so it is possible she has different views. In fact she strikes me as more centrist than her husband Flaherty. After all she is pro-choice and for same-sex marriage and she has argued the Common Sense Revolution is a thing of the past which Ontario should not go back to unlike her husband who still reminisces for those days.
Randy Hiller:
If you want to talk about a nutbar, this would be him. Its questionable whether the guy is even fit to be MPP, but certainly not premier. Being premier is a big job that requires a lot of responsibility and is not meant for your average Joe. It would be like having your average Joe be a CEO, doctor, or lawyer. He also would unnecessary pit rural vs. Urban Ontario. While I agree the government needs to do more to reach out to Rural Ontario, we don't need someone who is openly hostile to urban Ontario, where the majority of people live. I doubt he will win the leadership race though and certainly not in a general election as in both cases, the PCs need to do well in the 905 belt and he is exactly the type of person who would ensure it goes solidly Liberal. He may pick up a few seats in Rural Ontario, but this won't be enough. The federal Conservatives in 2006 won almost all rural ridings in Ontario yet still won fewer seats than the Liberals in Ontario. They only pulled ahead when the started winning in mid sized cities like Kitchener and London as well as some of the 905 suburbs.
Tim Hudak:
He is without question the front-runner and probably has the most experience of the four contenders. The problem with him is he strikes me as too much of a yesterday politician. Whether one agreed or disagreed with the Common Sense Revolution, it is clearly not the type of solutions Ontario needs now. While he could conceivably win in 2011, I suspect the Liberals will have plenty of ammo against him. Also a lot may depend on what happens federally as I suspect his chances of winning will improve if the Liberals win the next federal election as it seems Ontario likes to go one way federally and another provincially.
Frank Klees:
Definitely a dark horse candidate and don't really know a lot about him. Although the fact he started his campaign on TV with Charles McVety says a lot about the types he appeals to. As someone who finds Charles McVety a right wing lunatic (He is your Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell of the North), I cannot say he is someone whom I am very impressed with.
However, regardless of who they choose, it will result in the party moving to the right, which I think is the wrong direction. The party should be a centre-right party not overly ideological as the right wing base may want to see the party go further to the right but their hatred of the Liberals is enough to get them to vote Tory and even if they do stay home, elections are won and lost amongst the swing Liberal-Tory voters, not the right wing base. Every vote the PCs take from the Liberals has twice the impact as every right winger who didn't show up in 2007, but did in 2011.
Liberal Convention
The Liberal convention is coming up very soon in Vancouver in which Michael Ignatieff will be crowned Liberal leader. Undoubtedly, many Liberals are buoyed by the recent poll numbers. Some Tories point out Dion had similiar numbers after winning the leadership race, although any Tory who assumes Ignatieff will face the same fate as Dion is being delusional. After watching the mistakes Dion made, I think Ignatieff will take greater caution to make sure they aren't repeated. By the same token, Liberals should not get too overconfident. Polls come and go in cycles so the Liberals should not assume they will automatically win the next election. Its still way too early to predict the outcome of the next election. We don't know what point in the recession we will be at when this happens, what type of platform the Liberals will propose as well as Ignatieff is still not well known to most Canadians so a lot can happen between now and then. The only likelihood is that it will probably be another minority government. I think a majority government for either party is extremely unlikely. With Harper being extremely unpopular in Quebec and having limited room for growth in English Canada, that puts a majority out of reach for him. Likewise for Ignatieff, a breakthrough in the West is highly unlikely. He should continue to woo the West, but this is to build a base there for three or four elections down the road, not the next one. That doesn't mean the Liberals cannot gain seats in the West, but not the amount they need to get a majority. And likewise sweeping either Ontario (as Chretien did) or Quebec (as Trudeau did) is unrealistic now with the existence of the Bloc Quebecois and the right being united.
On May 12, 2009, British Columbians will go to the polls to decide whether to re-elect Campbell for a third term or put the NDP back into power. As someone who joined the BC Liberals back in 2001 and has never waivered on my support, I fully support the re-election of the BC Liberals. Being in the midst of the worse recession since World War II, putting a party in power whose economic credentials are quite poor would be disastrous. If the economy was doing well, we might be able to get away with electing an NDP government although it would still be a bad choice. Campbell is far from perfect and has made his mistakes, but clearly BC is far better off than in 2001 and he is taking the province in the right direction. In 2001, he promised to balance the budget and cut taxes and turn BC's economy around and he never waivered even when his poll numbers fell and there were massive protests. After being re-elected he offered signing bonuses for unions who signed contracts ahead of schedule, which helped bring about labour peace in a province where labour strife was quite common. And this was done after the fact many of those unions spent millions of dollars trying to get him defeated. Unlike Harper, he didn't try to punish those who opposed him. On the environmental front, he showed leadership with his carbon tax. Campbell is truly a leader as when he says he is going to achieve something, nothing will stop him from following through and this is the kind of leadership BC needs. By contrast Carole James may be a nice person, but her policies are completely out to lunch. She wants to scrap the carbon tax and replacing it with a cap and trade system which works but not as well. Has no plan to balance the budget when the economy starts to turn around. She wants to put a moratorium on independent power producers despite the fact these create jobs and help meet BC's energy needs and tries to put the whole fear of private power when the BC Liberals have not privatized BC Hydro and will not. Besides the NDP had no problem with IPPs in the 90s, so this smacks of pure populism and opportunism, not sound policy. She plans to tax the exports of all raw logs when in reality this is being dishonest as only logs harvested on provincial crown land can they control. Those harvested on private land fall under federal jurisdiction. While I am no fan of raw log exports, I do think we should be allowed to export our surplus (otherwise what can be produced locally should be, but what cannot can be exported). I will have more on the BC election as we got closer to voting day. The BC Liberals have a solid lead in the polls, but it would be very foolish to automatically assume they will win. They have a definite advantage, but an NDP win is still possible. For starters, the NDP base is far more motivated to show up and they are far better at bring their supporters to the polls, so it is important the BC Liberals get every supporter they can out. As for the BC Conservatives, they could be a bit of a problem in the Interior, although in the ridings they ran in last time around, the Liberals performed worse than the surrounding ridings, but so did the NDP so I suspect a good chunk of their vote will come from those who wouldn't vote otherwise. For example in Okanagan-Vernon, the BC Liberals got 43%, BC Conservatives 10% and BC NDP 33%, so yes the BC Liberals did worse, but the combined right vote was 53% which was higher than either Kelowna riding and both Kelowna ridings are more conservative than the Northern Okanagan Valley. Likewise in the two Cariboo ridings which went NDP in 2005, the Combined Liberal + Reform vote in 1996 was in the high 50s, as opposed to the BC Liberal support of high 40s suggesting not all Reform voters from 1996 went to the BC Liberals.
As for BC STV, I will have more on it later, but I voted No in 2005 and I would emphatically vote No again if I still lived in BC. If it is too confusing for a political junkie like me to understand, it is probably too confusing to your average voter. When I cast my ballot, I don't want to second guess how it was counted, which is exactly what happens under STV. Under FTFP, there is no ambiguity as to how one's vote is counted.
Ontario PC leadership Race
Below is a summary of the four candidates running for the Ontario PCs and my view on each
Christine Elliot:
She is best known as Jim Flaherty's wife and undoubtedly this will be a liability towards her chances. I am myself quite skeptical of having someone related to Jim Flaherty in power at another level, that being said being married to someone doesn't mean they have the same views. Marriage is about love, not about one's political preferences and in fact even in my family, not all members vote the same way and nor do they all have identical views so it is possible she has different views. In fact she strikes me as more centrist than her husband Flaherty. After all she is pro-choice and for same-sex marriage and she has argued the Common Sense Revolution is a thing of the past which Ontario should not go back to unlike her husband who still reminisces for those days.
Randy Hiller:
If you want to talk about a nutbar, this would be him. Its questionable whether the guy is even fit to be MPP, but certainly not premier. Being premier is a big job that requires a lot of responsibility and is not meant for your average Joe. It would be like having your average Joe be a CEO, doctor, or lawyer. He also would unnecessary pit rural vs. Urban Ontario. While I agree the government needs to do more to reach out to Rural Ontario, we don't need someone who is openly hostile to urban Ontario, where the majority of people live. I doubt he will win the leadership race though and certainly not in a general election as in both cases, the PCs need to do well in the 905 belt and he is exactly the type of person who would ensure it goes solidly Liberal. He may pick up a few seats in Rural Ontario, but this won't be enough. The federal Conservatives in 2006 won almost all rural ridings in Ontario yet still won fewer seats than the Liberals in Ontario. They only pulled ahead when the started winning in mid sized cities like Kitchener and London as well as some of the 905 suburbs.
Tim Hudak:
He is without question the front-runner and probably has the most experience of the four contenders. The problem with him is he strikes me as too much of a yesterday politician. Whether one agreed or disagreed with the Common Sense Revolution, it is clearly not the type of solutions Ontario needs now. While he could conceivably win in 2011, I suspect the Liberals will have plenty of ammo against him. Also a lot may depend on what happens federally as I suspect his chances of winning will improve if the Liberals win the next federal election as it seems Ontario likes to go one way federally and another provincially.
Frank Klees:
Definitely a dark horse candidate and don't really know a lot about him. Although the fact he started his campaign on TV with Charles McVety says a lot about the types he appeals to. As someone who finds Charles McVety a right wing lunatic (He is your Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell of the North), I cannot say he is someone whom I am very impressed with.
However, regardless of who they choose, it will result in the party moving to the right, which I think is the wrong direction. The party should be a centre-right party not overly ideological as the right wing base may want to see the party go further to the right but their hatred of the Liberals is enough to get them to vote Tory and even if they do stay home, elections are won and lost amongst the swing Liberal-Tory voters, not the right wing base. Every vote the PCs take from the Liberals has twice the impact as every right winger who didn't show up in 2007, but did in 2011.
Liberal Convention
The Liberal convention is coming up very soon in Vancouver in which Michael Ignatieff will be crowned Liberal leader. Undoubtedly, many Liberals are buoyed by the recent poll numbers. Some Tories point out Dion had similiar numbers after winning the leadership race, although any Tory who assumes Ignatieff will face the same fate as Dion is being delusional. After watching the mistakes Dion made, I think Ignatieff will take greater caution to make sure they aren't repeated. By the same token, Liberals should not get too overconfident. Polls come and go in cycles so the Liberals should not assume they will automatically win the next election. Its still way too early to predict the outcome of the next election. We don't know what point in the recession we will be at when this happens, what type of platform the Liberals will propose as well as Ignatieff is still not well known to most Canadians so a lot can happen between now and then. The only likelihood is that it will probably be another minority government. I think a majority government for either party is extremely unlikely. With Harper being extremely unpopular in Quebec and having limited room for growth in English Canada, that puts a majority out of reach for him. Likewise for Ignatieff, a breakthrough in the West is highly unlikely. He should continue to woo the West, but this is to build a base there for three or four elections down the road, not the next one. That doesn't mean the Liberals cannot gain seats in the West, but not the amount they need to get a majority. And likewise sweeping either Ontario (as Chretien did) or Quebec (as Trudeau did) is unrealistic now with the existence of the Bloc Quebecois and the right being united.
posted by Monkey Loves to Fight at 6:06 PM
2 Comments:
I'm surprised you're not endorsing Christine Elliott, since her positions seem to be right in line with your views. Her best shot would be to gain as many Red Tory supporters as possible and win the urban ridings big. But is she Red enough to gain the Rosedale big-money crowd and the hardest Red Tories who would much rather have another John Tory? (Some may simply abstain from voting) I think she will do poorly in rural Ontario, though, which will hurt her chances.
I would say Frank Klees will be gone on the first ballot since he is struggling to get any grassroots support.
Randy Hillier should do really well in the rural ridings and seems to be strong as well in northern Ontario right now (the spring bear hunt is a huge issue there), and his positions on some issues contradicting those of Harris (such as on municipal laws) should help too. However, his lack of any significant support in the GTA will definitely hurt him big time, since he is hated by Red Tories. He would surely spike turnout big time - on both sides - in the general election though!
Hudak is definitely the front-runner right now, but I agree that he is too closely tied to the party brass as he is supported by virtually every Harris advisor. He is also supported by some advisors of John Tory. He probably will win the first ballot, but can he grow from there? He reminds me of Ignatieff in his first run, as well as Jim Dinning in Alberta in 2006. He does have an advantage of no real weaknesses in regional or ideological breakdown, even if he doesn't have any real strong points.
Anonymous - Christine Elliot is probably the reddest of them, but still to the right wing of John Tory. Secondly, I would argue having someone who can appeal to urban voters is the best choice considering more people reside in urban ridings rather than rural ridings and if recent elections have taught us anything suburban voters (except for those on the very edge) tend to vote more in line with city folks than rural ones. My problem with her is that she is the husband of Jim Flaherty who I despise. She probably won't do well in Rural Ontario in the leadership race, although Rural Ontario is not full of a bunch of hard right ideologues as you seem to apply. More conservative than Toronto yes, but not your Alabama of the North.
As for Hillier, I doubt he will win, as less than half the ridings are rural ridings. In a general election, I suspect he would get clobbered pretty badly. Since lets remember many rural ridings contain sizeable communities of 20,000-40,000 people i.e. (Woodstock in Oxford, Cornwall in Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, Belleville in Prince Edward-Hastings etc.) and I think even these communities would find his views a little too hard to stomach. Most communities this size voted for Martin in 2004 federally causing many normally safe Tory ridings to be rather close as many here feared Harper had a hidden agenda. It was only in 2006 and 2008 he started winning in communities this size. I suspect Hillier would produce similiar results.
Hudak will win although you are right his room for growth is limited. Another liability for him as his connections to Mike Harris since winning for the PCs is not just about gaining votes on the right, it is also about keeping the left split and with him I suspect Green and NDP support will drop as much of it goes to the Liberals to prevent an Ontario PC win. Normally 40% is sufficient, but with him he will probably need around 45% in a general election to win a majority.
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