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Day 2: Return to the Coalition Crisis
We’ve known it was coming for two years. As expected, Stephen Harper jumped out of the gate trying to make this election all about the coalition. Initially, the opposition parties played along. Jack Layton made it perfectly clear the NDP was for sale or rent. Gilles Duceppe prattled on about his 2004 deal with Stephen […]
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(60% of) Canada Votes
And we’re off. At least I assume we are – I’m away from e-mail today and this was drafted up last night with an 11 am timestamp. I wouldn’t put it past Stephen Harper to cancel the election so as to ensure Canada’s economic recovery stays on track. While I’ll no doubt be busy this […]
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Calgary Grit Election Pool – 20 Questions
Anyone can predict seat totals or popular vote. That’s just the end result. The real excitement in an election is the journey – the campaign itself. With that in mind, I present the third (almost) annual Calgary Grit Potpourri election pool. Twenty questions to determine just how well you can predict the upcoming campaign. While […]
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Election 2011 Primer
With the government almost certain to fall in the next 48 hours, what should we expect between now and election day? Last week, I looked at the election calendar – today, a look at the strategies the parties are likely to employ: The Conservatives Official Slogan: Here for Canada (unlike that American bastard Michael Ignatieff) […]
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That Pesky Census Issue
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s basically a dead issue at this point but, via Wherry, a comprehensive list of what that long form census data is used for: More than 50 federal government agencies and departments rely on longform census data on ethnic origins, visible minorities, citizenship and immigration for planning and policies, according to […]
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You Know What’s Cool? Not Caring About the Census.
A CPC campus recruitment poster talks about “how being cool means not trying desperately to be seen as cool”. Like the Conservatives.
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Issue Management
In all the pages and pages of Census e-mails and documents released Tuesday, the excerpt above is probably the most telling. Just 2 days before the Census changes were made public, an internal Communications Plan was circulated proclaiming “These changes will not have a negative impact on the quality of the Census. Response rates and […]
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7 Weeks Later, Tony Clement Springs Into Action
Actually, his proposed changes are rather meek, designed only to avoid a court challenge: Stung by francophone anger, the Harper government is adding questions on French and English skills to the obligatory short-form 2011 census. It’s a bid to quell the linguistic minority’s fears that scrapping a longer mandatory survey will make it harder to […]
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Tony Clement: Non-mandatory with the truth
Tony Clement, on July 16th: “I asked [Statistics Canada] specifically, ‘Are you confident you can do your job?’ They said ‘If you do these extra things: the extra advertising and the extra sample size, then yes, we can do our job.’ ” […] Mr. Clement said the medical journal and other critics should trust Statistics […]
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Being Tony Clement
Tony Clement, explaining the government’s census logic: “Yeah, there are groups that are upset” about the government’s decision, Clement told reporters. “Hey, listen, they had a good deal going,” he added. “They got good, quality data and the government of Canada was the heavy.” Realizing fewer people will fill out a voluntary form, the government […]