And there it was.
Top of the front page.
Screaming headline.
Economist warns Liberal plan doesn’t make sense.
Right underneath a picture of the new Liberal Premier-in-waiting and the new Prime Minister smiling as they met in Ottawa. Title: Happy Liberals.
About as objective as Fox News and then you read the story.
Their economist shitting on the Liberals is….
wait for it…
Wade Locke.
Hands up who didn’t just piss themselves laughing?
According to a statement from the federal finance department on Wednesday, “the federal government will take any necessary steps to ensure that the [HST] rate increase does not come into effect on January 1, 2016.” [CBC]
That came out of the first meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier-designate Dwight Ball.
Ball wrote two federal cabinet ministers last week asking them to do what they needed to do in order to halt the two percent increase in the harmonized sales tax included in the provincial Conservatives’ spring budget. Ball promised last spring to roll back the rate hike.
He issued a news release about his letter a couple of days before he met with Trudeau. Local media covered it.
But what would have to happen in order to halt the hike?
Good question.
“A new government has a very small amount of time in which to lay the groundwork for its term of office. It has about six months to show things are different and about a year to start showing signs of results. In fact, they really have about 100 days to make a mark, and when it comes to things like re-organizing the departments and getting political and public service staff changes made, they have even less than that.
“The reasons are pretty simple: The outside world wants to figure out what government they really elected. For the government itself, they need to sort out the basics so they can cope with the onslaught of demands that come with the force of a three inch fire hose. Put another way, the new government has a short time to take control of the public agenda. That’s the only way they can filter the workload down to a manageable level, let alone do the things they want to do. Without control of the political agenda, they become followers rather than leaders.”
That’s the first two paragraphs from a column your humble e-scribbler wrote for The Independent was back when it began. It appeared in January 2004 after the Conservatives under Danny Williams had gone through a few less-than-stellar moments. Go back and read the whole thing to see if any of it applies to current events.
Political scientist Stephen Tomblin is concerned about the low voter turn-out in the recent elections.
Tomblin thinks it is a sign that voters are disconnected from the political system. The recent lacklustre election didn’t have the political parties connecting with voters in a meaningful way. There are lots of issues politicians could have discussed with voters but they just didn’t bother.
Tomblin makes some good points but there are some things about recent elections we should consider as we try and put some meaning on the recent election.
The information the Conservatives leaked to David Cochrane Tuesday on the budget update confirmed the extent to which they are actually the ones who have been running the finance department as if it was a ministry of magic.
The cash deficit this year looks like it will wind up being almost $3.0 billion. Bear in mind that the budget the Conservatives introduced last spring called for a 12% increase in spending - although they talked about restraint - and for borrowing $2.1 billion to cover a record deficit.
Incidentally, the accrual deficit figures leaked to Cochrane by the Tories leave out the $900 million the Conservatives planned to borrow for public works. You need to look at the cash numbers to understand the magnitude of what the Tories did last spring.
The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election, CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration. CBC distributed it nationally.
Cochrane described Dwight Ball as a man “unlikely” to be Premier:
Four campaigns. Two losses. Two wins. By a combined 75 votes.
Cochrane’s account leaves out relevant context. When it comes to describing how the Liberals won, Cochrane focuses not on anything the Liberals did but rather a string of Tory blunders that - according to Cochrane - made it easy for the Liberals to win the election essentially by accident.
And now, as Cochrane’s story goes, Ball The Unlikely will have to face enormous financial problems using a plan that Cochrane claims “was greeted with enormous skepticism in the final week of the campaign.”
Doing things differently.
That’s what the Liberal campaign was all about.
Now we have to see if Ball and the Liberals actually put that into action.
This is the year of the youtube election.
Some of them, like Alison Coffin’s recession pitch or Dan Crummell’s “I live in the district” spot are simple and straightforward. Others, like those of Conservatives Beth Crosbie and Ryan Cleary are so bizarre that they are funny. On Facebook, Conservative Alison Stoodley identified Browning Harvey as a threat to public health.
All are reminiscent of a string of videos released by John Ottenheimer during the Conservative leadership campaign a year ago. Ottenheimer, the outsider candidate, tried to use humour to attract some attention to his effort.
The Telegram did voters a valuable service the last weekend of the campaign by printing responses from candidates in metro districts to two simple questions.
They asked the candidates to identify the single biggest issue in the district and how they would tackle it.
Some of the replies were fascinating.
Kevin Parsons, is in a dogfight for his seat in Cape St. Francis. He is the only candidate who didn’t reply to the Telegram at all.
Bill Kavanagh, the NDP candidate in Conception Bay East – Bell Island is running on the Liberal platform. He thinks public consultation is extremely important. He’s right. What’s interesting here is the NDP and Conservatives are criticising the Liberals for not having enough detail in their platform when they talk about consultation.
Dan Crummell, the Tory seeking re-election in St,. John’s West thinks he is the biggest issue facing the district and all his friends agree with him, apparently.
The best answer to any question came from Ryan Cleary. It’s probably the most honest comment Cleary’s made since he lied to CBC about how he changed parties:
Cleary: First, I would be shocked if I were elected. … .
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What’s the biggest issue facing your district?
Cape St. Francis - Kevin Parsons, Progressive Conservative (PC): No response as of deadline. [Nuff said]
Conception Bay East – Bell Island - Bill Kavanagh, Bell Island, NDP: There is a democratic deficit in this district and it’s a direct result of a lack of public consultation when it comes to decisions made by our politicians. [Interesting given the Liberal platform calls for lots of consultation and public input. The NDP and Conservatives call that a lack of detail.]
St. John’s West - Dan Crummell, St. John's, Progressive Conservative: Strong and effective representation by someone who lives in the district. [That’s his only talking point]
Windsor Lake - Ryan Cleary, St. John's, PC: Change.
If you want to know why Forum Research’s poll is out of line with the other polls done on the provincial election, you need look no further than the data tables for the questions.
This is why pollsters should give out this information. Lots don’t.
Polling firms adjust their sample so that the sample matches the population as a who for sex, age, geography, and so on. It’s called weighting.
Forum notes that where “appropriate, the data has been statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure that the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest Census data.”
That’s where you get the problem.
Residents of Newfoundland and Labrador awoke Thursday to a massive sucking noise as amateur pundits, media commentators, and newsrooms across the province realised they’d read way too much into a single poll on Wednesday.
A new Abacus Data poll shows the Liberal are actually on track to sweep the entire House of Assembly. The results contradict a lone poll by Forum Research that had the Conservative miraculously closing the gap with the Liberals.
Never happened, as it turned out. Every other poll taken during the campaign lines with the latest Abacus poll. What’s more the behaviour of the Tory and Dipper campaigns confirms what serious political watchers already knew: Paul Davis and Earle McCurdy are desperately trying to save the furniture in the face of a potential Liberal tsunami.
The provincial election campaign a decidedly nastier turn on Monday. Conservative leader Paul Davis is trying his best to save the party’s furniture.
Davis’ best is nasty stuff.
Davis called Dwight Ball a liar.
Rarely does one politician openly attack another using words like that. They try to remain civil and respectful. Davis is the first Premier since Confederation who, facing imminent defeat at the polls, has thrown any trace of decency out the window.
“It was a previous Liberal government that wanted to actually privatize Hydro. This particular government wants to strengthen Hydro, wants to make it a very valuable corporation: a corporation that will ultimately pay significant dividends back to the people of this Province; a corporation that perhaps some day may have enough value in its assets overall as a result of the Hebron deal and the White Rose deal, possible Hibernia deal, possible deals on gas, possible deals on oil refineries and other exploration projects, where hopefully we might be able to sell it some day and pay off all the debt of this Province, and that would be a good thing.”
Premier Danny Williams, House of Assembly, 30 April 2008
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Corporate Research Associates’ latest poll is in line with polls by MQO and Abacus.
The table below shows CRA’s quarterly poll results since the last provincial election with the CRA “decideds” skew taken out.
Liberals are at 50% of all respondents, with the Conservatives at 16% and the NDP at seven with 26% undecided or giving no answer.
The only winner in the debate was David Cochrane.
He’s no Paul Wells but he did a fine job of wrangling the three leaders.
And that’s the problem for the politicians.
Real people were talking about the fact the neutral guy didn’t frig up like the guy on the other network. The other folks – all the party h’acktivists on Twitter - were just talking about how their guy won, which they were saying before the thing started.
If debates matter at all in Canadian elections, this one was a must win for Earle McCurdy or Paul Davis. They needed to score big points on Dwight Ball in order to stand even a vague hope of shifting a few votes in the last week of the campaign.
Neither did.
Muskrat Falls has been the big issue in two successive elections.
In 2011, the parties wanted to talk about the project, while voters didn’t. It never showed up in the list of any Top Five issues for voters.
The parties wanted to talk about Muskrat Falls because it was something they all agreed on. The 2011 election was a good example of an election in which the three parties ignored what the voters wanted to talk about and chattered instead among themselves.
Well, in 2015, Muskrat Falls and its impact on the economy is a huge issue but none of the parties want to talk about it. The best they’ve done is insist that non-existent export sales will help keep electricity prices low. It wasn’t true in 2011 and it certainly is nonsense now.
Another Muskrat Falls issue turned up recently and it could prove to be one of the most significant things so far.
