Ranting and roaring in St. John’s

As a Newfoundlander living “away,” I wasn’t surprised that the crowd of provincial Tories jumped to their feet and gave Stephen Harper a loud and long ovation when he promised “a loan guarantee or equivalent financial support” for the Lower Churchill project.

Why wouldn’t they?

Finally, a federal leader who cared about one of the longest running grudge matches in Confederation.

Not much sparks as much bitterness as Newfoundland’s long-running complaint that Quebec is ripping it off under a legal, binding, and iron-clad contract that sees Hydro Quebec pay a pittance for the Upper Churchill electricity that is then re-sold into American markets and earns the Quebec utility huge profits.

The promised federal help could allow Newfoundland’s utility to bypass Quebec, develop a new hydroelectricity source at Muskrat Falls on the Lower Churchill River, and tap into bigger profits too.

But Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a small-c conservative who lived a long time in Nova Scotia, chronicled the special treatment all politicians reserve for Quebec, and takes a dim view of reckless spending, is not dancing a jig.

“It’s a nutty project,” he says.

“It’s completely out of tune with where I think electric generation is going, which is away from giant projects in remote locations which require very expensive infrastructure that involves a lot of loss of electricity current along the way to distant markets.”

Crowley says there are other alternatives to coal-fired power generation, pointing to increased natural gas supplies, as a result of shale gas developments.

“The idea that this kind of old-style engineering-dominated power generation makes sense anymore is completely overtaken by events.”

“The fact that it requires very significant subsidies in order to create these power lines I think is further evidence of the economic non-viability of this project in particular.”

Crowley says Harper is tapping into a deep-seated resentment in Newfoundland.

“I can see the political value in Newfoundland of the federal government saying we’re going to help Newfoundland break Quebec’s stranglehold over the development of their hydroelectric resources here.”

“This is the Tories signaling to Newfoundland that they will help them in the decades-long battle to the death with Quebec over control of hydro resources in Labrador…It’s about using Newfoundland nationalism in order to get back in the good graces of the Newfoundland voter.”

But it’s a calculation Crowley says Harper has made on the path to a majority government.

“My guess is the Tories have decided the extra votes that might push them over into majority government territory are not going to come from Quebec and they’ve decided to look at Atlantic Canada, the 905 belt around Toronto, northern Ontario and the west as the place where they can make up the 12 seats or whatever it that they’re short, and my guess is their calculation is probably correct.”

Yet Crowley says Harper’s taking the easy way out.

Harper could help Newfoundland climb out of hydro-hell but it would “be even more offensive to Quebec.”

“My view is they have the constitutional and political duty to use the (federal) trade and commerce power to create an open electricity market in Canada so that Quebec could not prevent Newfoundland from exporting its electricity.”

Before the election writs were dropped last week, the federal Conservative government struck a deal with Quebec to draw oil and natural gas royalties from the disputed Old Harry area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in what some say was a bid to deflect criticism of Thursday’s campaign pledge.

We’ll have to wait and see if it does.

Meanwhile, in St. John’s Harper says the persuasive talents of Premier Kathy Dunderdale convinced him there is a “sound business case for the project with the risks being shared by the provinces, utilities and investors.”

Danny Williams, who had championed the project, must wonder what took him so long?

Anyway, Harper made clear, bygones are bygones.

On the anniversary of Newfoundland becoming Canada’s 10^th province, the Conservative leader waxed both prosaic and sentimental about the province.

Even though it shunned him in the last election, he reminded folks he built them two new Marine Atlantic ferries – the main shuttles for minivans of families to get home or go to the mainland.

But he said it would be better if Newfoundland MPs were in his caucus.

“You needed to join Canada, but we needed Newfoundland to join,” Harper said.

“It’s not what you can get out of it, it’s what you bring into it,” he said. “We need you.”

You don't say.

-Tonda MacCharles

What the Soup Guy knows

 

How can you tell if a campaign is in hot water? Why not check with the guy who sells soup?

Claudio Fracassi, or "The Soup Guy" in Ottawa's World Exchange tower, is a favourite of politicos in  the capital,  for his delicious, creative lunch offerings.

Lately, along with his soups, he's been selling political bobblehead dolls, at $20 apiece.

 Fracassi  reports that at the end of Week One, sales of the Stephen Harper bobblehead are leading the pack  -- but only slightly so. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff  has started selling at a brisk pace too in recent days, creeping up to nearly a tie with the Conservative leader. 

The Jack Layton doll is doing okay, Fracassi says, but well behind Harper and Ignatieff, and very few people seem to want a doll that looks like Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, it seems.

And what about Green Party leader Elizabeth May? Sadly, Fracassi says, he has plenty of stock -- almost no buyers for the May doll.

The bobbleheads are the creation of Paul Hallet, an artist from  St. Thomas, Ont., and are also available at www.politicalbobbles.ca  

You can't buy the soup online though. For that, you have to pay a call on The Soup Guy, who is no relation, in appearance or manners, to the legendary "Soup Nazi" on the old Seinfeld TV show.

Day 6: NDP in Quebec

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau 

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton heads to Montreal today, where the party holds just one seat but hopes to capitalize on recent poll numbers to expand in the province.

Layton will make an announcement at Insertech Angus at 11 a.m. The institution provides personalized training programs to young unemployed adults so they can enter the job market with the skills they need, so expect the policy announcement to cover that topic. He will spend much of the afternoon taping an episode of Tout le monde en parle, an irreverent and highly popular current affairs talk show on Radio-Canada, and taking part in an editorial board meeting at a Montreal newspaper.

Everyone had been expecting Layton to stop in Outremont – the former Liberal fortress where Thomas Mulcair won his seat in a 2007 by-election – but the riding the NDP bus stops in today is Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, which the Bloc Quebecois has held since its formation in 1990. Bernard Bigras won by a landslide in the 2008 election, receiving 52 per cent of the votes. The Liberal candidate placed a distant second with 18.7 per cent of the vote share, but the NDP came in third with only 1,263 fewer votes. Capturing the seat from the Bloc remains highly unlikely, but it looks like there is at least a battle for second place.

The unique political landscape of Quebec, where the Bloc takes much of the progressive vote, has made it difficult for the NDP to be a player in the province, but party officials have been quick to point to recent Quebec-only polls that put them in second place, about 10 points ahead of the Liberals.

Day 5: Layton, jobs and the Greater Toronto Area

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The events

UPDATE: Just as (un)expected, the hints about health care being the focus of the announcement on Wednesday morning were wrong. The announcement in Oshawa is about jobs. Details follow.

Since the New Democrats just released a television spot attacking Stephen Harper for his record on health care, there have been suggestions the policy announcement Jack Layton is scheduled to make at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday in Oshawa, Ont. will be on the same topic. If that ends up being the case, expect a proposal to train and hire 1,200 doctors and 6,000 nurses, which was one of the things Layton demanded from Harper in the failed federal budget. It was also a 2008 NDP campaign proposal. So was a plan to reduce the student debt of health professionals who practiced family medicine for at least a decade and so it is a good bet that if the announcement is about health care, that will be in there too. As an NDP staffer said yesterday when being ribbed about the recycled nature of Layton’s credit card rate announcement: “Everything is a new idea until implemented”. 

Layton will also tour a space technology plant in Brampton, Ont., where they have a piece of the space shuttle, and then finish the day with a rally at Artscape Wychwood Barns in the St. Clair W. and Bathurst St. area of Toronto. 

The ridings 

Oshawa: Conservative incumbent Colin Carrie won this riding over the NDP by about 3,200 votes, with the Liberals getting fewer than half the votes the NDP did. So, this is one of the ridings the NDP is targeting with the “New Democrats defeat Conservatives” message it has been hammering home in Blue vs. Orange ridings this week. The NDP is running Chris Buckley, president of CAW local 222, as its candidate this time. 

Bramalea—Gore—Malton: This riding is a different story, as the Liberal incumbent Gurbax Singh Malhi beat the Conservative candidate by about 3,900 votes in 2008. The NDP candidate came far behind in third. 

NDP releases television ad attacking Harper's record on health care

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The New Democrats released a television ad attacking Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's record on health care, which they say will begin airing Tuesday during popular programs including American Idol, Dr. Phil and morning news show Canada AM.

The first NDP ad in this election campaign features an animated doctor pushing a patient on a stretcher into a doughnut shop, referencing a Globe and Mail story from earlier this month about how the emergency room at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C. is dealing with its overflow of patients by moving some of them to the adjacent coffee shop.

It gets even more crowded when an animated Harper pops up and the narrator explains that the Conservative plan to train 100 doctors means one family physician for every 50,000 patients that need one.

(The Conservative government announced last month it would provide $40 million over four years to create 100 new training positions for medical students in rural areas, in the hopes they would stay there and provide family physicians to remote and under-serviced communities. So the ad )

The ad then loses its cartoonish tone and cuts to NDP Leader Jack Layton sitting in front of a Canadian flag, promising to make things better.

The NDP says the spot will form part of the largest advertising campaign in party history, although officials would not release any figures beyond saying they are running a fully funded $23 million campaign.

When asked about the ad, Layton said little except that the NDP will make health care a major issue in this campaign.

Layton said he does not trust Harper to negotiate the 2014 Health Accord with provinces and territories, which will determine how the federal government funds health care for a decade.

"I don’t trust him to negotiate those arrangements," Layton told reporters at a campaign stop in Kitchener, Ont. on Tuesday. "I don’t think he fundamentally believes in how our public health care system needs to be developed and supported and expanded and improved for Canadians, so we’re putting a major focus on that issue in this campaign for sure.”

Bloc slogan: Let's talk about ... sex?

Posted By Andrew Chung, Quebec Bureau

It’s probably safe to say that Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe doesn’t have the American female rap trio Salt-n-Pepa on “repeat.”

But their 1991 hit song, “Let’s Talk About Sex,” is inadvertently finding an echo in his campaign.

On Monday Duceppe unveiled his campaign slogan, “Parlons Qc.” It’s supposed to be a clever way of saying, “Let’s talk about Quebec.”

And he revealed his campaign themes. Let’s talk about “solidarity,” “fair share,” “truth,” and the like.

But shortly after the “Parlons Qc” was revealed, including on the Bloc’s now ubiquitous placards and in huge letters on Duceppe’s campaign bus, radio personalities and others were dropping the “c” in “Qc.”

“Parlons Q” in French sounds like "Parlons cul," or, “Let’s talk about sex.”

"Cul” is a slang term meaning “a--.” But it can also mean sex.

“I don’t know who the members of the test group are who liked it, but they need to be erased from the list of future call backs,” wrote Jean-François Lisée on his blog for the news magazine L'actualité.

“It was perfectly predictable.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had his own critique of the slogan, reportedly saying in Regina, “With the Bloc it’s talk and talk.”

“The Conservative Party is looking to include Quebecers of all regions in power. That’s the difference,” he added.

 

Layton offered some help from above

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

People who go out to meet a politician at a campaign stop like to shake his hand and tell him their story, and that part of the post-announcement walkabout on a suburban street in Brantford, Ont. was no different than usual for NDP Leader Jack Layton.

There was an 85-year-old woman named Ethel whose father was with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the predecessor party to the NDP, who remembers Tommy Douglas as an inspiration just like Layton does.

Then there was Iqbal Singh.

Standing above six feet tall, wearing a flowing white robe, a matching turban and golden slippers, it is fair to say Singh stood out among the small crowd of supporters surrounding Layton as he made his way to his RCMP vehicle.

"Waheguru," Singh said as he took Layton's hands. "Just say the word."

"Waheguru," Layton said.

"You'll make it," Singh told Layton, telling him he was praying fofr his good health. "I wish you good luck. I am there to support you anywhere you go in Ontario."

"I have a divine message," Singh then said, pointing to the sky.

Singh later explained to me that in the Sikh religion, Waheguru is a name of God.

Singh, who lives in Brantford and works as a sales associate at a hardware store in Burlington, said he was watching Layton on television one day when he received divine inspiration to help him out. So, he called up Marc Laferriere, the NDP candidate for Brant, and decided to show up for an announcement about capping credit card interest rates at five percentage points plus prime.

"My prayers for the next 40 days will be to get Jack to the best situtaion of health and be the winner here. We need a leader like him who is for the people here," said Singh.

Day 4: NDP hits Southern Ontario; Layton chats about his health on the plane

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Day 4: the events, the ridings, the chances.

Good morning. The NDP tour spent the night in Hamilton, Ont. but will begin the day in nearby Brantford, where Leader Jack Layton will make the first policy announcement of his campaign at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, which will be about credit cards and household debt.

Conservative Phil McColeman currently holds the Brant riding, but the Liberals want it back for Lloyd St. Amand, who represented Brant in the House of Commons from 2004 to 2008. This is not a clear Blue vs. Orange race like the ridings Layton was targeting out west the first three days of his campaign, but the NDP still sees the Southern Ontario industrial belt as a potential for growth having won Welland in the last campaign. They are running social worker Marc Laferriere.

Layton will then head to Kitchener for a local radio interview followed by some mainstreeting at a sports store owned by a local family on Duke St. W. The Kitchener Centre riding is held by Conservative Stephen Woodworth, but he defeated former Liberal MP Karen Redman by just 339 votes in 2008 and she is running to take it back. The NDP is running retail manager Peter Thurley.

Mr. Layton, how's your hip?

Layton joined the media travelling at the back of his campaign plane Monday night on the flight from Regina, Sask., to Hamilton, Ont. for a quick but casual chat about his health. Layton said he's keeping up with the excerises the doctor ordered with the help of his sister, Nancy, a phys. ed. teacher and a golf pro, who travels on the campaign as his assistant. Layton admits he misses his usual high-intensity workouts (he is known to hit the fitness centre twice a day on the campaign trail) but said he expects to be doing some cardio soon.

Three weeks after undergoing surgery for his fractured hip, Layton is still walking with the help of a crutch with an arm brace, but he said it's mainly for balance.

"The biggest worry is that you fall before all the healing has happened and then you have a real setback," said Layton, who usually has the cane at his right side during public events but rarely leans on it except while walking up to the microphone.

"You have to walk around and keep the blood flowing in your legs," he said while wiggling his feet back and forth.

Supporters always crowd around Layton and reach out to shake his hand when he makes his way through a crowd at a rally or campaign stop, but he said he isn't worried about getting jostled.

"I'm not nervous. These are all friendly people," he said.

Press secretary Karl Belanger looked a bit nervous and reached out an arm to steady his boss when the plane dipped a bit to begin its descent into Hamilton, but Layton pointed out his balance was better than some of those crowded around him.

"Now that the plane is beginning to weave and bob, you'll notice I don't have to grab a chair," he laughed.

One reporter asked if he was "fed up" with us asking about his health and he said no, or at least was too polite to tell us otherwise.

"No, I'm not fed up with you asking about my health," said Layton, who has also been successfully battling prostate cancer since last year. "It's always, I find, with a lot of good will."

Before heading back to the front, Layton had a message for all of us living out of a suitcase (and also missing our workouts...) with him these weeks, which I found rather touching: "Well, listen -- you're all away from your families and we appreciate that, so good for you."

Google helping Liberals steal NDP voters

Posted by Allan Woods

All parties are aggressively trying to capitalize on the growing use of social media. The New Democratic Party has launched an iPhone app, all parties are pushing their announcements and criticisms on Twitter and most candidates in the May 22 election have dedicated Facebook sites to attract supporters.

But if you were still doubting the parties' faith that technology can give them an edge, here's some more evidence.

Punch "NDP" into your google search engine, then peer over to the right hand side of your computer screen. 

There, you'll find an advertisement for Michael Ignatieff's Liberals and a fairly blatant attempt to steal the eyeballs, if not the voters, that would normally lean to the left leaning New Democrats. The small print reads:

"Learn more about Michael Ignatieff and his bold, new vision for Canada"

(Google seems to be alternating the ads between one for the Liberals and another for Ontario government tax credits)

The Liberal party's problem over the last two election campaigns has been fighting for votes with the two other left-of centre parties while the Conservative Party claims all those on the centre-right of the political spectrum.

The last two election campaigns have come down to Liberal leaders pronouncing in the dying days of the race that voters need to rally around their party to hold the Tories at bay.

It hasn't worked of course, and there's no evidence it will work any better this time around, but at least it's a bit more subtle.

 

There are great tales from the campaign trail, and then there is this one.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

There have been some good laughs among the media travelling with the NDP campaign this year, but this weird story takes the cake.

It involves a hotel room. It involves tin foil. It involves  robots. And love.

James Cudmore of CBC Radio has already done a good job telling the tale (yes, he used the phrase Domo Arigato from the song "Mr. Roboto" by Styx) and being part of the broadcast pool he has permission to publish the photographic evidence where I do not, so I will let him take it from here.

Before you hit the link, you should heed his warning:

This blog contains material of a (robo) sexual nature.