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Extra! Extra! No New Taxes!
With an election call expected within weeks, the Alberta PCs are blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their pledge to not raise taxes. Well, let me rephrase that – the Alberta government is blanketing the airwaves with advertising touting their plan to not raise taxes: The Redford government is under attack from opposition members over […]
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Dean Del Mastro: Knower of Everything
On previous episodes of Dean Del Mastro: Knower of Everything, Dean didn’t trust the survey results in a Peterborough newspaper poll, so he commissioned his own robo-push poll, in an effort to “protect democracy”. Then, last week Dean argued the Liberals used a US call centre and the Tories never did, despite Evan Solomon presenting […]
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The Dippers Vote
Ballots have arrived to thousands of NDP members, who now have until March 24th to vote for a leader. Originally, the field reminded me a lot of the 2006 Liberal leadership race, with the role of the establishment front runner lacking elected experience played by Brian Topp, the polished veteran who wore different colours provincially […]
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Damage Control
It remains to be seen just how involved the Conservative Party was in Robocon, but it certainly doesn’t help that they can’t keep their story straight. It was all Michael Sona, it was rogue third parties, it was the Liberals, the Tories had “absolutely, definitely” nothing to do with it…yet they’re reviewing the tapes. The […]
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The Six "S" of Scandal Stickiness
This time last year, the Tories found themselves engulfed in scandal – Carson, Contempt, In & Out, Oda… The opposition parties were licking their chops at the prospect of bringing the government down. We all know how that turned out. The scandals didn’t stick, and the result was a Tory majority. With the Nixonian references […]
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Self Inflicted Wounds
With the return of Parliament, today was the first chance for the opposition to put the Tories’ feet to the fire on Robocon. Instead, it was the Liberals who would up burning themselves with the admission that a Liberal staffer was behind Vickileaks. In scheme of things, the Vickileaks saga is fairly minor. It wasn’t […]
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Demand Better
Whenever the opposition tried to raise “the democracy thing” during last spring’s campaign, the electorate responded with a shrug. Contempt of parliament, the in-and-out scandal, Bev Oda’s “not” problem…meh. People got temporarily worked up over prorogation, but that was more because the government was seen to be taking a 3-month vacation, not because they’d disrespected […]
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The Orange Trickle
According to Postmedia, NDP membership numbers have “skyrocketed“: NDP memberships skyrocket heading into leadership vote OTTAWA — The number of NDP members has increased by about 50 per cent in the past few months, a sign that interest is rising as the party approaches its leadership vote next month. In all, there are 128,351 members […]
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#TellVicEverythingExeptWhat’sInTheBill
After finally reading his own bill, it appears Vic Toews has decided to side with the child pornographers: Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he is surprised to learn that a section of the government’s online surveillance bill provides for “exceptional circumstances” under which “any police officer” can request customer information from a telecommunications service […]
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I love Canada…so long as I run it
Justin Trudeau raised a bit of a stir last week with his comments that he’d consider supporting Quebec separatism if the Harper government took Canada too far to the right. Most have already weighed in on this, and my opinion comes closest to Andrew Coyne’s: I don’t doubt that some of the things the Harper […]