As DeNiro said in Wag the Dog, "it’s a pageant"....

The election is over, but Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s image makers — and specifically the advance team that worked on his campaign — are evidently still keeping their eagle eyes out for high-quality photo ops.

And so it was that the prime minister-designate trundled over to RCMP headquarters for a grip-and-grin with Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli. The two met on the front steps — cue the snappy salute from Zaccardelli — and went inside for a 45-minute meeting away from the cameras.

The assembled hacks were herded into a nearby building to cool their heels.

Then, as the two were about to emerge, uniformed RCMP communications staff (ably assisted by soon-to-be PMO officials) lined up a campaign-perfect assortment of officers from various police departments — women, visible minorities, young men, not-so-young men — on the steps and then told them where to stand and how to act as the various media photographers and camera folks were marshalled into position.

After exchanging stilted small talk, the pair moved down the steps and across a lane to a statue of James Farquharson MacLeod, the third commissioner of the Northwest Mounted Police.

Harper looked on studiously as Zaccardelli filled him in on the history behind the statue and camera shutters snapped.

With a perfunctory "that’s all guys, thanks" from Harper’s handlers, Zaccardelli walked the incoming PM a few steps back to his limo — as reporters threw a couple of questions at the pair, which were batted away — and watched as the car quickly pulled away.

Staged? Tut, tut, such a cynical, subjective term. We prefer to describe it as elegantly choreographed

Where’s my purse?

She was in a Mississauga grocery story making an announcement on electricity conservation, but it was her own cash that Energy Minister Donna Cansfield was saving.

Part of her photo-op for newspaper and TV cameras was heading down an aisle to buy some energy-efficient light bulbs and such — until Cansfield realized she didn’t have any money.

Good thing one of her aides did, because reporters hang on to their wallets pretty tightly when politicians are around.

No kidding!

The headline on the press release from the office of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory says it all.

"Tory says prosperity needed to help people."

If only we’d known this sooner, the world would be a better place.

Do as I say, not as I do

So much for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s pledge to outlaw partisan political advertising paid for by the taxpayer.

An eagle-eyed reader points out that the website for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission, an arm’s length provincial body, boasts a link with McGuinty’s face.

The click-on button in question is for the worthy Amber Alert program, which helps alert the public to missing children.

It connects to video of the premier announcing the launch of the Amber Alert system last year and Economic Development Minister Joe Cordiano, who used to oversee the OLGC, and Public Safety Minister Monte Kwinter also make guest appearances.

Not sure what McGuinty, Cordiano and Kwinter have to do with publicizing the OLGC’s involvement in an important cause, but it smacks of partisan politics.

In fairness to McGuinty and the commission, the questionable web display predates the premier’s former executive director of communications joining the lottery and gaming monopoly. Jim Warren left the premier’s office last week and is set to join the OLGC in an executive capacity.

The race in cyberspace....

Just one week after Paul Martin announced he wouldn’t lead his party into the next election, the Liberal leadership race is very alive. How alive? Well, two high-profile contenders have already ruled themselves out while the Internet has exploded with speculation. Here is just a sampling of the Liberal-leadership blogs now up and running. Star notebook readers — please feel free to alert us if you come across more...

http://www.nextface.blogspot.com

http://www.martincauchon.blogspot.com

http://draftdion.blogspot.com

http://briantobinforpm.blogspot.com

http://www.liberalleadershipodds.com

That's not my X

An investigation has been launched into a voting irregularity after it was discovered at least two ballots in a hamlet near North Bay had already been filled in for the Conservative candidate.

A spokesperson for Elections Canada confirmed that two ballots at a polling station in Chisholm, Ont. in the riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming had previously been filled in and the voters were subsequently given new ballots.

“We will be looking into how it happened,” Rejean Grenier told the Toronto Star.

“We contacted all of the candidates to let them know that that happened and that they might want to have scrutineeers there for the vote count to ensure that everything is on the up and up,” Grenier said.

A spokesperson for Liberal incumbent Anthony Rota, who held the riding, said the campaign on behalf of the candidate had filed a formal complaint.

“It was verified that it was two ballots - that had already been tampered with and there was already an X behind the Conservative candidate (Peter Chirico),” Peter Gavan, Rota’s campaign manager, said.

“This is the kind of thing that happens in some Third World countries,” Gavan said.

Deputy returning officers take the ballots and ballot box home the night before in order to be ready when the polls open, Grenier confirmed.

NDP candidate Dave Fluri said while it was certainly “highly irregular,” he didn’t want top make a big deal of it until he got more information.

Augie not much E-day help to Iggy

Departing Etobicoke-Lakeshore Liberal MP Jean Augustine won more than 50 per cent of the vote in her riding in the 2004 federal election, so one would think her experience be invaluable to rookie candidate Michael Ignatieff on Election Day.

Alas, Augustine was spotted aboard an Air Canada flight to Calgary on Sunday - along with Liberal Senator Art Eggleton - jetting west for Monday's vote. (They did not sit together and, unlike their days as MPs, travelled in coach instead of business class.)

The popular retired MP, who also won in 1993, 1997, and 2000, will join Eggleton live from Calgary for Citytv's election night special.

Meanwhile, confident Conservatives are saying their internal data shows Tory candidate John Capobianco might eke out a win over Ignatieff.

That has some wondering if the Harvard University professor and superstar parachute candidate will live up to the nickname "Michael Jimcouttsieff."

Jim Coutts, of course, was former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's principal secretary, who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in the old Toronto riding of Spadina, losing a 1981 byelection to NDP candidate Dan Heap.

Since then, Coutts has been synonymous with central parties foisting star candidates upon a local riding association.

He should have asked a woman for directions

The question going around the riding of Barrie is whether Patrick Brown is geographically challenged or simply up to no good.

According to his Liberal opponent, Aileen Carroll, Brown's campaign distributed literature to voters that gives non-existent and incorrect poll locations for Election Day.

"My hope is that this was not done deliberately to confuse and misdirect Liberal voters," said campaign spokesperson Nikki Holland. "My hope is that no one would deliberately interfere with their right as Canadians to vote."

Apparently the Grits aren't waiting for an answer and have lodged formal complaints with the Chief Electoral Officer and the office the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

Maybe Carroll could have phoned Brown's office because his campaign manager said the riding returning office had already been notified of the computer "mistake" and that steps had already been taken to correct the misinformation, which he says went to Conservative supporters.

"Is that all Aileen Carroll has to do in the last few days of the campaign?" Tom Simpson said.

Celsius 1/23

Left-leaning documentary film director Michael Moore, who is practically an honourary Canadian for the nice things he said about us in Bowling for Columbine, has waded into Monday’s federal election.

Moore, a self-described “an avid lover of all things Canadian,” whose Fahrenheit 9/11 was one of the most searing political movies ever, issued a statement Friday that we print in its entirety (and with U.S. spelling and his own kicker intact):

Oh, Canada - you’re not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That’s a joke, right? I know you have a great sense of humor, and certainly a well-developed sense of irony, but this is no longer funny. Maybe it’s a new form of Canadian irony - reverse irony!

OK, now I get it. First, you have the courage to stand against the war in Iraq - and then you elect a prime minister who’s for it. You declare gay people have equal rights - and then you elect a man who says they don’t.

You give your native peoples their own autonomy and their own territory - and then you vote for a man who wants to cut aid to these poorest of your citizens. Wow, that is intense! Only Canadians could pull off a hat trick of humor like that. My hat’s off to you.

Far be it from me, as an American, to suggest what you should do. You already have too many Americans telling you what to do. Well, actually, you’ve got just one American who keeps telling you to roll over and fetch and sit. I hope you don’t feel this appeal of mine is too intrusive but I just couldn't sit by, as your friend, and say nothing. Yes, I agree, the Liberals have some ’splainin’ to do. And yes, one party in power for more than a decade gets a little... long. But you have a parliamentary system.

(I’ll bet you didn’t know that - see, that’s why you need Americans telling you things!) There are ways at the polls to have your voices heard other than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

These are no ordinary times, and as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he’s a man who shares his world view. Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch in the cowboy belt?

C’mon, where's your Canadian pride? I mean, if you’re going to reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co., then at least don’t surrender so easily.

Can’t you wait until he threatens to bomb Regina? Make him work for it, for Pete’s sake.

But seriously, I know you’re not going to elect a guy who should really be running for governor of Utah. Whew! I knew it! You almost had me there.

Very funny. Don’t do that again. God, I love you, you crazy cold wonderful neighbors to my north. Don’t ever change.

Michael Moore

(Mr. Moore is not available for interviews because he now needs to address the situation in Azerbaijan. But he could be talked into it for a couple of tickets to a Leafs’ game.)

Ken Dryden Speaks...

With disarming candour, the legendary goalie and now Social Services Minister has sent out a note to his constituents at this late hour in the election campaign, acknowledging that things don't look all that great for his party, but wondering why that is. With sadness, he laments the potential Tory scrapping of the child-care program he negotiated...

Some excerpts...

"It's just a few days before the election. I'm anxious; on edge. Polls aren't votes. On Monday, we can all still vote any way we want, but somehow it doesn't seem that way. For days, I've been trying to think of what else to say, how else to put it, to all those people who I know still don't feel all that comfortable themselves.

It's time for a change. It's on election signs, in ads, in the media. It's in people's conversations. Said so easily, as if what more could one say.

But that's too easy.

Why is it time for a change? All the noise and nastiness, charge and countercharge, in this 20-month campaign, it can seem as if everything is wrong. Everything is bad. It isn't. Our employment growth, our increase in living standards, our productivity growth - all at or near the top of the G7. Our unemployment the lowest it's been in 30 years.

This isn't opinion. This just is. Two years of a good economy and it seems like a blessing. Eight, and it's inevitability. It's not.

Why? And most fundamentally to all of us, it's time for a change - to what?"

***

"Our country was built on great national endeavours - the joining of two great languages and cultures, the railroad, Medicare, the education system, the Charter of Rights. It's what Macdonald, Pearson, Trudeau - what our greatest leaders - understood."

***

"I don't think Mr. Harper thinks in terms of "great national endeavours." I don't think that's part of his understanding of Canada. I don't think that's what's in his bones.

Their announcements on child care, public transit, persons with disabilities - so limited. So limiting. He tells us to: "Stand Up for Canada" -- but what Canada are we to stand up for?

"Part of bringing out the best in people is coaxing, nudging, inspiring them to get together, to work towards something bigger than themselves, that stretches their imaginations, that gets them to do more than they ever thought was in them."

The railroad, Medicare, the education system, the Charter of Rights - Canada is a great national endeavour. We're a country whose greatest national endeavours are still ahead. I want big things for Canada. I don't want anything less.

It's time for a change. Why? To what?

We need to think hard."