The campaign is slowly beginning to pick up steam.
The Bloc's Gilles Duceppe is still in greater Montréal. Their campaign theme and slogan is
"Parlons Qc" (Let's talk Québec).
Jack Layton was in Regina and Moose Jaw yesterday. The NDP is aching to win a few seats in Saskatchewan, the province of their birth where they have been shut out in the past three elections.
Today he went to Brantford in Ontario where he made his first campaign promise to maximize credit card interest rates at Prime + 5.5%. All the seats he has visited so far have been Tory or NDP-held.
The Liberals today and yesterday are in the GTA. In Oakville, Ignatieff released the first element of his platform ; an 'education passport', where the government would make a grant of 4,000$ (6,000$ for low income families) to each child who goes to university, college (in Canada, college is more technical or vocational) or CEGEP in Québec.
The Conservatives yesterday went to Victoria, Burnaby, and Edmonton (3 top-flight targets), and today to Regina (they believe a sweep of Saskatchewan is possible) and Winnipeg. They presented measures for small businesses that were in the budget, however their first new proposals get mixed reviews.
They centre around families and are both tax cuts; one to allow income splitting for couples up to 50,000$, the other a tax cut of up to 1,300$ for families with children. However, with a big catch -- they wouldn't take effect until the government recovers from the deficit, which they expect to occur in 2015. This effectively means that even if they won a majority, there would be another election before then! In other words, they need do nothing and the other parties have rightly mocked them, saying families need relief now.
Their campaign has also hit their first snags. It has been discovered that the Conservative candidate in Algoma (with no shot) has been a lobbyist regarding the purchase of F-35 jets. In Winnipeg, meanwhile, Saint Boniface MP Shelly Glover referred to the Liberal MP from Winnipeg South Centre, Anita Neville, as past her "best before date", which has earned her condemnation for associations of retired persons. In Montréal, Conservative longshot and former Senator and Montéal Allouettes (CFL) general manager was quoted as saying that youth don't really care about the preservation of the French language, which Gilles Duceppe jumped on.
The talk about coalitions which dominated the weekend has died down pretty much and the focus has switched to families. Although most Canadians idealize the 50s stereotype, the reality of families in Canada today is far different. In particular:
- there are now more unmarried adults than married,
- 16% of all families are single-parent, and
- increasing numbers of families are multi-generation and have both children and seniors living under one roof, mostly due to tendencies within ethnic groups of voters from Asia.
To make these diaries easier to understand, here are a number of terms that frequently appear in Canada that would be of interest, either because they are unique or have different implications than in the US.
Grit: a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, in other words the Grits refers to the Liberals.
Tory: a member of the Conservatives, the Tories are simply the Conservatives... or are they?
Reform/CRAP: members in the Conservative party who were previously members of Reform and the Canadian Alliance, used as a derogatory term.
Dipper: member of the NDP, Dippers refers to the NDP, however these terms are much ore informal and are not used in the press.
Leader's tour: the emphasis of media reporting, the tours are planned well in advance at the start, converge to Ottawa mid-campaign for the leader's debates, then progressively give an indication of who's playing defence or offence, and at the very end suggest seats to watch on election night.
Elections Canada: the independent agency of Parliament responsible for all things related to the administration of the election, including overseeing candidate expenses, verifying the signatures required to be a candidate on the ballot, delivering voter identification cards to the voters and overseeing the creation of new poll divisions and the hiring of returning officers (who hire the vote supervisors and counters and have the ballots printed.)
Riding or electoral district: the equivalent of the Congressional District.
Representation Order: sets the boundaries, population and names of the ridings after redistribution
Redistribution: review of the boundaries and creation of new ridings in fast-growing areas (ridings are now rarely eliminated), done province by province, and by independent panels presided by a judge and overseen by Elections Canada (Parliament may make comments but cannot compel anything)
Variance and electoral quotient: the population each riding in a province should ideally have, the variance can range from -25% to +25% per riding depending on other factors (chiefly size), and can go beyond that in exceptional cases.
nomination meeting: a meeting of party members in a riding who select their candidate by ballot (no primaries)
NOB or paper candidate: a name on the ballot simply to ensure that a party can be voted for in a given riding where they have no chance, this is usually ensured by the parties' central office
by-election: equivalent of special election in the U.S.
poll: a small part of the riding that votes at one location in one box on election day, indentified by a number and sometimes also a letter. The largest ridings can have as many as 400 of them, and contain anywhere from 20 to 500 votes
600-polls: the polls used for advance voting, listed separately in the statement of return, each advance poll groups together a number of election-day polls
Special Group 1 and 2: polls for voters unable to vote include in their riding, including prisoners, members of the Armed Forces abroad, other people abroad, certain people with disabilities, and a few other groups of people. The votes are counted at Elections Canada central office in Ottawa, must arrive before 6PM local time on Election Day and skew heavily Conservative, even in their weakest ridings.
blackout: there are two blackouts. One, which has been determined to be legal, prohibits any result to be broadcast anywhere where the polls have not yet closed. The other prohibits polling results in the final 3 days.
strategic voting: technically illegal (along with vote-trading), voting for the candidate most likely to beat another candidate (most likely for the NDP out West, the Liberals in the Maritimes and Ontario and the Bloc in Québec if it's against the Tories, with a number of scattered exceptions especially around Montréal.)
Are there any others I missed?