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.

Brennan: Layton hits the stage in La Ronge

Posted by Richard J. Brennan, National Affairs Writer

NDP Leader Jack Layton clapped and sang in La Ronge, Saskatchewan on a Saturday night.

The NDP candidate for Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River Lawrence Joseph played the guitar while the two entertained an NDP rally in this northern town of 2,700.

They were upstaged somewhat by the 70-90 band consisting of George Bird, 70, on guitar and 90-year-old Edmund Bell on violin.

The two have been playing together for more than 50 years.

Brennan: Layton hopes for Saskatchewan breakthrough

Posted by Richard J. Brennan, National Affairs Writer

In Saskatoon, NDP Leader Jack Layton spoke to the largest partisan crowd.

Singing along with the Beatles tune Hey Jude, more than 700 Saskatchewan residents waited with excitement.

It was the second time this campaign Layton has been to Saskatchewan where the party has been frozen out since 2004.

Although he holds his emotions in check, it's well known that Layton is desperate to to be the leader who makes the breakthrough in the birthplace of Canadian socialism.

Brennan: Layton's military policy leaves veteran unconvinced

Posted by Richard J. Brennan, National Affairs Writer

Desert Storm veteran Patricia Brewer came to hear NDP Leader Jack Layton speak and she left unconvinced.

"He didn't answer my question," the retired master corporal, who served in a helicopter squadron, said later.

On the day he released his defence policy, Layton was put on the spot in Kamloops, B.C., Friday by Brewer who wanted to know what his policy was on replacing Canada's aging jets, a matter dear to her since her son Christopher is a pilot.

Layton said his plans called for tabling a discussion paper on the Canada's military needs.

"The most important priority in our view is to build the new supply ships," he said.

Not what Brewer wanted to hear.

"We don't want no more debate," Brewer, a lifelong NDP supporter, told reporters later.

"We want to get something done. We don't want them talking anymore about the equipment we need," she said.

"They don't need a bunch of politicians arguing back and forth about the price tag" of $16 billion for 65 F-35 fighter jets "when the military is telling them what they need."

The fact she would even get to ask a somewhat controversial question is in sharp contrast to the heavily scripted Conservative campaign.

"What I want them to do is stop talking about it and do it."

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.

National media play an April Fool's Day prank on NDP Leader Jack Layton

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

 
 

The national media touring with New Democrat Leader Jack Layton realized early on in the campaign that we would be on the road for April Fool's Day and so we decided to play a little joke on the leader. There were a few ideas tossed around, but Heather Scoffield of The Canadian Press came up with the winner: we would all wear white paper moustaches.

The idea was to poke fun at Layton's iconic facial feature but also riff off the stick-on eyebrows the Liberals handed out to media travelling with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to make fun of his own, er, facial hair. It would be funny, harmless and all we needed was a pair of scissors, paper and some tape. Easy.

Rosemary Barton of the CBC got to work cutting out all our little moustaches, which included fringe along the bottom, while the tour flew from Montreal to Sudbury on Thursday night and then handed them out with little pieces of tape this morning as we were waiting at Laurentian University for Layton to announce a plan to improve access to family doctors.

We kept them in our pockets until Layton finished his speech and then opened it up to questions, when we all donned our moustaches and tried to keep a straight face.

Layton, no doubt aware the news conference was being broadcast on television, hardly let on anything was up as he listened to a question from Richard Madan at CTV (pictured above), who also played it straight as he asked about the doctor-retention fund Layton had announced.

"Well, I just simply recommend you get a shave," Layton said as we finally released some giggles, before going on to answer the question seriously.

We wore the moustaches the entire time, although many of us had trouble keeping them on. Global News reporter Mike Drolet had trouble getting his words out through the paper and tape drooping over his lip and my own moustache was smeared with lipstick by the end.

Layton never really laughed, but just after he left the podium he turned around to say:

"That was cute. I hope somebody took a picture of that."

Yes, we took many, including one of yours truly that Globe and Mail reporter Gloria Galloway posted to Twitter.

Day 7: Layton in Sudbury to talk about health care; will have to talk about the gun registry

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Good morning from Sudbury, where New Democrat Leader Jack Layton will begin the day by doing some radio interviews, including a morning talk show with with local country music station Kicx FM. Expect the debate over the gun registry to be a hot topic.

NDP candidate Glenn Thibeault took the seat from former Liberal MP Diane Marleau in the 2008 election, but this riding looks like a three-way race and Thibeault could be vulnerable. Thibeault was initially one of the dozen NDP MPs who supported Conservative Candice Hoeppner's private member bill to scrap the long-gun registry, but then switched  sides for the final vote that shut down that Conservative dream. NDP incumbent Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt) did the same thing but with 46.5 per cent of the vote in 2008 he might be in less trouble. Nonetheless, both Thibeault and Gravelle will join Layton as he visits the Sudbury riding for some support. They will be joined by Wendy Wilson, the NDP candidate running against Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement in Parry Sound-Muskoka.

Layton will then make announcement concerning health care at Laurentian University at 9:30 a.m.

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. Given most of the campaign promises Layton has made so far are recycled, it is a good bet that forgiving student debt for family doctors will be in there too.

Another clue: I recall Layton made this promise at an event at the Dalhousie University medical school in Halifax when I was travelling with the campaign in 2008. Laurentian University, where we will be this morning, is home of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, a joint initiative with Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. If the NDP handlers line up a bunch of med students in white coats to stand behind Layton as he makes his speech, then I will know for sure.

At 2 p.m. there will be a "town hall" meeting, the first event of its kind for the Layton campaign this year. I will be watching for whether the people that show up and the questions they ask are scripted.

 

 

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.”