Poll: Liberals win Majority if Trudeau is Leader

Since the defeat of Paul Martin’s Liberal Minority Government in  2006 by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the news has only gotten worse, and worse, and worse for the Liberal Party of Canada. The once mighty party was reduced to third party status last year after repeated hits, losses and unfavorable conditions. However, there is a glimmer of hope at the horizon. As the Liberals grow and rebuild, a new Forum poll for The National Post shows, in favor of other polls that have been conducted, that star candidate Justin Trudeau can take them back to the top if he becomes their leader.

The poll found that if Trudeau were the leader, the Liberals would win a 160 seat majority government with 39% of the vote. The Conservatives would be left as the Official Opposition with 104 seats at 29% of the vote. The NDP would be reduced to a bit more than what they used to be, 42 seats with 24% of the vote. The Bloc Quebecois, Greens and other parties would share the remaining 8% of votes and this would only yield one seat for the bloc Quebecois. The survey was conducted on October 27 and called 1,735 random people that are eligible to vote.

The same poll found that current interim leader Bob Rae would have faired poorly had he thrown his name into the hat. If Bob Rae would have entered the race and won and lead the Liberals into an election, the Liberals would remain in third place with only 76 seats.

In terms of regional voting, Trudeau faired best in Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. One poll suggests that Trudeau would actually bring the biggest Liberal seat count from Quebec since when his father was Prime Minister.

“Interestingly, the Bloc Québécois take more seats if Justin Trudeau is NOT leader [eight seats] than they do if he is [one seat],” noted Forum research.

Meanwhile, British Columbia and much of the west remain a battle ground for the NDP and Conservatives.
“The ‘Trudeau Effect’ has proven itself as a real phenomenon, and it appears to be growing, not going away,” said Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff.

This poll agrees with other polls that have been conducted long before Trudeau even announced his bid. On September 28, 4 days before Trudeau jumped in, another Forum poll predicted that Trudeau would destroy the NDP.

A CROP poll last week suggested that in Quebec, the Liberals could pull ahead of the NDP with 36% support, leaving the Bloc Quebecois in disarray.

Over the past 6 years, the Liberal Party of Canada took a beating. As the Conservatives boxed them into a corner, every election defeat brought about a new leader and another defeat. The main headlines in the news outlined perceived weaknesses and polls that favored Conservative wins, incremental in size.

Last year the Liberals roughly halved their 2008 seat count and lost Official Opposition status. With Conservative legislative motions designed to act as landmines, Conservative strategists gambled on election fatigue and pessimistic media outlooks for the Liberals and succeeded. The Conservatives’ labeling motions as Confidence motions forced the Liberals to abstain or vote with them. A vote against a confidence motion – which would have been secured by the NDP and Bloc Quebecois who repeatedly objected to Conservative legislation, would have caused the writ to fall and another election to commence.

With another possible election, the Liberals stood to lose as polls incrementally favored the status quo and the electorate grew impatient and apathetic. So what were Liberal strategists to do? Force an election and lose more seats to the Conservatives or swallow the poison pill and sit on their hands? Clearly they chose the latter and while they kept seats this way, it gave the NDP and Conservatives plenty of ammunition.

A Liberal Party with its hands tied will inevitably appear weak and inevitably be labeled weak – as it was by the Conservatives. A Liberal Party that passes legislation with the Conservatives is not considered change, it is considered “more of the same” which gave the NDP momentum to come in and claim to be a better opposition party and most importantly, an alternative to the Conservatives. Add leaders that didn’t resonate well and we see a grim picture for the Liberals. The Conservatives got their coveted majority and the NDP made inroads with the majority of Canadians that simply didn’t support the Conservatives.

However, support for the Liberal Party is starting to rebound and polls suggest a Trudeau-led party would bring the Liberals back to power.

While the Forum poll suggests that Trudeau’s majority would be a slim 160 seats, he will have gotten that single-handedly whereas Harper’s Conservatives needed two minority mandates and 5 years to get 166 seats. Note that in both cases there is discontent. In 2006, Canadians voted for change because they were tired of the Martin Liberals and were angry at the controversies spiraling around the sponsorship scandal. Now, we have a Harper-led Conservative government that is seemingly losing support and let’s not forget that the Conservatives have had a good number of scandals of their own that measure up or surpass the sponsorship scandal.

For any Liberal out there, this is the best news they’ve had in over 6 years. As for the NDP, this may be the worst news they will receive and as for the Conservatives… the train can only roll so long before it needs to make a stop for gas.

A poll can only say so much, but it is always fun in politics to speculate and try to forecast election possibilities. Now it’s your turn, what do you think will happen if Trudeau wins the Liberal leadership race? Follow us and let us know what you think: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.

Conservatives: No one is supposed to know how much we actually spend

The Conservatives may have enacted austerity and they may be calling themselves good economic managers, but as we speak, they are not only spending recklessly, they are trying to hide their spending from the public and from elected MPs in the House of Commons.

The Auditor General released a report Tuesday which concluded that the Department of Finance Canada often neglects the impact of tens of billions of dollars of spending and tax measures on the government’s long-term fiscal sustainability. In short, the Conservatives are spending merrily and their party is blind, along with the rest of Canadians. In other words, the deficit is larger than the media will tell us. In other words, this country is in deeper financial trouble than many can even imagine. In other words, the next government will face the same surprise the Chretien government did in 1993.

Without surprise, the report found that MPs of all parties are voting blindly on financial manners that will impact Canadians down the road.

“This lack of reporting means that parliamentarians and Canadians do not have all the relevant information to understand the long-term impacts of budgets on the federal, provincial and territorial governments in order to support public debate and to hold the government to account,” the audit says.

This isn’t a surprise as the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be considering legal action on over 60 federal departments that refuse to disclose the way cuts will be administered and what programs and services they will effect.

“This means that senior management and the Minister of Finance were not informed of the overall impact on the government’s long-term fiscal position until well after they had approved the budget measures,” the report says.

The report also concluded that if public debt grows faster than the economy, our fiscal outlook will be unsustainable and the living standards for future generations will be compromised. In other words, Canada’s financial outlook is in such bad shape that a debt crisis is being considered a possibility. We all saw how that turned out in Greece and much of Europe.

So the Conservatives claim to be good economic managers, and in 2006 they ran on a campaign of accountability. Lying in both domains, the Conservatives have held power for 6 years and have left a dent in Canadian fiscal policy and have ranked Canada as the worst of the G7 in fighting corruption and bribery.

“Unless there is strong political will to take this on as an important issue, Canada and other countries that are laggards will remain behind.”
Huguette Labelle, the chair of Transparency International

Canada’s record on bribery compared to the rest of the G7

Cases prosecuted.
227 – United States
135 – Germany
35 – Switzerland
24 – France
18 – Italy
17 – United Kingdom
2 – Canada

With a budget of austerity and unnecessarily painful measures to Canadians – like raising the age of retirement to 67 – the Conservatives have hid the fact that in their first 2 years of power they spent Canada into deficit (half a year before the global recession happened), doubled the Prime Minister’s Office and inflated the size of Canadian bureaucracy (Don’t forget the new senators and their perks). On top of that, they are spending over $60 million this year alone on government ads that act to showcase a government that has a record of job growth and economic stewardship. As we speak, the Canadian economy paints a different story. Prices at the stores are rising, the cost of living is becoming an issue, and job growth is stagnant at best.


So one must ask where the billions in stimulus went and where the Conservatives are spending the billions of dollars that they refuse to take account for and refuse to announce to Canadians and the House of Commons. One must wonder what the actual state of Canadian finances really are and how large of a mess there will be to clean up.

Do you believe in the numbers the government claims are the actual figures for Canada’s fiscal state? Do you think the Conservatives are about to repeat the history of Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives in leaving behind an economy that is on the brink of collapse? How big of a clean up will the next government have to make before it can restore Canada to a good economic footing? Follow us and let us know what you think: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.

Conservatives Fail on National Security

The Conservatives are usually the ones prided with policies pertaining to national security and protecting countries from foreign threats. Not only did the Conservatives fail to live up to their mantra, they endangered our allies.

A leak of sensitive information the magnitude of WikiLeaks has not only compromised Canadian security, it has compromised the security of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance including the United States, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Among the data that was leaked by Navy Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle to the Russian government for a course of 4 years and a rate of sale of $3,000 per month, was highly sensitive information pertaining to the positions and strategies of units of all of our armies along with information we had been gathering on situations overseas. Our allies are infuriated, Canada’s security and integrity have been compromised and where was the Conservative government to make sure this would never happen?

On top of that, American governments usually get briefings when these kind of situations take place. The Canadian government has done everything in its power to minimize and hide the facts of the affair from Canadians.

US President Barack Obama blocked a Chinese national company from buying out a wind farm project in northern Oregon near a Navy base where drones and military weaponry are routinely tested. He cited national security and now with Canada’s intended sell off of Alberta crude oil to China, our American neighbors are stating that a Chinese takeover would endanger national security even more.

It should be common sense that the Canadian government block this deal but Harper has his heart set out on Chinese ownership of our land, our resources and our economy. Not only is the planned CNOOC purchase of Nexen a threat to Canadian National Security and Sovereignty, it is reckless and painful economics. One of the clauses in the deal which was hidden in the recent omnibus bill states that China will have precedence over Canada when it comes to the usage of these resources. In other words: when supplies dwindle, we take the cut, not them.

In the end of the day, not only have the Conservatives put our national security at risk, they have endangered our allies and trade partners to the point that diplomatic relations can and will deteriorate and as a consequence, Canada will lose its trustworthy reputation – thus taking us off the table in future trade deals and future economic decisions that we rely heavily on.

What do you think of the way the Conservatives handled the information leak and the Chinese purchase of Canadian oil? Feel free to follow us and leave your feedback Facebook, Twitter, Google+.