Project Democracy and Strategic Voting

While I know that the concept of strategic voting is anathema to some party purists, I think it is something that needs to be given very serious consideration this election, given the recent polling results. Project Democracy is an interesting site that allows people to put in their postal code to see who has the best chance of defeating the Tory candidate in their riding. Check it out.

Student Voting at Guelph, and A CBC Appeal

Hot on the heels of news suggesting that more young people are making efforts to get politically involved in this election is the disturbing action by the Harper operatives to get a special ballot overturned at the University of Guelph in which 700 students voted. The people at Leadnow.ca are fighting back with an online petition demanding that the Conservative regime drop its challenge and let the vote stand. You can sign the petition here.

On a related note, Friends of CBC is offering a handy guide and downloadable campaign signs for those concerned with the political threats to the funding of the Corporation. Click here for that information.

Are Young People Becoming More Engaged In The Political Process?

A story in today's Globe suggests they are, in part thanks to a Rick Mercer rant from the end of March. While I have written previously about why I think it is crucial to increase voter turnout over that of the 2008 election to have any chance of defeating the Harper agenda, perhaps Mercer says it best in this video:

Some Useful Tuesday Links

The CBC website has some useful links revolving around the G8 controversy and the upcoming debate.

RCMP Admits It has Acted Improperly

In a breaking story, the RCMP has admitted to acting beyond its mandate at Conservative political rallies. However, it is only a partial admission, as the statement says:

"The RCMP assisted the party organizers in restricting access to persons not registered for the private event," Sgt. Greg Cox said in the statement.

"This was not in accordance with the RCMP's mandate, and RCMP members have been reminded of our responsibilities."

What is left unaddressed is the role they seem to be playing in the removal of registered rally attendees, as occurred on Sunday at a Conservative event in London.

Some Useful Monday Morning Political Links

I am starting off the week with a few links to the Toronto Star. Today's editorial, entitled The Conservative record: Sharing Credit on the economy, offers a balanced assessment of the Harper government's record on the economy, including the truth behind the 'fiscal discipline' myth that is being touted by Mr. Harper.

An exciting addition for the rest of the campaign is Youth Nation 2011, a daily weekday online feature in which political candidates under 30 address issues that matter to young Canadians in the hope of engaging them in the electoral process, the same goal I am trying to achieve with my modest Facebook political engagement page.

In today's edition, three young candidates, one from the Liberal Party, one from the NDP, and one from the Green Party, address some important issues.

A Quick Post About Michael Ignatieff

I will be the first to admit that I have been critical in the past of both Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party. However, I cannot help but be impressed by the way he is thus far conducting his campaign; his wit, grace and openness to all questions in free-flowing forums can't help but stand in positive contrast to the tightly controlled and fear-based one being run by Harper and his operatives. I am also glad that Ignatieff is framing some his campaign around the issue of democracy, something about which the pundits tell us we don't care but which I suspect many feel very passionate about.

Today's Toronto Star has a positive profile of the Liberal leader, one which I am certain will provoke the usual howls of outrage from the right about "liberal media bias." I hope you will check it out.

Harper and Media Control

I have to confess to being deeply disturbed by the implications of sixth estate's post yesterday, suggesting that political interference is resulting in the removal of digital news reports critical of Harper on the campaign trail. If the pattern suggested by the site continues, it becomes even more incumbent upon us to get this message out to as many people as possible, through our blogs, tweets, emails and whatever contacts we may have with local independent media.

Closely related to this concern is another pattern that I have noticed on television recently during political discussion on the CBC, CTV and C-PAC. The common theme emerging from the chatter of pundits is that Harper's tight control and relative inaccessibility to the press is nothing unusual, really only of interest to the reporters themselves whose noses are somewhat 'out of joint' over being put on halters.

I had a little spare time on Friday during which I caught part of a phone-in show on C-PAC, which had journalists Tom Clark and John Ibbitson as guests. The latter offered the opinion that Harper's keeping the press at arm's length is common practice for frontrunners in any election, as that reduces the possibility of unscripted events that could undermine the carefully crafted image Harper is trying to cultivate. Ibbitson said that this is very similar to past campaign tactics employed by Brian Mulroney and Chretien, and that during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama didn't have too many press conferences. In other words, the message the pundits are conveying is, “Nothing to see here. Move along."

From my perspective, the comparison to past practices doesn't hold for one simple reason. Unlike Harper and his operatives, the aforementioned politicos, while hardly saints, did not head governments whose central tenets are absolute control, secrecy, and contempt for the democratic process. The fact that those tenets are the tactical foundation of Harper's campaign for the trust of the Canadian electorate makes it vital to report at every opportunity.

Providing the public with such insight, well-known to those who follow politics, is a duty in a society that supposedly promotes the free and open exchange of information and ideas. To conceal or minimize such facts is a grave disservice to both to democracy in general and to the electorate in particular.

Rick Salutin's Thoughts on Democracy

I am so glad that Rick Salutin has found a home at The Star after having written for many years at The Globe and Mail. As I mentioned in an earlier post, his writing always offers a unique perspective on issues, and he rarely disappoints.

In yesterday's column, he addresses some of the shortcomings of our democracy, yet concludes it is one still worth participating in. I encourage everyone to take a look.

The Star Finally Exposes The Truth About Harper's Press Restrictions

What follows is a copy of today's headline story in The Star. I was unable to find it online after reading it in my home delivery, so I cannot provide the link. Therefore I am taking the liberty of reproducing the entire story.

While Andrew Coyne expresses outrage in a Twitter message that this is headline news, I think it is far overdue that the general public learn of the methods the Harper camp is using to control the P.M.'s image. Although this has been well-known since the start of the campaign by bloggers and users of Twitter, newspapers with wide circulation have not reported it until now, as far as I know. Significantly, there is no mention of the story in our so-called national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

Tensions rise as Conservative leader imposes daily cap on queries from reporters at campaign events
HALIFAX— The cost to travel with Stephen Harper’s campaign? $10,100 a week.

The number of questions Harper takes each day? Five.

Looking like an over-controlling politician? Priceless.

The bright yellow fence that kept reporters penned in far from the Conservative leader Thursday during a campaign event here was an apt metaphor for his first week dealing with the media — controlling and restrictive.

Now Harper is facing questions about his questions. Namely, why he isn’t willing to take more. And he’s refusing to answer. Harper takes only five questions from the media each day — four from the reporters on his tour and one from a local reporter. His political rivals place few restrictions on how many questions they take.

That’s produced tension between the Conservative leader and the journalists following his campaign tour as it criss-crosses the country.

Harper has settled into a routine in his first week — a morning announcement, followed by a media availability. Journalists on the campaign tour get four questions — usually two in English and two in French — and a local reporter is given the chance to lob a question at the Conservative leader, as well. But the situation boiled over Thursday when Harper was asked — using one of the five questions — why he refused to take more than a handful of questions from reporters each day. Harper refused to answer, but when pressed, suggested he would be open to addressing any issues he hadn’t already discussed.
But he never explained his rationale for not fielding more questions.

“In terms of questions, is there any specific issue that I haven’t addressed that you want me to address?” Harper asked.

“If there’s another subject, I’ll answer,” the Conservative leader told journalists behind the fence, more than 10 metres away.

Later, Harper supporter David Cameron, who was at the event, came up to the journalists to express his frustration with their questions.

“You guys reporting the news or making it?” he asked.

Senator Michael MacDonald, a Harper appointee, tweeted: “Lovely day on Halifax waterfront for PM’s trade status. CBC reporters (Terry) Milewski and (Jennifer) Ditchburn were like attack dogs afterward — pathetic!”

In fact, Ditchburn works for The Canadian Press.

MacDonald later wrote that he withdrew the comment.

The New Democrats soon issued a news release noting that MacDonald — who was vice-president of the Conservative Party of Canada before Harper put him in the Senate in 2009 — earned $132,300 last year and rang up expenses totalling $257,142.

Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said later the Conservative leader has several media interviews with radio and television stations across the country this week.

Are All Attack Ads The Same?

In today's Star, Bob Hepburn has an interesting article entitled Harper the king of nasty attack ads, an article well-worth reading. It got me thinking about fallacies of reason and the importance of critical thinking, subjects about which I have previously written.

So I decided to make a brief post here on one of the most common fallacies, the ad hominem, followed by video of two attack ads, one from the Liberal Party and one from The Conservatives. I will then leave you to consider whether one or both of the ads fall under the ad hominem label.

About.com offers some interesting insight on the purpose served by the fallacy known as the ad hominem, which means the attack on the person rather than on his/her arguments:

The abusive ad hominem is not just a case of directing abusive language toward another person. . . . The fallacy is committed when one engages in a personal attack as a means of ignoring, discrediting, or blunting the force of another's argument.

An example of an ad hominem would be the following statement:

I can't believe a word that Al Gore says about climate change because he couldn't even keep his marriage together.

You will notice the fact that Gore's marital status has nothing to do with the facts that he has been promoting for many years on global warming, yet the purpose here is for you to dismiss those facts by cultivating a disdain for those who experience marital failure.

Enjoy the videos:

The Latest Nanos Poll

Liberals narrow gap to 6 points in campaign’s ‘first possible shift’

Evan Solomon's Explosive Interview Demonstrating Harper Lies

I have made no secret of my absolute disdain for the Harper government and the threat I sincerely believe that it poses to both democracy and our Canadian way of life. While Conservative true believers quite blithely dismiss such concerns as partisan hyperbole, sometimes something comes along that objectively suggests the foundation of lies upon which the Conservative Party is building its campaign.

That something occurred on today's (Tuesday's) installment of Power and Politics with Evan Solomon. Solomon first interviewed Laurie Hawn, Parliamentary Secretary to Defense Minister Peter McKay, who insisted that the Conservatives, despite the Parliamentary Budget Officer's assertions to the contrary, will be able to buy 65 F-35 jets for $9 billion, including all of the associated infrastructure. He dismissed the objections raised by NDP candidate Jack Harris and Liberal candidate Dominic LeBlanc that this figure cannot withstand scrutiny, and that the costs will be much higher, ($120-$130 billion for each jet), telling them that they didn't understand the math behind the figure.

After the interview, Solomon conducted one with Mike Sullivan, the Director of U.S. Government Accountability Office equivalent to both our Auditor General and our Parliamentary Budget Officer. It was during this interview that the deceptions being perpetrated by the Harper regime should have become obvious to even the most ardent Tory supporter who still claims to think independently. Click here to watch the interview.

Thomas Walkom on Secret Agendas

Well, back to more serious matters. Thomas Walkom has an interesting column in today's Star suggesting that Harper's talk about conspiratorial coalitions and secret agendas could really prompt people to start thinking about things the Conservative leader has said in the past that suggest a dark future for Canada as we know it.

Colbert's Take on the Collapse of the Harper Government

Today, for a change, something a little different and a little lighter: a clip from The Colbert Report on the fall of the Harper Government. Kind of reminds all of us to come up for air periodically.

Help Get Out The Vote – Election 2011

Much has been written about the badly damaged state of our Canadian democracy; not only has the Harper Government, for the past five years, shown its contempt for Parliament, but also for the people of Canada, who have the right to expect responsible, representative and transparent government from all of our elected representatives.

The level of citizen engagement in our democratic society has dropped to dangerously low levels; the federal election of October 2008 saw a turnout of 58.8% of eligible voters, the lowest participation rate since Confederation, resulting in the second Harper minority government. The distribution of those votes means that we are allowing a minority of people to determine the direction our country takes, the policies that are enacted, the treaties that are signed, etc. Given that a good portion of those who vote are 'true believers' of one political stripe or another means that we are essentially allowing special interests to determine our collective fates.

Does this sound fair? Does this sound reasonable?

I believe there is a way to begin to remind those who govern that they are accountable to us, not to those monied interests who can employ expensive lobbyists agitating for more and more targeted tax breaks and other policies that may work counter to our collective interests. That way is to have a much larger proportion of average citizens exercising their franchise.

That is the reason I have created a Facebook page entitled Help Get Out The Vote – Election 2011. And while I may have a political philosophy that runs counter to someone else's, I invite people of all political stripes to participate in order to help increase political awareness and to discuss ways to significantly increase voter turnout in the upcoming federal election.

It is my hope that people who like this page will extend invitations to their family and friends to visit and contribute to it; the more ideas, discussion and plans that people can offer, the better will be our results.

My only role as moderator, as I see it, is to try to keep discussion on a respectful level; diverse views are welcome. I will only delete comments that are slanderous, rude, racist or otherwise inappropriate.

So let's use the power of social media to achieve something important. Let's work toward building a better, more democratic Canada!

What Do Harper's Tactics Reveal About the Man?

If we really stop to think about them, the overwhelmingly negative nature of Prime Minister Harper's government and his campaign tactics reveal something that should deeply concern everyone. It occurs to me that all of the contempt his government has shown for Parliamentary democracy, all of the corrosive hatred and fear-mongering infesting his attack ads and his poisonous public pronouncements that so far substitute for a platform, are predicated on a core philosophy: that the people of Canada are stupid and easily manipulated, that power is to be won at any cost, and that collateral damage, i.e., the moral and psychological health of the nation, is of no consequence.

Is this really the man we want to be leading our nation?

A New Facebook Page to Encourage Greater Voter Participation

I have established a Facebook page entitled Getting Out the Vote - Election 2011. My hope is to establish a forum for political discussion, the end goal being to increase the voter turnout for the upcoming federal election.

During the 2008 election, slightly over 58% of eligible voters cast ballots, the lowest in the history of Confederation. Given the distribution of those votes, we as Canadians are allowing the fate of our country to be determined by a minority of people.

Does this seem fair? Does this seem reasonable?

Although my Facebook effort may ultimately accomplish little, I hope as many of you as possible will participate in the page with your ideas, observations, suggestions and links to politically useful sites, including your own blogs.

I look forward to hearing for as many of you as possible. Click here to get things started.