Vancouver King

This latest round of ads is asking for trouble. It is one thing to skewer a Liberal leader before an Ontario audience and come away with a measure of success, it is quite another to mock a Quebecois political institution long associated by politically astute Quebecers, for better or for worse, as the chief defender of the province's generations-old struggle for increased autonomy.

But there is no indication one way or the other which way the undecided vote will go. That's why it is statistically most accurate to apportion those votes along the lines of the decided vote. But then again that would involve being honest. If honesty in polling is your priority consider this Leger sounding as little more than interim entertainment until the real professionals at SES update their February numbers. You remember these people, they are the ones that predicted the final support numbers for all 5 major parties in the January 23rd election to within one-tenth of 1% of the actual outcomes. From a polling-gone-mad perspective, few things compare with Allan Greg - barely 2 weeks before January's election - proclaiming the Tories enjoyed an 18% lead on Martin's Liberals. Agendas and objective polling are incompatible.

The Globe and Mail says that the results are more like this when you add the 20% undecided. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...y/National/home Your link describes the Bloc's Michel Gauthier announcing retirement after this session. Were you implying that the 11% spread changes once the undecided are factored in? Politics 101 tells us that the undecided break down exactly as the decided do.

Neither of them are. You're just realizing this now? Why are you wasting your time? And your personal slurs and attacks constitute wisdom do they? For someone with profound mental issues you seem a tad judgemental.

Last night's Quebec election served up something for everyone. Just as I surmised that Charest's set back would rub off on his Ottawa Tory patron, along came Craig Oliver on CTV assuring all that the big winner of the evening was Stephen Harper. The ADQ wants autonomy for Quebec. In Craig Oliver's universe this is, apparently, right up the Tories alley.

However, they are back in minority nationally. In all these analysis no one acknowledges a potentially significant factor for the Liberals. Faced with the stark reality of a Harper majority, legions of New Democrats could answer Dion's eleventh hour call to unite the left and halt the hated Tories. The stench of Liberal corruption has largely dissipated and many socialists remain distrustful of a majority Harper agenda, leaving them disposed to cast strategic votes. This dynamic is a certainty, only it's dimensions are in doubt. I am guessing this factor adds 2% to any Liberal polling number.

I actually sympathize with principled conservatives - Harper & Co. give every indication of out-spending recent Liberal regimes. Most true-blue rank and file would rationalize that in order to address the issues closest to their hearts (confronting the homos, revisiting abortion, 3 strikes and your out, a reasonable turn at the trough, etc.) the party requires a working, 5-year majority, thus in the short term the electorate must be bribed with it's own money, historically a can't lose strategy. Look at it this way, the NDP type spending is temporary and simply serves the greater good. Harper has been accused of borrowing policies, mannerisms and inspiration from George Bush. Is it coincidence that Washington Republicans spend money as fast as it can be printed or borrowed?

Tories should delay performing cartwheels. A 35-29 margin bears an uncanny resemblance to the results of the last election - 36-30. Additionally, this latest sounding says Consevatives have lost fully one-third of their Quebec support. Goodbye Quebec City seats. All this is thin gruel in the context of a government now finished with an easy first year agenda and on the heels of a recent billion a week spending binge. We shall see if a budget loaded with goodies offsets the voters distaste for an unwanted election.

Dude, this is just sad and/or funny. A 95% confidence interval simply means that there is a 95% probability that the true mean lies in the interval. So, there is 95% prob that at the time of the first poll support for the Liberals was somewhere between 38 and 50% and at the time of the second poll it was somewhere between 32 and 44%. The two CI overlap substantially, so there is no evidence that the means actually differ or that support for the Liberals has changed. On top of that these polls suffer from around 80% non-response and respondents are not necessarily honest about their intentions, making the margin of error even larger. My training in statistics is much stronger than yours and no statistician would claim that there is a change in Liberal support based on this poll. What you wrote above make no sense. Oh, I see. You are probably assuming that the 44% in the previous poll WAS the true mean. That's a bad assumption. 44% +-6% simply means that at the time the previous poll was done, the proportion of people who would have answered the poll would have claimed and that they would vote Liberal was somewhere between 38% and 50% with 95% probability. I wouldn't stake my life on it Geoffrey, but I think you have just been handed your ass.

Mirabel, a name synonymous with out of control federal spending and make-work projects for Quebec. Next time someone says build it and they will come, tell them to remember this symbol of Ottawa waste.

I won't be buying any green proposals from an Environment Minister who said, "We are on track to meeting all our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol but not the targets." - Rona Ambrose, Nov. 12, 2006

Here's a variable that should put a lump in every Tory throat: What if a recession rears it's ugly head before the next election? Perhaps someone should start another thread where we estimate the additional erosion in Tory support.

"BBC NEWS / Science/Nature/Plan to build emission scrubber". "Engineers try to build a system to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3612739.stm Sure they can. Why isn't Alberta funding this research or similar from a provincial treasury awash with cash? It is a travesty that Alberta pollutes the nation's air at will - 1000% higher greenhouse gas emissions than neighboring BC. Federal Liberals should be sketching strategy along the lines of isolating Harper and Alberta's new premier over the provinces refusal to invest in leading edge technologies instead of pumping ever increasing amounts of pollution into the air we breathe. Preston Manning tried to bring Tories to their senses when he took a run at the premiers office only to cut his bid short when it was obvious there wasn't the slightest interest from the province or Ottawa in such investments. The Conservatives could have owned the enviro file and converted it into a majority govt. Instead they will pay the consequences for the politics of greed.

An emphasis on the environment file will help his election chances. When Harper and other Albertans point out that CO2 emissions climbed 30+% while Dion was Environment Minister, he can always retort that Alberta oilsands/oil patch activity accounted for roughly 75% of that increase. If we could only get them to use scrubbers.

Yorkman: Guess you have to be a true Alliance Conservative to condone what's been going on. At least we cannot blame this type of behaviour on Liberals anymore. They certainly didn't have a lock on this type of behaviour which Conservative denouced prior to the election. Talk about hypocrisy. It's breathtaking. ------------------- In a single pique of personal animosity to Shapiro, Harper has squandered untold political capital earned at the expense of unethical Liberals. The commissioner does not exist at the pleasure of the prime minister, Shapiro reports to parliament, not the PMO. On the street the controversy boils down to simple, cynical conclusions on the prime ministers refusal to cooperate with the office of the ethics commissioner and the emptiness of CPC promises of accountability. The Emerson affair, far from being a foot note of spent news, threatens to define Harper's new govt.

Really? Dull? But they all had political themes and that should appeal to most people here. I caught "Crash" two weeks ago on satellite and found it riveting. Would never guess racial tension in present day Los Angeles could be grist for such entertainment. When Brokeback Mountain lost best picture to Crash I could almost hear the cheers of the anti-SSM crowd.

Leafless: "In fact I woud edit what you said to read -It remains to be seen how long "the Quebec lets take over Canada crowd" remains vocal and in control." ____________________________________ If it's any comfort, I understand your obvious frustration and that of many other people who refused the tag of "non distinct" in the face of Quebec's quest for distinct society status. One acquaintance demands after a lifelong federal diet consisting largely of the nuances and intrigues of French Canadian separation that his own children should grow to experience a political climate free of the pall associated with a never ending risk of national disintegration. He simply wants closure. Reality, of course, brooks no such sentimentality. Harper's position is harsh and driven by the numbers. Without the country's major centres on side Harper has no option other than a positive response to Quebec's 10 seat invitation to service it's agenda. Quebecers can be expected to hold him to his promises. Is a country within country too terrible to accept?

That seems pretty obvious. He'll offer all the provinces, not just Quebec, increased autonomy. Or rather, he will provide them with his interpretation of the roles and responsibilities described in the Constitution. There will be no problem selling that to the West. Quebec and Alberta want the same thing. A free hand in their economies and cultures. A caucus that became publicly restive over the Emerson appointment is also a group likely to react negatively to a preoccupation with the Quebec file. Elements of this group once ran campaign ads openly questioning the legacy of prime ministers from the province. To some Western rural MP's, the West getting in must be pretty thin gruel. It remains to be seen if this "let's put Quebec in it's place" crowd remains silent and under control.

Leafless: "You wrote-" Quebec the nation is about to become effectively soverign." Firstly Quebec is not a nation but a province like all others." ____________________ Not by their own estimate or in the responses of successive federal govts since Lesage's "quiet revolution" of the 60's. The moment ROC asked the question, "what does Quebec want?", the nation legitimized Quebec's dialogue and quest for special status. Harper's recent overtures represent the latest, and probably final, attempt to accommodate Quebec aspirations within a loose and diminished national framework. The fact we can ease the province into self-govt without a shot fired will be testimony to our country's civility. Leafless: "I believe if even if Mr. Harper attemps to provide more automony to Quebec will only fuel anti-federal Western sentments with many Canadians looking down at such a move." ____________________ This theme will have larger implications in a Tory majority. How will Harper reconcile the remaining Reformist, sometimes anti-Quebec sentiment of his Western caucus with the party's generous response to Quebec's aspirations for further autonomy?. Maybe a collision is coming. Meanwhile, a short term strategy of deference to Quebec's sense of nationhood enhances the CPC's main priority: a majority government with substantial Quebec presence.

The Liberals fall from grace in Quebec could be attributed to Martin's losing strategy of framing the election there as a vote for or against sovereignty. Not even Duceppe claimed that was the Jan. 23rd stakes. Harper promised Quebecers another way, discarding the Liberals shop-worn rhetoric of the 1980's. It involves greater autonomy through less federal intrusions, continuing a Liberal tradition of one-off agreements, a voice for the province in appropriate international forums, less corruption/more ethics and addressing Quebec's sense of the fiscal imbalance. We can now add Paul Martin's 5 year day care funding guarantee to the above list of Quebec requirements. Any observer would be fully justified in asking do Harper's pledges amount to de facto independence - basically missing only the military factor - a gradual ceding of administration over a people aching to receive autonomy. The answer is yes. Quebec the nation is about to become effectively sovereign. This could prove to be as much in the country's interest as it is to the future of the Conservative party.

You got it ... the only change will be the identity of those doing the puckering.

Leafless: "It's obvious Mr. Charest does not like Mr. Harper's plan concerning a substitute for national care compared to what was offered by the Liberals and to that I say to bad and Quebec gets what the ROC gets." ----------------------------------------- This kind of thinking will keep the CPC in perpetual opposition. In Quebec, the national Liberals have owned federalist sentiments for a generation but have now fallen from grace. Harper cannot afford to allow the present oppourtunity to slip away. Negotiate and compromise with Quebec, the hearts and minds of it's electorate will determine if the CPC gets it's majority.

There's a big difference between a party's support level and a govt's approval level. The latter number takes in members of all other parties willing to give a new govt additional time to prove itself and/ or rope to hang itself. The one number that stands out is 61% approval in Quebec. Harper honoring Charest with the first premier's visit to 24 Sussex and his willingness to honor Liberal Martin's 5 year child care funding for Quebec should further enhance his stature. Harper certainly knows where his majority can develop.

His crossing the floor makes slightly more sense if you assume his need for "public service" will be spent before the next election. Good thing as I doubt Emerson will ever get reelected within the boundaries of Vancouver. Crass opportunists like Svend Robinson and David Emerson are not viewed kindly by downtown voters. If he still wants to inflict more "public service" on British Columbians after the current govt falls, the CPC will have to move his egotistical butt to a safe riding out in the valley, ie. Chilliwack or Abbottsford.