Tag Archives: Deborah Coyne

Roundup: Push-poll “miscommunications”

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Oh dear. It seems that despite initially denying the story, the Conservatives did eventually admit to being behind a push-poll in Saskatchewan designed to turn public opinion against the electoral boundaries changes – changes that will disadvantage the Conservatives as genuine urban ridings are carved out of the old distorting “rurban” ridings. Oh, but it was an “oversight” that they didn’t identify themselves. I’m sure the CRTC will be happy to hear that “guilty plea,” as Pierre Poilievre would term it, were this a Liberal mishap. But it’s not, so I’m sure their euphemisms will be equally creative.

The Environment Commissioner tabled his final report yesterday, which details frustrations with the pace of resource projects outstripping the capacity of regulatory agencies who are dealing with changing legislation, jurisdictional confusion, and not enough resources.

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Domesticity politics: the Winnipeg non-debate

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“I’m sorry my dears, but you are up for elimination.” Ten words that should have been spoken, but one again, were not as the second Liberal leadership – well, “forum” – happened in Winnipeg. It was not a debate, but a series of one-on-one interviews with failed candidate Harvey Locke, whose uninteresting and frankly dull interview style did nothing to advance the plot of the leadership race. Someone pointed out that leaders do more one-on-one interviews than they do debates, so from that viewpoint it made a certain amount of sense – but one would think you’d need a competent interviewer and some actual questions of substance.

There isn’t a whole lot to be said about each of their answers, other than the fact that several of them had a tendency to ramble aimlessly around the topic without offering a substantive answer, and it didn’t help that the interviewer didn’t call them on it or try and keep it engaging.

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A few too many: the Vancouver Liberal leadership debate

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Sunday was the first of five Liberal leadership debates, and it certainly showcased a few things – mostly the seriousness with which we should be paying attention to some of the also-rans, and how the field needs to be whittled down. Because it does. The nine candidates were about four too many in this round, and it should be whittled down even more as they proceed. I almost have this vision of the remaining debates being run like RuPaul’s Drag Race, where every week, the bottom two candidates must debate for their lives, at which point RuPaul will declare to one queen candidate “chanté, you stay,” and the other to “sashay away,” until we are down to the top three.

But a boy can dream.

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Roundup: Returning to untenable demands

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The AFN is apparently back to their demands that Harper and the GG be at the table together at their next meeting – which is untenable. That a number of chiefs think that the GG can force Harper to deal with their issues is a gross misconception that they need to abandon. It’s even worse when one of them comes on Power & Politics and declares that the Queen got it wrong. Because you know, it’s not like she’s been on the job for the past 60 years or anything. Meanwhile, Tim Harper has a very disturbing tale of threats and intimidation going on in the internal politics of the AFN, which includes threats being made against National Chief Shawn Atleo and other regional chiefs. Paul Wells writes about Stephen Harper’s choice between cooperation and confrontation with First Nations.

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