Campaign blog

It's hard to find out all that candidates are doing on line without googling each one individually.  Facebook is popular with candidates from all parties, but you have to search them within Facebook individually.

We've already highlighted progressive Conservative candidate Steve Kent's website.

Now let's take a look at the Liberal in St. John's centre. 

Lori Ann Campbell-Martino, left,  is a social and environmental activist and a former Green Party organizer. Her website is simple, clean and easy to navigate.  There are pictures and a link to a video of a conversation she had with Ron Fitzpatrick of Turnings. She's got a Facebook group and a blog of her own.

The blog is the epitome of social media applied to politics, the ultimate social activity.  It's personal  - obviously written by the candidate - and hence very engaging.

While watching my children play I decided to ask other parents and caregivers for their opinions on the $1000 baby bonus proposed by Danny Williams. Of course everyone laughs. "It would take more help than that for me to have another one!" was one woman's response. One older gentleman pushing his grandson on a baby swing explained that his daughter cannot afford to pay for daycare for her son she got now, even with a subsidy from government, because of her high student loan payments and that's why he is helping care for the child.

The whole conversation called to mind another story I heard at one door in the district about an elderly lady who receives a pension cheque of $14.00, because 'the only work she ever done was raise nine children'. It seems that historically and today there has been an overall lack of investment in services for families precisely because it is difficult to economically quantify the 'benefits' of providing support of 'future' generations-unlike oil, gas and hydroelectricity projects. But good governance should require the ability to think and act beyond the short term 'today'!

The key word here is engaging.  Campbell-Martino engages people in the district in conversation about what matters to them and that is clearly reflected in her online presence. Other candidates undoubtedly do that too, but here the evidence is seen. Using social media also allows Campbell-Martino to engage others outside the district and make them aware of the views and lives of individuals she hopes to represent in the House of Assembly.

The tools are there.  They aren't hard to use and as Lori Ann demonstrates, it is possible to do it simply, inexpensively and effectively.

it doesn't matter whether she wins or loses;  Lori Ann has already used the Internet more effectively than any other member of any political party currently represented in the House of Assembly. How many of the former members - retired or incumbents seeking re-election  - used the Internet for communicating with constituents, preferring instead to follow the Speaker's lead and lower legitimate costs in favour of maximizing the money available for donations?

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From the grassroots

New technology is changing the face of public life and Newfoundland and Labrador is no exception.

Well, at least Labrador anyway.

Someone with the onscreen ID "labmetis" has produced several videos, two of which involve the Progressive Conservative land claim promise to the Metis people of Labrador. One was posted a few months ago but the newest came only within the past few days.



It's pretty aggressive stuff, in its own way. So much for recent comments by a Memorial University professor that lack of broadband access in some parts of our province would limit the impact of things like youtube during election campaigns.

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You be the judge

Scowl on his face and an attitude [right, Photo: cbc.ca/nl]






Scowl on his face and an attitude [left, Photo: The Telegram]

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There's no "I" in t-e-a-m either.

It's supposed to be Torngat Mountains, isn't it?

Could this be another problem with a google search?

Even google will tell you that the place of spirits and the name of the district aren't the same.

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Campaign Notes: end of week 1

1. Kiss Labrador good-bye, Danny. Anger over the energy plan seems to have galvanized attitudes in Labrador. The Labrador party announced on Friday that it won't be fielding candidates in the two ridings currently held by the DW Team. This will almost certainly guarantee the New Democrats will recapture Labrador West.

Meanwhile in the central district currently held by transportation minister John Hickey, it may become a contest to see if Hickey can stand three weeks of sleepless nights. looks like Chris Montague will be taking Hickey's seat; it will be interesting to watch Montague waving his "broken promise" letter from the Premier for the couple of years before DW retires.

Well, either that or Williams will spend the rest of the campaign in Labrador going door to door by dogsled, skidoo, quad and anything else he can use to get every vote possible.

Will there be any other seats where parties will not field a candidate to defeat an incumbent? Stay tuned.

2. The Fuehrer furor. Campaign 101: read the introductory speech of everybody introducing the party leader and anyone else on the speaking program. Stupid comment handled defensively thereby trebling the impact of the first goof.

3. The People's Campaign? From David Cochrane's campaign notes at cbc.ca/nl:

As I write this I'm on a Provincial Airlines Cessna Citation flying to Happy Valley Goose Bay.

That would be the executive jet - left - used by DW on the first day of the campaign to get to Deer Lake. After you allow for the Premier and a couple of staffers, the rest of the plane is media. The thing only holds eight people.

Wonder how much it costs? Provincial doesn't disclose its lease rates. In the old days, campaigns would lease larger aircraft and pull everyone around in the same airborne cattle car. The per passenger charge worked out pretty well the same for everyone.

Given that the media - like say the Mother Corp - would be or should be paying their own way on the eight seater, the cost for the Premier and his staffers would be pretty light. The media types would actually be the largest number of passengers. Having news media subsidize the campaign travel budget. Interesting concept.

Bond Papers welcomes e-mails clarifying the travel/cost arrangements.

4. Another committee named after a dead racehorse. Both the Liberals and Conservatives like things called secretariats. The Libs created a rural one before they were punted from office in 2003 and the Tories in office continued that along with a bunch of other Liberal policies.

Now the Liberals are talking about a population growth secretariat. Both parties are missing the point. The issue is one of economic development. It has nothing to do with either insufficient motivation ("Would you do him for a grand?") or the lack of recent MUN graduates traveling around the province holding consultations on copulation rites and rituals and producing reports in the time it takes elephant fetuses to gestate.

So far the rural secretariat hasn't produced any more wins than the race horse has lately. It's dead and so is the idea that make-work projects for bureaucrats solve anything.

5. Another reason Danny should regret voting for Harper: Child care. It's not like some us didn't warn about the choice in child care scam either. Bonus would have been getting the feds to pay for it, versus shelling out of your own pocket.

6. The Dan Vinci Code. Do you see the "w" formed by the three figures at the centre of this tableau?

And while we're at it, is the similarity to this famous painting just a coincidence?

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When free speech is compromised

The Telegram editorial today raises questions about the provincial Progressive Conservative plan to put a bounty on booties of $1000 for each new child born or adopted in the province.

The questions raised in the editorial - based on sound research - point to criticisms of the approach from other quarters, none of which are partisan. Other news media have covered the issue in somewhat the same way as the Telegram does.

The criticisms are based on experience in other jurisdictions where these pronatal policies have not worked and have proven to be very costly.

So why, pray tell, would the Telegram feel the need to preface its editorial with these words:

This is not meant to be a criticism of any party's election platform...?

An editorial is the place where a newspaper should take a critical position - if need be - and not have to apologise for it at all. An editorial should criticize the platform of any party if there is a good reason to do so. Being ineffective is as good a basis for criticism as anything else, particularly when the criticism is constructive.

Feedback, including critical comment, should be expected in return. The Telegram took issue yesterday with a Liberal who eventually wound up as a candidate in the current election voting in an open nomination process of another party, the Progressive Conservatives.

As far as Bond Papers was concerned, the editorial was off base on its facts. Frankly even after the editorial page editor commented on it, it's still hard to see what the issue actually is. The alternate point of view - expressed eloquently by the Telly's sister the Western Star - was presented in that post to demonstrate the difference of opinion on the issue.

But...

No one questioned the right of the Telly's editorialists to make a critical comment in the first place.

Free speech demands no less.

Free speech needs no qualification.

On the front page of the Telegram today there is also an article calling attention to comments made by a Liberal supporter, who referred to the Premier as a "Fuehrer". The Telly story isn't available electronically but cbc.ca/nl picked up the same point:

Party supporter Jim Combden, speaking at a rally in the town of New-Wes-Valley, made a crack about how Progressive Conservative cabinet minister John Hickey had threatened to sue critics of his spending.

"[Hickey] said, 'I will sue you if you speak on the open line programs, if you speak on legitimate airwaves, if you criticize my government, if you criticize my fuehrer, I will sue you,'" Combden told the rally, in the Bonavista North district.

Combden's remarks were over the top and the use of any analogy to Nazi Germany is the certain death of any point. Rather than lamely try to pass the comment off as a joke, Combden ought to apologise unequivocally and immediately withdraw the remark. It was wrong.

However, let's recall that the incident to which Combden referred prompted concerns at the time about many things including libel chill; that is, that the threat of law suits would silence critics. The fear is reasonable given the abuse of defamation laws by the rich and powerful in our own society and in the developing world to silence anyone with whom they disagree.

The Premier is notoriously thin skinned. In February, at the time the Hickey suit was first raised, Danny Williams named several individuals - including your humble e-scribbler - and threatened to sue them for motives he attributed to the individuals falsely, at least speaking in reference to Bond Papers.

Let's also recall at the time that the Premier stated his belief that it would be appropriate to eliminate the right of free speech in the provincial legislature. Centuries of precedent and a hard won liberty be damned: let's take the parliamentary immunity away.

In the aftermath of the Premier's remarks and the launch of Hickey's suit against former premier Roger Grimes, many people changed their behaviour. One blog vanished for a period of time, although ostensibly for other reasons. There's no question that callers to the province's very popular talk radio shows regularly checked themselves needlessly or in some cases refrained from comments out of fear of lawsuits.

Thankfully, that chill was temporary. Nattering nabobs, as Telegram editor Russell Wangersky named them after the fashion of former American vice-president Spiro Agnew, have their valued place in any democracy worthy of the name.

However, when the province's leading daily newspaper hobbles its own opinion as it did today, free speech is compromised.

We are weaker.

We should be ashamed.

And the only determination we should have is to resist unreasonable efforts to restrain voices of dissent.

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And it only took four days

"It's good to have an opposition, but it's important that that opposition be a constructive opposition, it not be a name-calling, mudslinging, personal-attacking type of opposition," Williams said in an interview.

Premier Danny Williams, quoted in a Canadian Press story on the provincial election, September 16, 2007

"Gerry Reid is a capable guy in his own way, but he's got an attitude, and he can't get over it. And everybody in the province is seeing it," Williams said during a rally in Twillingate. "When they look at him, they see him on television, they see the scowl on his face."

Premier Danny Williams, quoted in a Telegram story on the provincial election, September 20, 2007

Slamming a guy for the face God gave him. There's an original Conservative personal attack.

While we're at it, how nice it would be to have a government administration that didn't resort to a name-calling, mudslinging, personal attacking type of government.

Update almost instantly:

The highly productive I.P Freely has reposted one of his little videos from last January when it seems the Premier had dropped a derogatory comment or two about Gerry Reid's face during a spate of by-elections. The vid was relatively popular, having garnered almost 2,000 views.

Two wrongs don't make a right, I.P, but this puts things in another perspective.

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Campaign Notes: Using the technology

Step 1. Google any of the following words:

"danny williams"

"pc party"

"newfoundland"

Step 2: Check the sponsored links, usually on the right hand side.

Hint: Try "pc party" first and see if your search turns up the same result as the one we just did here at Bond.

Step 3: lol or roflyao

Update - Step 4; Google "bob ridgley". You won't find any website for the candidate. The first link that turns up is interesting.

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A non-story

Someone picked up on the fact that some campaign signs - in this case for Tory Beth Marshall - don't carry any reference to the "Danny Williams Team."

There are plenty of re-cycled signs around and Marshall appears to have been frugal with her campaign expenses.

Let's hope Bond Papers doesn't get as many comments on Marshall as CBC radio did after her interview yesterday. The server couldn't handle the volume of criticism aimed at the former auditor general

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Two views of democracy

From today's Telegram a rather bizarrely written editorial trying to make an issue of a candidate for one party who voted in the open nomination process of another.

Bizarre because apart from the smear of referring to political cross-dressing, the editorial gets the facts wrong:

But take this curious situation: Simon Lono, a Liberal candidate in St. John's North, actually attended a Tory nomination meeting in St. John's East and voted for a candidate there, even though he wasn't eligible to vote in the district at all.

This comment makes it sound like Lono did something improper or illegal.

He didn't.

The shifting of boundaries created problems across the province, but especially in St. John's where district line shifted by one street or another. In this case, the Progressive Conservative candidates themselves blanketed areas of the old St. John's East boundary which included Lono's house. Turns out the district association decided to use the new boundaries, even though they weren't legally in effect.

This editorial is something one might expect from a locally owned newspaper with a political agenda, one that took to printing tripe to fill up its page three in the weeks leading up to the election. It's unusual for the Telegram; conspicuously different from the norm.

Conspicuous too, given that in January 2007, the Telly's sister daily endorsed open nominations as a means by which all citizens can become involved in the political process at the grass roots. progressive Conservative candidates blanketed the airwaves of commercial radio with appeals for voters - any and all voters irrespective of party - to come and vote in the PC nomination process.

Were someone to ask, one would likely find that men and women from across the province have voted for candidates of different parties at various times and have participated in nomination processes for parties other than the one they usually support.

There's nothing sinister about it, nor is there any implication of some form of political gender confusion, whatever that is.

No one seems to be confused here, except the editors at the Telegram. The thing that has confused them most are the pesky things that normally confound their independently minded competitors across town: facts.

The Western Star (Corner Brook)
Opinion, Saturday, January 20, 2007, p. 6

Byelection promises to be interesting

Next month's by election in Port au Port has drawn a slew of candidates lining up for the PC party nomination. The byelection became necessary with the resignation of PC Jim Hodder, who after serving 21 years in the House of Assembly, decided to leave for health reasons.

It's good to see that seven citizens have come forward to offer themselves because it shows there is real interest in the seat and it will be interesting to see who gets the nod when voting takes place Monday.

The Progressive Conservative party has opened nomination voting to the general public and they're to be commended for doing so. A person shouldn't have to be a card-carrying member of the party to help make the decision on who their candidate will be.

Often voters are undecided in an election and tend to vote for the man or the woman rather than along party lines. This open system gives any person the opportunity to be involved at the grassroots level of politics. There are good candidates running for the PC nomination and whoever takes it will likely have a fight on his or her hands since the district was known to be a Liberal one in the past.

That changed in the last election when Hodder took it from incumbent Gerald Smith and it remains to be seen what message voters want to send this time around.

With a general election coming in the fall, this byelection promises to be more interesting than most.

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You whistle. Who barks?

"We can't be a dying race."

Premier Danny Williams

Dog whistle politics is the use of code words that carry specific meanings for specific segments of an audience. The majority may miss them, but for certain segments they have a different meaning than the one most people might assume.

The term originated, according to some accounts, in Australian politics in the 1990s and the ideas of Howard strategist Lynton Crosby. It's based on a theory of voter motivation that is far from controversial in and of itself. As Crosby put it:

"People don't generally vote simply on the basis of issues," he told a conference in Canberra last May [2004]. "They vote as much on the values and motivation of political parties in taking a particular position on an issue... It is the values you communicate, and the motivation you have, that influences the way people vote."

It's hard to escape the idea that there is something of a dog whistle in Danny Williams use of the word race, especially when you see the sort of posturing on the issue that turned up after the remarks. It's code in the local nationalist fringe, just as it would be in Quebec.

The themes in the last throne speech and the campaign song all have a flavour and tone which would appeal across several audience segments. There's the talk of pride of place which most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians feel and its a core value pretty well everyone has.

The bootie call policy itself is a pretty straightforward example of the sort of retail politics that took Stephen Harper to 24 Sussex last year. It also makes it appear to some people that the premier and his crew are trying to do something to stem the tide of outmigration by paying people to stay and have children.

But if you wanted to look at another layer, consider that idea of Newfoundlanders as being a distinct race of people is a notion most common among those who never quite got over their loss in the 1948 referendum. Williams has raised the traditional political theatrical device of the external enemy to a fine art, playing to the insecure and largely xenophobic crowd who thrive on the myths of carpetbaggers and Canadians who pillage the benighted people of God's other Eden. To those people, defending a Newfoundland race beset by a declining birthrate and the loss of their culture to the evils of the mainland is as instinctive as breathing.

But for most of "race' is such an odd word, that it's sudden appearance in public remarks by the Premier would elicit one of two responses. Either people would ask what he meant or, as in this case, the embedded atmosphere of the media on the bus might well lead people to rationalize the word as an unimportant anomaly.

Problem is that things are quite that easy.

Political messaging sometimes comes on layers, with different aspects aimed at different segments of the audience. It takes a sophisticated organization to research and detect how messages are playing in smaller segments of the population and then adjust messages according.

Williams has done it before. The one instance in which such a detailed analysis was conducted occurred in 2004 with polling on the flag controversy. The poll results were obtained by the Telegram under Access to Information laws. Shortly afterward, the Premier's office stopped purchasing polling other than CRA through any publicly accessible means. That doesn't mean the sophisticated polling stopped.

Political messaging in a skilled organization isn't developed on the basis of the simplified and almost simplistic analysis offered in the Corporate Research Associate's quarterly omnibus political questions. Skilled operators would know what messages resonate with specific audiences.

The Premier's race comment might just be a slip of the tongue. But don't bet on it.

Danny Williams is a savvy politician whose has built his success on surrounding himself with a team of capable, sophisticated marketers. He doesn't often drop words out there carelessly, even if occasionally he gets suckered into musing on taking away free speech. those are core to his political agenda.

In this instance, "race" is the word Danny Williams chose without prompting.

It's a word that was on his mind.

There's a reason why the word came up.

Maybe he was whistling a tune intended, in part, for some of his most hard core supporters.

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Beth Marshall: Donations by MHAs "are appropriate"

In an interview with the St. John's Morning Show, former Auditor General Beth Marshall blew away whatever credibility she had as a fearless campaigner for accountability of public spending.

Marshall said she had no problem with members of the legislature handing out donations from constituency funds in manner essentially in violation of the system of accountability she used to espouse. In many cases, what the legislature called donations went to purposes for which there were already established government programs.

Among her most amazing comments:

"The Auditor General [John Noseworthy] has no basis to base his opinion on that those expenditures were inappropriate."

The AG based his views on the report by Chief Justice Green and his scathing indictment of the practice of donations. When pressed by Jeff Gilhooley on whether or not the donations were inappropriate, given that they came from an allowance that was never intended to include donations, Marshall was unequivocal: "They are appropriate."

Marshall defended her view on the basis that "discretionary funds" exist throughout government. That's an interesting argument for Marshall to make. As she should know, Green documents the original Morgan Commission recommendation in 1989 on allowances and the manner in which discretionary funds were restricted until that specific type of fund was eliminated by Marshall and her colleagues on the House management committee in 2004.

Had donations in fact been treated like discretionary funds, then members would have been limited to a maximum of $4800 per year. But Marshall knows that donations were not treated like discretionary funds. In the period after Marshall and her colleagues eliminated discretionary funds - and as the AG documented - gifting by Marshall and her colleagues increased compared to previous years. Marshall's colleague the deputy Premier handed out one gift of $5,000 in a single go in 2007.

In another part of the interview, Marshall said that when she was elected, she was provided with a set of rules to be followed. That's blatantly contrary to the line taken by most members that there were in fact no rules and hence abuses and oversights occurred.

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An abundance of optimism

There's a great story in the Wednesday Telegram assessing the possible performance of the Hebron royalty arrangement compared to the generic regime.

Sometimes, though, one gets an uneasy feeling when the same people who scream "no more give-aways" step forward to say "trust me", but then don't release any details of the deal.

And it's not like the major deal that the "no more give-aways" crowd use as a goblin to frighten people wasn't greeted with an abundance of enthusiasm when it was announced in May 1969. [Aside: That's right, Bill Rowe. May 1969. When you were in cabinet.]

From the Telegram, May 30, 1969 in a story by John Carter:

Fears that Newfoundland came out on the short end of the stick in the agreement to develop Churchill Falls appear to be unfounded.

In fact, Newfoundland fares quite well, although it may appear otherwise on the surface.

...

The $950 million project in Labrador has been a long time coming. However, it probably would have come earlier had it not been for Premier J.R. Smallwood's uncontrolled outbursts of provincialism...

There are references to name calling, of Smallwood referring to keeping the project from the "clutches of Quebec" and things that sound eerily familiar.

Sadly, there is no electronic copy of the text, just these two scans.

Maybe the Telly will add them to their website.

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Stephenville 2: Not on my watch

From the Premier's remarks in Goose Bay on Tuesday:

And I want people here to know that I am not prepared to leave Labradorians excluded on my watch. Labrador's day has arrived. This is Labrador's time to shine, to flourish and to reap the benefits of growth as our province moves forward, united, toward self-reliance.

It's odd to use this sort of phrase a second time, at least under the circumstances.

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Danny makes Bourque!

Well, indirectly.

But the original is here.

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Hiring baby ranchers

From Washington Profile, an interview with Nicholas Eberstadt on the demographic problems facing Russia. Read the whole interview to understand the Russian experience in a wider context.

Eberstadt is a political economy specialist at the American Enterprise Institute. It's a pretty stark appraisal from a purely economic perspective, but the ideas are worth considering.

But in light of the Progressive Conservative's procreation policy, take a look at this [emphasis added]:

Washington Profile: Russia is not the only country to attempt to increase birth rates through government policy and incentives. How effective have these kinds of policies been in other countries, for example, in western Europe?

Eberstadt: Birth incentive plans are almost always ineffective in the long run. The typical history of birth incentive plans in western Europe and elsewhere has been to elicit a small blip in birth rates followed by a bigger slump. The reason for the blip is that some parents “on the fence” about the timing of a second or a third child take advantage of the introduction of these incentives. And the subsequent slump takes place because the bonuses alter parents' timing of desired births, not desired birth totals. If one were to have a serious pronatalist economic plan, you’d be getting into some very big money. You would have to have vastly larger outlays than are currently accorded to social security, healthcare or any other existing programs. Basically, you’d have to be prepared to be hiring women to work as baby ranchers—and in a modern economy, given the opportunity cost of women’s labor, a program like that would be staggeringly expensive. That, I think, explains the limited success of pronatalist efforts in the western historical record. By the way, it also turns out to be very difficult to talk up the birth rate: the bully pulpit and the government usually can’t convince people to have extra children out of patriotism or civic duty.

Washington Profile: Russia has become a country with significant immigration flows. How is this likely to impact on its demographic situation?

Russia has the same problem that other European countries have, with the prospect of population decline, and the question of changing ethnic composition. Many of the prospective migrants to Russia are not of Russian ethnicity, and as you know, the government has increasingly indicated a nationalist, or a nativist, objection to immigration to the Russian Federation. There still are a number of millions of Russians in the near abroad, but the flow of Russian ethnic migration to the Russian Federation has declined almost to a trickle over the past decade. Barring some sort of awful political upheaval, I don’t know how realistic it would be to think that these ethnic Russians in the near abroad might want to pack up and head back to the Russian Federation. So Russia is facing the same kind of issues as the rest of Europe. Throughout Europe, the key question in this regard is: can the newcomers be turned into loyal and productive citizens? Some places have a better track record of this than others.

A discussion paper from the Max Plank Institute for the Study of Democratic Policy examines fertility policies in western European countries. Note that the paper discusses a range of policies aimed at supporting people raising children, not merely the performance bonus system for producing children.

While the Progressive Conservative policy announced on Tuesday includes components aimed at supporting parents during child-rearing, it remains to be seen if these measures will be effective. A significant program would involve reform of the federal government's parental leave program to provide larger benefits over a longer period of time versus the current scheme of providing 55% of income for a year. At the time when costs rise, the scheme actually reduces family net income.

There is also a question as to whether or not the longer-term policies are actually the impetus for the proposed program. The Premier's comment on a "dying race" suggest something closer to the sort of reactionary nationalist policies that have emerged in some states, such as Russia. "Race" in this case, is most definitely not synonymous with "province" as some may naively be tempted to argue. The provincial government's throne speech from the past spring, as well as the Progressive Conservative campaign contain clear expressions of nationalist sentiment if not outright ideology.

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Leader's Tour for Wednesday: Dueling banjos

Danny Williams will be in Liberal leader Gerry Reid's district, the Isles of Notre Dame. That's an offensive play on the heels of the trip to Labrador.

Gerry Reid will be in Isles of Notre Dame on a defensive mission, after visiting two districts in the metro St. John's area on an offensive play.

Do the New Democrats have a website for the election?

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Election 2007: Day Two Notes

1. Quote of the Day: "We can't be a dying race." Premier Danny Williams on his campaign promise to offer cash to people having babies or adopting children.

What "race" is he talking about?

Take a look at the Conception Day idea the Premier mentioned in his newser. Here's the audio clip of the Premier. [ram file] Here's a story from the Toronto Star from September 12 on the idea: it goes way beyond just the need to boost a population in a region, province or country. The whole idea is to produce people of a certain ethnic origin, as opposed to say dealing with the other issues in the society that are affecting reproduction to say opening up immigration.

The low birth rate in this province is not the result of any decrease in sexual activity. So what is behind the idea of a cash bonus for upping the birth rate?

2. Ethical Story of the Day: An admission by retiring Progressive Conservative MHA, Speaker Harvey Hodder, that members of the legislature - Hodder included - actually refrained from claiming legitimate expenses so they could maximize the amount of cash available to hand out in gifts. The Auditor General decried the money - termed "donations" - as inappropriate expenditures. Chief Justice Derek Green did likewise.

Hodder made the remarks on CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show but the audio isn't available on line. There are related stories on the Auditor General's report in The Telegram but they also aren't available on line.

If you want to see a genuine example of the bizarre logic of politicians, consider a letter from Maura Hanrahan to local media on the subject. Rather than have a properly funded, fair and equitable program, they felt it better that they have cash to hand around entirely at their own discretion.

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Danny's bootie call

Here's the CBC story on the Tories $1000 bonus for having babies in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Quote of the day, from the ram audio file: "We can't be a dying race."

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It's come to this

Known for years as the most sexually active people in Canada and, not surprisingly, known for having large families, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians now have one of the lowest fertility rates in the country.

No problem.

The provincial Progressive Conservatives are now proposing a one-time payment of $1,000 for every new child born in the province or adopted in the province. it's one way to deal with population decline and, as Danny Williams said in his newser today, the bonus is one way Quebec has slowed its population decline.

Retail politics hits the bedroom.

or spectators at the submarine races off Signal Hill.

Danny's reference to the "race" dying out is likely to raise more than a few hairs on the back of a few necks. Well it should. If nothing else, the terms are very much in keeping with the language of the Quebec nationalists and separatists he likes to ape in his own remarks.

Aping is one thing, but to put the population issue in a racial context is a bit much. A thriving economy will attract new immigrants from many cultures and backgrounds. Talking about the race not being allowed to die out sends an uncomfortable message from a government looking to encourage immigration.

Then again, there's another similarity, this time between Roger Grimes and Danny Williams.

With Roger, the whole place was supposedly about either fishing or f***ing. Danny Williams laced into Grimes for the comments which were made at a speech in New York.

Well, with Danny, there's a lot less fishing but there will be more f***ing.

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