A departure lounge confidence vote?

That's what deputy Conservative Leader Peter MacKay was proposing Monday morning after icing in Ottawa cancelled a raft of Air Canada flights and left MPs stranded at Toronto's Pearson International.

Many of the MPs were headed back to the capital after Sunday's Grey Cup game in Vancouver.

Their ranks included Conservatives Peter van Loan, Randy White, Gary Lunn along with NDP Leader Jack Layton.

With so many Tory MPs stranded away from Ottawa and with just a few hours to go before the Monday night confidence vote, a few even quipped that perhaps the Liberals were out spraying the runways in Ottawa with water to force the delay.

Prime Minister Paul Martin hitched a ride on a Challenger and got into Ottawa around 2 a.m.

MacKay mused that Edmonton's win in a cliffhanger boded well for the Tories in a campaign certain to get underway Tuesday.

And while the election won't have the overtime action of the football game, MacKay predicted lots of election drama.

"I think there'll be lots of recounts," said MacKay, after arriving in Toronto on a red-eye.

MacKay sat beside CBC sportscaster Brian Williams in business class on the flight.

Journalists Doing Something Positive (For Once)

Next Wednesday, November 30, the social event of the season will be held at the Legislature.

The Queen’s Park Press Gallery charity auction and Christmas party is the largest non-partisan fete of the year and one of the few times when reporters, politicians and staffers gather to drink reasonably priced premium Canadian beer and VQA Ontario wine for a good cause.

Organizer Christina Blizzard, the Toronto Sun’s Queen’s Park columnist, has been working around the clock with other gallery volunteers to collect donated items, like sports tickets, trips and other gear, from media organizations, breweries, political leaders, banks and other businesses.

Last year, the auction raised more than $30,000 for the United Way and Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman’s native literacy charity. This year’s event will again be for the benefit of the two charities.

The fun gets under way at 6 p.m. at the Government Caucus Room on the second floor of the pink palace.

Furious George Goes Global

Health Minister George Smitherman is the first to admit he’s a hothead.

Now, all of North American knows the hard-working Toronto Centre-Rosedale MPP has a short fuse.

Smitherman was featured the other night on The Comedy Network’s popular new Colbert Report, a Daily Show with Jon Stewart spin-off, for his warnings about the dangers of … optometrists.

Host Stephen Colbert featured Canadian optometrists on his "Threat Down" of menaces in the post-9/11 world.

"Ontario’s health minister called the Ontario Association of Optometrists ‘a bunch of terrorists and I don’t negotiate with terrorists,’" Colbert intoned in his trademark Giant of Journalism-ese.

"Bravo, sir. Optometrists are a menace. You have to be careful with a group that gets their kicks blowing air into our eyeballs."

Smitherman, of course, was forced to apologize a few weeks back for his intemperate slight against the optometry community.

That didn’t stop NDP MPP Peter Kormos (Niagara Centre) from asking Premier Dalton McGuinty if he would force the minister into "anger management classes."

"I know the minister of health considers himself a media star, but surely, this is the kind of media exposure that Ontario and Ontario optometrists can do without," said Kormos.

Fighting back laughter, McGuinty replied: "There is no doubt about it: There is no shortage of enthusiasm that Minister Smitherman brings to his work, but I can tell you it all is informed by a spirit and a sentiment of commitment to improving the quality of health care for all Ontarians."

McGuinty Jobs Tory

A few weeks ago, some Liberal MPPs were visibly embarrassed when Finance Minister Dwight Duncan attacked Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory in the Legislature for laying off staff when he ran Rogers Cable.

Some even sent private notes to Tory outlining their discomfort with the misguided strategy.

Still, Premier Dalton McGuinty has embraced the tactic, quoting from Liberal researcher’s figures on Tory’s time at the unloved cable giant.

"Apparently, the champion of the working people here has undergone some kind of a conversion on the road to becoming leader of the official opposition," McGuinty charged Wednesday after the PC Leader railed at him for manufacturing job losses in Ontario.

"But again, in 2002, when he presided over a company that laid off people by the hundreds on an annual basis, he said at that time, ‘It’s a sign of the times. Most businesses today are finding that they have to reduce their costs and that includes, unfortunately,’ what he characterized as ‘people costs,’" the premier said.

Unfortunately for McGuinty, his party’s brain trust hasn’t done all of its homework, according to gleeful Conservative researchers.

Between 1997 and 2002, while running Rogers Cable, Tory created 2,153 net new jobs and even in the year of the layoffs scores of people were hired.

Oops.

Dammit Janet

Somebody forgot to tell former Progressive Conservative finance minister Janet Ecker that her party lost the 2003 election.
Liberal staffers were working away in their research offices in the north wing of the Legislative Assembly Tuesday night when a familiar figure strutted in.
The affable Ecker, herself a former staffer to PC premier Bill Davis in the 1980’s, started chatting with the junior politicos.
“Where’s the boardroom?” she asked pleasantly.
The confused Grits directed her toward the darkened room and helpfully switched on the lights for her.
“I thought there was a board meeting here,” Ecker said to blank looks from the Libbies.
They sheepishly explained that the area was no longer the PC research suite offices (and hadn’t been in more than two years).
“Oh, that’s why there are so many Dalton McGuinty posters here,” she said.

The Mel-ody Lingers On

Mel Lastman once ruled Toronto with flamboyance and a flair for good (and bad) publicity.
Two years out of office, the retired former mayor’s one-time strategists are now key players in all three provincial political parties.
Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s most influential media adviser is executive communications director Jim Warren, who worked for Lastman throughout his two terms.
Another long-time staffer to Hizzoner, Andy Stein, is a senior official with Infrastructure Minister David Caplan.
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory’s top kitchen cabinet member is business executive Rod Phillips, who was Lastman’s chief of staff and was an architect of Tory’s successful leadership campaign last year.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton’s candidate in Thursday’s by-election is Sheila White, who aside from working for the New Democratic chief at Queen’s Park served under Lastman for 13 years while he was North York mayor.
As Mel might say, noooooobody in municipal politics has a provincial legacy like that…

I Got You, Babe. Or not.

From the front lines of the coming election campaign, this anecdote from a (presumably Liberal) resident of St. Paul's in Toronto, which is destined to be one of the most keenly watched races in the country.

Public Health Minister Carolyn Bennett will be facing off against Global TV's Peter Kent and the NDP's high-profile recruit, Paul Summerville, an economist who's worked with the Royal and Toronto-Dominion banks. Here's an early street skirmish, in Kate Reilly's own words:

A funny thing that happened to me on the way to work this morning.

I was coming up on Eglinton station when I saw a man waving some fliers. Not wanting to be accosted, I averted my eyes and continued walking but looked up just at the wrong moment.

"Hey, babe, take one of these. Wanna meet Peter Kent?" I kid you not, these were the exact words from this man's mouth.

I told him I didn't really have time to stop but as I was still speaking Peter came over and grabbed my hand to shake it. Here is the best part - he then told me to "hurry off so you won't be late for lessons."

...Lessons? I'm a 25 year old woman. Who does not have lessons to hurry off to and does NOT appreciate being called 'babe' by someone trying to win her vote.

This is a sad state of affairs. But it did make me chuckle, in an, "oh, how sad," kind of way. I don't imagine he'll be much of a challenge to the incumbent.

Living Up To His Last Name

CBC Television’s Queen’s Park reporter Mike Wise is doing a lot more than just covering the news these days.

Wise is spearheading an ambitious project called Making The Grade, which has canvassed high school students across Ontario for suggested legislation that could be tabled as a private members’ bill by one of the three parties in the Legislature.

Working with the cooperation of Liberal, Progressive Conservative and NDP House Leaders, the journalist garnered 106 proposals on various types of legislation that, after consulting the parties, were whittled down to five.

Our favourite? A law that would force school cafeterias to sell only healthy food. Hey, it’s a fashionable idea being put forward by TV chef Jamie Oliver in the U.K.

Wise is hopeful the winner will be selected some time next month.

There is a catch, however. The non-partisan high school students themselves must draft the legislation and then convince an MPP from one of the three parties to introduce the bill.

For more details see http://cbc.ca/makingthegrade.

Downs and then out?

Paul Martin will be going to the Grey Cup in Vancouver on Sunday along with B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and perhaps other premiers. Campbell has been inviting all the premiers to watch Montreal play Edmonton in the wrap-up of the CFL season.

Football, particularly in the West, has assumed some symbolic significance for Martin. He went to the Grey Cup in Regina the day after he was elected leader of the Liberal Party in 2003.

This year, he's attending a day before his government may be booted out on a vote of non-confidence in the Commons. In politics, as in football, you win some, you lose some.

Keeping a watchful eye....

An Ottawa speech from Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is a heartburn-inducing occasion for federal Conservatives at the best of times, and when Klein stood to address the Canadian Club in the nation's capital today, there were nervous glances all around from the legions of Tory MPs and party apparatchiks in the audience.

Klein joked about the pre-election uneasiness in his remarks, saying "at the risk of sending Conservative strategists running for the exits, let me say a few words about health care."

Laughs aside, Calgary-based consultant, lobbyist and federal Tory strategist Ken Boessenkool stood near the back of a post-speech news conference with Klein chief of staff Peter Kruselnicki, listening carefully to Klein's utterances.