Posc Student

First off I'm not a Liberal and you're quite ignorant towards the fishery and its importance to Newfoundland and Labrador and the rest of Atlantic Canada. I personally don't care either way if there is a fishery inquiry or not but the fact is he bribed a popular candidate who has a good chance of winning and had left the party to run again because he promised him an inquiry into the fishery and when asked about it he wouldn't say if he'd do it or not. The fact is Jack Layton makes lots of promises and has put things in writing to win votes here and there so he could have some power in a Liberal or Conservative government, now that it seems like he could have a chance of being more then the fourth party he's going back on written promises. Why put something in writing in your platform if you don't know if you can afford it or not, why not say in your platform you may not be able to afford the promise. They've critisized the Conservatives for making promises for when the budget is balanced and are now saying themselves they can't make promises because of lack of reveneue.

Why put something in your platform if you are unsure if you'll have the revenue to do it or not, and did he state in the platform "if the revenue is available"? Nobody ever knows what are revenue is going to be. How many other things may he not have the revenue for? I'm also waiting to see if he states publicly about a promise he made to the NDP candidate in St. John's South Mount-Pearl. He bribed him to run by telling him he'd have an inquiry into the fishery but when asked about the inquiry at a ralley in St. John's he wouldn't commit to it, the candidate said the inquiry was the only reason he decided to run.

It's interesting that Jack is already going back on promises he put in his platform. If the NDP ever made it to power I think you'd see more promises broken by them then any other government.

John Baird has been voted by MPs as Parliamentarian of the Year. I've heard many times about how well respected he is and how different he is outside the House of Commons. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/06/02/best-overall-john-baird/

I really like John Baird and I think he is great speaker, I'm watching CPAC and he's doing a good job. I do feel bad when he has to defend many of Harper's scandals and screw up and defend them, I'm sure he has felt like an idiot a few times defending him. I think he'd be a great leader, he's fiscallly conservative and socially liberal. He is also very well respected by members of all the parties.

One of my favorites, I could support him as CPC leader.

I always find weird flaws in that seat predictor, like the NDP going from like 40% in 2008 to literally 0% and being bet my the Greens who are at 1.3%.

During this campaign I have been thinking about a few things that I am not fussy about and I was wondering what people thought and if they had their own issuees with our election campaigns. First off I feel that our election campaigns should be a few weeks longer. While we've seen how quickly public opinions can change I think it would be great if the campaigns were a few weeks longer. The whole process now as is seems a bit rushed and the candidates and leaders don't seem to have the proper time to get their messages out. A quick campaign just seems to benefit the front-runners. Another thing I've heard people take issue with is the leaders debate, there was a lot of complaints about how the French debate was only about Quebec. People have mentioned how the leaders should have more debates, or they should have one for each region, someone told me they thought that higher probfile members of each party should do televised debates in their respective regions instead of their leaders, for example in Atlantic Canada Dominic LeBlanc, Peter MacKay and Jack Harris could debate. I would like to either see several debates where each debate focused on a certain topic or topics, ie. the economy. Or have a debate for each region of the country, having a debate for each region would mean that the Bloc would only be involved in a Quebec debate. This would allow us to really see where the parties stand on topics that relate to each region, people were saying to me that there was not one question relating to the fishery in either debate and I don't think the oil sands were mentioned. A longer campaign would make it much easier for these such debates to happen. Has anyone else noticed things throughout the campaign they'd like to changed or added?

If you watch videos of what Dominic LeBlanc when he was running in 2008 for the leadership he talks about how the party has a problem and that they need to figure out why they have such a problem. He said they need to reach out to francaphones, rural Canadians, westerns, new Canadians and young people. He has also said that he's not a candidates from downtown Toronto and that the party has to be careful so that they don't turn into a book club from downtown Toronto.

Why do people think the NDP will be any different if they were in power?

Dominic LeBlanc would probably be a front-runner.

They're just plain old.

I'm not to familiar with the riding or anything but the NDP didn't even get 15% of the vote in that riding in 2008 and they came in third. The Liberal candidate is Rana Sarkar who was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canada-India Business Council, he also worked in Derek Lee's office and has an impressive resume. This must be a real big star for the NDP if she has a shot at winning.

Why?

I looked through some of their MPs in the Toronto area and they have so many over 60 years old who have been around since the 1990's. They do seem to have a great candidate running Derek Lee's old riding of Scarborough—Rouge River though.

The Liberal caucus itself has become old which I do not think is good for them. The party still has a number of safe ridings, in Toronto for example, but a lot of the members in these riding are old and have been around for a long time. I guess it's not an easy thing to do but they should have tried to get some of these members to retire. After lasts year's Toronto Mayoral election I was thinking that Sarah Thomson, George Smitherman and now PC Rocco Rossi would have been excellent candidates for the Liberals to run. All were younger, should have easily won and would have added some new life to the party. The reason there's not a whole lot of leaders to pick from is because the vast majority are to old to be leader. I'm fine with letting someone keep running if you know they are the reason you're winning the seat and without it the seat would be gone, but here we have the biggest city in the country and they could be running some great candidates who would easily get elected but they don't do it. Montreal is the same thing.

I don't think it will be hard for the party to win back lost support with a good leader, the "Liberal" brand is still strong.

The NDP in Nova Scotia had been doing well for a number of years, if you look at the opinion polling they had been in first place after the 2006 election till the 2009 election. From what I can tell they had a breakthrough in 1998 but it took 11 years till they formed government. We are looking at a surge in a week not a numbers of months.

I'm not hard set biased against the NDP, I don't support their policies but I'm not fussy on any of the parties. The thing is though this has been a quick surge in support for the NDP. While they had been building support in Quebec they were still going from low teens to high teens and back and now they're in the 30's. Their support had collapsed in BC and now they're suddenly back in the game, same goes for Saskatoba. This has been a surge so far and not a steady slow increase in support. It could go down as quick as it went up.

Is there anyone outside the current LPC who could be leader. We hear of some for the CPC but I never do for the Liberals. Is there any popular federal Liberals within the the Quebec Liberal party who could possibly run?

Well riding polls in NL have shown the CPC is in trouble and the NDP support is set to go down in the province though they could gain a seat.

There's still a good chance that the NDP numbers could collapse, they got into the 20's in polls during the last election too. With their numbers trending up there will be more attacks at Jack Layton and people will be putting more focus on the NDP and where they stand on issues. Though he tries to deny it Layton is like all politicians and has said a lot of wishy washy things and has flipped floped on issues, like the Clarity Act. If more focus is put on some of his stances he could lose, or gain. There have been candidates who have switched back and forth from the Bloc and NDP, he wants to open the constitution and he's talking about this stuff with Bill 101, which I think expands it.

So where exactly did it come from and who did it because there are many flaws.

At the moment the CPC are set to not win any seats in NL and the most the NDP could win is 2.

So is there someone in Quebec who could be leader? Martin Cauchon was seen as a likely possibility but he seems set to be defeated by Tom Mulcair. There's rarely any women mentioned as possible leaders.