Holiday hockey

I'll be back with some new posts in the New Year. In the mean time, here's some of what I was up to during the Christmas break:

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Who wants to run the HST Yes campaign?

I'm on the record as believing the HST is the right policy for British Columbia (and Ontario and elsewhere), despite the flawed implementation on the left coast. However, with the tide of anger against the HST in B.C. seeming to make its defeat in a referendum next fall almost inevitable, I support Christy Clark's proposal to put the HST to another vote in the legislature in the spring, which could see the HST killed sooner. My feeling is if the public will is clear, government should listen instead of prolonging the issue unnecessarily.

Just how clear the public mood is on the HST is becoming increasingly, well, unclear. New polling from Angus Reid indicates the HST's defeat in a referendum may no longer be the slam-dunk fait accompli it once seemed.

As the weeks progress, support for abolishing the harmonized sales tax (HST) continues to erode. More than half of British Columbians (54%) would still vote to extinguish the HST, but support is down 10 points since early December. One third of BC residents (35%, +5) would cast a ballot to keep the HST, while 11 per cent are undecided.

While women continue to support abandoning the HST by an almost 2-to-1 margin, the race has tightened considerably among men (48% would extinguish it, 42% would keep it).
...
The one key change from early December is the erosion of support for the abolition of the HST. Men and respondents in affluent households are slowly coming on board with the idea that the tax should be kept, so the final decision on whether to proceed with a free vote in the Legislative Assembly—or hold the referendum at an earlier date—will be particularly important for whoever becomes British Columbia’s 35th Premier.

There was another recent poll that showed a strong desire from a lot of BCers for more information on the HST ahead of the referendum, which would seem to indicate both that people are becoming more engaged, and that they're not satisfied with the information they've gotten on sales tax harmonization from either the government, the media, or the anti-HST campaigners.

While the polling shows an erosion of anti-HST sentiment and appears to show a referendum could be winnable, and certain members of the punditry and academia are shaming the political class for backing down from the fight, I would strike one major note of caution to those who think the HST could survive a referendum.

I was talking to a politically astute friend from the left coast last week, and he raised a very good point I haven't heard discussed elsewhere: even if the polling is close, get out the vote would be a nightmare for the HST yes campaign.

Let's remember that we're not talking about a referendum in conjunction with a general election here. We're talking about a standalone referendum on the HST. Voter turnout is going to be a challenge for each side, as they try to motivate people to take time out of their lives to vote in a referendum. It will all be about get out the vote (GOTV).

While it may be getting close to 50-50 in polling, answering the vote or a web panel is one thing, and physically going to cast a ballot is quite another. When it comes to motivation to go out and vote, it's fair to conclude though that the anti-HST crowd has an advantage. If you think the HST is an evil tax increase that costs you money, you're motivated to go vote. If you think harmonization is sound fiscal policy, the impetus to vote is a little lower.

The problem is that the HST's impact on the street creates a more natural anti-HST constituency. You see it at the till, it hits you when you buy a house. The negatives are visible. The positives are less visible and more abstract. The most immediate benefit is for business owners in reduction of bookeeping and other expenses; business owners are fewer in number than the public at large. And the benefit for the public, more competitive businesses creating more jobs, is less visible and hard to link directly to sales tax haronization.

There's also the question of who will step up and run the HST Yes campaign. The No side is clearly defined. The government's role is limited by legislation, leaving it to business to step up, or not.

Point being, despite agreeing with the policy, and even with the tightening polling, I wouldn't envy the task facing the Yes to HST campaign team. It may be a fight worth fighting in the abstract, but on the ground, with the GOTV challenge it seems more than a little hopeless.

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Another Conservative rejected by voters appointed a Harper Senator

Stephen Harper once vowed he would only appoint elected senators. We're obviously long past that point for assorted reasons, some valid and some not as much, but what is impressive is how far in the other direction the Harper Conservatives have gone.

Never mind appointing only elected senators. We're so far removed from the spirit of that pledge that Harper has now made a habit of appointing to patronage heaven people who, when they were on the ballot, were rejected by the electorate. Instead of elected senators, we have senators who couldn't get elected.

The latest, called to the senate today, is Don Meredith. The failed Conservative candidate in the Toronto-Centre by-election in 2008 won by Liberal Bob Rae, Meredith finished not second, and not third, but fourth in that by-election, with just 2,982 votes for a paltry 12.5 per cent of the vote. Not only was Meredith behind the NDP, Green Party candidate Chris Tindal finished ahead of Meredith, besting him by 281 votes.

How bad was it for Meredith? Even the former Conservative candidate in the riding (later dumped by CPC HQ), Mark Warner, endorsed Rae:

On March 10, Warner publicly endorsed Rae, the man he’d planned to run against. (A breaking point for him was Meredith telling a St. James Town crowd that bedbugs were a matter of hygiene. “Telling your potential constituents ‘you stink, you don’t wash, you live in filth’ probably isn’t the best way to win an election,” Warner says.)

While Meredith did manage to score better than the candidates for the Animal Alliance and the Canadian Action Party, the message was pretty clear from Toronto-Centre voters they didn't want Meredith as their MP. But now he'll represent all of Ontario in the senate.

In case you think Meredith is an isolated case, by my count Meredith is the 10th senator appointed by Harper who ran for office and was rejected by the electorate. I wrote about all of them in a previous post; the list includes Salma Ataullahjan, Yonah Martin, Claude Carignan, Fabian Manning, Michel Rivard, John Wallace, Leo Houskas, Michael Fortier and Suzanne Duplessis.

Having to appoint senators in the absence of senate reform is one thing (we'll save the conversation about Harper's utter aversion to meaningful senate reform for another day). But claiming to favour an elected senate for accountability purposes, and then making a habit of appointed people who have been rejected by the electorate, is quite another.

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Bill Siksay’s retirement puts Burnaby-Douglas in play

News broke last night that Bill Siksay, the three-term New Democratic Party MP for the riding of Burnaby-Douglas in the Vancouver area, will not be running again in the next election.

After a quarter of a century in politics, Bill Siksay has decided to hang up his hat.

"It's been 25 years for me," he said. "It just feels like time to make a change."

Siksay, the MP for Burnaby-Douglas made the announcement he was leaving politics today - Dec. 16.

Siksay is the NDP critic for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and transsexual (GLBTT) issues. He will stay on till the next election, which could be as early as next spring.

I spent a little time in Burnaby-Douglas in the last election, and I can say Siksay is definitely a classy guy, respected in the community and by his political opponents. He’s also a solid constituency guy, and that’s one of the reasons for his success; he handled constituency issues for his predecessor, former NDP MP Svend Robinson. He's good people, and the level of debate in Ottawa will be lesser without him.

While Burnaby has traditionally been strong NDP territory at all levels of government, the demographics of the area are shifting. Once a major union city, the resource industry in the area isn’t what it once was. As of the 2006 census, 71,000 of the riding’s 112,000 residents were immigrants. 57,000 were a visible minority, including 33,000 Chinese.

It’s a riding that falls nicely into the ethnic outreach campaign that Jason Kenney is leading for the Conservatives, and they very nearly swung the riding in 2008. The Conservatives ran Ronald Leung, a candidate with a very high profile in the local Chinese community as the host of a radio call-in show on Fairchild Radio who nearly won a seat on Vancouver City Council a few years earlier (he also used to work for Kenney in the minister's regional office). Despite running the typical Conservative peak-a-boo campaign – skipping all candidates meetings and hiding from most media – Leung grew the Conservative vote by nearly 4000 votes and finished just 800 votes behind Siksay.

Siksay’s departure will certainly put this riding in play – his personal popularity was a strong contributor to his performance – and with the Conservatives reportedly running Leung again, the riding would appear ripe for a Conservative pick-up. It will be interesting to see who the NDP nominate to replace Siksay.

It’s far from a slam-dunk, however. The Liberal support in the riding could well be the wildcard here. Bill Cunningham ran in the last three elections for the Liberals, and after running tightly with Siksay in 2004 and 2006 (934 and 1244 votes) the Liberal vote collapsed in 2008, dropping nearly 7000 votes. Many Liberal voters simply stayed home, and many others moved to Leung. Historically, though, the Liberal base here is stronger than the 2008 numbers show.

The Liberals have already nominated Ken Low as their candidate in Burnaby-Douglas, and he could make it interesting. Low ran for the Liberals in Vancouver-East in 2008, finishing a distant (but respectable, all things considered) second to the mighty Libby Davies. Low is a civil engineer who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong. He’s very active in the community, and while he doesn’t have Leung’s profile he will give him a strong race. The Liberal vote in this riding in 2008 was hurt by several factors: green shift, Stephane Dion’s unpopularity, and Leung’s appeal to the Chinese community. It will be a much different race next time.

While we’ll wait to see who the NDP run, at this point I’d say it’s Leung’s race to lose. He’s not without his baggage, however. There’s a reason the Conservatives ran a peak-a-boo campaign in 2008 (after the campaign, he blamed the media for his narrow loss). He has a history of strident opposition to same-sex marriage. That's a popular opinion with some the riding, but it's also divisive: Siksay was Canada's first MP to win election as an openly-gay candidate. When Leung was a spokesperson for Kenney, then Conservative Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, Leung said that multiculturalism is not part of the Canadian identity. And the former pastor of his ultra-conservative church, Titus Cheung, said multiculturalism is the precursor for the anti-Christ.

Should be a riding to watch in the next election, for sure.

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In BC Liberal race it’s all about the kids

It’s early days in the BC Liberal race, but so far we’ve seen several notable efforts by the candidates to reach out to the youth vote. Which is smart, because people as young as 14 are eligible to join the BC Liberal Party and vote in this leadership race.

The first youth-friendly policy initiative of the campaign came from leadership candidate Christy Clark, who promised to raise the minimum wage (BC’s is the lowest in the country at $8/hour) and, more importantly for youth, scrap the training wage:

Clark said she’d raise the minimum wage above the $8 an hour mark, now the lowest in the country, and wants to scrap the $6 training wage given to young workers.

“We shouldn’t have the lowest minimum wage in the country. Whatever the minimum wage is, it should be the wage for everybody.”

Scrapping the training wage is a no-brainer ... but then again, the BC Liberals were completely brain-dead when they implemented the training wage in the first place because it’s a thoroughly stupid policy. The training wage allows employers to pay employees with no experience a wage below minimum wage for their first 500 hours of employment. Usually, it’s youth that get hit hardest. It’s discriminatory and exploitive, and it has to go.

As for the minimum wage, the current national average is $9.28, ranging from the low of $8 in BC to a high of $10.25 (with a few exceptions) in Ontario. I think BC should raise it to at least $10, and that’s still barely a living wage.

The voting age

In an even bigger move to court the youth demographic, leadership candidate Mike De Jong said Wednesday he favours lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 to get more youth civicly engaged before leaving high school.

"What happens now is Grade 12 students leave and the vast majority of them never vote, or if they do, they are 40 or 50 by the time they get around to it," he said.

Lowering the voting age could also help boost low voter turnout, he said. Only 51 per cent of 3.24 million eligible voters cast ballots in the 2009 B.C. election, down from 58 per cent in 2005 and 55 per cent in 2001.

Following De Jong’s commitment, Christy Clark said on Twitter and Facebook that she supported De Jong’s proposal.

I support Mike de Jong’s call to lower the voting age. Let’s get people in the voting habit earlier.

There’s no doubt a call to lower the voting age is obviously smart leadership politics. But is it smart policy? I’m inclined to say absolutely, but with one caveat: the move must be accompanied with focused and comprehensive non-partisan high school curriculum to engage and educate young people in civic issues.

We all know that youth voter turnout is low. Frankly, it’s low for everyone. In any demographic there are plenty of people that just don’t give a darn. But it’s a mistake to say that, overall, youth are apathetic. Many youth are concerned and engaged, they just don’t see the traditional political process as particularly relevant to them and affecting real change on the issues they care about. (In that, at least, the youth aren’t alone.)

Lowering the voting age is good leadership politics. A solid comprehensive plan to actually engage youth would make it great policy.

And a poll

In other BC political news, an interesting new Mustel poll out this morning gives the BC Liberals a five point edge among decided voters over the NDP, 41 to 36. It's a flip from last month's Mustel poll that had it NDP 42 BC Liberals 37, and appears fueled by a shift in female support away from the NDP to the BC Liberals.

On the leadership front, Mustel also shows strong support for Christy Clark, among both the general public and BC Liberals:

Former deputy premier Clark enjoys a strong lead over her leadership opponents, according to the Mustel poll, with support from 27 per cent of all voters, followed by Kevin Falcon at 11 per cent, George Abbott at 10 per cent, Mike de Jong at seven per cent and Moira Stilwell at two per cent.

When first and second choices are combined among all voters, Clark has the support of 37 per cent, compared with Abbott at 22 per cent, Falcon at 19 per cent, de Jong at 18 per cent and Stilwell at five per cent.

Among Liberal supporters, Clark leads again at 46 per cent, followed by Falcon at 35 per cent, Abbott at 30 per cent, de Jong at 24 per cent and Stilwell at four per cent.

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Shhh! The Liberals are talking policy again!

If there’s one oft-repeated meme from the opposing parties, the media punditry and others, it’s that the Liberals aren’t talking policy, and they really should be, because people need to know what they stand for other than not liking Stephen Harper.

The problem with this criticism, of course, is that it requires the observer to not pay any attention to the reality that, hey, actually the Liberals have been talking specific, detailed policy for some time.

Yesterday, for example, Ujjal Dosanjh, Carolyn Bennett and Hedy Fry fanned-out across the country to try to kick-start a national debate on the future of medicare. (The Citizen gave it 95 words)

Health care is the focus of what will be one of the signature pieces of the next Liberal election platform: the Liberal Family Care Plan. Announced earlier this year, it includes a new six-month Family Care Employment Insurance Benefit similar to the EI parental leave benefit, and a new Family Care Tax Benefit, modeled on the Child Tax Benefit.

Want more health policy specifics? How about:

* a National Food Policy
* a national brain strategy to help Canadians fighting Alzheimer’s
* a program to get more doctors and nurses to rural Canada by forgiving up to $20,000 in student loans

How about economic policy? In October, Ralph Goodale, Scott Brison and Marc Garneau fanned-out across the country to talk about the economy, and outline Liberal economic policy prescriptions.

Like what? Well, how about:

*a deficit reduction path of one per cent of gdp within two years
*fiscal prudence by restoring the budgeting buffer
*new programs must be financed without increasing the deficit
*freeze corporate tax rates by postponing decreases we can’t afford

The Liberals have also discussed a Rural Canada Matters strategy, a pension reform plan, an environment and clean energy plan and a pan-Canadian learning strategy. Not to mention a Global Networks Strategy to grow trade.

And here’s one that really deserves more attention: the Liberal Open Government Initiative. It will:

*Immediately restore the long-form census;
*Make as many government datasets as possible available to the public online free of charge at opendata.gc.ca in an open and searchable format, starting with Statistics Canada data, including data from the long-form census;
*Post all Access to Information requests, responses, and response times online at accesstoinformation.gc.ca; and
*Make information on government grants, contributions and contracts available through a searchable, online database at accountablespending.gc.ca.

Confronted with the reality that, wow, the Liberals are actually talking all kinds of policy, I expect to soon be hearing the media and punditry complaining: why are the Liberals wasting their time talking about policy! They should be attacking the Conservatives; no one cares about policy!

When they do, remember you heard it here first.

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Can Christy Clark move BC past the HST?

To most that follow British Columbia politics from afar, myself included, it’s more than a little surprising that, with all the drama over the last year or two, the BC Liberals stand a more than decent chance of winning the next election.

There is one big caveat though: the BC Liberals need to get out from under and away from the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). When she launched her campaign for the BC Liberal leadership last week, Christy Clark presented one scenario that would seem to offer the party the chance to do just that:

“Let us consider putting the proposed referendum question to a truly free vote of the Legislative Assembly. And you know how that question goes: that this house is in favour of extinguishing the harmonized sales tax. Now if this process is successful it would put the HST behind us by March 31st. If it’s successful, we would notify the federal government immediately of our intention to withdraw after the 18 months notice that’s required in the agreement. We would start to negotiate with them to get out earlier than the five-year agreement currently allows. And unfortunately, it would mean going back to the GST and the PST. But we won’t revisit the HST for another five years. It is time for British Columbia to have certainty around this question.”

“After almost a year, the public still hates the HST. And I think we need to face some hard realities here. And that is if this goes to a referendum, a real referendum, the HST will almost certainly fail. We need to take our heads out of the sand on that, and we need to get on with restoring our economy. No one is served by uncertainty.”

Personally, I think sales tax harmonization makes good economic sense and good policy sense. The devil is in the details, and you need to do everything you can to ensure it’s as close to cost-neutral as possible for taxpayers, but it makes sense on all kinds of levels. Less paperwork for businesses, less paperwork for government. And I think undoing it will be a major logistical and procedural headache.

In BC, though, the implementation was clearly bungled. After telling the public harmonization wasn’t on the agenda during the election campaign, just days later suddenly plans to harmonize were announced. It reeked of dishonesty. While it belatedly began to try to sell the public on the merits of the HST, it was never able to get over that initial perception of dishonesty.

In any democracy, you must listen to the will of the citizens, and the people of B.C. seem clear that the HST has got to go. The government has lost the battle on this one, and it’s time to move on. Prolonging this process through the referendum next fall would be pointless, and would only prolong the economic uncertainty while seeing time and resources wasted fighting a lost cause.

Clark hasn’t committed to a course of action on the HST – she plans to consult party members and the public in the weeks ahead – but her outlined option seems the best way to move the province forward and allow it to put the HST behind it. If the legislature votes to kill the HST the referendum becomes unnecessary and the process of unwinding the tax can begin.

I do have one big question though, and that’s what of the $1.6 billion in transition funding that the federal government sent to the province to sweeten the deal? It seems safe to assume the feds are going to want that money back; just saying “keep it” would hardly be fair to the other provinces. I doubt the feds would take a super hard line and demand it all back at once; this would be part of the negotiation but I could see it being paid back over time or applied over time against future transfer payments. Still, it’s going to but a crunch on the province’s budget and necessitate some tough choices that need to be part of the debate.

Anyway, here’s the video from Clark’s leadership campaign launch last week:

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Conservatives, Liberals and NDP: Coalition of the C-12 unwilling

There are times when all our politicians fail Canadians, and even the most partisan among us have to admit it they’re all behaving like fools. And the actions of the major three parties when it comes to Bill C-12 is one of those times.

C-12 is a government bill that the Conservatives have been in no big hurry to pass, and the opposition parties have shown no particular desire to push them on. It’s been languishing on the order paper for some time. It would expand the size of the House of Commons from 308 seats to 338, giving additional representation to fast-growing and under-represented regions of Ontario (+18 seats), British Columbia (+7 seats) and Alberta (+5 seats).

It wouldn’t go all the way to fixing the severe regional inequalities in the HoC, but it would be an important step. To illustrate the problem, in the recent by-elections there were 120,864 eligible voters in Vaughan versus just 51,198 in Winnipeg-North.

The recent all-around nonsense on C-12 began last week with this story by the Globe’s John Ibbitson:

The Harper government and the opposition parties have agreed to quietly sink legislation that would have given Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta more seats in the House of Commons. As a result, urban and visible-minority voters will continue to be discriminated against in Parliament.

Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic MPs and party strategists, speaking on condition that they not be named, stated this week that the bill has no chance of passage. Although all three national parties remain committed to the principle of equal representation for all Canadians in the House of Commons, in practice, the legislation that would advance that cause has virtually no hope of becoming law.
…
The Liberals and Conservatives especially feared that passing the bill could harm the electoral prospects of their Quebec MPs.

Facing caucus revolts and potential electoral losses, the government shelved the bill.

Ibbitson’s story was quickly denied by all concerned. First up to bat were the Conservatives, who said it was all nonsense, they totally want to get this bill passed (at some undetermined point in time) and blamed it all on the scary opposition coalition.

This story is completely false.

Today the Prime Minister confirmed that our Government will continue to move forward with our representation by population bill.

The Liberals and NDP both denied any deal, blaming the Conservatives for stalling the legislation as it’s up to them to bring the bill forward for study and debate and they’re not opposed to the bill in principle, although they do want to study it in committee.

While all involved are denying there’s any kind of a deal, Ibbitson’s story does have a ring of truth. The fact is, the Conservatives have been going no where with the bill and the Liberals and the NDP don’t seem to have minded. It wasn’t until they were called out by the Ibbitson story that they started doth protesting muchly.

And I’m still not impressed with any of the reactions. Reading between the lines, I think nothing has changed. It’s all sound and fury for the appearance of action, symbolizing nothing. Take the comments of Carolyn Bennett, Liberal critic for democratic reform, which echo what I’ve heard as the Liberal line on C-12, post-Ibbitson:

No deal exists between federal parties to shelve Bill C-12 on Parliament’s seat redistribution (Federal Parties Agree To Scrap Bill – Dec. 3). On the contrary, Liberals have stated clearly that we will send the bill to committee to give it the thorough consideration it demands and allow an opportunity for consultation that has been sorely missing, particularly with the provinces. Stephen Harper has, as usual, failed to properly consult on this issue with Canadians, and with the provinces in particular. A Parliamentary committee is the appropriate forum to ensure that this consultation occurs and that as parliamentarians, we can be assured that the bill offers fair representation of all Canadians in the House of Commons.

There’s one line that stands out for me here: “and with the provinces in particular.” I like and respect Dr. Bennett, and I know she’s committed to democratic reform and engagement. But she’s off-base here. There is absolutely no reason to consult the provinces on the HoC re-distribution. It’s a completely federal issue that has nothing to do with provincial governments. We have MPs elected from every province and territory to represent their constituents; this is their job.

I can’t help but see the “consult the provinces” line as a stalling-tactic by a Liberal Party that doesn’t want to deal with this issue until after an election. Just like the NDP and Conservatives, who are all professing to support the principle while doing nothing to advance it and are blaming the others for the lack of forward progress on C-12.

They all want the thing stalled because they’re all afraid passing it will lose them support in Quebec (and to a lesser extent, the Maritimes) which, frankly, is a pathetic abdication of responsibility by all involved. But of course they can’t say that, for fear of pissing of Ontario, B.C. and Alberta, who they're screwing-over in their pursuit of gold in Quebec. It’s ridiculous. What’s right is right; these regional inequalities need to be addressed. It’s time to step up and lead. Get the dammed bill to committee, give it the proper study it deserves, get the dammed thing passed, and stop making excuses.

I’ll leave the other parties to their own devices, but to my Liberals, my plea would be this: stop hiding in the corner meekly playing pass the buck on this issue. There is an opportunity to seize some momentum and demonstrate leadership. There is a thirst and a hunger in this country for democratic reform and re-distribution, while a small step, could be important symbolically. So step up and commit strongly to the principle. Demand the government bring C-12 to committee. Bring visibility and prominence to the issue. Outline your own proposals; if you want amendments, what are they? And stop stalling, because your meek protests aren’t fooling anyone.

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Everybody needs to pause, take a deep breath, and relax

Sometimes the partisanship really does get ridiculous. I’d say it’s a product of perpetual minorities, but I’m reasonably certain that the partisanship has always been pretty ridiculous and any memories of a golden era of peace and love are illusory.

Some of the worst partisanship revolves around the most trivial of events, like music. And everyone, from partisans of all stripes to the press gallery, is guilty of overdoing it. I bring this up, of course, because of Stephen Harper’s “rock concert” last night at the Conservative Christmas party on Ottawa. It was somewhat bemusing to watch it unfold on Twitter last night, and then read the flurry of coverage this morning.

It’s all rather over the top. Conservatives say it’s a master-stroke that shows Harper’s regular guy awesomeness. Some of my Liberal friends are all in a lather, calling it a cynically-staged photo-op by a guy who can’t sing. And the media are all in a tizzy giving it wide coverage and, of course, asking how this all impacts the horse race and election timing. (Because everything is about election timing to our media friends.)

The worst is this so-called “senior Ignatieff official” who, if they do really exist and hold a senior position, should be moved to a job that involves neither talking to the media or communications strategy of any kind, because these have got to be some of the stupidest comments I’ve read in years:

“Not even one song in French,” a senior Ignatieff official told The Globe and Mail on Thursday morning. “One week after Quebec’s artistic elite (over 100 songwriters and singers) came to Parliament Hill on C-32. It shows that he is clueless about Quebec culture.”

Dude. Senior whoever the hell you are. Seriously, you need to get a life. Do yourself a favour and get out of Ottawa, because you seem completely clueless about what people really give a shit about.

And as passionately as the partisans of varying stripes hold their positions on Harper’s rock show, they all probably had the exactly opposite reaction when Bob Rae, for example, did his piano man thing earlier this year. Liberals lapped it up, great show and all that. I posted the video, and I still get comments months later on it from Conservatives saying he’s a crappy performer who should stick to his day job. Their hostility was fierce.

Or when Michael Ignatieff danced for Much Music – un-priministerial and not a leader, the Conservatives huffed.

The problem with blind partisanship is that it blinds everyone’s judgment, and leads to a tendency to blow things out of proportion on both sides. My side’s goals are just, so anything we do in their pursuit is peachy, and the other guys are evil, so anything they do is wrong. And as David Akin pointed-out, it forces politicians to act like robotic automatons to avoid the inevitable attacks.

It's a war room mentality, and it's the same no matter who is running it. Everything is an opportunity to attack, to oppose, to advance the agenda. I know applying the "if you don't have anything nice to say" rule to politics would be ridiculous, but knowing when to hold your powder is important.

People need to just breathe. So Harper played some songs at a Conservative Christmas party, and the room of party loyalists loved it. Good for him. It has no deeper meaning. Was it a coincidence the media were there? Probably not. (I'd have not invited the media, but make sure someone got it with a Flip camera and let social media take it viral, myself.) Were they hoping for positive coverage? Probably. But who cares. Everyone is hoping for positive coverage.

They had a fun night, and that’s all it is.

The Conservatives shouldn’t pretend its step one to a majority.

The Liberals should focus more on having more fun nights of their own.

And the media should leave trivialities to lighter-side briefs or too much information segments and spend more of their time reporting on issues more substantive than Christmas parties or Caribana dances.

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Seems Christy Clark will launch BC Liberal leadership run this morning

A few quality candidates are already in the race to replace Gordon Campbell as the next leader of the B.C. Liberal Party (I hear good things about Kevin Falcon), but I'm excited to see that it appears likely former education minister and deputy Premier Christy Clark will throw her hat in the ring this morning.

She's making an announcement this morning in Vancouver at SFU's Segal School of Business, 500 Granville at Pender. It's open to all with doors opening at 8am and the announcement at 8:30am PDT. If you can't make it in person, you can also watch the live stream online at her Web site.

I've supported the BC Liberals in the past, but I felt they drifted too far to the right over the years for my comfort, and in the last election I was in B.C. for I actually, reluctantly, voted NDP. I think the BC Liberals need to return to their moderate, centrist, progressive roots, and I'm hopeful Christy could be the candidate to make that happen, and bring progressives like me back into the fold.

I'm looking forward to hearing what Christy, Kevin and the other candidates have to say on the issues in what should be a very interesting race. Two races actually, with Carole James' resignation this week as BC NDP leader. They have some challenging issues to deal with.

The B.C. political landscape is about to undergo a major shake-up. One thing is more sure; B.C. politics are never dull!

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By-elections hit parties in the pocket book (Update: No they don't)

UPDATE: Actually, as two speedy commenters suggest, byelections don't count in the calculation of the subsidy. Therefore, ignore all of this post. At least I got to use a calculator, though. That's always fun. So if byelections did count, this is what would happen. Consider it the first in my series of alternate history blogging, a new genre soon to sweep the blogsphere. I wonder though, SHOULD the subsidies be recalculated based on byelections? Given that the mood of the electorate could well have changed, I'd argue yes, they should be.

I've seen lots of "by the numbers" analysis of this week's by-elections (Pundits' Guide is solid as usual, as is Calgary Grit) but there's one numerical analysis I haven't seen yet, so I thought I'd dive in: what it means for the major party's per-vote subsidy take.

As we know, parties earn a per vote subsidy for each vote they earn, once they reach a certain threshold. Currently, it's $1.95 per vote. The Conservatives are routinely proposing to kill this subsidy, which was introduced when corporate and union donations were banned. I have a campaign finance reform counter-proposal.

In the mean time though, the subsidy lives. How was it impacted by these by-elections? Well, since by-elections tend to have lower turnout, everyone tends to lose votes, and dollars, after by-elections. And this week's were certainly no exception, with every party finishing with fewer votes in totality. There were too exceptions on the riding level: the Conservatives gained 530 votes in Vaughan, and the Liberals am impressive 5,288 in Winnipeg-North. But those gains were more than offset by loses elsewhere.

Here are the riding-by riding figures, with the vote change from 2008 and the corresponding subsidy impact:

Vaughan
CPC: 19,920 (+530) +$1,033
LPC: 18,236 (-9537) -$18,597
NDP: 661 (-4770) -$4,768

Winnipeg North
LPC: 7,303 (+5228) +$10,194
NDP: 6,490 (-7607) -$14,833
CPC: 1,647 (-3386) -$6,602

Dauphin--Swan River—Marquette
CPC: 8,176 (-9945) -$19,392
NDP: 3,785 (-1089) -$2,123
LPC: 1,481 (-2603) -5,075

As we can see, while generally (with two exceptions) all parties lost votes, largely due to voter turn-out, those parties that saw incumbents resigning took the biggest hits in each case, even when the party of the incumbent was re-elected. The departures of Maurizio Bevilacqua, Judy Wasylycia-Leis and Inky Mark each really hurt their respective parties. Meanwhile, Alf Apps should really buy Kevin Lamoureux a beer tonight as his victory wasn't only unexpected, it was profitable.

Now, the overall results, with vote change from 2008 and corresponding subsidy impact:

NDP -13,466 (-$26,258)
CPC -12,801 (-$24,961)
LPC -6912 (-$13,478)

As we can see, everyone lost votes and, therefore subsidy dollars as a result of the by-elections this week.

The Liberals can at least claim a moral victory for having lost the least, thanks in large part to Lamourex's big swing in Winnipeg-Centre, but with budgets tight at party central this loss will definitely be felt. The Conservatives lost nearly twice as much, but as their subsidy take was bigger to begin with and they have a large edge on direct fundraising, it won't really hurt them too much. The biggest loss was taken by the NDP, and they'll probably feel the loss the most as well, as they've ramped-up their spend since the introduction of the per-vote subsidy.

*If I've gotten the math completely wrong somewhere, my apologies in advance. I was always more of an arts guy.

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