On Random Lists Of Names

I was naively hoping decorum would prevent our national media from beginning the silly speculation about who will replace Jack Layton as leader of the New Democrats until the man was buried but it hasn't happened. So lets look at the first absurd list of random names hastily thrown together.

At the risk of being labelled ageist, Gary Doer, Nycole Turmel, Joe Comartin, Bill Blaikie, Lorne Nystrom and Greg Sellinger are too old to take over the role at 60+ years of age. Look at it this way. It's 4 years until the next election and should the New Democrats prevail you'd want the party's leader to be able to serve at least 2 four year terms. This would put the youngest of the lot at 72 by that time and the oldest at 80. And that is the best case scenario.

Libby Davies, Megan Leslie, Robert Chisholm and Olivia Chow are not even close to being fluent in French. Considering the New Democrats are working from a base that is mostly from a French speaking province this is an impossible obstacle to overcome.

Brian Topp. Sorry, Brian who. If you've never even run for elected office you have no business gunning for the top job on your first attempt.

So this leaves us with Paul Dewar and Thomas Mulcair. In this random list of names these are the only 2 that are at least qualified enough to be considered.

Lots more to come on this subject.

Just Say No

The Reality Of Privatization

With the usual suspects once again caterwauling for the privatization of mail delivery in Canada I thought I'd put together a simple flowchart that illustrates the reality--not textbook economic theory--of what happens when you privatize government services.

The Advertisement Harper Doesn't Want You To See

Full story here.
Michaela Keyserlingk's website.

Make Our Concern Trolling Media Cry

Our concern trolling media is calling for the New Democrats to replace Nycole Turmel as interim leader of the party. Make them cry by sending the clear message that dippers, not our national media will decide who leads the party.

Turmel's Turmoil Is Bad News For The Liberals

It began with the hysteria over the Sherbrooke Declaration during the recent federal election, moved on to outrage over ambiguous comments regarding their views of Quebec separatism from a couple of new MPs and now revelations of past party memberships has Canada's political class apoplectic with anger. The it of course is the political narrative being crafted that the New Democrats are the New Separatists. It's a silly narrative to be sure, but not unexpected. Creating silly narratives (see: Dion is not a leader, Harper is scary, Ignatieff is not here for you, etc.) is what the political class does best and if they weren't creating this one they'd be creating another. As far as silly narratives go though, I'll take this one any day of the week.

Why? Because seldom does a silly narrative work in your favour and this one does for the New Democrats. It has the effect of losing an entire province of voters for their opponents. And lose the province is certainly what this Quebec/separatist bashing will do for the Conservatives and Liberals.

For the Conservatives this won't be a problem. Harper has demonstrated that Conservatives don't need Quebec to win a majority. They've built a powerbase in the western provinces that offsets the need to win any seats in Quebec. But the same is not true for the Liberals. They need Quebec votes if they hope to form government or even regain official opposition status. By taking part in the crafting of this silly narrative however, they're shutting themselves out of the province. And without Quebec, they have no hope of unseating Harper which means the Canadian voters in the rest of the country that didn't vote for his party will turn to the only party that can.