CAPRU had a day skip, but is back yet again with your fun supply of Canadian punditry.

Rick Bell:

When you see Tories doling out more than a half-million bucks for a fancy quad ski lift at an Edmonton bunny hill and the cash is a must, because rich kids from the capital city’s southwest shouldn’t have to wait in line to tumble down what passes for a slope, you know what appears as grey matter under the legislature dome is unplugged from the best of planet Earth’s brainwaves.

Yes, the $600,000 is cash from VLT gamblers but it’s still coin the province gets and can spend as it sees fit.

And it is a small amount but it is a sign of something bigger. The provincial poobahs will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the rude reality of the current financial calamity.

You see, most of today’s elected Tories are Conservatives of convenience. They’re Tories because that’s how you get elected. It’s just a brand.

Rebecca Walberg: Harper was too much economics and not enough culture war. In these times of economic turmoil and strife, we clearly need more culture war and social division. Harper lost not due to his complete lack of a plan for the clear economic troubles Ontario and Quebec are having or his lack of charisma. No, the only thing that kept Harper and crew from getting that majority was not taking a clear stance on the issues that matter during a recession; abortion and gay marriage.

The Toronto Star:

Dion has accurately diagnosed a major cause of the malaise: a moribund fundraising apparatus dramatically outpaced by the Conservative and NDP machines. Lacking a deep campaign war chest, the Liberals were unable to fend off a negative advertising onslaught that framed him as a geeky, goofy, professorial politician.

“I want to protect the next leader against that,” Dion vowed.

By announcing his departure, Dion signalled the end of a noble experiment in Canadian politics where a principled politician could concentrate on ideas and policies, rather than imagery and advertising. But his formidable intellectual credentials, his political courage during the national unity debates, and his impressive commitment to saving the environment and fighting poverty failed to impress voters.

Paula Arab:

I’ll say it even though it’s unpopular: homeless people have rights, too. We forget that, because those already down on their knees aren’t likely to get up and defend themselves, or remind us they’re part of the human race.

And anyone who says it for them risks a public stoning, being dismissed as a bleeding-heart communist, or told to take in the homeless themselves.

Look at the backlash after B.C. Supreme Court Justice Carol Ross upheld the rights of homeless to protect themselves from the elements, when forced to sleep outdoors.

…

Sleeping in a public park is a last resort, when all other options fail. And everyone facing that kind of dire situation has every right to try and cover themselves from the wind, rain and cold.

If they don’t, they risk freezing or catching a life-threatening illness like pneumonia.

Bob Hepburn is taking bets on who the next Liberal leader will be. His top bet? Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna.

Naheed Nenshi:

Almost lost in the discussion has been one very smart strategy: Obama focused hard on the almost-forgotten state of Iowa, a state that had voted Democratic in three elections, but which John Kerry lost.

Not only did Obama win a surprisingly large victory in the Iowa caucuses, he moved the state into the Democrat camp. With Iowa in his pocket, he can afford to lose the traditional battlegrounds of Ohio and Florida, as long as he picks up votes in places like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

So, what’s the Liberals’ Iowa?

If we assume that they can defend their pockets of strength in Toronto, Montreal, and Atlantic Canada, where else do they concentrate their efforts, long before the next election, to build their starting position? Manitoba? Urban mothers? Established suburbs in mid-sized cities?

What is clear is that they need to rebuild a coalition. It’s impossible to win an election when you start by writing off one-third of all the seats.

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Your daily supply of Canadian punditry

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Gable:

James Travers points out how vote splitting is naturally incorporated into party strategy and how it can cause incredibly random and undesired results (like a Harper majority).

Every party is counting on the splits to help them somewhere, somehow. Conservatives, after squandering their Quebec edge, have the most to gain where it still matters most, Ontario and B.C. With a solid base and sophisticated database they are best positioned to take maximum advantage of minimal shifts, notably in Ontario’s 905 and 519 area code ridings.

Where Conservatives are poised to be opportunists, Liberals are vulnerable. Stéphane Dion’s much improved performance this week, including a confident speech to the joint Empire and Canadian clubs in Toronto yesterday, helps re-establish Liberals as the Conservative alternative and protect against NDP and Green vote poaching. It doesn’t fix a strategy that isn’t effectively focusing on ridings where the splits will be decisive.

That tilts the election toward Conservatives and is a critical error in a campaign where so few ballots can mean so much. If an 11th hour blitz scatters the vote to his party’s political left, if Harper can bring himself to connect emotionally with deeply worried Canadians, Conservatives will regain some grip on a victory now slipping away.

Hicks on Six does a good job at explaining the credit crisis in a clear manner.

What’s the difference between a stockbroker and a pigeon?

A pigeon can still leave a deposit on a Porsche.

Tom Brodbeck seems to fail to realize that giving a party $1.25 per vote is not a “tax” but rather a way of supporting the party you vote for, regardless if they get elected or not. By his standards, Manitobans are paying a undemocratic “MP tax” for parliamentary members they didn’t directly elect (They pay a lot more in MP salaries than by this new $1.25/vote plan). Either his math is pretty messed up or Manitoba is in a worse state than I think when he says that $1.25 per vote will somehow prevent families from putting food on their table. [Ed note: $1.25 means a maximum of $1.25 per person who can vote in the province every election (ie. four or five years).]

Haroon Siddiqui: Democracy and transparency is finally catching up to Harper as Canadians see what he is really like.

Harper is in trouble in hard-hit Ontario, which is losing manufacturing jobs and $20 billion a year in money transfers from Ottawa. But he doesn’t seem to care. Worse, his finance minister, Jim Flaherty – ironically, an Ontarian – has been badmouthing the province as a bad place to invest.

Besides having a tin ear, Harper has cornered himself politically. Having said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, Harper cannot now say they are not. He is right to argue that our economy is sounder than America’s. But it is not recession-proof, as he implies.

Andrew Weaver and 123 climate scientists agree: “Vote for the environment”

We are at a critical juncture in Canadian history. The 14th United Nations Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention will be held in December in Poland and COP15 will follow next December in Copenhagen. It is at this latter meeting that a post-Kyoto global warming treaty will be proposed. It is critical that Canada play a constructive role in negotiations leading up to this event.

In the last two years, Canada has obstructed international efforts to develop policies to deal with global warming. At the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda, Canada scuttled attempts aimed at getting consensus on a strongly worded commitment to greenhouse gas reduction.

Neil Waugh: The Alberta Treasury Branch was caught recently with $1.1 billion of junk investments, and the executives were forced to write down $253 million, and yet…

The day began when fictitious ATB employee Kirsten from Killarney was the justification given for ATB Financial CEO Dave Mowatt pocketing $1.6 million last year - a stunning $1.2 million in perks called “variation pay and post-employment benefits” - on top of his already sweet $406,000 base salary.

You’ve gotta love those golden parachutes.

Bob Hepburn: We have too many parties that I don’t support, they clearly are going to take votes away from the party I do support, so I say they should just go away and everyone should just vote for my party. [Ed Note: apparently he hasn't learned about voteforenvironment.ca , someone should drop him a note]

Paula Simons has a great article about Harper’s complete lack of respect for our charter and country.

For a fellow who likes to portray himself as a law-and-order candidate, Stephen Harper shows a remarkable disdain for the law that orders our Confederation — that pesky Constitution.

Last month, Harper attacked Alberta’s jurisdiction to control its natural resources, with his plan to ban raw bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to countries that don’t conform to Canada’s greenhouse gas emission standards. This week, when the Conservative leader unveiled his party’s platform, he went even further, and suggested his government would also ban exports to countries with lower pollution standards in general.

…

Tuesday, Harper also pledged reforms to create an elected Senate. If Parliament didn’t pass such reforms, Harper vowed, he would abolish the Senate.

That’s quite the threat. … But whatever our impatience with the current Senate, a bicameral Parliament is a fundamental part of Canada’s history and democratic structure.

The Senate isn’t just there to be a retirement home for senior politicians. Nor is it only there to provide “sober second thought.” The Senate is also there to protect regional interests, to provide smaller provinces with a way to make sure the big provinces of Central Canada can’t control the national agenda. What Alberta needs to protect its interests isn’t fewer senators — it’s more of them.

More to the point, no PM can unilaterally ice the upper house.

Jeffrey Simpson believes we are heading into a phase change in Canadian democracy where coalitions and minorities will become the politics of the day and authoritarian majorities are history.

Don Martin: Harper desperately drags his own mother into the fray to try to stop the Conservative support from hemorrhaging any further.

The Prime Minister admits it’s unusual for him to drag a family member into the ugly political fray, but bizarre times call for desperate measures as the party tumbles dangerously into the low 30s in percentage of voter support.

“We’re getting this criticism that somehow I don’t understand the stock market or understand what people are feeling about the stock market,” he told reporters. “I use my mother as an obvious example because she is the person closest to me most worried about the stock market these days. Believe me, I get quicker updates from her on the stock market than from the Department of Finance.”

He might also want her advice on closing a campaign that has turtled.

Naheed Nenshi: If you want to know why a majority of Canadians don’t vote Conservative, just look at Stephen Harper.

I suggest, while people might trust Harper as a leader, they don’t trust him as a person. Or maybe they just don’t like him. The problem here, I submit, is one of his own making — he has been incredibly calculating, and Canadians have seen that.

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Your daily six-pack or so of pundit brewskies.

Paula Simons applauds Ed Stelmach’s (Alberta’s premier) recent move to depoliticize the task of hiring returning officers for Alberta elections by having the Chief Electoral Officer hire them based on merit and not simply having the current ruling party choose them. It’s a small step, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Jeffrey Simpson discusses Harper’s international influences from Australian and American conservatism and how these strategies could end up hurting Canada in the long run — From John Howard’s electoral strategy of tax cuts for targeted demographics to Karl Rove’s politics of lying voraciously about your opponent and their policies at every possible opportunity. Both strategies are generally recognized as being damaging the economy and democracy in general.

Don Martin thinks that bringing out the other big Liberal names, like Bob Rae, will hurt Dion in the long run by emphasizing his weaknesses.

Lawrence Martin believes the exact opposite — the biggest thing the Liberals have to sell during this election is their large number of highly-qualified candidates instead of simply one leader. After all, this is a parliamentary democracy.

Greg Weston points out the tough spot Dippers (For Americans, Dippers are NDP supporters) are in. They may have to play the spoiler this election. The NDP party could end up giving Harper his much desired majority or they could keep Harper in minority territory.

Doug Saunders reveals little known plan for a Canada-EU trade agreement rivalling NAFTA, a plan Harper wasn’t going to reveal until after the election.

The proposed pact would far exceed the scope of older agreements such as NAFTA by encompassing not only unrestricted trade in goods, services and investment and the removal of tariffs, but also the free movement of skilled people and an open market in government services and procurement – which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services.

Dan Gardiner calls famous economist Gregory Mankiw at Harvard and asks him what the thinks of the Liberal’s Green Shift. Mankiw replies that policies similar to the Green Shift are good economic policy, even if you don’t believe in global warming. They increase the available money to citizens by decreasing income taxes and encourage companies to consider externalities when they invest.

The StarPhoenix has a troubling story about how the government treats some of our newest citizens.

Foreign Affairs officials had made a commitment to Mr. Abdelrazik that they would provide him with a temporary passport should he find an airline willing to transport him to Canada despite his presence on the U.S. no-fly list.

Less than 24 hours before Mr. Abdelrazik’s scheduled flight home this week from Khartoum on Etihad Airway via Abu Dhabi to Toronto, the government’s lawyer informed him that the passport wouldn’t be provided.

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Your daily supply of Canadian punditry

Ricky Leong reminds us that regardless of who wins this election and what policies are put into place, the energy economy will not suddenly change overnight. He rightly points out that the energy economy in Alberta is so large and unwieldly that any major policy will have two of the following properties to some degree — slow, useless, or expensive.

The National Post, a great friend to Bay Street (Canada’s version of Wall Street) has a great series of posts pandering to those who aren’t being affected by the current recession. (Jonathan Chevreau, Terence Cocoran, and Peter Foster)

Jonathan Chevreau points out that you should buy, buy, buy stocks while they are cheap. Don’t worry about the loss of a job, lack of food or having no roof over your head. Capitalism totally works!

Terence Cocoran stamps his feet and whines that people should stop saying we are going through a “d-word” (depression)! The fundamentals of the economy are great.

Peter Foster loves the market, and believes that oil companies poop milk, gold and lollipops. They would never do anything illegal, immoral, or wrong to increase their profit margins. They especially would never consider using a humanitarian disaster to gouge consumers at the pumps. So to all of you moms worried about affording the gas to take Billy to school, suck it up! It’s only the market doing its job.

(As a note to the American readers, Ed Stelmach is the Conservative premier of Alberta)

Shorter Neil Waugh: “I wish Ed Stelmach would stop talking so openly about a Conservative majority. He’s going to scare the Ontarians and Quebecers into actually thinking about who they are voting for when consider voting for Harper.”

Martin Regg Cohn points out that compared to the US and Britain, we have one of the best leadership debate systems out there. He shows that the US system actively blocking any third party and the British don’t even bother to do that (They just don’t have debates). Compared to those systems, ours seems downright reasonable and democratic. It’s a good thing the Canadian people stood up to Layton and Harper over their childishness over May.

Diane Francis is glad the US is not bailing out the big money gamblers on Wall Street anymore at the expense of taxpayers.

As James Grant, of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, said last year: “Capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich.” I would add that capitalism without referees or penalty boxes ruins the sport and that is what has happened to investment banking.

Don Martin points out that Dion still has a microcscopic chance of coming back and winning this election.

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Image via Wikipedia

A while back, I blogged about how the big fat red cats over in Ontario had expertly decided spend their constituents money on a nice big raise for themselves. Now, in Alberta, the home of the big fat blue cats, Ed Stelmach’s government is doing the same thing. This is, I guess, one of the perks of living in a province where only 41% of the population actually cares enough to vote, and in general seems to vote status quo. From the article:

It comes less than two months after all politicians received their mandated annual pay raise, which is indexed against the cost of living.

The raise came through an Order in Council from Stelmach, which is an order from the government not debated and voted on in the legislature.

…

Stelmach last night defended the big salary boost, insisting it was a way of recruiting better quality candidates to the legislature.

“If we are going to attract younger people for government, we’ve got to pay them appropriately,” Stelmach said.

Paul Stanway, Stelmach’s spokesman, added the move was necessary.

…With the increase, Stelmach will make about $194,000 per year. Cabinet ministers and the speaker will make about $184,000 per year.

To put this somewhat into perspective, if you look at the 2001 census (the latest one), you’ll see that the average earnings for a person 15 years and older from Alberta is $32,603. If you look at Statscan, you’ll also see that in 2005 the median income of an albertan household is $71,000 (Note: this includes couples, family and more than 1 person households.) With this, the incredible scam the Alberta PC government has going becomes apparent. On top of their government expense accounts and all the other perks, Stelmach and his buddies have just increased their salaries to 2.5 times the median salary, and around 5 times the average income. In their infinite wisdom, they have taken money from the hard-working taxpayers and placed themselves into the top 5% of income earners in Alberta, not including their other sources of income.

To put it in even simpler terms if this doesn’t already make you mad: Stelmach just wrote himself a yearly cheque of $54,000 of your money (If you are Albertan), because he wants his job to be more “desirable.”

Now, note that the opposition was forced into a raise recently by the government, a raise that they voted against. The argument the PC cronies will use is that the opposition is making so much money now, even though the opposition didn’t want the money, and didn’t vote for the money. Yet, with no real representation in the legislature, their opposition is basically useless.  Obviously, real change is needed to stem the tide of government corruption and waste in Alberta. Change not only to the composition of parliament, but also how the Liberal, NDP and Green parties handle themselves. Obviously whatever they have been doing doesn’t work. However, until someone steps forward to take charge and stirs up the passions of Albertans and make them realize what they are losing, that change will never come.

So, as it has been for 30+ years in Alberta, the big blue cats will simply get richer and richer at the expense of ordinary hard-working Albertans.

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