The real priorities....

Forget the national debates. Jack Layton was on the hot seat before a younger audience today and answered the questions that really matter.

The federal NDP leader put in an appearance on Much Music’s Much in Demand afternoon show on Monday and with an enthusiastic studio crowd watching, host Leah Miller put him to the quiz.

Subway or car? Bike was Layton’s choice.

Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie? Olivia Chow, his wife.

Piercing or tattoo? Piercing.

Jim Carrey or Mike Myers? Mike Myers.

CD or iPod? iPod.

Suits or jeans? Suits on the campaign trail; otherwise jeans.

Olivia Chow or Britney Spears? No contest.

Layton presented Much host David Soltendieck with a trademark orange NDP scarf, to add to the other one he was sporting on the set.

The Much crew had done their research and put Layton, an avid cyclist, to the test on a stationery bicycle in a race against Miller. Layton won but Miller complained that her high heels were an unfair disadvantage.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Responding to questions sent by phone and email, Layton urged support for lowering the voting age to 16, talked about gun violence and said Ottawa should put more focus on post-secondary education.

At the other end of the demographic scale....

Tory Leader Stephen Harper wandered to the back of his campaign plane to chat with the expanding media contingent that has come to cover the front-runner. After some idle chitchat he asked Craig Oliver, CTV’s venerable political correspondent, which election the current campaign reminded him of.

"’84," Oliver said without hesitation. To which Harper mischievously replied, "18 or 19?"

Much guffawing and hilarity among the assembled crowd, and Harper clearly revelled in his joke. But as CTV Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife pointed out it doesn’t pay to make too much fun of the dean of the Ottawa press gallery. "That’s it, now you’ve done it, the wheels are going to start falling off," Fife joked.

Back to the future

One of the most popular Ontario political public affairs shows is returning to its original time slot.

Global TV’s Focus Ontario will back on Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. starting on Feb. 11.

Last February, the big brains at CanWest Global moved the show to Sunday morning, where it unsuccessfully competed with national and U.S. political chat programs and NFL pre-game shows.

On Saturday nights, Focus, which has become an institution in this province after 19 years on the air, routinely attracted 110,000 viewers, making it one of the most-watched political programs in Canada.

But on Sundays, viewership plummeted to a mere 20,000 people.

To mark the historic shift, there will new theme music, a new opening and familiar host Sean Mallen.

The change is due to the fact that Global National, the network’s national news show, will be on at 5:30 p.m. seven days a week followed by a 6 p.m. local newscast. The national show had supplanted Focus by running at 6:30 p.m.

Avid fans, meanwhile, are still holding out hope that Mallen and former hosts Graham Richardson, Troy Reeb, and Robert Fisher will gather for a 20th anniversary show next year.

Admitting it is half the battle....

It is suddenly quite fashionable for Liberals to admit that they are losing. On Sunday it was Belinda Stronach and Mike Robinson saying on CTV that it looked bad for their party. Even aboard the Prime Minister’s plane, speechwriter Scott Feschuk is acknowledging the big trouble in his daily blog.

Here’s his latest entry:

I feel the need to go on the record with something: I have a real problem with all these polls that show we’re not ahead.

My problem is that they show we’re not ahead.

What I’m basically saying is that I’d prefer if we were ahead, instead of being ahead’s more homely, horribly disfigured stepsister, behind.

I throw that out there in case, you know, saying so makes a difference of some kind.

What I mean to say is that I’d hate to find out Jan. 24 that all I’d needed to do was ask politely.

Virtually there...

NDP Leader Jack Layton’s ambitious plan to barnstorm around Northern Ontario was foiled by a forecast.

The threat of freezing rain thwarted a Sunday morning visit to Kenora, forcing the NDP leader to do a cyber-rally — by telephone — from a hotel room in Sault Ste. Marie.

The pilots of Layton’s chartered Air Canada jet had warned that because Kenora lacks de-icing equipment, there was a good chance the tour would get stranded in the northwestern Ontario community.

So Layton and his team diverted instead to Sault Ste. Marie — and rallied the Kenora supporters from afar.

“I can practically smell the coffee from here,” Layton said into a speakerphone to more than 200 supporters gathered for a breakfast at the Best Western in Kenora.

Layton pitched his party as a defender of the interests of Northern Ontario and pledged to take up the fight on issues like softwood lumber and economic development.

The NDP’s two MPs from Northern Ontario have “raised more issues, spoke more often on behalf of the north than all of the Liberal MPs combined,” Layton told his Kenora audience, whose hoots and whistles of support could be heard over the speaker.

Hampton, who was canvassing in Kenora recently, joined Layton for the call and said support for the NDP is “very strong.”

“We’ve got people who said ‘I’ve been a lifelong Liberal, this time I’m voting NDP’,” Hampton said.

The power of this blog!

Never let it be said that the Toronto Star’s Political Notebook does not effect change.

No, we haven’t toppled a government - yet - or even taken out a cabinet minister, although Ontario Transportation Minister Harinder Takhar does look pretty shaky.

But this teensy blog has managed to get the mighty provincial government to set the record straight on Sir John A. Macdonald.

As revealed here on Jan. 11, an architectural photograph of the Macdonald statue at the top of University Avenue - on display in a tunnel at Queen’s Park - was erroneously labelled.

“John A. MacDonald Monument Legislative Building Grounds,” it read last week, putting a capital D in our first prime minister’s surname.

Fast-forward five days and we can report that it now reads: “John A. Macdonald Monument Legislative Building Grounds.”

That’s our good deed for the week.

Harper on ice

The Conservative tour was grounded today after a combination of rain and an overnight cold snap turned the runway at the North Bay airport into a skating rink.

Harper had just wrapped up a rally in the city and was plannning to fly back to the nation's capital.

While smaller aircraft were using the airport, the Air Canada pilots on Harper's chartered aircraft didn't want to take a chance of sliding off the icy runway. So they decided against landing to pick up the tour.

That left officials scrambling but they quickly organized to have the campaign buses shuttle everyone back to Ottawa, a trip expected to take more than four hours.

If Harper has his way, such icy problems will be a thing of the past in future elections.

Harper favours fixed, four-year election dates. And while he said he would consult with other parties, the Conservative leader made clear he's not a big fan of winter elections.

"I commit to you all that the next election will not be Jan. 23, 2010," he told reporters yesterday.

"We'll obviously, all parties, be looking at a date some other time of the year," he said.

In the short term, the leader can look forward to some relief from ice and snow -- Sunday afternoon he flies to Vancouver.

Team spirit

Much of the blame for the poor fortunes of the Martin campaign has gone to the so-called "board" -- the raucous team of advisers around the Prime Minister who are accused of running the government like a frat party. It's also been said that Martin himself tends to be too much one of the gang and too little like a leader when he's in the midst of the group.

This all has some folks thinking of yet another style of Conservative attack ad, aimed directly at the heart of the Martin organization. It looks a little like the Liberals' child-care ad, which shows the faces of innocent children disappearing from the screen.

For this one, though, cue the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," and picture a TV screen -- a photo of Martin in the middle, surrounded by his loyal team of advisers and strategists. A voice-over intones, "The problem with the people around Paul Martin....," as the various photos fade to black, leaving only Martin's face in the centre, "...is that one of them is Paul Martin."

My big fat election campaign...

The hardest aspect of running for prime minister isn’t the stress or the lack of sleep, says Liberal Leader Paul Martin.

No, the tough bit is maintaining one’s slim figure.

Happily Martin’s got his wife Sheila along to keep him in line, even if he unilaterally extended a two-week diet holiday at an event in Burlington MP Paddy Torsney’s campaign office.

After delivering a short speech, Martin was handed a small box of chocolates and returned to the microphone to joke that he would be waiting a few more days before resuming his healthy eating.

Earlier, Martin explained that he’s something of a gourmand, especially on the road.

“She’s put me on the South Beach diet, and she’s keeping me to it on the campaign, sometimes I sneak away, but she’s pretty tough,” he told a CTV interviewer.

Asked what he likes to scarf when Sheila Martin isn’t around, Martin said “oh anything . . . if there’s a muffin in the corner I’ll take it.”

Lest anyone think Martin is hen-pecked, the Liberal leader was careful to remind his interviewer that “I don’t think this campaign would be livable if she wasn’t traveling.”

Election Abroad....

The venerable Washington Post has duly noted the anti-American streak in the election campaign -- as well as the Liberals' faltering hold on power. On page A18 of the paper today (Thursday), reporter Doug Struck notes how the Liberals are playing the anti-U.S. card to try to chip away at the Conservatives' growing lead.

Explaining to his U.S. audience why it is good politics in Canada to campaign against George W. Bush's administration, Struck also notes: "The ads are running before an election in which Martin's party appears likely to lose its hold on the government."

Closer to home, the newspaper Embassy, catering to the large diplomatic community in Ottawa, also seems to be warning envoys and their countries to brace themselves for a change of government. The warning is flashed across the front page of this week's edition, put in the form of what some might find a chilling question: "Will Stockwell Day be the Tories' chief at Pearson?" Day, a former leader of the Canadian Alliance, is currently the Tories' foreign affairs critic. But that doesn't translate into an automatic cabinet post in that portfolio, many students of history have noted. New cabinets in fact rarely resemble shadow cabinets. And the Embassy article goes on to suggest that the prestigious foreign affairs post in a Conservative government could just as easily go to Alberta MP Monte Solberg or Peter Kent, the former Global TV anchor now seeking a seat in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's.