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Election 2015 Live blog

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I’m temporarily bringing mikel.org out of retirement so that I may live blog with election results of the October 19th 2015 Canadian Federal Election.

I’ll be adding everything in this post and new material will be at the top.

OK so the live blogging never really happened…

I will share some notes and thoughts about the results now that things are pretty much decided in today’s federal election.

  • First of all: wow. What a result! And I don’t mean whether I am happy about it or not – just the magnitude of the victory for the Liberals is very impressive. From coast to coast, in rural ridings, urban ridings, and suburban ridings, the Liberals made huge gains.
  • I think this election has to go into the “polls are really unreliable” file. The polls have been radically incorrect for almost every election in Canada in the past 5 years, and this election is no exception.
  • One of the talking points by the TV commentators so far has been that this has been the best-run and best-designed political campaigns in Canadian history. From my perspective this is a bang-on comment – and furthermore, that that’s what was required for the Liberals to get anywhere.
  • Some individual riding results I find interesting…
    • Stéphane Dion seems to have won in his usual Ahuntsic-Cartierville riding. I have a soft spot for Mr. Dion for many reasons and it’s quite frankly a great testament to a humble public servant that he continues after having reached the highs and lows of Liberal Party leadership over the past decade.
    • It looks like Hélène Laverdière (NDP) will hold her riding in Laurier-Ville-Marie in central Montreal (my old riding for years) over Gilles Duceppe. I am a little sad for Duceppe that he was almost forced to return to the Bloc just to lose in *his* riding. I hope he will be able to retire once and for all.
    • Gutted for Andrew Cash in the Davenport riding in Western Toronto. I didn’t follow his political career TOO closely but he always seemed like a great representative and a hard-working MP. At least Charlie Angus seems to have won his riding in Northern Ontario. (If you don’t know their names, they’re both legendary Canadian musicians).
  • While I understand it, I’m a little disappointed for the NDP tonight. They have really become an important force for good in Canadian politics during this recent period of ascendency. For instance, I believe they had more women candidates in this election than any other party in Canadian history – and this is important. I hope people don’t just write them off now.
  • Personally, I was most impressed by far by Justin Trudeau during this campaign. I was very vocal among my politically-inclined friends that the Liberals seemed to me to be making huge errors, basically shutting up and trying not to say anything on the expectation that they would be once again tapped for form a government by natural Canadian law or something. In fact, though, during this campaign Justin Trudeau clearly annunciated a very human and humane vision for Canada, and was quite forceful about a return to traditional Canadian values that had been lost under a decade of Harper/Conservative leadership. As a referendum on Justin’s ability as a leader, he clearly passed with flying colours.

Today was by-election day

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Today was by-election day

in three Quebec ridings, and it has proven to be as exciting as politics in Quebec have tended to be in recent years. It’s hard to see what has been happening both federally and provincially as nothing less than a sea-change, not a temporary post-scandal correction as many (including myself) feared it might have been.

The results are interesting. In my new riding, Outremont, the winner was Thomas Mulcair of the NDP (and the former provincial environment minister for the Quebec Liberal Party). In Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, the winner was Denis Lebel, a Conservative (and sitting Mayor). In Sainte-Hyacinthe, the winner was Ève-Mary Thai Thi Lac for the Bloc Quebecois. Most striking is that none of the Liberal candidates were successful, even now that the scandals are behind them and despite (well, maybe) having a new leader.

Some bullet-point reactions:

  • The NDP have to be careful how they interpret their victory in Outremont. If they have any illusions that this is a vote of confidence in the party as a whole or in Jack Layton, I think they’re sorely mistaken. On the positive side of things, Mulcair, and Mulcair alone, is the reason for their victory. If anything he has such personal popularity and universal respect that he won in spite of how the NDP is viewed in Quebec.
  • It is pretty shocking to “traditional” interpretations of Quebec voting tendencies that neither of the MPs in the Saguenay region are sitting for the Bloc Quebecois.
  • Stéphane Dion must be – should be – pretty scared. For the party with the second most seats in Parliament to not win any of three by-elections? Not a comfortable spot for the leader. When he was selected as leader of the Liberal Party, I was cautiously optimistic that he could do a decent job – certainly better than Ignatieff – but so far, it has been nothing but setback after setback. He’ll probably stick it out until the next General Election, but it looks like he’s already finished.
  • Back to the NDP, after years and years of living in Montreal but never having any hope of my candidate winning, I’m kind of amazed that someone has done it. Again, though, if the NDP over-estimate the significance of this victory they’re going to be in trouble. I’ve almost only ever voted NDP, but party had pretty much lost me as a supporter over the past two or three years. The NDP’s foreign policy is nothing more than naive and pandering, and the fact that they have done nothing to truly address their chronic problems in Quebec is more than frustrating – at this point it smacks of a mix of disrespect and fear. I hope they can get over it – and the first step would be a radical re-thinking of their traditional (and idiotic) strong-centralist federalism. It does them no good and a lot of harm.

The NDP website offering

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The NDP website offering

for the election is less flashy than the others (no “get yer weblogs here” titles polluting the main site) but in fact it’s far better executed than either of other large parties’ sites. They don’t have a fake-casual blog per se, but if you look at their Get The Latest page you’ll note that it has a nice and subtle RSS feed associated. If you prefer either section within that you can get an RSS feed just of that as well.

My attention turned

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to our own Federal general election tonight, as I watched the English language debate between the leaders of the 5 major parties. I was quite disappointed in the whole thing, although frankly I didn’t expect much.

Dan Rather, following all the US debates, was loathe to call them debates at all, suggesting that rather than debate it was really an opportunity for the two leaders to talk about their platform only – the other guy just happened to be in the room. Our debate here was the opposite – it was all acrimonious bickering and no annunciation of coherent platforms. None at all.

Alexa McDonough, leader of the ever-smaller federal NDP, came off the best by far, in my opinion. My own MP, Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois, was actually pretty good – except the idea that overwhelms everything else he stands for is diametrically opposed to my view of things. Joe Clark, the once and current leader of the Progressive Conservative party was OK, but it’s clear that although he’s a decent guy, his time has passed.

Which leaves Jean Chretien and Stockwell Day. Chretien, the leader of the Liberal party (and current PM, if you’re not from around here) was basically in an impossible situation. He didn’t meet it very well. Day came off like a motivational speaker – a lying, duplicitous motivational speaker. He and his Canadian Alliance cronies are probably the scariest thing to happen to Canadian politics in years. Which is enough said about him.

The new Mike’s Message

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The new Mike’s Message from Michael Moore is a great open letter to Al Gore. I still think I’d vote for Gore (if I could vote), but at the same time I have the same general feeling as Moore and would ask some of the same questions as Moore poses.

It’s funny – my attitude to the NDP in Canada is practically the opposite of my feelings about the Democratic Party in the US. Dems have moved, as has our Liberal Party, to the right – due to changing circumstances, a changing electorate, a new world that we live in. In doing so, parties like those represent me even less than they ever did – which was never that much. At the same time though, the NDP here hasn’t seemingly changed at all to face the different sort of world we live in now. And so they too don’t represent me – and in fact seem openly hostile to people in a situation such as mine. So if anything I’m even more screwed here than I would be in the US.

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