From the you-knew-this-would-happen but it-doesn't-matter-anyway department

Last night: Liberal Party Announces Consultative Process to Appoint an Interim Leader

Liberal Party President Doug Ferguson announced Monday that the Liberal Party’s National Executive has approved a consultative process by which it will appoint an interim Liberal Leader ...

Consultative, not democratic, a process which regular members would have largely been excluded from.

“I first wish to thank Mr. Dion for the courage and passion with which he led the Liberal Party of Canada,” said Mr. Ferguson.

Mr. Ferguson may have also added: "Don't let the door hit you in the bum on the way out, Stéphane".

This morning: Rae bows out, Ignatieff secures Liberal leadership (CP)

OTTAWA — Michael Ignatieff has secured the federal Liberal leadership without a fight after his last remaining rival, longtime friend Bob Rae, bowed out.

Rae informed his supporters of his decision during a conference call this morning and is to make it official at a news conference later today. His decision came just hours after the Liberal national executive rejected his plea to find an expedited way of giving all party members a vote for Stephane Dion's replacement.

And no messy recriminations about party democracy.

Dion will resign, perhaps as early as Thursday. CBC News reports the Toronto Star will publish a story making this claim. That twisted route is so far a dead end, as nothing appears on-line at The Star as yet.

Update: Clearly the rumours were... just that. Mr. Dion will hold a press conference on Monday October 20 at 2pm ET at the National Press Theatre.

In the meantime:

• Knives come out swiftly for Dion (Oct 16, Globe and Mail) Senator David Smith said "Obviously, he will be making some decisions. But everybody should just be very respectful and appreciative of what he did. I don't think anybody should rush into anything"
• Noted Liberal strategist and Jean Chrétien loyalist Warren Kinsella announced on Monday that he was returning to fight with the Liberals once more, which really means: leadership race. Who will the Chrétien-annointed leadership candidate be?
• Des libéraux rêvent à Frank McKenna (Oct 16, Cyberpresse.ca) - Frank McKenna a dream for Liberals - According to information made available to the paper senior Liberal organizers and caucus members have already formed a group working on convincing the former Premier of New Brunswick to return to public life in Ottawa.
• Dion soigne ses plaies (Oct 16, Le Devoir) «Il faut qu'il réfléchisse» - Dion licking his wounds, "He must reflect".

I admire Dion for taking a strong yet unpopular stand on an important issue - climate change. While his decision may become a textbook illustration that stubbornness has no place in a campaign, in reflection we may wish we'd chosen a man who had the courage to stand by his convictions rather than chose expediency.

A by-the-numbers view illustrating an unusual number of individual third party advertisers supporting a single candidate

This post will be updated as new information is obtained

Yesterday I wrote about concerns I have regarding the use of the race card in the local race in my riding, Vancouver-Kingsway. Without editorializing on the content of the advertisement I thought it would be interesting to look at the issue of third-party individuals running advertisements in this riding strictly from a numbers perspective.

If one trawls through the Elections Canada databases for riding and candidate contributions, and the list of third party advertisers, you can come up with the following by-the-numbers view of the issue too. What you'll find is that third-party advertising by individuals in support of an individual candidate is extremely rare. There are thousands of candidates country-wide yet it would appear only one has attracted the individual support of multiple individual third party advertisers.

These facts and numbers infer no wrongdoing, but the facts alone do cause one to ask questions and want to look deeper at third party advertising in general and in Vancouver-Kingsway in particular. The facts as they are known today include:

1. Of the 51 entities found within Elections Canada's national list of registered third parties as of October 13, only 7 are individuals as opposed to organizations, and of those 7 one is connected to VoteForEnvironment.ca which is a multi-candidate multi-party advocacy internet site.
2. Of the remaining 6 individuals, all are from B.C.
3. Of those 6, half or 3 of the B.C. individuals are supporters of Ms. Yuan. Each of the 3 are running Chinese language advertisements in her support. Another, apparently as yet unregistered individual, appears to be also running a supporting advertisement which would have a cost such that registration of this individual would be required under the Elections Act. Each of the four third parties have been identified by the required English language text at the bottom of advertisements printed in Chinese media. The three registered individuals are:

• Alan Deng
• Wu Zhi Dong
• Yi Xin Chen

The three registered individuals have authorized advertisements benefiting Ms. Yuan in the following publications:

As might be expected, certain of these names will be found in Elections Canada reports on donations to the riding association. Nomination donations for Ms. Yuan were not available on the Elections Canada web site at time of writing.

Of thousands of candidates running in 308 ridings across the country only one candidate - Wendy Yuan - appears to have multiple third party individuals running election advertising in her support. The by-the-numbers view looks like this:

• Number of ridings: 308
• Number of candidates across the country: more than a thousand
• Number of third party advertisers in total: 51
• Number of third party advertisers supporting causes rather than individuals: 45 (best available estimate)
• Number of individual third party advertisers not supporting multiple candidates or causes: 6 (best available estimate)
• Number of other candidates having no third party advertising support: all but a handful
• Number of other candidates having multiple individual third party advertising support: zero (best available estimate)
• Number of other candidates having multiple individual third party advertising support: zero (best available estimate)
• Number of registered third party advertisers supporting Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan: 3
• Number of unregistered third party advertisers supporting Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan that likely should be registered under the Elections Act: 1
• Number of third party advertisers supporting Wendy Yuan's campaign: 4
• Number of times Wendy Yuan's campaign or third parties have used a racial appeal for votes: many

Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan denies playing the race card (Oct 11, Georgia Straight)

Patrick Tam

A story in local press erupts over concerns raised by local political photographer, Patrick Tam, that the Yuan campaign is engaging in race-politics.

Such suggestions could be made about many campaigns across the country, and I'm not sure I would have looked carefully at this article except for the fact that Tam is the one that lodged the complaint. Tam covers political events for all parties, and in all my interactions with him, the strong impression made upon me by Patrick is that he is a man of fairness and integrity. Between Tam's involvement and the fact that it's playing out in my riding the story has naturally caught my attention.

Here is the advertisement which sparked the controversy. Note it's paid for by a third party. The campaign denies foreknowledge, of course.

Additionally, an official advertisement released by the Yuan campaign exhorts:

Please unite, on 10/14 cast a vote for your ethnic Chinese candidate, Wendy Yuan.

Patrick points this out as a racist appeal for votes and I agree. Candidates shouldn't be asking for the vote based on their race or skin colour, and nor should their supporters. Sadly this approach typifies much of campaign 2008 where the politics of attack and division have dominated over that of ideas and the future.

Here is the response by Yuan's principal challenger, Don Davies.

This article updated to include a more accurate translation of the quote attributed to the Yuan campaign as well as further coverage of this story:

• Critic accuses Liberal Yuan of prejudice (Oct 13, The Tyee)

Yes, its true, Nude Election '08 has claimed yet another NDP candidate: Skinny-dipper Julian West (Saanich-Gulf Islands) has gone beyond making apologies for his past lack of common sense and has resigned, making him the third in a week to quit the NDP campaign. One can't help but wonder about the man's sense of morality, given he asked minor girls to use their face paints on his nude form, "all over".

This resignation brings an interesting dynamic to the Saanich-Gulf Islands race where the incumbent, Conservative MP and Natural Resources minister Gary Lunn, faces off against Liberal candidate Briony Penn, well known to the area as an environmental activist and former Green Party supporter. The NDP vacuum might allow a real race against Lunn, an outcome I would welcome, although it does seem likely that vote splitting between the Green and Liberal candidate is likely to ensure an anti-environment Lunn is re-elected.

Lady Godiva

Although her moral compass is not in question, Penn is no stranger to public nudity herself, having taken on the starring role as Lady Godiva for a protest against Vancouver-based corporate logging interests. No minors nor horses were harmed in the event.

Of greater importance than the forgettable Mr. West's political future, for those who have not followed Conservative MP Gary Lunn's career, know that he is in favour of opening up B.C.'s west coast for oil and gas exploration and has been consistently opposed to progressive environmental measures and the fight against climate change.

Priddle Panel: Not Found

The last significant read of the public apettite for off-shore drilling was done by a NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) Public Review Panel - the "Priddle Panel" - in 2004 under the direction of then minister (Liberal) John Efford.

Panel Chair Ron Priddle was at the time a director of Talisman Energy, while another panel member, Don Scott, was a former mayor of Prince Rupert who had lobbied to have the moratorium lifted. The third member of the panel, Diane Valiela, is a lawyer currently working for B.C. firm Lawson Lundell in areas including energy law. Valiela had been a member of the National Energy Board, a tribunal principally concerned with approving requests from industry.

In short, this was not an unbiased panel but a panel with a mission, one which the Gorden Campbell-led provincial government happened to share: lift the moratorium.

Despite the obvious pro-exploration bias of the panel the report was forced to note that the public at large was not behind them. Public support strongly favoured (75%) retaining a continued moratorium or ban on offshore drilling. I'd like to link directly to the NRCan website to provide a copy of the panel report but, tellingly, since Lunn took over the NRCan ministry that link no longer works. Interestingly, there is a still-working link to the table of contents of the report, but no working link to the panel report itself.

One well-established rule of publishing on the internet - particularly for public bodies such as government - is that links should remain viable forever. This tenet doesn't trouble Stephen Harper's version of democracy, because transparency is clearly not a Conservative Party virtue.

Yet its worse than that. Not only does the link fail to function but the NRCan web site search facility fails to turn up any reference to the Priddle Panel, which is odd since almost 4,000 submissions were made to the panel; the process took months to complete; and the cost involved real taxpayer dollars. Question: Has Lunn or any of his staff ordered that the document be taken off-line or otherwise hidden from view? If so, when was this order made and why?

Search results for "priddle"

Frankly I'm surprised at how difficult it was to locate a copy of this report. Here permanently attached to this post for posterity is the report as well as a first nations specific study and a 2004 review of moratoria status. Interesting reading:

Trust Scandal A Brewing

Whether someone in Finance Minister Goodale’s office leaked information to persons in the investment community is an issue which is only slowly building steam but deserves to be on the front boiler.

You’ll recall back in the fall Goodale sent shock waves through the Canadian investment community with direct and indirect threats to change the tax treatment of income trusts – a class of investment which has become wildly popular with large and small investors alike. The decision was immensely unpopular, so much so that Canaccord Capital (Trust Reform Hurts Canadians) and others launched a campaign to put pressure on the government.

Then, as an unavoidable election neared, a flip flop could be smelled in the wind from far away…

The finance minister said he wants to provide “the greatest degree of certainty that’s possible” for income trust investors before an expected election campaign begins next week. “I’m very anxious to ensure the greatest amount of certainty and I am obviously considering what the implications of a non-confidence motion might be,” Mr. Goodale said, referring to opposition plans to defeat the Liberals.

Toronto-Dominion bank chief economist Don Drummond predicted in September that there was a 50-per-cent probability of the Liberals cutting the effective rate of tax on dividends if they acted on income trusts before an election.

He’s now raised that probability to 80 per cent, but still can’t rule out the possibility that the government may also apply some sort of tax on trust distributions.
Globe and Mail

Then on November 23rd, after the market close, Goodale makes an announcement favourable to both trusts and high yield stocks. Yet, before the close, many income trusts and high-yield stocks on the TSX, made impressive gains and or traded in unusual volume… made more unusual because US-only equity counterparts in similar sectors did not match the gains on Canadian markets.

“That has nothing to do whatsoever with any behaviour or conduct on the part of my office. We are always very careful and very discreet, and there was no leak and there was no kind of advanced information whatsoever,” Goodale said Friday. Goodale further said he didn’t think an investigation is warranted “because there’s nothing to investigate.” Minister of Finance, Ralph Goodale (November 27th Ottawa Citizen)

Really.

• Online posts suggest leak in income trust case That evidence is in public bulletin board postings on a popular investor’s internet site called “Stockhouse”. The first posting—at 11:14 that morning—came from someone who wrote: “Skuttlebutt is that he (Goodale) will soon announce a reduction on dividend taxation to ‘even the playing field’.”
• Did Goodale’s income trust announcement leak early? Market Regulation Services, which monitors trading activity on the Toronto Stock Exchange, said it noticed unusual trading activity on Wednesday and is looking into it.
• CARP says it got notice of Goodale announcement But a representative of Canada’s most influential seniors’ lobby group says he got a phone call on the morning of Nov. 23, several hours before the markets closed, and before Goodale made his announcement. “The day they made the announcement they phoned us and said something is going to be said,” the associate executive director of Canada’s Association for the Fifty Plus, William Gleberzon, told CTV News. Gleberzon said the call came from a senior policy advisor in the finance minister’s office. When asked what exactly he was told, Gleberzon indicated the specifics were vague, but the underlying message was clear. “They said something was going to be announced later in the day. And we assumed that if they told us that… it would probably be something we’d be happy with.”

Goodale screwed up the trust file back in the fall; now he’s screwing up when there is quite clearly evidence continuing to build that there was a leak. There’s one Liberal that should not return to parliament as, complicit or not, he’s clearly as dumb as a fence post.

Prediction: If the Martinites manage to pull off a win, Liberal David Emerson, Vancouver Kingsway, becomes Canada’s next finance minister.

Television Advertisements

Liberal TV advertisements vs Conservative TV advertisements

• Conservative – these were “ok”; but Harper seems stiff and the “interviewer” isn’t much better either. Questions posed from the “public” seem better. Harper ads: C+ – B. Use of the Intel-like tone at the start and back end of each commercial makes me think they produced these themselves or with a b-rate firm. My favorite ad doesn’t include Harper: Débloquer votre voix, mostly for the title. The ad conclusion is sharp too “Authorized and paid with clean money by the official agent of the Conservative Party”. Neat.
• Liberals – visually appealing and most of the ‘characters’ (some appear to be ordinary folks) employed make you want to watch. Of those featuring people, not newspaper clippings, my favorite is version two as it leaves the perception that its Canadians speaking, not liberal party operatives. Newspaper clipping ad is effective for what it is. Version three I like the least; it appears to be designed to leave the impression that its ok to be a Liberal, and to some degree its probably effective but I think I’d pass on this altogether. Also the last fellow to speak at the conclusion of the “There’s thirty million reasons to vote Liberal” belts out “Whats yours!” in a way thats a bit off-putting. Suggestion: put a sweet voice, not two guys dressed in black, at the finale.