That popping sound

Boom goes the EKOS poll dynamite:

Graves said the figures could conceivably bring the NDP, led by Jack Layton, more than 100 seats in Parliament. The poll indicates that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives could win around 130 seats.
But that's not a majority in Parliament, raising the prospect that the NDP could form a coalition with the Liberals and Layton could become the party's first prime minister.

That popping sound you hear is a million Conservative wingnut heads exploding.

"Who do you trust to govern the country?"

Ignatieff asks "who do you trust to govern the country?" Its the basic question of any democracy.
Iggy has spent this campaign connecting with Canadians, but the polls are not giving him much encouragement. I'm hoping events like this will help turn that tide.


Halifax

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Montreal


Toronto

Voting strategically at Project Democracy

I just added the Project Democracy widget to the sidebar. They list some key contests for strategic voting:

• Beauport--Limoilou
  
Liberals and Greens should vote NDP
• Madawaska--Restigouche
NDP and Green should vote Liberal
• Ottawa--Orléans
NDP and Green should vote Liberal
• Sault Ste. Marie
Liberals and Greens should vote NDP
• Vancouver Island North
Liberals and Greens should vote NDP
• West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast--Sea to Sky Country
NDP and Green should vote Liberal
• Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar
Liberals and Greens should vote NDP

In Prairie Dog magazine, Paul Dechene uses Project Democracy charts to summarize some other key Regina ridings.

Can Ignatieff get out the vote?

With NDP support a mile wide but an inch deep, the question for Liberals this weekend at the advance polls and next Monday will be, can they get their vote out?
Liberals stayed home in droves in 2008 rather than vote for Dion, leading to one of the lowest turnout elections ever. Liberal campaign co-chair David Smith talks about Liberal campaign volunteers working to get the Liberal vote out:

"They know it's a battle, they know it's a challenge, and they know we are behind to the Tories, but they are pumped and we'll go all out right to the end"

How stupid do they think we are?

Saskatoon MP Brad Trost has let another cat out of the bag about the Conservative decision to pander to its pro-life base by cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood.
Now all the Conservative powers-that-be are perishing the thought.

William Stairs, chief of staff in Oda’s ministerial office said in an email to the Star late Wednesday that despite Trost’s claim, no decision has yet been made on Planned Parenthood’s application because CIDA is “still reviewing the file.” . . .
Conservative officials called an urgent news conference with reporters at 1:30 a.m. in Newfoundland to distance the party from Trost’s controversial comments. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, referred to Trost as a “backbencher” and said he was mistaken to say a decision had been made . . . “I honestly don’t know where he got his information,” Soudas said.

Oh, really? But we've heard from Trost before and he did seem to know what he was talking about then.
Fool me once....

Campaign photos

Yellowknife


Victoria


Vancouver


Edmonton


Regina


Sudbury

Rise up

Steve V is exactly right -- carting Martin and Chretien along on the Liberal campaign now is pointless and actually counterproductive to the message that Iggy is the new leader.
The Rise Up line was terrific.
What the Liberals need now is a new series of "my vision of Canada" ads, to build momentum.

What have they been smoking?

Tonight I heard the At Issue panel on CBC News suggesting that Jack Layton could come second in the election.
Seriously.
Now, Jack is a nice fellow, and the press will always like him because there's no way he's ever going to be in charge of their careers. But still -- why would Chantal Hebert and Andrew Coyne think that the party supported by fewer than one in five Canadians is somehow going to elect more MPs than the party supported by one in three Canadians, the Liberals?
What have those two been smoking?

Gazebo in the middle of nowhere

Remember the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, the earmark that finally triggered America's gag reflex about pork barrel government spending?
Well, now Canada has the $100,000 gazebo in the middle of nowhere -- just one of the Muskoka projects built with G8 money that Parliament had apparently thought was going to be used to improve border crossings.
The Globe and Mail has posted a blistering editorial thundering that the AG report into the G8 expenditures "must be released, immediately."
But actually, it doesn't matter anymore what the final report says -- now that we know that at least some of the auditors in Fraser's office thought the Harper Conservatives were using the G8 as an excuse for unaccountable, old-boys-club pork barrel spending, any mealymouthed exoneration in the final version will be seen for the whitewash it is.
The Toronto Star editorial doesn't even bother asking for the final version of the report:

The much-ridiculed ersatz Muskoka lake the Conservatives commissioned for the G20 in Toronto wasn’t the only example of spending like “drunken sailors,” to quote Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. Clement’s constituents also got $1.1 million for trees and sidewalk upgrades 100 km away from the Huntsville site. Another $745,000 for civic amenities in towns nearly 70 km away. $274,000 for public toilets 20 km away. And a $100,000 gazebo an hour’s drive away. What any of this had to do with the summits is anyone’s guess.
That’s the problem for the Conservatives. We may not see the final version of Fraser’s report before the vote, but what we already know is bad enough: A party now trying to wrap itself in the mantle of fiscal rectitude threw millions around for dubious political reasons.

Great line of the day

Montreal Simon predicts the way the Harper Conservatives will try to "correct" the Auditor Generals G8/G20 funding report:

You had a choice, sir

Just in time for Tuesday's debate, we find out that the Serious Responsible Protectors of the Taxpayer's Purse -- the Harper Conservatives -- secretly hiked the pay of their political staff and improved their severance pay provisions.
Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

Another Carson cover-up

Alison puts it together -- convicted felon Bruce Carson was the man in the Prime Minister's Office who was handling the Afghanistan file, at the time when the PMO was ordering Canadian diplomats not to send in critical reports about the way that Afghan prisoners were being treated.

Rant of the day

John Cole writes about the US budget deal -- I’m Not Disheartened, I’m Pissed:

. . . we’ve talked about the Ryan plan to gut medicare and medicaid and give the proceeds to the rich while feeding the warpig, and it is important to recognize this is not some one-off. This is what they want. They are also coming for your pension, they are after your social security, they want to destroy your union so you can not organize against them, they will go after your minimum wage next, they want to get rid of the EPA so their donors can pollute your water, air, land, and food and not have to worry about being punished, they want to deregulate Wall Street more so they can screw you again and not face any consequences, they want to tell you what you can do with your body, and they are spending lots of time and money making it harder and harder for you to vote. The Ryan plan isn’t an isolated incident, it was just shots fired on another front. If you are disheartened by the budget deal the other night, which is one small skirmish in a big war, you probably should just give up and go buy yourself a ton of lube.

Its a war we would have to fight in Canada, too, if Harper gets his majority -- "just watch me" would be the new Con motto.

Still more campaign photos

Conception Bay South


Hamilton


Brossard

Iggy is winning the rallys and the campaign stops, but his biggest challenge is yet to come -- getting Canada to view him as a potential Prime Minister. In the Toronto Star, Bob Hepburn writes:

Both Ignatieff and Harper are polarizing figures in federal politics. But after five years as prime minister, Harper is a known commodity, with all his strengths and weaknesses already well established in voters’ minds and with three national campaigns under his belt as Conservative leader.
Ignatieff, however, is still relatively new to national politics, untested in the heat of a federal campaign.
That’s why Ignatieff, who has emerged over the first 12 days of the election as a surprisingly smooth, confident-sounding campaigner compared with Harper’s peek-a-boo-style of campaigning, must score a decisive win in next Tuesday’s leaders’ debate on English-language television.. . .
On Tuesday, Ignatieff will get his best chance to sell himself to Canadians. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.
“Ignatieff has to speak and act like a prime minister” in the debate, says Jim Gray, a Toronto presentation skills coach and author of How Leaders Speak. “His goal should be to get the audience to readily imagine him in that role. It all starts with the rationale: How would Canadians be better off under Ignatieff than Harper. He needs to establish the rationale early on — simply, clearly and confidently — and keep going back to it.”
Gray, who has coached politicians over the years, says Ignatieff is improving as a communicator. “He’s more relaxed on the campaign trail, more engaging, more real. That’s how he must be in the debate.”

StealthCon Crowds

Last election, we had the StealthCon candidates -- people running for the Conservatives to represent constituencies who refused to attend any constituency debates. It was Canada-wide ploy obviously orchestrated by the Conservative party even though none of the candidates ever admitted what Ottawa was telling them to do. (And H/T to RossK for inventing the term.) Their disappearing acts during the campaign may have disappointed their voters, but it certainly turned out to be useful practice for after the election when nobody could find Conservative MPs to say boo about anything.
Now we're seeing the 2011 version -- lets call them the StealthCon Crowds.
These are the mythical crowds of enthusiastic Conservative supporters who are supposedly turning up to cheer for Harper at every stop, those "big crowds" of invisible Canadians who are apparently turning out in droves for Harper's appearances, but none of the media is apparently able to see them.
I don't think the Cons will be seeing then on May 2.