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Coronation
The media reaction to Marc Garneau’s exit from the Liberal leadership race has not been kind. The party is “not a happy place“, the race is a “fiasco“, this is the “worst-case scenario“, “is the Liberal Party serious?”. I haven’t checked out SunNews’ take, but I’d imagine they aren’t overly ebullient either. None of this […]
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Liberal Speed Dating Helps Voters Make Their Choice
While the sit-down interview format of the last “debate” served as a nice introduction, the timid questions served up by Harvey Locke didn’t give us any sense of how the candidates would perform in the heat of an election campaign. Saturday, we were treated to a series of short two-way and three-way debates, with many […]
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The Case For Kennedy
This weekend, Liberals from across Ontario will gather at Maple Leaf Gardens for what is likely to be one of the last grand old leadership conventions in Canada. Having 2,000 delegates decide who governs a province of 13 million doesn’t scream “grassroots”, but it makes for one heck of a show. There will be signs, […]
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2012 Woman of the Year
Every December, I like to name a “Person of the Year” – the individual who left their mark on Canadian politics over the past year. The only rules are that the PM is too obvious a choice, and that lame picks (“You!”) are strictly verboten. The Person of the Year doesn’t need to be someone […]
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Liberal Heartland Calgary
Wednesday was not a typical day for Calgary Grits. While leadership candidates must all fly into town, knowing the party’s weighted-by-riding leadership system makes a vote there far more valuable than a vote in Toronto, I have never seen a serious candidate launch their leadership campaign from the heart of Conservative country. But there was […]
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Kennedy for Ontario
After some bleating about how no one wanted the “poisoned chalice”, an impressive field of six candidates has declared for the OLP leadership race: Glen Murray, Sandra Pupatello, Eric Hoskins, Kathleen Wynne, Charles Sousa, and Gerard Kennedy. All have Cabinet experience, and all are ready to step into the Premier’s chair. I have nothing negative […]
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Trudeau’s Challenging Cakewalk
Now that we have confirmation about what we’ve known all summer, and now that we’ve exhausted every conceivable boxing-is-politics metaphor, we can begin speculating about what the Justin Trudeau leadership campaign will look like. Names of some key players are beginning to leak out, but it will likely be months before we truly get a […]
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100 Years of Bad Photo Ops
As you have probably heard a hundred times over the past month, the Calgary Stampede turns 100 this year. Calgary has changed a lot over this time. A seat at the 1912 rodeo cost 50 cents. Calgary’s population was 70,000. And, oh yeah, back then Alberta was a Liberal bastion, with the Grits holding 6 […]
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Bob Builds His Liberal Party Legacy
As I hoped would be the case, Bob Rae has taken a pass at the Liberal leadership race. Despite Rae’s solemn pledge not to run for the permanent leader position, this news comes as a bit of a surprise in the wake of last week’s reports that he had all but declared. Rae himself acknowledged […]