The (rising) cost of democracy

Here's an article that is, and should be, provoking some thought among Ottawa reporters mulling the possibility of an imminent election campaign.

It's a New York Times piece on the dwindling numbers of reporters aboard the campaign planes in the U.S. presidential race. Cost is a big factor - reportedly $2,000 a day (yes, a day) to cover a recent trip by Barack Obama.

That cost may seem staggering, but it's not out of whack with Canadian reporters' costs in federal elections. During the 2005-06 campaign, which lasted seven weeks, the political parties billed media organizations around $9,000 per reporter, per week. And that didn't include hotel costs. So divide that billing up by seven, add hotels and overtime costs, and you're looking at a figure approaching $1,500 a day, if not higher. Is it any wonder why news organizations may be thinking twice? In the last election campaign, Sun columnist Greg Weston and CanWest columnist Don Martin rebelled against the costs by outfitting themselves in a Hummer and shadowing the Conservative tour as it made its way around Ontario.

Above and beyond the question of the cost - and the real question of whether reporters are actually subsidizing the expenses of the leaders' tours - there's also the issue of value for money. All the leaders' tours increasingly have operated on the same kind of rhythm: a press release of some policy announcement in the morning, all-day travelling, and a rah-rah rally at night. Almost no interaction with the leaders, and even the aides keep themselves closeted away a large part of the time. That means often that the "news" that print reporters are getting on these punishingly expensive tours is actually nearly a day old when they can get a chance to file to the newsroom and the story is turned into a piece for the morning paper. Worse, that same piece of news has been on Newsworld and Newsnet every hour.

All this to say, the NYT article is making a lot of us revisit conversations about how to cover leaders' tours without bankrupting our bosses, while providing news or analysis of some significance. That conversation is clearly also well under way in the U.S.

The 'Buzz' about Liberal candidates

Last night, CTV's Mike Duffy floated a rumour that the Liberals were recruiting Toronto Mayor David Miller and Buzz Hargrove of the CAW to run in the GTA in the next election. The same rumour is being circulated over at the National Newswatch website.

The official word from the Liberals is this: "If only it were true," a spokesperson from Liberal leader Stephane Dion's circle told us last night.

The rumour seems to have its origins in the final paragraphs of a March 23 column in the Toronto Sun by Angelo Persichilli.

Persichilli, in blue-sky mode, so to speak, is reminding readers how Hargrove enraged his old pals in the NDP during the last couple of elections by urging New Democrat-leaning voters to cast ballots for the Liberals if that's what it took to defeat the Conservatives. And so, he writes:

The NDP leader should be very worried about the erosion of support for his party towards the Liberals. Rae's victory brings the "strategic vote" notion of Buzz Hargrove to a higher level. Now not just votes, but also leaders, are marching from the NDP toward the Liberals. Many New Democrats might be tired of seeing their party being the conscience of Canadians between elections who then send the Liberals or Conservatives into power when the actual election comes.

The only thing missing to close the circle would be an announcement from two former NDP bigwigs that they were running for the Liberals: CAW president Buzz Hargrove in Toronto-Danforth, challenging Layton, and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, as a Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina (against Olivia Chow).

And then, bingo, the takeover of the Liberal Party is a done deal.

So, that's all it takes these days, it seems to start rumours on Parliament Hill: the last couple of paragraphs in a Toronto Sun column. Nonetheless, I'm sure we'll be checking them out more today, just in case, with Hargrove and Miller themselves.

Update: A senior Liberal has also this morning pointed out another flaw in the Persichilli scenario. There is already a nominated Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina. His name is Tony Ianno, the man who held that riding from 1993 to 2006 and the former minister of state for families and caregivers.

Crybaby federalism

Belatedly, perhaps, it's time to welcome Maclean's columnist Paul Wells back to Ottawa and send all readers here clicking to his excellent blog post today on the Ontario-Ottawa feud.

It's called "Crybaby federalism," if that gives you a hint of the tone. Wells has been away for most of the past year on assignment in Paris. Now he's returned to find the national capital more childishly bullying than it was before he left -- or at least that's how I read this latest entry.

He also urges readers to check out the Conservative website to see just how low a party can go in picking a fight with Canada's largest province.

I don't think I can ever remember a government poking ridicule at a provincial premier, as a matter of official communication strategy. And I am at a similar loss to suggest why anyone would think this is a good idea -- politically, or on any plane.

In fact, I keep wondering -- all those Tim Hortons folk out there, the hockey moms and dads, the supposed target audience for all this negative campaigning by the Tories  -- wouldn't they send their kids to bed without dinner if they made of fun of people the way the Conservatives are doing with Dion and McGuinty?

PM in Florida with wife, kids

Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper is sick of this long, Ottawa winter it seems.

Though he's been darting around the country quite a bit the past week or so - Yellowknife, Vancouver, London, Ont. - it seems the PM briefly got away to warmer climes before Easter with wife Laureen, son Ben and daughter Rachel.

"The family vacationed in Florida and the PM joined them for the weekend," said Harper's spokesman Dimitri Soudas.

Siesta Key, Florida, was the family's getaway, the Star learned.

Siesta Key is near Sarasota. One vacation website bills it this way:

"You’ll feel at ease here in the comfortable atmosphere of Mom-and-Pop businesses, free of the hype of mega-hotels and chain restaurants that characterize so many other resort areas."

The adventures of a rookie MP

For those who still have elections on their mind, either the by-elections just passed, or the potential spring election, it's worth checking out the newest issue of Walrus magazine, which has the second instalment in Barry Campbell's series on becoming a politician.

Campbell was the MP for the Toronto riding of St. Paul's - the riding now held by Carolyn Bennett. In the last issue, he told us of what it was like to run for office. Now, in this new issue, he tells the story of what it was like to be a rookie MP with no hopes of getting into cabinet.

The pieces are well written in raw, funny, self-deprecating detail, but with the perspective of 11 years away from this place. Walrus should offer a prize for anyone who can name all the characters that Campbell has only thinly (and tactfully) disguised with anonymity.

A couple of examples:

Describing the wacky makeup of the Liberal caucus, circa 1993, Campbell writes:

"There were single mothers and divorced fathers, and a young woman so unreconciled to modernity that she had fought a running battle with the Catholic Church for the right to say Mass in Latin on her knees (and been arrested for disturbing religious worship)."

And there's this hilarious paragraph, still on the subject of the wacky caucus and the wild variety of communication skills Campbell saw on display:

Some MPs spoke the King’s English. (Indeed, a dashing older gent from British Columbia, a former military man and college professor, looked like he could be the King of England.) Others couldn’t string a sentence together without malapropisms and scrambled syntax.

One MP expressed grave concerns about the lack of “supervision of dirigibles.” Financial derivatives, he meant, I believe.

Another went on and on about government “stewardess-ship.” A Toronto MP (who would become a minister and leadership candidate) was certain that some event “has given a lie to the deception that . . . ”

Another colleague wanted to “suck it to the Opposition,” and another insisted that we be “quick out of the shoe” on something.

When asked why an expected witness had failed to appear, a committee chair said, “I bumped him off.”

I assume the witness was rescheduled, not eliminated.

One MP took me aside to “prick my ear.”

Playing with fire

This can be dangerous. But Rahim Jaffer, the current Conservative caucus chair, already knew that.

We've lost that loving feeling

Some people might argue that the federal government  stopped being warm and cuddly quite a while ago.

In fact, the end of the kinder, gentler Ottawa, it could be argued, could perhaps be traced back to 1994, when then-Transport Minister Doug Young had this to say about the railroad and its iconic status in Canadian lore:

"Railroads to me are just another way of moving people and goods. They don't get my heart going pitty-pat or anything like that."

But a sharp-eyed member of our bureau here found this more recent confirmation that Ottawa is out of the feel-good business.

It's an order-in-council, showing that Telefilm Canada is selling off its stake in the Care Bears enterprise.

Maybe it has something to do with those crazy bears and their Liberal red paint in this video.

Harper followed tradition with by-election no-shows

Before and after this week's by-elections, there seemed to be some suggestion from pundits and commentators that the Conservatives had written them off -- because Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't do any campaigning.

It is, in fact, very rare for prime ministers to campaign in by-elections, at least in recent years. Jean Chrétien made a point of avoiding any foray into ridings during by-election campaigns. Here's a little snippet, for instance, from a story in late 2002 about why former finance minister Paul Martin was out campaigning in Quebec by-elections:

Jim Munson, a spokesman for the PMO, said there are no plans for Mr. Chrétien to travel to the ridings, but that is in keeping with the tradition of the prime minister not intervening in byelections.

The last prime minister to do by-election campaigning was Brian Mulroney, and as I read through the Star's records on this, I see he did so against the advice of old political hands. Veteran Conservative Norman Atkins was quoted as saying as far back as 1986: "I don't think it helps for prime ministers to go into by-elections."

Mulroney also campaigned fiercely in 1988 to get his old friend Lucien Bouchard -- lured back from his ambassador's post in Paris -- a seat in Lac St. Jean. And we know how that turned out.

By-elections giving Layton pause?

We here at the Star aren't sure what to make of the fact that NDP leader Jack Layton turned down Richard Brennan's request for an interview yesterday. We were even more perplexed when Layton did manage to turn up, via broadcast feed from Washington, on Don Newman's Politics broadcast.

Newman tried several times to pull Layton off his message track, which seemed to be that the NDP was far more interested in talking about its September, 2007, win in Outremont, rather than this week's slump in the by-elections.

Here's one statistic from that evening that may be the source of some internal strategic discussions at NDP headquarters right now, even if Layton is a bit shy about talking to the Star right now.

In the three urban ridings where by-elections were held on Monday night, the Greens and NDP collected roughly the SAME number of votes.

The NDP won 3,299 votes in Toronto Centre, 1,084 votes in Willowdale and 4,064 votes in Vancouver Quadra. Grand total: 8,447 votes.

The Greens won 3,263 votes in Toronto Centre, 1,325 in Willowdale and 3,792 votes in Vancouver Quadra. Grand total: 8,380 votes.

That's a difference of less than 100 votes.

May, MacKay faceoff ... in New York?

Many believed that Green Party leader Elizabeth May made a strange strategic decision when she opted to run in Nova Scotia in the next election campaign - up against Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

Well here's another strange twist in the tale. May and MacKay are finally going to be on a public stage together in two weeks - in New York, at an American Bar Association gathering. Perhaps they're both thinking, in the words of the old song, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

The two have been booked as panelists in a "showcase program" on Thursday, April 3 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan, not far from Times Square.

The subject of the discussion is Arctic sovereignty.

Here's the blurb on the ABA website: Global warming can make the Northwest Passage the shortest route between the Atlantic and the Pacific and has accelerated claims to the Arctic’s potentially vast mineral resources. The U.S. considers the straits international waters. Canada has reaffirmed its claim of internal waters and is reinforcing its military presence there. Senior officials from both countries will debate this environmentally and strategically sensitive issue.