Shopping for votes in Vancouver's Punjabi market

(Prime Minister Stephen Harper greets supporters as he attends the Vaisakhi festival in Vancouver, BC on Saturday April 16, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

VANCOUVER —Conservative Leader Stephen Harper met with Vancouver’s plentiful Sikh community Saturday afternoon in the three-block Punjabi market and gave a brief address at the city’s Vaisakhi parade, an event held each April to mark the harvest festival.

The parade just happens to be held in the Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh’s riding of Vancouver South, where the Tories hope to reap benefits for the political seeds they have been planting. Tory hopeful Wai Young had a booth set up less than half a block to the right of Harper’s stage, handing out leaflets and campaign paraphenalia to the passers by. Half a block to the left of the stage was a similar booth promoting NDP candidate Meena Wong.

A similar booth for the Liberals couldn’t be found in the area.

Dosanjh did, however, preceed Harper on the stage, speaking almost entirely in Punjabi. In a brief interview after his speech, he said his message was political. He was critical of the Conservative government’s record on family reunification.

“Why is it that it would take a new immigrant about 14 to 18 years to bring family to Canada? What kind of people do we want? Do we want people who are prepared to give their families up and come to Canada? Do we want simply temporary workers? Why is it that we’re so interested in having people in ethnic costumes stand up behind them, but he isn’t interested in true equality? Ultimately what kind of country to we want if there’s simply temporary foreign workers coming?” Dosanjh said.

The former NDP B.C. premier noted the Harper government had decreased the family reunification quota by 50 per cent since taking power in 2006.

Later he acknowledged that he was in the race of his life in Vancouver South.

"It's a hotly contested riding, you know that. (Harper) is here. Why do you think he is here?"

Harper himself was late to arrive at the event, forcing the emcee to kill time with stories and idle political talk.

He urged the gathered crowd to get involved in politics no matter what party they choose to support.
“If they (politicians) know you, that’s an easy way to get things done,” he said.

He was then informed that the Conservative leader was five minutes away and proceeded to tell a story about a meeting between former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau the bearded, turban-wearing editor of India Abroad and the editor's clean-shaven son.

“Where’s your turban?” a puzzled Trudeau asked the son.

The father replied, “He’s a Canadian.”

“Mr. Trudeau said, ‘That’s wrong. He can be a Sikh-Canadian. You don’t have to leave your tradition. You don’t have to leave your language. You don’t have to leave your culture.’ ”

Harper’s bus pulled up behind the stage at precisely 1:30 pm PST. He emerged wearing a blue headscarf. He was accompanied by wife, Laureen, B.C. candidates Nina Grewal, Paul Forseth, James Moore, Wei Young and others, as well as retiring cabinet minister Stockwell Day and Conservative candidate Jason Kenney, who head’s up the party’s ethnic outreach.

Jason Kenney kicked off the speeches with a dazzling, fluently Punjabi greeting.

“He is a man who shares the values of the Sikh community. Values like devotion to family, respect for tradition and the belief in hard work,” Kenney said of Harper in English, adding that the Tory platform promises an office of religious freedoms in DFAIT.

Fleetwood Port-Kells incumbent Nina Grewal was next up at the podium. She spoke entirely in Punjabi.
Then came Harper. He praised the founding principles of Sikhism, which he said have led Sikhs to be “among the most courageous, hard-working and successful of our world.”

“These principles are also important to us here in Canada, because ours is a country defined by its belief in freedom democracy and justice, values that have attracted people from around the world to our shores, including the growing numbers of Canada’s Sikh community,” he said.

Harper spoke of his visit to the Golden Temple in India in 2009 as among the fondest memories of his term in office. He said that 2011 was the year of India in Canada, and touted his promise of free trade talks with India.

The emcee took the microphone when Harper finished speaking. He took the opportunity to push the Conservative leader to help build a $3-million gate, one that was supposed to have been completed for last winter’s Vancouver Olympics.

“I don’t want to go into details because it’s not a good time for you to spend too much time on that, but please, look into that,” he said.

Day 21: NDP Leader Jack Layton in Montreal and Prince Edward Island

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

After having spent his first day of post-debates campaigning with a visit to Scwartz's delicatessen and watching the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins 2-0 in the first round of the NHL play-offs, New Democrat Leader Jack Layton begins Friday with another quintessential Montreal past-time: stopping by the Jean-Talon Market. Layton will then ride the underground Metro for a few stops.

This is in the riding of Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, which the Bloc Quebecois has held since 1990. Bloc incumbent Bernard Bigras won by a landslide in the 2008 election, receiving 52 per cent of the votes, but Layton has been campaigning hard against the Bloc, trying to build on the breakthrough 2007 by-election that sent NDP deputy leader Thomas Mulcair to the House of Commons to represent the former Liberal fortress of Outremont.

Expect Layton to continue trying to convince anti-Harper Quebec voters who have previously cast their ballots for the Bloc to come over to his side, with the argument that while the Bloc can keep the Conservatives from getting a majority government, the NDP could (in theory) replace it. Buoyed by recent Quebec-only polls that put the NDP in second place in the province, well ahead of the Liberals, the NDP is selling itself as the main federalist player in Quebec.

The second half of the day will be in Prince Edward Island, where Layton will be the first party leader to  visit in this campaign. He will stop by the East Coast Music Awards in Charlottetown and then go to Seven Miles Bay to make an unspecified announcement.

Smoked-meat survey says: Jack Layton will form a majority government

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

If you’re one of those people who rolls your eyes or stifles a giggle every time New Democrat Leader Jack Layton talks about being the next prime minister, consider this bit of political insight. 

There is an old theory that says the key to winning a majority government at the federal level is a visit to Schwartz’s, the legendary delicatessen on St. Laurent Blvd. in downtown Montreal that is now featured in a new musical comedy. 

As Globe and Mailtheatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck wrote on his blog last month, every Canadian prime minister who has won a majority government since the 1970s has been to the world famous – and incredibly tiny – eatery for some smoked meat on rye with a pickle and fries, while those who have not have been doomed to minorities.

Consider the facts: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien have all eaten at Schwartz's and gone on to solid wins in Parliament.

Joe Clark, John Turner and Kim Campbell, on the other hand, have never been seen at the eatery, and none of them ever led their parties to a majority in an election. Coincidence?

Okay, there is one: Paul Martin, who did not win a majority in an election despite a demonstrated predilection for Schwartz's smoked meat. (Breaking with his South Beach Diet, the then-Prime Minister carved a medium-fat brisket for media at a party at 24 Sussex Drive in 2005.)

…

Will the election of 2011 ultimately be determined by whoever - Harper or Ignatieff - makes it to Schwartz's first?

As Layton would likely point out, that kind of thinking represents the old-fashioned attitude that Canadians only have two choices when deciding who to vote for in this election.

And you know what? While both the Liberals and Conservatives are quick to point out they have served smoked meat on the campaign trail this year, neither Stephen Harper nor Michael Ignatieff have actually stopped by the joint yet.

So, guess which national leader is the first to visit for a photo-op on Thursday afternoon?

Your next prime minister: Jack Layton.

Time to stop being such a defeatist.

UPDATE: I briefed Layton on this theory as he was entering the place and noted he had beat both Harper and Ignatieff to it. "Well, there you go," Layton said. "It's a theory I subscribe to."

Who won the French debate?

Posted by Andrew Chung, Quebec Bureau

Two insta-polls were out this morning showing how Quebecers felt about the French-language debate Wednesday night.

The winner, as expected, was Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe. The NDP's Jack Layton was the runner up in both polls, adding to his well-received performance in the English debate the night before. Liberal Michael Ignatieff and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservatives fought for last in both surveys.

The Leger Marketing poll had Duceppe at 42 per cent saying he won the debate, Layton at 20 per cent, Ignatieff at 14 and Harper at 11. The poll of 879 Quebecers, invited randomly to a web panel, had a margin of error of 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The CROP poll asked about best performance among the leaders. Duceppe came in at 45 per cent, Layton at 28 per cent, Harper at 16 and Ignatieff at 12. The Internet panel did not have a random character, and so there was no margin of error.

The Leger poll also gave Layton a lift in another area. Asked whether they were more apt to vote for each party, far more respondents said they were for the NDP than for the other federalist parties.

Bollywood movie star shines light on Harper's bid for re-election

Posted by Allan Woods Ottawa Bureau

BRAMPTON – Prime Minister Stephen Harper popped out of his campaign bubble, linked arms with a movie star and went pitching for South Asian votes in a movie theatre Friday.

The reviews won’t be out until May 2, but the Conservative leader appears to have done himself some favours by showing up for the premier of Bollywood star Akshay Kumar’s latest film, Thank You, a comedy about adulterous spouses.

Kumar and Harper pulled up to the event in the riding of Liberal incumbent Ruby Dhalla on the Tory campaign bus, which played Indian music through loudspeakers. Harper had just released his platform, entitled “Here for Canada.” But it appeared the crowed was here for Kumar, who splits his time between India and Canada.

“We weren’t sure what was really going on,” said one woman seated inside the theatre.

Still, Harper may have done his party some good for showing up.

“I think it’s a great way to get the local community. And it’s smart, especially in an ethnic area, using (Kumar),” said her friend, who noted she would be voting Conservative in the election even if the Prime Minister hadn’t shown up.

In a short address to the crowd just before the movie started, Harper was recognized for building better relations between Canada and India and for signing a film co-production treaty between the two countries.

Some even credited the Tories for bringing the India Film Awards, the Bollywood equivalent of the Oscars, to Toronto this summer, even though the Ontario government is hosting the event.

Vicky Sharma and Del Smadder heard Kumar was coming to the premiere a few days ago on the radio and rushed out to get advance tickets. Harper’s presence was a big surprise.

Sharma says her election support is “still up in the air.” Smadder’s mind was made up for him Friday.

“Since (Harper’s) here, my vote goes to him now,” he said.

That could be the deciding factor for quite a few of the movie fans who turned out Friday.

“The fact that they saw him walking beside Akshay Kumar, that changes everything,” Smadder said.

Harper toned down his political rhetoric for the event, leaving behind his stump speech about the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois plot to overthrow any election result. Instead, he noted that both he and the film star met their wives in Alberta, and said that in a job filled with great responsibility and great perks, this would be among the greatest.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve got to do one of the things I like doing most, which is to … sit and watch a movie with the start of the movie, one of the biggest stars in the world.”

The crowd went wild with applause, Laureen Harper did a little dance with Kumar at the front of the theatre and the movie began.

A few minutes later, the Conservative leader’s bus pulled out of the Brampton parking lot, bound for his next stop on the road to re-election.

From the email inbox: a closer look at a Guelph veterinary student and what the blogosphere is saying about him.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

On Thursday Wednesday night I received an email from a reader named Catherine McMillan, who let me know that a blogger had found some stuff on the Internet about Izzy Hirji, the 22-year-old veterinary student at the University of Guelph I featured in my story on youth engagement in politics on Wednesday.

“I figure you should know that a blogger in Winnipeg has done the background work you didn’t bother with on a source you featured today in your Star piece,” McMillan wrote in the email copied to our public editor, Kathy English, who received a few more emails on the topic around the same time.

McMillan linked this post by a blog called The Black Rod, apparently run by a group of anonymous citizen journalists (more on that later).

The post details some things Hirji has posted on Facebook over the years, including one from 2006 (apparently since deleted) that McMillan included in her email to me:

"...stephen harpers plan is ridiculous, 40 years without results, and death to Kyoto!?!?!?! OMGWTF im ready to like go to Ottawa myself an take him down..."

UPDATE: Sean Ledwich, a freelance journalist in Winnipeg, notes the original Facebook post included an "lol" at the end, presumably to indicate Hirji was joking (which is an important bit of context). The Black Rod left that out, but referred to it later on in the post and McMillan included a screen shot in her post on the subject. It appeared Thursday night the original Facebook comment had been deleted, but Ledwich found it in a Google cache result on Friday.

“Perhaps less time on Twitter, and more on Google, yes?” wrote McMillan, the woman behind a popular conservative blog called small dead animals, where she is known as Kate.

Now, here’s the thing: according to both the story that ran in the Guelph Mercury and my own interview with Hirji on Tuesday (where he confirmed all those details in his answers to questions I asked over and over again), Conservative party organizers asked him to leave the rally for Stephen Harper at the Delta Guelph Hotel on Monday because he had participated in the peaceful get-out-the-youth-vote flash mob outside, which they viewed as a protest. Hirji said RCMP Cpl. Tony Fowler of the “O” Division/VIP Security Section told him the same thing as he was reinforcing the Conservative party request that he leave the venue. Hirji said he had pre-registered online (as the rally was advertised as a public event in the Guelph Mercury), but his name was on the list at the hotel and he was let in without a problem – until the party official recognized his face from the flash mob.

“The people who did take me out, it wasn’t because I was a security threat,” Hirji said when I spoke to him again Thursday. “It’s because they saw our student rally as a protest.”

In other words, according to his version of events (and neither the RCMP, the Conservative party or Harper has contradicted it), something he wrote on Facebook in 2006 or anything else The Black Rod found on Google was not the reason he was kicked out.

And, let’s remember, the RCMP said Wednesday it overstepped its bounds and Harper has also apologized to everyone who was kicked out of his rallies.

Still, I had some extra time today and since I honestly do enjoy interacting with and learning from readers (one of the reasons I am so enthusiastic about Twitter), I decided to take a closer look. Instead of turning to Google (because the bloggers had that covered), I picked up the telephone.

My first call was to McMillan, as she was the one who had reached out to me first. I wanted to get a better idea of where she was coming from, given everything I and my colleagues had learned while reporting the different aspects of this rally story.

“I call it journalistic malpractice,” McMillan told me on the phone from Saskatchewan Thursday.

“I think you have to go back and look at the facts,” said McMillan, who throughout our conversation referred to Hirji and other flash-mob organizers as Green Party activists based on what The Black Rod had included in the post. “It isn’t a debate about this perception versus that perception. It was a report on an event and I think that when you quote someone who just happened to be there and just happened to get thrown out as thought he’s a non-partisan student who just wanted to go see the prime minister, it’s a little bit disingenuous when that’s obviously not who he was, not who he is…

“We see this all the time as bloggers, you know,” said McMillan. “For example, there will be a Liberal party meeting in Manitoba and they’ll quote an independent farmer and we Google the guy up and he’s the riding president. You know, this is a repeated pattern, which is why it gets jumped on so much by bloggers, because we see this over and over and over and over again, where people are quoted. Their story is taken without any investigation as to who they really are and it’s all so easy to do now. We’re picking this stuff up in five minutes.”

For the record, I had asked Hirji if he was a member of a political party when I first spoke to him on Tuesday. He told me he had joined the Green Party but couldn’t remember if he had renewed his membership. It was clear from the Facebook page advertising the event and the videos that the flash mob was billed – and executed – as a positive, non-partisan event, where political signs were forbidden and the crowd was ordered to sit down and boo anyone shouting political slogans. The Facebook page advertising the event also featured a comment from at least one member of the Guelph Campus Conservatives, who was told he was welcome to show up, although I could not confirm whether any of its roughly150 members did. So, I figured his possibly lapsed Green party membership was irrelevant in a piece that was more about youth engagement in democracy than the details of what happened to Hirji, which had already been widely reported. I’m pretty sure it’s not something the RCMP would have viewed as a security threat. Asking another student to leave a Conservative rally in London, Ont. because she had posed for a photo with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff certainly didn’t go over so well. In hindsight, should I have mentioned this? I don’t think it would have satisfied McMillan, who argued the flash mob itself – quite apart from the five-year-old Facebook comment – was inherently dangerous.

“One of these may end up with a group of so-called anarchists in their midst and the whole premise of what they’re doing has inherent dangers,” McMillan said, although she added that of course she could not speak for what the Conservative party and the RCMP did or did not view as a security threat.

Security was the main issue for The Black Rod too, said a “designated spokesman” for the blog I was asked to call in Winnipeg on Thursday afternoon who refused to give his name.

(“Is this speed dating? You want a name? You’re not getting one,” the deep, male-sounding voice said on the phone when I pressed for some identity, stressing that speaking to people without any name was not particularly sound journalistic practice, especially since this whole exercise was a response to my being admonished for not entering a name into Google. I warned that readers would therefore have to take his words with a grain of salt and he said “Please! They can take it with a mound of salt.” So, readers, there you go.)

“There is a thread that runs through this,” the anonymous designated spokesman said, which begins with the Facebook post in 2006. “Do you call it a threat? In hindsight you can look at it and say was that a threat? Well, maybe not, but had he pulled out a gun and shot somebody, then it would have been a threat.”

The anonymous designated spokesman went through the other items listed on The Black Rod, including a November 2009 environment-related “strip mob” in Guelph associated with one of the organizers of the Monday “vote mob”, an event that Hirji noted on Facebook he could not partake in because he had class.

“So if you’re a security official, you look at this and go ‘Okay, what’s the plan? A publicity stunt inside? Are they going to take off their clothes?” the anonymous designated spokesman said, later linking the flash mob to the environmental movement at large, with the risk of anarchists breaking off and smashing windows like they did during the G20 Summit in Toronto last summer. “You just simply say: ‘Let’s err on the side of caution.’”

“Well, no, it didn’t happen in this case. But it could have,” the anonymous designated spokesman said.

Now, what I found interesting about my conversation with the anonymous designated spokesman for The Black Rod was that he fully believed the RCMP removed Hirji because of the stuff he had been able to find on Google, fully expected the RCMP to run the list of attendees through Google and remove people based on what they find and, even more interesting, was fully okay with that happening in Canadian democracy.

I’m going to give last word to Hirji.

“I do acknowledge the validity in what they’re posting, but I mean, to dig up something from six years ago when I was a teenager and spewing angry comments at my government, that has nothing to do with my professional conduct as a voter right now,” Hirji said Thursday. “Yeah, sure, I’ve attended a Harper protest before, but that doesn’t make me a protester every time that I want to engage in a political event.”

Actually, I’m going to give the last word to Ray Novak, a long-time aide to Harper, who posted a photo on Twitter Thursday evening, with this as the caption: “PM meets with student pro-vote activists after Hamilton rally.”

Ready, set, Google.

 

Things that make you go, 'Quoi?'

By Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

VAUGHAN – Former police chief Julian Fantino, the Conservative incumbent in Vaughan, offered the latest offering to the department of things that make you go, ‘Duh!’

Introducing Tory leader Stephen Harper at an event in his riding Thursday, Fantino shared one of his many irritations with life in the House of Commons. In addition to Liberals and those opposing tougher laws to crack down on crime (also Liberals), one of the things that really gets under Fantion’s skin is the refusal by Bloc Quebecois MPs to gather each Wednesday to sing the national anthem.

“The Bloc are absent consistently, and if the odd one’s in there when the national anthem is struck then they seem to leave,” he told reporters later. “I find that very strange. I don’t know why. Obviously they have their own reasons.”

The Bloc Quebecois was formed in 1991 to advance the cause at the federal level of sovereignist lawmakers in the province. Namely, they want to separate from Canada and form an independent nation.

That would seem a pretty good reason not to sing O’ Canada, non?.

 

 

Tories aren't behind riding's sign war

posted by Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

Campaign sabotage, such as the crosshairs painted over an Ottawa Liberal candidate’s election signs, is unacceptable, Conservative leader Stephen Harper says.

Liberal Ryan Keon’s campaign for the riding of Nepean-Carleton reported over the weekend that 100 signs had been vandalized at a cost of about $2,000. A number of them had targets spraypainted over the candidate’s face. Others claimed he was a “tree hugger” or sought to revive the memory of the Liberal sponsorship scandal with the words “ad scam.”

Conservative Pierre Poilievre was re-elected in 2008 by a 22,000 vote margin over his closest oppoent, a Liberal.

Harper said the vandalism could never have been perpetrated by members of his own party, because they’re way too busy.

“Defacing of other candidates’ signs is never acceptable for any campaign,” Harper said at a campaign stop Sunday. “Our campaign does not have the time to do that. We’ve got enough to do to get our own signs up because we’ve got lots of demand for signs all across the country.”

After the Conservative leader’s morning event, he did venture into Poilievre’s riding. But it wasn’t to console the Liberal victim of the attack. Harper chose instead to partake in a 20-minute game of street hockey, a photo-opportunity to promote his promise to expand a tax credit encouraging youth to take part in physical activity.

Nevermind that there would be no tax relief for parents whose children dodge cars all summer while imitating their NHL favourites.

-30-

 

NDP campaign plane tradition: Jack Layton brings out his guitar

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

  

It has become a tradition on the New Democrat campaign plane for Jack Layton to bring his acoustic guitar to the back of the plane and lead a sing-along with the media. So, on our flight from Halifax back to Ottawa on Saturday evening, staffers passed around the Pete Seeger song books and we all crowded into a few seats to join Layton for some rousing (but not so beautifully sung) renditions of classics chosen by the media flipping through the book.

We began with Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers, which only made sense given one of the lines in the chorus is about a "broken man on a Halifax pier". We followed it up with "Molly Malone" (also known as "Cockles and Mussels" or "In Dublin's Fair City"), at the request of CBC's Rosemary Barton, who said it is her mother's favourite song. We also sang "Downtown" by Petula Clark and Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay".

Layton said he's been playing guitar since high school (the first song he ever learned the chords to was "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain") and he remembers strumming in the cafeteria at Hudson High School while one fellow student named Larry Smith played the piano.

Smith, as many of you already know, became a football player, president of the Montreal Alouettes, publisher of the Gazette and was then appointed a Conservative senator by Stephen Harper. Smith is now running in the riding of Lac-Saint-Louis on the West Island of Montreal, hoping to unseat Liberal incumbent Francis Scarpaleggia.

Guelph Tory candidate reacts to Star story

Posted by Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

A Toronto Star story I published Friday about Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke raised some dust in the riding.

Burke's campaign and the party's central war room in Ottawa wouldn't respond to my repeated requests for an explanation about his assertion in 2004 that the Afghan mission was "near worthless" days.

But he did get back to the Star's sister paper, the Guelph Mercury with a statement that they included in a follow-up story.

Apparently his beef was with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's government sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan without the proper equipment. One can understand how this would strike a nerve with the air force officer-turned-Air Canada-pilot-turned-Tory candidate.

He didn't, however, explain his complaints about the appointment in 2005 of Governor General Michaelle Jean and why he was so upset that another female, immigrant, visible minority was being named to the post following Adrienne Clarkson.

Burke's opponents in the riding weren't so convinced with Burke's explanation, accusing him of being whipped into supporting the official party lines.

But It seems Prime Minister Stephen Harper is fine with his candidate being off-side with the party's policies and positions at the time. The Conservative leader plans to land in the Guelph riding, where they hope to unseat Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, on Monday evening.

I'll be there and I'll report back how things go.