The Vancouver harbour, whose future was almost certainly decided by the 2013 BC Election, on E-Day (May 14, 2013).

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Christy the Campaigner's 20-point comeback, against the most technically proficient campaign the BC NDP has ever run, contains a number of lessons for federal political watchers to consider carefully.

Here are several to ponder, and no doubt more will surface as the BC provincial election win of Premier Christy Clark and her free enterprise coalition party, the BC Liberals, starts to sink in.

• "No more Mr. Nice Guy' – The "positive campaign" as a strategy in the face of relentless attacks does not work, especially when the ballot question winds up being leadership. Everyone remembers the 2012 Obama campaign as positive, but seems to forget that a brutal series of negative ads against Mitt Romney six months earlier paved the way for their positive end-game. Voters (especially women) might tell focus groups ahead of time that they don't like negative attacks and prefer positive campaign ads, but that feedback is given in isolation from exposure to the other campaign. Once you get into an election period, with the two main campaigns running in parallel, if one campaign is constantly attacking you, turning the other cheek looks wimpy.
• "Comms trumps Policy" – If you're explaining, you're losing, and policy requires a lot of explanation. As a sub-lesson, a policy pivot – such as on the Kinder Morgan pipeline – probably needs the groundwork laid well before an election in order to make sense to the voters whose decision would be affected by it. Facts and subtleties get lost in a campaign, while a lie that touches a key value, if repeated relentlessly, cuts through. In politics nowadays, you can either be in the Message Box or the Penalty Box.
• "Anger is better than love, and fear works better than hope" – In the chaotic and frenzied info-saturated world electoral campaigns now have to function within, strong negative emotions repeated endlessly cut through the clutter if they're not answered better with strong communications and marketing. The BC Liberal campaign was able to change the ballot question for enough people from 'time for a change' to 'fear of weak leadership', while the hopeful kids who wanted 'change for the better' did not seem to feel it necessary to vote.
• "Stop looking at the polls" – Good luck with that, but the panels from which online polls are drawn are clearly not representative of the voting popoulation as a whole, in either demographics or psychographics, and two of the leaning online pollsters in the industry – both of whom were able to approximate the 2009 election results pretty closely, were off the mark by 6 to 8 points. This is becoming a real problem, because the public domain polls drive the news coverage, which then often wrongly governs the mood on each campaign, and may even influence tactical voting decisions right down to the final hours. I don't know where or how Christy Clark found it in her to put on a game face and smile every single day, when all around predicted doom. But by the same token, did confident NDP voters go out and enjoy the sunshine rather than vote, believing their win was in the bag? We believe that awareness of the Wild Rose surge in Alberta caused people to switch during the final weekend there, but did a belief in the invincibility of the BC NDP's final E-minus-1 poll numbers cause voters to skip a trip to the polls? Or is it the case that online polls find younger, left-wing voters, while traditional telephone polls find older, more conservative ones?
• "Stop trusting the polls" – While good campaigns don't base their strategy on following the polls, how can they help but use polling data as a measure of how they're doing? If you're constantly getting the wrong feedback on what you're doing, how can you improve it?
• "The lessons are different for right and left" – Conservative parties received confirmation last night that they are right to stay in their own bubble and mistrust the 'analysis' coming from the policy wonks in the media (or, evidently, me). They learned that they can speak to their core supporters, who have very different demographics and values, and ignore everyone else. Ranking the BC ridings by turnout shows the older, wealthier ridings near 60% turnout, and the less-well-off, younger ridings down in the low 40s. The turnout bonus for conservative parties is apparently accelerating, as well, going from a 3- or 4-point gap in the 2011 federal race to a 10-point gap last night in BC. Ten ridings were decided by less than 3.7% of the vote, and while under BC elections law there are six kinds of absentee ballots that won't be counted until May 27 which could conceivably change the outcome in several of those seats, it was not closeness of the race but turnout that was decisive in explaining last night's historic upset. If the traditional demographic bases of support for progressive parties do not vote in sufficient numbers, they will become increasingly powerless to effect other changes in their society.

For the BC Liberals, they ran the campaign they thought they needed to, given the apparently dire circumstances, and stuck to their guns to the end. They are certainly entitled to more than one victory lap and "I told you so" for that.

The BC NDP ran the campaign its leader insisted he wanted to run, and while it will be tempting to compare it to the 2011 Layton campaign, given a few of the key BC campaign personnel known to Ottawa insiders, the BC campaign lacked a clear hit on attendance records, or negative ads about flip-flops and Tim Hortons healthcare. It really did not start to prosecute the incumbent government's record until E-minus-10, which wound up being far too late. Indeed Dix wound up under-performing the 2009 vote-share achieved by former leader Carole James, whose ouster by a baker's dozen of caucus members paved the way for his ascendancy to the leadership.

It seems a cruel twist of fate that Senator Doug Finley could not live long enough to see Tuesday's come-from-behind shocker, though I'm sure he would have enjoyed it thoroughly. I wonder what other lessons he would have drawn. What lessons do you draw?

Although crazy work commitments are keeping me away from all the blogging I'd like to be doing, we were fortunate to snag a guest-post from a political scientist who studied the recent federal Liberal leadership race. Thanks to David McGrane for sharing his recent data and findings with Pundits' Guide readers.

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A Referendum on Electability – The 2013 LPC Leadership Race

by David McGrane

The day that the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) announced its leadership results, I attempted an experiment with administering a ‘virtual exit poll.’  I set up a 10-15 minute online survey. Just when the leadership results were announced, I posted a link to the survey several times on twitter and Facebook ads began to run that were targeted at LPC supporters. Respondents were entered into a draw for one of ten $20 Tim Horton’s cards as an incentive.

Unfortunately, the experiment did not work.  Depending on where the question was placed in the survey 200 to 330 out of the 104,000 LPC voters completed the survey. As such, the attrition rate was rather high as the survey when along.  Over half of these respondents were from Ontario, while the other respondents were scattered throughout Canada.  Of the 324 respondents who stated their first choice in the leadership the breakdown was a follows: 66% Trudeau, 15% Hall-Findlay, 12% Murray, McCrimmon 3%, Cauchon 2% and Coyne 2%). Registered supporters made up approximately 30% of the sample. In this sense, the sample under-represents Trudeau voters and over-represents voters from Ontario and Hall-Findlay supporters.

When using a convenience sample, such a small sample size prevents me from presenting firm findings about voter behaviour in the LPC leadership race.  On the bright side, the LPC in Saskatchewan did e-mail the survey to their members at the same time. Using this method, I got about 350 or 15% of the Liberal leadership voters in Saskatchewan to fill out the entire survey.  The lesson is that you can’t do ‘end run’ around parties in surveying One-Member-One-Vote leadership races in Canada. You basically need their co-operation or you are out of luck.

I will be using the 350 respondent sample of Saskatchewan Liberals for a future academic paper. However, in this blogpost I will use the other sample of 330 Liberals outside of Saskatchewan to glean some tentative conclusions about why Trudeau won in such a landslide. That is really my question. We knew that Trudeau would probably win the LPC leadership…but why did he win so big?

The intent of the questionnaire was to test what factors influenced LPC voters when they decided to choose their preferred leadership candidate. To limit the length of the survey, I asked questions concerning only the top three candidates (Justin Trudeau, Joyce Murray, and Martha Hall Findlay).  The results are presented below. The sample for these results ranges from 330 LPC voters for questions placed at the beginning of the survey to 200 for question placed at the end of the survey. 

While this sample should not be considered ‘representative’ in a scientific sense, it does give us some clues to the strength of the brand that Trudeau developed among LPC members and registered supporters during the leadership campaign. From the data that I have gathered, Trudeau had significant advantages over his two nearest competitors in all areas of the campaign. However, the areas where Trudeau had the largest advantages were ideology, voter contact, endorsements, and electability.  The biggest factor in Trudeau’s win was his ability to convince LPC that he was the candidate that would win the party the most seats in the next election.  Contributing to his image of electability, respondents felt that Trudeau was a good speaker who looked good on television and that he could provide inspiring, compassionate, and strong leadership to appeal to those who did not vote for the Liberals in the last election. When it came to electability, Trudeau seemed to be a near perfect 10 and that is why he won in a landslide.

But, I did say a ‘near’ perfect 10. The data does reveal some of what the Liberals who took this survey regarded to be their new leader’s liabilities and it reads like a Conservative Party attack ad.  We can see some of the criticism of Trudeau as ‘policy lite’ coming out.  Despite having a much larger and better funded campaign machine, the respondents in the survey were no more aware of Trudeau’s policies than they were aware of the policies of his two closest competitors.  Further, the respondents in the survey were somewhat skeptical about Trudeau’s understanding of the economy and his experience outside politics.  Compared to Trudeau, they saw Martha Hall Findlay as the more knowledge and intelligent candidate who had a better grasp of the economy and superior experience outside of politics. Murray was seen as an honest and moral candidate who had good experience inside and outside politics. Though they couldn’t match his style, Hall Findlay and Murray were seen as having some the substance that Trudeau lacked.

Ideology and Policies

My data indicates that Trudeau did a very good job at positioning himself in the middle of the left/right ideological spectrum of the Liberal Party.  Respondents were asked to place themselves, Trudeau, Murray, and Hall-Findlay on an 11-point scale with 0 being the far left of the LPC and 10 being the far right of the LPC.  The mean placement for the LPC voters was 5.96, which was close to how they judged Trudeau who scored 6.15. The other two candidates were judged to be more on the ideological extremes of the LPC. Hall-Findlay was viewed as being on the right of the LPC with a score of 7.54, while Murray was viewed at being on the left of LPC with a score 3.87.

On two of the controversial issues of the campaign, the LPC voters seemed to side with Trudeau. For instance, respondents were asked to place themselves on the following scale: 0 = the Liberal Party of Canada needs find ways to co-operate with the NDP and Greens to prevent vote splitting and defeat the Conservatives in the next election and 10 = the Liberal Party of Canada should run candidates in all ridings in the next federal election and not cooperate with the NDP or the Greens in any way. The mean of 7.56 clearly leans towards Trudeau’s position of non-co-operation.  The Northern Gateway pipeline ended up being a divisive issue in the LPC leadership race with Hall-Findlay strongly supporting it and Murray strongly opposing it.  As such, respondents were asked to indicate their position on the following scale:  “0 Liberals should oppose pipelines to bring raw bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to the West coast and 10= Liberals should support the development of Alberta's oil sands through the building of pipelines to West coast.”  The mean of the respondents was 5.70 indicating that Trudeau’s wishy-washy position of supporting the Northern Gateway pipeline but not its current route was the safest position to take.  

The fact the Trudeau was more ideologically in tune with LPC voters in the survey came out when respondents were asked how much they agreed with his policies that they had heard about. Of those who remember hearing about Trudeau’s policies, they were asked to indicate their level of agreement on a 1-5 scale (1=agreed with all of his policies, 2=agreed with most of his policies, 3=agreed with some of his policies and disagreed with others, 4= disagreed with most of his policies, 5=disagreed with all of his policies). Trudeau scored a mean of 2.14.  When the same question was asked of other candidates, Hall-Findlay scored 2.71 and Murray scored 3.06.   

Effectiveness of Trudeau’s Campaign Machine

Interestingly, the Trudeau campaign had an advantage over other campaigns when it came to contacting voters but it did not do a superior job at communicating Trudeau’s policy positions.  On a scale of 1-6 (1= zero contact and 6=over 20 contacts), the Trudeau campaign scored a mean of 4.65 compared to 3.45 for the Hall-Findlay campaign and 3.44 for the Murray campaign.  However, when respondents were asked if they remembered hearing about any of the candidates policies, Trudeau’s advantage nearly disappears.  On a scale of 1-3 (1=hearing about several policies, 2=hearing about one or two policies, 3=hearing about no policies), the Trudeau campaign scored a mean of 1.57 that was relatively close to the means of 1.61 for the Murray campaign and 1.69 for the Hall-Findlay campaign.

Endorsements

As could be expected, the respondents were much more impressed with Trudeau’s endorsements than with the endorsements of the other candidates. Using a 0 to 10 scale (0=not impressed at all and 10=very impressed), respondents were asked how impressed they were with the candidates’ endorsements by “MPs and other notable people.” The mean for Trudeau was 7.00 which was much higher the mean for either Murray (4.89) or Hall-Findlay (3.80). 

Electability

Trudeau’s largest advantage over his opponents was in the area of electability. The voters in the LPC leadership race who took the survey clearly believed that Trudeau was most able of the candidates to win more seats for the party in the next election.  Respondents were asked: “On a scale of 0 to 10, during the leadership race, how did you rate the ability of the following candidates to win more seats for the Liberal Party of Canada in future elections? 0 = not very able to win more seats, 10 = very able to win more seats.”  Murray scored a mean of 4.89 and Hall-Findlay scored a mean of 5.48.  Trudeau scored a whopping 9.88 which is close to a perfect 10! 

The media may have played a role here as 96% of the respondents choose Trudeau as the candidate that the media thought would win the most seats for the LPC in the next election.  When asked on a 0-10 scale how favourable the media coverage of the candidates was (0=not very favourable and 10=very favourable), Trudeau scored a mean of 8.74 compared to the lower scores of Murray (6.41) and Hall-Findlay (6.14).

Leader Abilities and Character Traits

The respondents were given a list of things at which successful leaders of political parties much excel. The respondents were then asked how they rated the abilities of the three candidates in these areas based on 1-4 scale (1=poor, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=excellent).  The mean scores for Trudeau were highest on “looking good on television” (3.84), “being a good public speaker” (3.65), and “being able to appeal to those who did not vote for the Liberals in the last election.”  Trudeau’s lowest scores were “being hard for the Conservatives to attack” (2.34), “having good experience outside of politics” (2.62), and “understanding the economy” (2.65). By coincidence, the two latter themes were picked by the Conservatives in their first attack ads against Trudeau. Perhaps, voters in the LPC leadership race had some of the same concerns about Trudeau as the Conservatives’ focus groups.

As for Hall-Findlay, she beat Trudeau on “understanding the economy” (3.06 versus 2.65), “being hard for the Conservatives to attack” (2.69 versus 2.34), and “having good experience outside of politics” (2.91 versus 2.62).  The only area where Murray beat Trudeau was her experience outside of politics  (2.96 versus 2.62). Although, reflecting her standing as a MP, she did come close to beating Trudeau when it came to “having good experience inside politics”: Murray scored 2.91 to Trudeau’s 2.96. Finally, all three candidates scored nearly the same on “understanding social policy issues like healthcare and education” (Trudeau scored 3.03, Hall-Findlay scored 2.93, and Murray scored 2.92). 

Similarly, respondents were given a list of positive character traits and asked how well these traits described the three candidates (1=not well at all, 2=not to well, 3=quite well, 4=extremely well).  Trudeau scored highest on “inspiring” (3.62), “compassionate” (3.52), and “provides strong leadership” (3.37) and his lowest scores were on “knowledgeable” (2.93) and “sensible” (3.05). Hall-Findlay beat Trudeau when it came to “knowledgeable” (3.16 versus 2.93) and “intelligent” (3.36 versus 3.14) while her lowest scores were on “inspiring” (2.39).  Murray narrowly beat Trudeau on three traits: “moral” (3.27 versus 3.22), “honest” (3.26 versus 3.24), and “knowledgeable” (2.99 versus 2.93).  Murray’s weakest score was on “provides strong leadership” (2.34).

Conclusion

According to this data, Justin Trudeau won a landslide in the LPC leadership race because the campaign became a referendum on which candidate could deliver the most seats for the party in the next election.  Trudeau was able to build up an image for himself in the party as the candidate who had the most endorsers, contacted LPC members and registered supporters the most, took positions that had broad support in the party, and was favoured by the media.  He had an image of a compassionate and inspiring candidate who was telegenic, a good speaker, and attractive to traditionally Liberal voters who may have drifted away to support other parties. All of these factors led Trudeau to be seen as the most ‘electable’ candidate. Once he was seen this way, whatever reservations Liberals may have had concerning his experience outside of politics or his political knowledge faded. His campaign took on an air of invincibility and he steamrolled to victory. 

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David McGrane, Ph.D, is a Professor of Political Studies at St. Thomas More College in the University of Saskatchewan, and the author of the chapter on the NDP in the regular Carleton University collection “The Canadian Federal Election of 2011”. He has studied several federal and provincial leadership conventions in Canada. Read more at davidmcgrane.ca.

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The Prime Minister has decided to take his licks early in the Big Land, and bury the news of his likely by-election loss to the Liberals in Labrador the day before BC will almost certainly elect a new NDP Premier.

With the results of an early Forum Research poll confirming what federal Liberals were telling reporters about their internal polling after Caucus two weeks ago – namely that they were way out ahead of former Conservative M.P. Peter Penashue, himself now in a race with the NDP for second place – some in the nation's capital had been speculating on the possibility of a longer call, and an effort to rehabilitate the government candidate's prospects.

But instead a writ was issued Sunday afternoon for an Election Day on Monday, May 13, which is coincidentally or otherwise the day before the provincial fixed election date in British Columbia.

Meanwhile, there is another provincial sidebar to the by-election timing back on the east coast. A federal writ has to be at least 35 36 days long and end on a Monday (or Tuesday if the Monday is a statuatory holiday), and a federal candidate cannot be an elected member of a provincial legislature at the time of his or her nomination with Elections Canada, under the Parliament of Canada Act. This means that acclaimed Liberal candidate, the soon-to-be-former MHA for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair and former provincial fisheries minister and opposition Liberal Leader, Yvonne Jones, will have to resign her provincial seat before filing her federal nomination papers.

But as noted by CBC St. John's reporter David Cochrane on his Twitter feed, the length of a provincial writ in Newfoundland is quite short (between 21 and 30 days, according to s.37 of their provincial Elections Act), and so PC premier Kathy Dunderdale could call a provincial by-election to replace Jones before the federal by-election is even over.

Jones is the sixth member of the provincial Liberal caucus there, which in spite of losing second place in the popular vote to the NDP in the last election (19% to 24.6%), did manage to win one more seat than the NDP's five (and if you want more cross-country fun facts, most people credit that sixth seat as being St. Barbe in western Newfoundland won by Jim Bennett, the husband of former Ontario provincial Liberal leadership candidate Sandra Pupatello, but I digress).

Once Jones resigns, however, the Liberals and NDP will be tied in the number of seats they hold in the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial House of Assembly. I'm told the Liberals will get to keep their official opposition designation unless the NDP can defeat them in Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair, but on the other hand that provincial riding has traditionally been considered one of the most reliable Liberal strongholds even in tough times, so such a possibility seems more theoretical than realistic for now.

Back to the federal scene, another gambit was launched by Green Party leader Elizabeth May the weekend of the March 23 federal Liberal leadership debate in Montréal, when she called on the NDP not to field a candidate in Labrador and instead "cooperate" with the Greens who she announced would not be running a by-election candidate there either to give the Liberals a free run at Penashue. Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray rushed to claim some credit for this play as well, saying that she had called May earlier in the week to discuss it, and Murray's media folks were telling people at the debate that the Greens had taken this decision democratically, consulting their local riding association and national executive, just as Joyce had advocated.

Give May credit for having the Ottawa media ready to buy whatever she's selling, but in fact the Green Party's association with seal hunt foes makes them a toxic non-entity across much of Newfoundland and Labrador — particular in the latter, where their riding association was registered for less than a year between March 2007 and February 29, 2008, and the party managed to obtain just 139 votes in the last general election. So, it's not clear at all which riding association May would have consulted locally, given that it had been deregistered. Her own release only admitted to consulting the last campaign manager in the riding.

In fact, what May did do was duck the necessity of running a by-election campaign in a very expensive part of the country to compete seriously in, for an E-day result that could only lock in a very tiny vote share for her party, which had just scored so well in the earlier by-elections held in the Fall of 2012 but spent heavily to do so. [A move at least one pundit predicted last year, by the way.] And at least one Liberal leadership candidate was quite happy to help her do it.

Anyway, the gambit was all for nought. The NDP poured hot water on the idea, and held a three-way contested nomination the next day (Sunday, March 24), which was won by the son of a long-time Happy Valley-Goose Bay family and northern policy expert, Harry Borlase, over Labrador City municipal councillor Mike Goosney and former Labrador Party candidate Brandon Pardy, with NDP Leader Tom Mulcair making the first campaign trip to the riding of any party leader shortly thereafter. And less than two weeks later, re-appointed Conservative candidate Peter Penashue showed a poor third in the only published poll of the campaign so far, proving that no such "co-operation" gimmick was necessary — given that the Liberals and NDP had apparently both eaten into the Conservatives' supposedly impervious vote without it.

[I have my doubts about polling remote northern ridings, but more on that below.]

Not that Yvonne Jones' own ascension to the federal candidacy was without some back-story drama of its own. Acclaimed leader of her provincial party in the summer of 2010, one month later Jones was faced with a completely unexpected breast cancer diagnosis after she decided to request an early mammogram in the wake of the province's breast cancer testing scandal, and she temporarily stepped down as leader to have surgery and recuperate. The following summer, mere days after Jack Layton's own poignant announcement, and with a fall provincial election about to be launched, Jones emerged to face the cameras once again, and reluctantly announced that her immune system was not strong enough to lead her party through the campaign, and that she would have to step down as party leader, though run for re-election in her local riding. "I am sad and I am a little angry. I am feeling cheated by cancer from doing something that I have dreamed of doing my entire life," Jones told the news conference. She was re-elected as MHA with 71% of the vote two months later.

Fast forward to 2013, and the very same day former Conservative M.P. Peter Penashue resigned over irregularities and perhaps worse with his 2011 election campaign return, Jones announced her intention to seek the federal Liberal nomination, while former Liberal M.P. Todd Russell, who had lost to Penashue by 79 votes two years earlier and 22 days shy of becoming eligible for his MP's pension, was still considering his options. According to John Gushue in a great analysis of the riding's politics for CBC.ca, Russell had never had much of a "machine" of his own in the south, relying instead on Jones' body of volunteers for his re-election in the past, even though he had defeated her and two others for the Liberal nomination back in the 2005 by-election. With Jones' muscular early entrée into the nomination race now, and with Russell having just started a new job that put him squarely opposed to the major hydroelectric development project in the riding, he was left with no choice but to bow out, though he pointedly refused to endorse her and vowed to stay out of the by-election fray. Several weeks later, he was one of eight Inuit-Métis protesters arrested at the Muskrat Falls worksite outside Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Meanwhile, Liberal party president Mike Crawley tweeted that Jones was the party's official candidate, she having been the only candidate to come forward and was therefore acclaimed.

Meanwhile, both Penashue and Jones are in various kinds of legal limbo. His 2011 election return has been referred to the Commissioner of Elections, for investigation and a determination as to whether charges or a simple compliance agreement should be pursued, while Jones is also waiting to see whether a ferry company whose contracting practices with the provincial government she criticized will sue her for slander as they've threatened or not.

Finally, outstanding questions about Penashue's campaign return also created some drama at a government announcement he attended, where rather than ask him about the government spending as he had hoped, for some reason the CBC reporter who first broke the story of his campaign irregularities, Peter Cowan, doggedly insisted on asking Penashue about the investigation instead, leading the Conservative candidate to accuse the CBC of having family ties with members of Yvonne Jones' campaign team. The CBC in bed with the Liberals? Surely a first for that allegation, but anyways the raw footage of the news conference makes for an interesting watch.

Enough of the drama. Now to the numbers.

A quick look at the federal and provincial results since 1997 show why all three parties believe they could be in the hunt in Labrador. Plotting them as the number of votes, instead of vote share also situates both Todd Russell's 70% percent of the vote in the A-B-C election of 2008, when large numbers of Conservative voters stayed home, and also his narrow loss to a resurgent Conservative vote in 2011 as the Liberal vote fell, a direction it continued into the fall provincial election, notwithstanding Yvonne Jones' personal result in Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair.

The NDP is also fighting its way back up from weaker performances in the middle of the timeline, and indeed it did not even field a candidate in every provincial riding in each of the last four provincial elections. Still, its strength can be seen in the riding of Labrador West, which was held by its former provincial leader Peter Fenwick in a former incarnation as Menihek from 1984-89 (Fenwick later ran for the Canadian Alliance federally), and then by Steelworkers staff rep Randy Collins from 1999 until 2007, when he resigned in disgrace after being charged in the provincial MHAs' expenses scandal. Collins eventually plead guilty, repaid the $300K and served 21 months in jail, after telling the court that what he had done "was wrong".

Even after the Collins resignation, the NDP held on to a strong second place in the ensuing provincial by-election, and they also won the Lab West portion of the federal riding handily in 1997 and ahead of a three-way split in 2011. But with the exception of the 2008 federal A-B-C election, the Conservatives have bested the Liberals in every federal or provincial election there since 2005.

Labrador West represents about 36% of the federal riding's electors, as does Lake Melville, which contains Happy Valley-Goose Bay, along with North West River, the Innu community of Sheshatshiu, Muskrat Falls and Churchill Falls. It's the home provincial riding of both former Conservative M.P. Peter Penashue and the NDP's candidate Harry Borlase, as well as former Liberal M.P. Todd Russell.

The Liberals have maintained a lot more strength in this part of the riding, until they fell off in 2011. A major beneficiary of their weakness was the NDP's Arlene Michelin, a Happy Valley-Goose Bay town councillor, who ran provincially in 2011 and was approached to run federally in this by-election, but cited family reasons for declining the offer. Given that the area is home to a military base at Goose Bay, and the site of a lot of hydroelectric development activity, it's not surprising to see a strong Conservative vote here over time, but as you can see, the provincial PCs posted significantly higher vote totals than their distant federal cousins until recently.

Also, note that the federal NDP to provincial PC switching here between the 1997 federal and 1999 provincial, and the likelihood of at least some of that switching in the opposite direction between the federal and provincial elections of 2011. Finally, in the 2003 provincial election, the Labrador Party cut substantially into the Liberals' vote.

The remaining 28% of the riding is split between Jones' provincial riding of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair to the east (17% of the electors) and the northern riding of Torngat Mountains (11% of the electors), both of which have been overwhelmingly Liberal since 1993, except for the 2007 provincial election in Torngat which was won by Progressive Conservative Patty Pottle, and the 2011 federal election there which was won by Peter Penashue based partly on the strength in advanced voting in the Innu community of Natuashish. (I would plot these two ridings, but it's already nearly morning, so I'll have to stop now).

For either Penashue or the NDP's Harry Borlase to win, they would have to hold off Yvonne Jones and the Liberals organizationally in the two largest provincial ridings discussed above, in the face of strong Liberal polling results. While Jones is probably untouchable in the federal part of her old provincial riding, that's still worth a maximum of 1,500-1,700 votes to her. And while Penashue could enjoy a home advantage up the east coast, again that's a block of maybe 500 for him (and up to another 700 for Jones).

Unknown is whether having Todd Russell offside with the Liberal campaign in his former areas of strength will have some negative consequences for Jones, but given that she showed up to his organization's picket against the Muskrat Falls project, that looks to have been laid to rest.

Finally a note on polls in the remote northern ridings. At the best of times, survey samples are very hard to draw in places like that. Phone service is not the same as found down south, and folks from the aboriginal communities can show low response rates. These kinds of difficulties would only make an IVR poll more difficult to get a representative sample from than a CATI (phone) one. The results could tell you something about Labrador City/Wabush and Happy Valley-Goose Bay, but given that Penashue won in 2011 based on the advance polls in communities which had previously not voted to any great extent, polls and the seat projection methodologies that were extracted from them completely failed to predict his win last time – even on election night. So, poll readers beware.

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There has been some fantastic reporting on the case of the financing and election expenses of the Peter Penashue Conservative campaign in Labrador, but an awful lot of misinformation elsewhere in the media as well about the details of the case.

So here's a briefing note, Pundits' Guide-style, on the law, on how to read his financial returns, and a little on what may come next.

I would say that the popular (mis-) understanding of the story at this point is that "Peter Penashue overspent on his campaign by accepting $40,000 in illegal donations, and had to pay it back, and we're just waiting for some kind of Elections Canada report to come down, to know what happens next".

There are a lot of factual errors in that statement. For one thing, illegal donations on the one hand, and election overspending on the other, are two different issues. If Candidate X incurs tens of thousands of dollars flying around the riding, so long as its cost was under the campaign ceiling or was for his or her own travel as a candidate, no problem – as long as it was accounted for at commercial value.

Whether the money to pay for it came from eligible contributions to his candidate campaign, from funds transferred in to the candidate's campaign from the local party riding association, or funds transferred in from party headquarters, it doesn't matter. If they couldn't raise the money locally to cover the cost, they could always just ask party headquarters to transfer in some funds. This happens a lot with those big northern remote ridings, which are expensive to travel across, and usually have a low average income so are hard to raise money in.

Ineligible Contributions

Here's what the Elections Act says on contributions:

Ineligible contributors

404. (1) No person or entity other than an individual who is a citizen or permanent resident as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act shall make a contribution to a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant. [emphasis mine]

Return of contributions

(2) If a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant receives a contribution from an ineligible contributor, the chief agent of the registered party, the financial agent of the registered association, the official agent of the candidate or the financial agent of the leadership contestant or nomination contestant, as the case may be, shall, within 30 days after becoming aware of the ineligibility, return the contribution unused to the contributor or, if that is not possible, pay the amount of it or, in the case of a non-monetary contribution, an amount of money equal to its commercial value, to the Chief Electoral Officer who shall forward that amount to the Receiver General. [again, emphasis mine]

Contributions by corporations – or by what in this case seem to have been some individuals signing corporate cheques to make their contributions and other cases of a single corporate cheque purporting to cover several individual contributions – are "ineligible" under the Act.

(As are union contributions – though we note with a sigh that some Conservatives in the House of Commons are referring to these corporate donations sweetly as "ineligible contributions", but the sponsorships at the NDP convention which were afterwards deemed to be union donations less sweetly as "illegal contributions"; sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and all that).

Now if someone has received an "ineligible contribution" as an official agent for a candidate, or chief agent for a party, they have to pay it back within 30 days of becoming aware of its ineligibility. And they can choose to (or in some cases have to) pay the money to the Receiver General of Canada instead – including the commercial value of any non-monetary contribution.

If you want to follow along on Mr. Penashue's return at the Elections Canada website for the next bit, it's about a 20-step process to get to the table of contents of the various parts of his return (or you could just click here), but once you get there, make sure you (a) already selected by candidate's details, (b) select 'Data as reviewed by Elections Canada …' if not selected already, and then (c) pick the relevent section.

[Click on image to open a full-sized version]

In the Penashue case, we can look at Part 2a of his revised financial return ("as reviewed by Elections Canada"), and see that the official agent declared a total of $28,360.14 in eligible contributions from 42 eligible donors. [You can find that yourself - I'm not showing the names of citizens who contributed to our democracy in good faith and whose donations have been deemed eligible.]

But in Part 2c of that return, we find the list of 28 ineligible contributions (both monetary and non-monetary) totalling $46,560.54, and note that the first 27 monetary contributions worth $27,850 were paid back to the Receiver-General through the CEO on November 28, 2011, while the non-monetary contribution of $18,710.54 from Provincial Airlines Limited/Innu Mikun Ltd., on line 28, was paid out on March 4, 2013.

[Click on image to open a full-sized version]

So, ineligible contributions were accepted during the campaign, and were later repaid via the Chief Electoral Officer to the Receiver-General for Canada, per s.404(2) of the Act. Not great, but so far so good.

The legal questions on the contributions side, though, are whether the official agent "knowingly" accepted ineligible contributions, whether he colluded to hide the true source of any of those donations, etc., etc. These are evidentiary questions for the Commissioner of Elections, who is still investigating, and once concluded will forward a recommendation to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for a decision on whether charges should be laid, and against whom.

Also, anyone making a contribution on behalf of someone else would have committed an offence, or anyone who colluded to hide the source of a donation. Again, an evidentiary issue about which we could speculate endlessly, but is up to the Commissioner of Elections to investigate properly and thoroughly, collect up all the evidence, and then perhaps recommend to the DPP that charges be laid.

Exceeding the Expense Limit

Moving to the other side of the ledger, here's what the Act says about candidate expenses and a candidate's expense ceiling:

Candidate's expenses for electoral campaign

406. An electoral campaign expense of a candidate is an expense reasonably incurred as an incidence of the election, including

• (a) an election expense;
• (b) a personal expense; and
• (c) any fees of the candidate's auditor, and any costs incurred for a recount of votes cast in the candidate's electoral district, that have not been reimbursed by the Receiver General.

Election expenses

407. (1) An election expense includes any cost incurred, or non-monetary contribution received, by a registered party or a candidate, to the extent that the property or service for which the cost was incurred, or the non-monetary contribution received, is used to directly promote or oppose a registered party, its leader or a candidate during an election period.

….

Definition of "cost incurred"

(4) In subsection (1), "cost incurred" means an expense that is incurred by a registered party or a candidate, whether it is paid or unpaid. [emphasis mine]

S.C. 2003, c. 19, s. 26.

….

Personal expenses of a candidate

409. (1) Personal expenses of a candidate are his or her electoral campaign expenses, other than election expenses, that are reasonably incurred in relation to his or her campaign and include

• (a) travel and living expenses; [emphasis mine]
• (b) childcare expenses;
• (c) expenses relating to the provision of care for a person with a physical or mental incapacity for whom the candidate normally provides such care; and
• (d) in the case of a candidate who has a disability, additional personal expenses that are related to the disability.

….

Prohibition – expenses more than maximum

443. (1) No candidate, official agent of a candidate or person authorized under paragraph 446(c) to enter into contracts shall incur election expenses in an amount that is more than the election expenses limit calculated under section 440.

Prohibition – collusion

(2) No candidate, official agent of the candidate, person authorized under paragraph 446(c) to enter into contracts or third party, within the meaning given that expression by section 349, shall collude with each other for the purpose of circumventing the election expenses limit calculated under section 440.

As you can see, expenses can be paid or unpaid. Candidate expenses can be either election expenses or personal expenses, but only the former are subject to the expense ceiling. Candidate travel is a personal expense that doesn't fall under the ceiling, but non-candidate travel is an election expense.

Note that the expenses in question in Mr. Penashue's case have to do with candidate versus non-candidate travel. We can look at Part 3a, which is the expense portion of his amended return, and see the problematic expense on line 83.

[Click on image to open a full-sized version]

$19,869.56 in Candidate's personal expenses (which includes candidate travel) + $5,840.98 in Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel) = $25,710.54 in travel services that were purchased from Provincial Airlines/Innu Mikun, for which $6,000 + $1,000 was the agreed final price, including a $18,710.54 discount from their commercial value. As of when the return was filed, $1,000 of the $7,000 was still owing to the airline as an Unpaid Claim from the campaign.

Now, note further that the airfare discount of $18,710.54 on line 83 of Part 3a is also recorded as an ineligible contribution on Part 2c, and shows there as having been paid back to the Chief Electoral Officer for the Receiver-General on March 4 of this year. All good, so far as it goes.

But also note that the amount of the non-candidate travel – the $5,840.98 with the red circle around it on line 83 of Part 3a – when added to Penashue's other election expenses, puts his total Election Expenses subject to the Limit up to $89,997.85.

Looking at Part 4 of his return (the Campaign Financial Summary) we see from line 3 that, for candidates in Labrador riding in the 2011 election, the Permitted limit of election expenses (aka the "ceiling" or the "expense limit") was $84,468.09.

So Penashue is now $89,997.85 – $84,468.09 = $5,529.76 over the limit. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that his election expenses now represent 106.55% of the limit, in order words 6.55% over the limit, and thereby violating s.443 of the Act.

Role and Responsibility of the Official Agent vs the Candidate

A Candidate isn't the one who accepts donations. The candidate's Official Agent is. And in one of those typical anomalies in the Elections Act, which the Chief Electoral Officer has recommended that Parliament amend, if the official agent screws up on filing the candidate's return – then he or she is the one to go to jail, not the candidate.

Here's what the Act says about official agents:

Duty of official agent

436. The official agent of a candidate is responsible for administering the candidate's financial transactions for his or her electoral campaign and for reporting on those transactions in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

[Also, no person (or entity) other than an official agent shall: s.438(2) accept contributions to the candidate's campaign, (3) issue tax receipts to contributors to that campaign, or (4) pay expenses, except for petty cash and candidate's personal expenses.]

[And only an official agent or the candidate shall: s.438(5) incur campaign expenses, or (6) pay the candidate's personal expenses [which includes candidate travel, but not family or staff travel, a point we'll return to in a second].

Offences

Here is a list of some of the technical offences you can commit under the s.497(1) of the Act as an Official Agent, on what's called a "strict liability" basis (i.e., if you did it, you did it, whether you meant to or not) which can result in a "summary conviction" instead of an indictment:

[Note: there are a lot of them, so you can just skip over them to read about the punishments, if you like.]

• 497 (1) (r) being an official agent, contravenes section 437 (failure to satisfy bank account requirements);
• (s) being an official agent, a candidate or a person authorized under paragraph 446(c), contravenes subsection 439(2) (incurring more than maximum allowed for notice of nomination meetings) or subsection 443(1) (exceeding election expenses limit) or, being an official agent, candidate, person authorized under paragraph 446(c) or a third party, contravenes subsection 443(2) (colluding to circumvent election expense limit);
• (t) being an official agent, contravenes subsection 445(1) (failure to pay recoverable claim in timely manner);
• (u) being an official agent, contravenes subsection 451(1), (2), (3) or (4) (failure to provide electoral campaign return or related documents);
• (u.1) being an official agent, fails to comply with a requirement of the Chief Electoral Officer under subsection 451(2.2);
• (v) being a candidate, contravenes subsection 451(5) (failure to send declaration re electoral campaign return to agent);
• (w) being an official agent, contravenes section 452 (failure to pay value of contribution that cannot be returned);
• (x) being an official agent, contravenes section 455 (failure to provide updated electoral campaign return or related documents);
• (y) being an official agent, contravenes paragraph 463(1)(b) (providing incomplete electoral campaign return);
• (z) being an official agent, contravenes subsection 472(2) or section 473 (failure to dispose of surplus electoral funds);
• (z.1) being a registered agent or financial agent, contravenes section 476 (improper or unauthorized transfer of funds);
• (z.2) being an official agent, contravenes subsection 478(2) (failure to return unused income tax receipts);
• (i.3) being a person who is authorized to accept contributions on behalf of a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant, contravenes section 404.4 (failure to issue receipt);

There are other "strict liability" offences that apply to everyone in Canada, not just official agents.

• 497 (1) (i) being a person or entity, contravenes subsection 404(1) (making contribution while ineligible);
• (i.4) being a person or entity, contravenes subsection 405.2(1) (circumventing contribution limit);
• (i.5) being a person or entity, contravenes subsection 405.2(2) (concealing source of contribution);
• (i.6) being an individual, contravenes section 405.3 (making indirect contributions);
• (i.7) being a person authorized under this Act to accept contributions, contravenes section 405.4 (failure to return or pay amount of contribution);

But there's also another class of offences, which "require intent", and could be either summary convictions or indictable offences (note the use of the words "wilfully" or "knowingly").

Some apply to official agents, while others apply to anybody:

• 497 (3) (f.12) being a person who is authorized to accept contributions on behalf of a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant, wilfully contravenes section 404.4 (failure to issue receipt);
• (f.13) being an individual, wilfully contravenes subsection 405(1) (exceeding contribution limit);
• (f.14) being a person or entity, knowingly contravenes subsection 405.2(1) (circumventing contribution limit);
• (f.15) being a person or entity, knowingly contravenes subsection 405.2(2) (concealing source of contribution);
• (f.16) being a person entitled to accept contributions under this Act, contravenes subsection 405.2(3) (knowingly accepting excessive contribution);
• (f.161) being a person or entity, knowingly contravenes subsection 405.2(4) (entering prohibited agreement);
• (f.162) being a person or entity, contravenes subsection 405.21(1) (soliciting or accepting contribution);
• (f.163) being a person or entity, contravenes subsection 405.21(2) (collusion);
• (f.17) being an individual, wilfully contravenes section 405.3 (making indirect contributions);
• (f.18) being an individual, wilfully contravenes section 405.31 (exceeding cash contribution limit);
• (f.19) being a person authorized under this Act to accept contributions, wilfully contravenes section 405.4 (failure to return or pay amount of contribution);
• (p) being an official agent, a candidate or a person authorized under paragraph 446(c), wilfully contravenes subsection 443(1) (exceeding election expenses limit);
• (q) being an official agent, a candidate, a person authorized under paragraph 446(c) or a third party, contravenes subsection 443(2) (colluding to circumvent election expenses limit);
• (r) being an official agent, wilfully contravenes subsection 451(1), (2), (3) or (4) (failure to provide electoral campaign return or related documents);
• (r.1) being an official agent, wilfully fails to comply with a requirement of the Chief Electoral Officer under subsection 451(2.2);
• (s) being a candidate, wilfully contravenes subsection 451(5) (failure to send electoral campaign return declaration);
• (t) being an official agent, wilfully contravenes section 452 (failure to pay value of excess contribution);
• (u) being an official agent, wilfully contravenes section 455 (failure to provide updated electoral campaign return or related documents);
• (v) being an official agent, contravenes paragraph 463(1)(a) or knowingly contravenes paragraph 463(1)(b) (providing electoral campaign return containing false or misleading statement or one that is incomplete);

Punishments

According to s.500(1), conviction of a "stricty liability" offence like those in s.497(1) would result in a summary conviction having a punishment of up to three months in jail or a fine of up to $1,000, or both.

But under s.500(5), conviction of an offence "requiring intent" with a dual procedure like those in s.497(3) could result in either: (a) a summary conviction with a punishment of up to a year in jail or a fine of up to $2,000, or both, or (b) an indictment with a punishment of up to five years in jail or a fine of up to $5,000 or both.

And if the offence is a serious one, then under s.501(1), the court is empowered to make any other orders to bring them in compliance with the Act, or make compensation, perform community service, and so forth.

Finally, under s.502(1)(c), if a candidate or official agent "wilfully contravenes section 443 (exceeding election expenses limit)", then that's called an "Illegal practice" and under s.502(3) the person is prevented from being elected to or sitting in the House of Commons for five years, in addition to any other punishment.

To Recap

Exceeding the spending limit is the charge that finally stuck to the Conservative Party in the so-called in-and-out advertising case. They faced charges on the more serious offences, and while charges were dropped against the individuals, the party paid the maximum fine.

In this case, we do not know what evidence there is of "wilfully" or "knowingly" accepting ineligible donations, or incurring election expenses over the limit. But the Commissioner of Elections is investigating, and the former official agent insists he accepted them 'unintentionally". Given the facts now reported on Peter Penashue's election campaign return, one or more strict liability offences appear to have taken place by exceeding the ceiling, but whether they are something more we don't know yet.

Now many people make the point that these extra expenses are what allowed Penashue to fly around the riding and win by 79 votes. Newsflash: Penashue's own flights were not included under the ceiling. And I highly doubt a well-funded party headquarters wouldn't have chipped in with funds to cover a star candidate's travel expenses, when he was only nominated at the last minute (April 4, according to my notes from the time). And it's very hard to out-organize incumbent MPs in far-flung remote ridings like that.

The incumbent MP he beat would have been flying around the riding for nearly 6 years on House of Commons travel points, except during writ periods. Todd Russell spent considering less than the expense limit in the 2011 campaign, perhaps because looking at his previous vote-share, he might not have believed he needed to raise so much money this time to win this campaign.

Other folks wonder if all this detail makes a difference, or if one charge is worse than the other? Well, exceeding the limit is an offence for a candidate, and has some pretty strict punishments if done deliberately. That's the offence that in the worst case could strip Penashue of his seat in the House of Commons, and keep him from running for another five years.

Others scoff at whether the official agent was an "inexperienced volunteer", when he'd worked as an official agent before. I don't know if that was in a remote riding though, which as you can see sometimes has very different requirements from an urban or suburban one. In how many other ridings in Canada would the cost of a staffer hopping the cab to travel with the candidate, risk putting that candidate over the limit. This might have been the inexperience part – not saying no to the family and staff travelling with Penashue, I don't know.

Anyways, I hope this illustrated explanation has helped explain the factual details of the financial return, while we await word of the investigation and disposition.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

The resignation of first-time Labrador Conservative M.P. and one-time President of the Innu Nation, Peter Penashue, means that a by-election will be held in this northern seat as soon as May 6, 2013.

Penashue (pen-AA-shoe-way) wants to be a candidate in that by-election, but said in a statement that he's resigning after learning that his first official agent had accepted some "ineligible campaign donations". However a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office merely thanked the Minister for his service, leading some to wonder whether he would receive his party's endorsement for a second run. Luckily the Twitter assures us he will indeed be a candidate.

The riding of Labrador, NL – with the notable exception of 2008 – has seen a long-term decline in Liberal support, mirrored by a growing trend-line for conservatives, though 2011 was the first election in which the Conservatives were able to convert that to a win. Liberal candidate Lawrence O'Brien replaced the retiring Liberal M.P. Bill Rompkey in a 1996 by-election [UPDATE: and NOT in 1993, as earlier written], and was re-elected three more times until his untimely death from cancer forced a second by-election in 2005.

That by-election was won for the Liberals by then-President of the Labrador Métis Federation, Todd Russell, who was in turn narrowly defeated by Innu leader Penashue in 2011 — exactly 22 days before Russell would have been able to vest his MP's pension.

I hate to be cynical, and I'm really not cynical about these things in general, but a 79-vote margin plus 22 days to an inflation-protected pension of whatever size have got to add up to pretty strong incentives to try and run again. Particularly when Russell's typical raw vote of 5,500 or so could be worth as much as 70% of the vote in the famous "ABC campaign" election of 2008, which saw large numbers of Conservative voters stay home, and figuring on a typical low-turnout by-election, he would have to like his chances.

But Russell will probably have some problems to contend with himself. For one thing, the NDP has long coveted the riding, given their reasonably concentrated base of support in Labrador City in the west of the riding where they have occasionally won a provincial seat. The party has long aspired to find the right candidate to bridge that base with other potential pockets of support. And while it benefitted to a lesser extent than the Liberals from the 2008 "Anyone-but-Conservative" campaign, the NDP did at least move into second place with a solid 20% of the vote in that election, and unlike the Liberals were able to maintain their vote share in 2011.

For another thing, the provincial Liberals are not the party benefitting from PC premier Kathy Dunderdale's mid-term unpopularity on the provincial scene, the NDP is – topping the provincial polls for the first time in history.

Now, Penashue's own 2011 candidacy was controversial within the Innu Nation, which was not unanimous in its support for the various deals its leadership had signed onto with the federal and provincial governments, and who historically have not voted at all in federal or provincial elections, much to the chagrin of the NDP which always considered them natural allies.

Other significant voting blocks in the riding include the Labrador Inuit up the coast, and the residents of Happy Valley-Goose Bay (especially those who work at the Airforce Base there). And looking at a map of the poll-by-poll results, the various regions break down much as you would expect, with Happy Valley-Goose Bay the red dot in the middle.

[Click on map below to open up interactive version on the Pundits' Guide riding profile page for Labrador]

Now, I don't claim to be an expert in the field of energy, but the Muskrat Falls project in Labrador, and its relationship to the Maritime Link project, will undoubtedly be an issue in the by-election. It pits Newfoundland & Labrador against Québec, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair against the Québec National Assembly, Peter Penashue against his own mother apparently, the Nova Scotia NDP government against their currently more popular rivals in the Nova Scotia Liberal Party, and some federal Liberal leadership candidates against each other.

But I don't think you can tip-toe through the tundra on this issue, and expect to win a Labrador by-election right now. Whatever his newfound reputation difficulties on the national stage, Peter Penashue is a local boy made good, who brought federal investments to his riding. It's hard to out-organize an incumbent in a remote riding like this at the best of times, and those two factors alone would tend to make him the early favourite.

Assuming Penashue's resignation reached the Commons Speaker today, and gets from there to the Chief Electoral officer within the next few days after that, the Prime Minister will be able to call a by-election as early as the last week of March for Monday May 6. The last day to call it would be sometime in early September for a date on or after mid-to-late October.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

Earlier today, Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau dropped out of the race after failing to generate a debate on substance versus flash.

This is too bad, because he never really tried.

Garneau wanted a debate on substance with Justin Trudeau, but he never raised a substantive issue for the debate. The best he came up with was to ask "what is your position on the middle class?". How can you even have a position on that? I don't know what that would even be.

It's like the hackneyed start to so many badly-written political speeches: "This campaign is about leadership". It's not *about* leadership, if you have to say it is. If a campaign is truly about leadership, then show some. Same goes for substance. Actions speak louder than words.

The young woman who ran the organic farm stall at the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market, and challenged Justin Trudeau on fossil fuel subsidies and inter-party cooperation last weekend, could have taught Garneau a thing or two. She didn't issue a news release, hold a 130-S, and dispatch her spinners on Twitter. She just asked Trudeau the questions. And then watched him skate.

Instead the Liberal leadership race has been marked by a series of too-clever tactics and gimmicks, by a gang of folks who don't even do them well for the most part anymore. For example, if you're going to make a big attack, don't signal it to your target days ahead of time and give him the chance to prepare.

And now comes the inevitable battle over the rules. What Liberal contest is complete without one of those. Because no-one trusts one another to act in the overall good of the party, rules multiply and become unwieldy, and then when they crack under their own weight, people argue over them and try to press their own advantage all over again.

One candidate who is doing most things right is Joyce Murray, who although I disagree with her crazy elite-accomodation scheme to withdraw electoral choices from voters in the hopes of steering their choice elsewhere, at least has a clear unique selling proposition to distinguish her from the other candidates. She has also made sustainable development and electoral reform key parts of her platform, and has an actual electoral strategy to try and win the leadership contest using the contacts of organizations like LeadNow.ca and Avaaz.org.

Another is Deborah Coyne, who is making a clear pitch to the policy descendants of the Trudeau Sr. era, if not the groupies, with her work to update the classic strong central government strain of federal Liberal thinking — though she doesn't seem to have a political strategy for winning the vote, and seems intent on winning a role in the party's future policy development instead.

Even Martha Hall Findlay staked out some turf on the right of the spectrum, mixed with a personal style that is usually charmingly frank and self-depracating, and an electoral strategy that focussed on building up a concentration of support out west. But again, she hurt her own cause when she made her own big attack move personal rather than substantive.

But, no, political "substance" isn't found in 44-point economic plans that no-one can remember, or earnest invocations to "be bold" either.

It's taking a substantive policy issue, that resonates with the political coalition you want to appeal to and creates a meaningful difference with your opponents, finding compelling language to distill and communicate its essence, and then provoking debate over it for the purpose of winning people over to your perspective.

At one time, there was nobody better at doing that than the federal Liberal Party. But on the eve of their fifth and final leadership debate, and the deadline for voter registration, it seems many of them have just forgotten how.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

Satellite trucks filled the parking lot at Mississauga's International Centre to see nine candidates at times stumble their way through the first real debate on their way to picking the leader of the third party in the House of Commons.

The combative and fast-paced format was designed to see which of the federal Liberal leadership contestants could master the art of the pithy clip in today's rapid-fire media environment, while still conveying something of substance or connecting to a deeply held value. The answer: very few of them.

Many have still not answered the very simple question of why they are in the race at all, what their unique selling proposition or positioning statement is, or how specifically they plan to lead the party back out of the wilderness. Others are unconsciously channelling the very tabloid TV format they nominally object to, trying to interrupt or take cheap shots in service of landing some mythical punch that would become the clippable moment of the debate.

[Click on image to play CBC-The National's story on yesterday's debate]

While it's become fashionable to champion the value that political neophytes could bring to our system of governance, yesterday's debate clearly demonstrated how politics is a trade that takes considerable skill and experience to do well in; and that not enough of those on stage have completed a sufficient apprenticeship inside or outside of politics to pass muster for the top job. They will need to sharpen up their offerings considerably to justify the expense and effort of staying in the race. It could be that their best contribution to party renewal at this point is to withdraw.

The vacuous but earnest hejiras of several entrants should end now, as should the preening ego trips of others. Meanwhile, the cryogenic candidacy of Martin Cauchon, who still has evident political skills but hasn't had time to update his content or frame since the last decade, needs more resuscitation than time will probably allow at this stage.

Deborah Coyne, I believe, is being unfairly lumped in with the no-contribution candidates, as she shows up well-prepared for every debate, and is clearly the candidate of the strong central government wing of the federal Liberal tradition. She's running a cost-effective campaign suited to its more modest goals, and contributes points of substance with dignity and without personal attack.

Likewise, Joyce Murray has enhanced her reputation as a serious candidate by gracefully defending her controversial "cooperation" proposal for joint nominations with the NDP and Greens against some pretty ham-fisted and clunky attacks from the political amateurs on the stage. A proposal, by the way, that may enjoy more support amongst grass-roots Liberal members than amongst the political operatives who have been attending the leadership debates (h/t @Impolitical), and so should be accorded the respect of a well-considered response.

The gentleman from space, former astronaut Marc Garneau, is probably in the best position of any candidate to give Justin Trudeau's candidacy the kind of dignified vetting it so clearly needs. But Garneau will need to retool his attack a little, as when you criticize another candidate for lacking substance, you better have a quiver-full of your own proposals ready at the tip of your tongue, in order to make the contrast. Having supporters post links to your website on Twitter after the fact just dulls the impact.

Which brings us to the incompetent, nasty and probably career-ending political attack from Martha Hall Findlay yesterday, when she questioned Justin Trudeau's use of the phrase "middle class" based on a personal attack of his family's wealth. If you are going to shoot the King, you do not miss. If you are going to attack, for heaven's sake game out the likely response. Unlike the interesting chess moves we saw in last year's NDP leadership race (see: "The Push, the Pin, the Polls…"), here the Queen just attacked the King from the square right next to him, and was promptly removed from the board, suddenly undoing all the good work she had done to resuscitate her reputation within the party after two other disastrous strategic moves in the past (leading the charge to back Stéphane Dion in 2006, and then spending most of 2011 campaigning in ridings other than her own, which she had told everyone was "safe" but lost narrowly as a result). I do not see how Hall Findlay recovers from this misstep, but if Stephen Carter is as good a political operative as he says he is, he'll have to be proving his worth over the coming weeks.

INSTA-UPDATE: Almost as soon as this blogpost went to press, I noticed that Martha Hall Findlay had posted an apology to her website. It must be getting a lot of traffic, because I can't currently load the page, but I'll comment further if there's anything to add once I can.

From my perspective, the GTA debate was a turning point in the leadership race. I doubt there is anyone left with the ability or organization to catch Justin Trudeau, and very few are left with the legitimacy to vet him. Trudeau took the political openings his inexperienced opponents left him yesterday, and when Hall Findlay foolishly teed him up for the big moment, he hit it out of the park. (Sorry to mix the sports metaphors there.) Garneau has yet to really land a glove on Trudeau, and in fact was forced to defend the young dauphin after Hall Findlay's assault on him proved so unpopular with the audience.

Liberals do not want to see personal attacks against the man who will almost certainly become their leader, and whose persona invokes the hope that better days are returning for their once-great party. They need to give him the chance to improve quite a bit more and lose a bit of the swagger. But more importantly, they need to hear more from him about how he'll lead them out of the wilderness than has yet been on offer. If Justin Trudeau won yesterday's debate, it was only because most of his competitors lost it so badly.

———————————–

Meanwhile in Saskatoon, far from the radar of the national media, four leadership candidates completed the fourteenth and final debate in a six-month race to pick the next provincial leader of the NDP opposition, and likely the next premier of Saskatchewan.

[Photo credit: Greg Pender, Saskatoon Star Phoenix]

Like the federal Liberal Party, the Saskatchewan NDP had used its glory days as a crutch for one leadership campaign too many in 2009, when its old boys network engineered the installation of former deputy premier Dwain Lingenfelter as "the only one who could win". But a series of clumsy attack ads against the province's popular premier Brad Wall, coupled with Lingenfelter being the wrong leader to sell a decidedly left-wing opposition platform in the fall 2011 campaign, led to predictable results, and the party is now having the wide-open race it needed four years ago.

Featuring two MLAs with backgrounds in teaching (Trent Wotherspoon) and the provincial public service (Cam Broten), along with a medical doctor whose 2009 leadership run nearly caught Lingenfelter (Ryan Meili), and a nationally known labour economist (Erin Weir), the competitive race has featured a detailed and for the most part gentlemanly contest of ideas about resource royalty rates, the provincial tax system, rural farm ownership, the determinants of health, uranium mining, the emerging role of first nations youth in the province's economy and society, and lengthy discussion of how to rebuild and reinvent the party from the ground up.

While fundraising totals and social media counts give some indication of how active the various campaigns are on the ground relative to each other, in fact it possible to see a path to victory for nearly every candidate in the race, as two different recent polls suggest.

[Click on image to open full-sized version]

The amounts being raised and spent are small by national standards – although it's fair to say that some of the provincial NDP candidates will have raised more than some of the federal Liberal candidates to date – but they're being reported on every month. And the number of eligible voters stands at 11,000 – not large, but likely greater than the number of federal Liberals enrolled in the province, and showing a large increase in the number of youth members. On the other hand, the lack of diversity in the Saskatchewan race – four white male candidates in their thirties – stands out starkly against the range of candidates seeking the federal Liberal helm, and is the all-too-predictable result of years wasted not recruiting sufficient numbers of women and diverse candidates in that section of the party, who would then be ready to step forward.

All four candidates are using NationBuilder as their website and online-organizing platform, by the way; a fortuitous coincidence that should assist the party in integrating the data from all four campaigns afterwards to help the rebuilding process.

It will be interesting to look back in five years, and see which of the two leadership races produced the greater change in their party's rebuilding and growth prospects.

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UPDATE: Here is the text of Martha Hall Findlay's apology from her website, during the 5 minutes or so when it came back up for air over the past hour:
 

2013 – MHF Comment – Leadership – An Apology, and the “Middle Class”

There are some who believe that I overstepped a line in the Leadership debate yesterday. To Justin, his family and to those who were offended, I apologize. My comments were not meant to be personal, in the sense of being in any way a comment on Justin’s character – indeed, I have the greatest respect for Justin’s passion, enthusiasm and commitment.

My concern is what I have been saying from the beginning: that to lead the Liberal Party and to lead this country, particularly when the economy is the most important issue facing Canadians, we need leadership that not only understands the many challenges facing Canadians, but also understands how to meet those challenges.

When choosing a Leader, it is a person’s record of experience, substance and achievement that are important, regardless of the circumstances into which that person was born.

I am proud of my educational achievements, my background of success in law and business, my record of fulfilling responsibilities to my employees and to my family. I agree with other of my co-candidates, that platitudes and lack of concrete policy ideas are not enough. We all have lofty goals, but it’s how we plan on achieving them that is critical.  Clear ideas, clear goals and clear plans of action are what we need to regain the trust and confidence of Canadians.

A comment on my concern over the use of the word “class”:

We all know that we have economic disparity in Canada – too much. We have lower income people who struggle to make ends meet, a great many who get by with the basics, and people who are well-to-do. We also have a great many who, by dint of hard work, improve the situation they started with for themselves and their families. We all know that our society is made up of people of a variety of income levels. But for me, the words “middle class”, “lower class” and “upper class”, although we hear them often in the US and the UK, are terms that carry with them a societal judgment, connotations of social ‘standing’ that I would prefer we not have in Canada.

My objective is to improve access to opportunity for all Canadians, whether it’s a kid at Jane and Finch in Toronto, in Attawapiskat, or in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We cannot ignore the income disparities that we have – indeed, our focus must be on increasing equality of opportunity. All Canadians want jobs. All Canadians want a better future for their kids. All Canadians want to be proud of their country.

My colleagues in this race have all come from different backgrounds, and have had access, in different ways, to the great opportunities this country can afford. I myself had the benefit of excellent education, opportunities and role models when I was young.

This campaign will have its moments, some we might regret, and we will all face challenges and criticism. It is politics. I will say, though, that if there is a Liberal in this country who doesn’t believe that the next leader will come under intense scrutiny from the Conservatives, the NDP and the Green Party they are mistaken. We need a leader who has the ability to withstand that inevitable scrutiny, to take them on, and indeed – take the fight to them.  I have the ability and the commitment to do just that.

I was kind of hoping not to be drawn into the very labour-intensive biznak of writing and keeping track of the nomination news at least until the new Representation Order came out in the fall. But political junkies that they are — some people are already signalling their intentions to run or step down, and we may as well start documenting that now, before falling too far behind.

UPDATEs: I got Scott Simms' riding wrong in the boundary commission segment, by confusing him with Scott Andrews (which I gather happens a lot; sorry fellas). Also, an alert reader reminds us about the possibility that Gerry Byrne could run provincially; see below.

The Impact of Redistribution

First a little context. We now have 8 of the 10 boundary commission reports tabled in the House of Commons (all except Ontario and Québec, which have both been given an extension until February 21). Four of them have even been through the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs already (Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador). The only MP objections raised amongst those four had to do with: (a) where the boundary commission drew the boundary between the new St. John's East and St. John's South–Mount Pearl ridings (i.e., after the initial commission proposal) which split the community called "The Narrows" in half (the shot that opens CBC's Republic of Doyle, interestingly enough), and also (b) the new name for Avalon riding name for the new central Newfoundland riding which Bonavista–Gander–Grand Falls–Windsor Liberal M.P. Scott Simms argued should start with "Coast of Bays" rather than "Bay d'Espoir" to be more inclusive of all the bays involved. The Committee agreed with both changes and so advised the House in its 40th report.

The Standing Committee has now started on its study of the Alberta boundaries with the northern and central ridings (evidence not yet transcribed and translated from the 57th meeting on February 7, but a very interesting audio recording of it is available here). Fort McMurray-Athabaska MP Brian Jean argued that, because the federal 2011 census significantly under-reported the shift-working population of Fort McMurray with its telephone/mailback/online data collection methodology, as compared with the door-to-door methodology used by the municipal census, and given that the city is the fastest-growing part of the province, the new riding's boundaries should be limited to just the municipal boundaries of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (which includes Fort Mac). This position had also been supported by the local Liberal riding association in hearings before the boundary commission.

Another northern MP, Chris Warkentin (Peace River), talked about the difficulties the new boundaries would create for him and  neighbouring MPs in navigating their ridings, and argued that the boundary commission for Alberta erred in adhering too strictly to a 5% variance, given not only the large geography, awkward boundaries for an MP to service, but also a single MP needing to serve for example 32 municipalities and 26 first nations. He and Mr. Jean argued to keep the northern ridings north of the "swath of trees" that separate Edmonton from the rest of northern Alberta. Meanwhile, central Alberta MP Blaine Calkins (Wetaskiwin) argued that the Rimby area belonged back with the northern Red Deer riding, while the Hobbema First Nations territory should be split so that each of the bands could be joined with the city (Ponoka vs Wetaskiwin) they most often do business with, and finally he argued against the name Red Deer-Wolf Creek for the northern Red Deer riding in favour of the name Red Deer-Lacombe which would be better understood locally.

So, we have had four kinds of MPs' objections so far:

• Objections based on a new boundary drawn by a boundary commission since its first proposal and after the public hearing phase was over,
• Objections based on new information, for example about the most suitable name,
• Objections that revisit earlier unsuccessful representations to a boundary commission, but which the MPs are hoping will be bolstered by a unanimous recommendation of the Procedures and House Affairs Committee, and
• Objections that the MP did not present during the public hearings at all, but which stem from representations made to him or her by constituents.

In the latter case, Wetaskiwin MP Blaine Calkins was asked why he hadn't raised this information earlier to the boundary commission. He said that he was responding to constituents, but suggested that a better process might have been for the Commission to solicit input in advance of making their initial proposal. Unfortunately, Mr. Calkins seemed to be unaware that that is exactly what the Commission had done, so he missed his chance for a pre-submission and a presentation to the public hearings, and had to settle for an appearance before the Standing Committee instead.

Next Steps

The Committee will continue consideration of MP objections to the Alberta report at meetings on Tuesday, February 12 and Thursday, February 14. They have until June to study and report all 10 provinces, and then the Chief Electoral Officer will take the summer to prepare the Representation Order, which is expected to be proclaimed by the Governor-in-Council in September. The new riding boundaries are called the "Representation Order", and will come into effect for any election held at least 12 months after it's proclaimed.

Now before any nomination meetings can be held, of course all the parties' riding associations will have to either pass resolutions continuing themselves on the new boundaries, or where there are new or significantly changed ridings, winding down the old associations, and creating new ones (which will also entail the distribution of old ridings' assets and liabilities proportionally to the new ones). You can appreciate the amount of work involved here. There are currently 1,181 riding associations registered, and that's not counting the 30 new ones that will have to be created for each major party in the new ridings.

Nomination News

Notwithstanding that effort, a number of potential candidates are trying to get out of the gate early, so we may as well record their intentions now.

First, the Liberal leadership candidates:

• Martha Hall Findlay has said she intends to run again in 2015 in the Willowdale, ON riding (we don't know exactly what boundaries it will have yet, of course).
• Martin Cauchon has said he intends to run in a Charlevoix, QC riding – his hometown and where he first ran against Brian Mulroney at the age of 22 – rather than in his old seat of Outremont against NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.
• George Takach has said he will be devoting the next 20 years of his life to politics, but I didn't think to ask him which riding had caught his eye. A question for next weekend's debate gathering, for me, then.
• Karen McCrimmon I assume will run again in whatever riding corresponds with the current riding of Carleton–Mississippi Mills, just west of Ottawa, while David Bertschi seems intent on another run in Ottawa-Orléans, which doesn't look likely to change much in the final Ontario boundaries report.
• I'm not aware that Deborah Coyne has said whether she'll run, or in what riding, so I better pay closer attention to that question next time.

In other news:

• Former three-term Surrey Central and then Newton-North Delta, BC Conservative M.P. Gurmant Grewal is "vindicated", and ready to jump back into the ring, according to an email he sent the Vancouver Sun's Peter O'Neil. This time, Grewal is considering running in the proposed south Surrey riding of Langley-Cloverdale, rather than challenge NDP M.P. Jinny Sims in the proposed new riding of  Surrey Centre. If successful, Grewal would be hoping to rejoin his wife Nina, the four-term Conservative M.P. for nearby Fleetwood-Port Kells, BC.
• Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, 2011 NDP candidate and University of Regina professor and housing / homelessness expert Dr. Marc Spooner announced his intention to seek the nomination once again in Regina-Wascana, on Facebook last month. Spooner, whose beard and long-hair inspired a website to give him a light-hearted makeover during the last election, also announced a pretty drastic haircut a few weeks later — see what you have to do when you aspire to government!
• Finally, while there have been no formally announced retirements that I'm aware of, John Ivison has reported on the rumours of Bob Rae's expected retirement as MP for Toronto Centre, ON this summer. The same sources were reporting an interest on the part of former Toronto Centre MPP George Smitherman in replacing him for the federal Liberal nomination there.
• Meanwhile, Rob Ford's success in beating back a court-enforced resignation has also quelled the rumours of any move by the NDP's Olivia Chow to the municipal scene for now. So, no Trinity-Spadina by-election is in the offing after all.
• Which leaves Denis Coderre, who is still widely expected to seek the mayoralty of Montréal, thus opening up his north-Montréal seat of Bourassa before the next federal election.
• UPDATE: Oh, and of course west coast Newfoundland Liberal MP Gerry Byrne, who will wait until March to announce whether he'll run for the provincial Liberal leadership, Bonavista–Gander–Grand Falls–Windsor MP Scott Simms having ruled out a run in an interview tonight with the CBC's David Cochrane. Thanks to @JordanP90 on Twitter for reminding me to include them.

I am hearing that the Conservatives will not be promising to protect the nominations of their incumbents in the upcoming election, and that the NDP could unfreeze nominations as early as this fall. Several of the Liberal leadership candidates are advocating a lift on protection for incumbents as part of the race, but it's doubtful that governance rules for nominations could be finalized until the new leader's administration is settled in.

Now if you know of candidates who have publicly declared their intention to seek a nomination federally, do not be shy. The Nomination News works best when it is crowd-sourced, and Google News is just not as reliable as it used to be (too few links returned with too wide a net cast). All tips received confidentially, though a link or news source is always helpful, as is the individual's website, Facebook page and/or Twitter handle if you have it.

Drop me a line by email, or tweet to @punditsguide on Twitter. I tried to set up a Tumblr for nomination news, but I think that's one too many channels to keep track of, even for me, so I won't be checking it for updates, sorry.

I'm hoping to give the website an update and redesign in anticipation of the next election, not least because the Google Maps API v.2 is not going to work after May of 2013, and with the advent of JQuery, Wordpress, Google Charts and Twitter since I first built the site. Anyways, my ambitions always seem to exceed my time available, so we'll see how well that goes, but in the meantime, we can at least collect a good dataset.

Also, don't forget the social media aggregator for the federal Liberal leadership campaign, at http://lpcldr.punditsguide.ca, which pulls in Facebook feeds from each of the candidates, tracks their Facebook and Twitter follower counts, updates a Google News search in both english and french every 30 minutes, and features Twitter tickers for the candidates and the greater Twittersphere, along with links to CPAC video of the debates and scrums, and my blogposts on the race.

See you on the campaign trail.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

Sometimes I think the word "gerrymander" is the most over-used and under-understood word in politics. The fact is that Canada has one of the most enviable, non-partisan systems of establishing electoral boundaries in the world — one that was designed and agreed to by every political party of the day.

And during all the back and forth on the Saskatchewan boundaries issue we're about to endure, it will be important to remember that fact.

UPDATE: See addition in the Saskatchewan section regarding the minority report issued to the Saskatchewan boundary commission report, and thanks to a sharp-eyed reader for reminding me to include it.

FURTHER UPDATE: I typed University of Saskatoon instead of University of Saskatchewan at 6 in the morning. Sorry about that.

MORE IMPORTANT UPDATE: I got the Edmonton situation back-to-front the way I wrote it. There used to be 3 all-urban ridings there and 5 rurban ridings. And now the Commission is thinking 7 all-urban ones plus 2 rurban ones plus 2 adjacent ones.

ALSO: It's Michael Starr, not Richard Starr, who I meant.

History of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act (EBRA)

Like so many Canadian innovations, our independent redistricting process owes its birth to the existence of a minority government, but also in this case to the widespread cross-party agreement at the time on the need for change.

While the Manitoba Liberal-Progressive government of D.L. Campbell had already adopted an independent system of provincial boundary setting a decade earlier following on legislation first adopted in Australia, it was then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker who got the ball rolling federally, when his 1962 motion to support independent boundary commissions every decade was adopted by the Commons late in the Progressive Conservatives’ majority mandate. But Dief never got around to introducing follow-up legislation in his subsequent minority term, and the initiative fell to Liberal PM Lester Pearson to implement together with the NDP’s Tommy Douglas and the now-opposition PCs, after 1963.

It wasn’t just gerrymandering that had bothered Diefenbaker personally as much as what he called "Jimmy-mandering" – the heavy-handed and partisan way in which Diefenbaker felt that then-Saskatchewan Liberal party boss Jimmy Gardiner had exercised his influence over the redrawing of the Saskatchewan federal boundaries in 1947 and 1952. To that point, electoral boundaries were drawn by the government of the day; but the with the 1961 census complete and the notorious acrimony of the Pearson-Diefenbaker era threatening to make any one-sided redistribution impossible to pass through the Commons, a new process seemed to be the only way to ensure the constitutionally-required redistribution could actually take place.

So with the flag flap already largely out of the way, the House of Commons devoted 51 days of at-times stormy parliamentary debate, spanning two sessions of Parliament, where MPs from all four parties sorted through the various options for the new electoral boundary system. They were responding to a Bill tabled by Pearson’s government, but one to which its sponsor Jack Pickersgill said it had an "open mind" to accept any and all amendments. [And to anyone who claims that the House of Commons today is no less acrimonious than in the days of Pearson and Diefenbaker, I defy them to find a single bill on which either of our two last federal governments were prepared to proceed in such an open and cooperative manner.]

Key to the eventual consensus were former Secretary of State Jack Pickersgill, Progressive Conservative M.P. Gordon Churchill and of course the NDP’s estimable House Leader Stanley Knowles who had the most experience with the provincial Manitoba model. The result of their work became the Electoral Boundaries Adjustment Act of 1964 (EBRA), which was adopted unanimously, and whose key principles remain largely intact to this day.

Now, while the parties agreed that electoral boundaries should be set by independent commissions, who would have the last word and final say on them (not even Australia had gone that far, though they later relented after two proposed redistributions were defeated), the Canadian parties did disagree on a number of other elements of the process, as did MPs across party lines from urban versus rural parts of the country.

• Having one national commission or ten provincial commissions – It was eventually agreed that provincial commissions were more likely to grasp local communities of interest than one national commission, though Conservative MPs Richard Michael Starr and Erik Nielsen wanted a single national commission. While independent provincial commissions can take advantage of local knowledge to better represent communities of interest and local circumstances in their own provinces, the quid pro quo is often inconsistent application of redistricting principles across the country. But that’s the trade-off you have to accept if Central Canada is not to set the boundaries for the whole country, and you want to get the commissions’ work done within the year.
• Who would the commissioners be, and who would appoint them – The Liberals’ bill outlined a four-person commission, with the chair appointed by the provincial chief court justice, one nominee each from the prime minister and opposition leader, and the "representation commissioner" (a position already created in a companion piece of legislation) as the fourth member of every provincial commission. Stanley Knowles didn’t want any partisan appointments at all, and moved a lengthy amendment outlining who ought to be appointed as commissioners (for example, provincial chief electoral officers and university presidents or other academic experts). The Liberals indicated support for Knowles’ amendment, thereby raising suspicions amongst Conservatives about a possible deal between the other two. Eventually, Knowles’ amendment went down to defeat, but the parties agreed that each provincial Chief Justice would choose a member from his or her bench as the chair, and then the Commons Speaker would appoint two other members. In practice the Speaker’s appointments have always followed the spirit of the Knowles amendment, including academic experts on boundaries and redistribution, and public servants with knowledge of the region’s demographics and communities. Boundary commissions are now three-person affairs, the position of "Representation Commissioner" having been eliminated by Parliament in 1979.
• How much variance from the provincial average seat size should be permitted – MPs representing urban seats, along with the NDP caucus, wanted to keep the maximum variance to 20% (the then-all-urban NDP’s opening position was 5% in keeping with the New Zealand model), while MPs representing rural seats, along with the Conservative caucus, wanted to allow as much as 33.3% variance on either side of the provincial quotient. The final bill sawed off the difference at 25%. Later on in the 1980s under the Mulroney Tories, Parliament amended the EBRA to allow for abrogation of the variance in "exceptional circumstances", a provision that has been used to justify keeping Labrador as a separate seat, for example.
• What, if any, other principles should the legislation set out for the commissions to consider – Not only did the 1964 EBRA legislate a maximum variance of ± 25%, it went further than Australia or New Zealand had by mandating boundary commissions to draw ridings that corresponded "as nearly as may be" to the provincial average seat population (the "electoral quotient"). Canadian parliamentarians also agreed on a set of criteria that the independent commissions could consider alongside mathematical equality, including:
  • sparsity or density of population, and other geographic considerations
  • relative population growth rates (contentious, and so later deleted in 1975), and
  • community or diversity of interests of the residents

  1986 Mulroney era amendments to the EBRA softened up the phrase "as nearly as may be" to "as close as reasonably possible", and added the "historical background of a particular district" to the list of allowable criteria.

• The desirability of public hearings and public input, and when it should feed into the process – Unlike the Australian system it borrowed from, Canada added the requirement for a round of public hearings after the boundary commissions submitted their first set of proposals. After the 2003 redistribution process, and following the across-the-board panning of the 2003 Saskatchewan boundary commission’s initial proposals, the Chief Electoral Officer recommended that the Act be amended to include an opportunity for input before the commission proposals were drafted. This point becomes important shortly.
• The legitimate role for elected representatives in the process – A role was preserved for Members of Parliament in the process, both to give evidence before the public hearings and later to have the right to file objections to the boundary commission reports. As local representatives, Members of Parliament often have more detailed knowledge about the area, which can be very valuable to the commissions. MPs can also try to influence the commissions to decide in the their own interest, though this can sometimes go horribly wrong, as in the story of Cambridge Liberal M.P. Janko Peric who was adamant that rural Dumfries could not be separated from the city of Cambridge, and then proceeded to lose his seat when Dumfries voted overwhelmingly Conservative in the next election. Once the province’s boundary commission reports to the Speaker, MPs have 30 days to file an objection if at least 10 of them sign on to it. Those objections were originally debated by the Commons as a whole, but since the 1986 amendments to the EBRA now go to a Commons committee instead.  The independent boundary commissions have to consider and rule on any MPs’ objection referred to them by the Committee, but do not have to accept it at all when making their final reports.
• Timelines for the commissions’ work – Commissions are obligated to complete all their work within one calendar year. Technology has enabled some aspects of the work to go more quickly, and a post-2003 representation order report by the Chief Electoral Officer contained a number of suggestions for shortening timelines, some of which were enacted by the Harper government’s bill to change the Commons seat count apportionment last year.
• Who should get the final say – This aspect of the 1964 Act has not changed – the independent boundary commissions still get the final say. Australia did not go so far originally, but after failing to get two redistributions through their own house, subsequently followed Canada’s lead. In our case, the boundary commissions submit their final reports to the Chief Electoral Officer, who prepares the "representation order" and sends it to the "governor-in-council" (basically the cabinet), which MUST proclaim it within five days. Then Elections Canada and the political parties have a year to re-organize themselves along the lines of the new boundaries, and after a year any general election will be run on them.

How could you "gerrymander" an independent process?

So, given this very independent process by international standards, why does the term "gerrymander" pop up so quickly in the vernacular? How could you gerrymander a system like this?

Well, if power is defined as "the ability to influence an outcome", then politicians by definition will always look for a way to do just that. The best way to influence an independently-governed process is to do your research, know what’s in your interest, and then marshall your best non-partisan arguments and best non-partisan allies in those arguments, and hope to do so better than your opponent. Some people think a thumb may have been put on the scales in terms of appointments to the boundary commissions as well, but there’s no evidence Speaker Scheer engaged in that to any great extent.

The one thing not to do, though, is to make partisan arguments before the public hearings of a boundary commission, because you will get cut off. Also, you have to make arguments that demonstrate an interest in the impact of your proposed changes on the surrounding area and even province. Presenters who omitted doing so in the Ottawa hearings were called to order quickly, for example.

The way the boundary commissions actually work is to sit down with the electoral geographer they are assigned, take the province’s population, divide it by the number of seats allocated to that province to come up with the "quotient" or target population for every seat, and then start drawing.

Now, because a riding can’t cross a provincial border, and obviously it can’t go into the United States or into one of the oceans, if you were in their shoes you would quickly realize that the work has to make some big decisions, and then start at the corner of a province. So, for example, the Ontario commission considered how to handle the northern Ontario seats, and then knowing that it was going to keep a province-wide quotient, would have started at the border between Vaudreuil, QC and Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, ON. They would have asked if GPR was now too big or too small population-wise, and then deleted a few census tracts or blocks of land that could fit better with Ottawa-Orléans, and/or added a bit of territory from Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry. And then they’d just keep moving east, through Ottawa, eastern Ontario, Kingston, and on through Northumberland county into Durham.

Or the Alberta commission would have taken the extra seats it was given to work with, decided how to allocate them within the province, noticing that Edmonton now had sufficient population for 7.5 seats, but enough surrounding suburbs to make 7 city seats and 2 hybrid urban-suburban-rural seats, where they were previously 5 city seats and 3 hybrid rurbans 3 city seats and 5 hybrid rurbans..

Or the BC commission would have realized that Vancouver city proper had enough population for 6 seats, while the north shore had enough for 2.5 seats, while other parts of the GVRD were due fractional numbers of seats; and then decide to make a riding that crossed the bridge from Burnaby to the eastern part of the north shore that pleases none of the political parties or local municipal interests on either side of the Burrard inlet.

Or the New Brunswick commission would go so far in its initial report to try to avoid another court-case over Miramichi and Acadie-Bathurst, that an extraordinarily under-populated Miramichi would wind up seeing Dieppe hived off from Moncton and stuck together with Fundy Royal instead.

Any big change creates so-called "ripple effects". So a decision in BC to keep Richmond together in two ridings and Delta together in one, has a ripple effect on Surrey to the east. Deciding whether to protect the under-populated but geographically large ridings on the Gaspé in Québec, for another example, could have ripple effects down as far as Lévis and beyond.

Which is how we get to Saskatchewan, and what happened there over the past year.

The case of Saskatchewan and the rurban vs urban boundaries

Speaker Andrew Scheer had more at stake with his appointments to the Saskatchewan Boundary Commission than any other province, since he represents one of the "rurban" seats in Regina himself, Regina—Qu’Appelle. Justice Ronald Mills of Prince Albert was assigned from the provincial bench, while the Scheer appointed Canada’s leading expert on electoral boundaries and redistricting, Professor John C. Courtney of the University of Saskatoon Saskatchewan, and the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), David Marit.

Once all the boundary commissions were appointed, they had a surprise for us, because they announced a round of pre-consultations before releasing their initial proposals, and people did not have much time after the 2011 election to meet those deadlines. There was more or less take-up in the different provinces, but in Saskatchewan the opponents of the current boundaries had not been snoozing, and they filed numerous academic and other briefs, whose impact was noted in this paragraph from the commission’s initial proposal last August:

"The population shifts of the past decade called into question the continued suitability of the composite urban-rural electoral districts. This issue is central to the Commission's proposal for the province's 14 electoral districts. It was also central to the concerns expressed by a considerable number of Saskatchewanians who contacted the Commission with communications ranging from brief, one-sentence or one-paragraph notes to formal documents presented on behalf of a group or association. These communications almost unanimously voiced opposition to the continued use of hybrid urban-rural districts in Saskatchewan."

Far from the earshot or awareness of Ottawa, the last highlighted sentence set off a prairie firestorm, because of what it meant. To local Conservative Party activists in Saskatchewan it meant that party headquarters had dropped the ball on the pre-submission phase, and that from that point forward they would be fighting a rear-guard action. Fingers were pointed during a behind-closed-doors meeting for over an hour, with Ottawa bearing the brunt of the blame and resentment. Party Operations Director Jenni Byrne is said to have demanded in return that she wanted to see 8,000 submissions in the public hearing phase against the ending of the rurban seat boundaries.

The Conservatives didn’t manage that number of in-person presentations, but when the Saskatchewan commission announced extra public hearing dates for Regina and Saskatoon, the province’s New Democrats and Liberals realized the Conservatives were not going down without a fight, and indeed the Leader-Post’s longstanding political columnist Murray Mandryk declared the Conservatives to have been the "winner" on Twitter, in terms of turnout at the first day of commission hearings in Regina. By the end of the hearings, the pro and con presentations had evened out somewhat, and both sides were being bolstered with petitions and postcards galore. The Prime Minister asserted yesterday that 75% of interventions in the public hearing phase had opposed the rurban boundaries, but CBC Saskatchewan reporter Stefani Langenegger questioned on Twitter after her interview with Justice Mills whether those numbers were a bit of a stretch. They certainly didn’t include any of the pre-submissions from the first round of public input.

The Prime Minister and party robo-calls also claimed that the old rurban boundaries represented the history and traditions of Saskatchewan representation. This is a little ironic, as when the 1966 redistribution (the first conducted under the newly independent EBRA) recommended two rurban seats each in Regina and Saskatoon, then-Conservative leader John Diefenbaker complained that they did not follow the "historical" precedent until 1966 of all-urban Regina and Saskatoon seats, proving that where you stand depends so often on where you sit.

But the NDP historically made a grand miscalculation about its own interests during the last redistribution, one that was being prepared while the party’s own future was under question, and which came into effect just as newly-minted leader Jack Layton was coming onto the scene. Rural Saskatchewan New Democrat activists found an ally in Palliser M.P. Dick Proctor, who would have wound up living just outside a very awkwardly-redrawn version of his riding, and Proctor and former Moose Jaw mayor Don Mitchell led the fight against urban ridings in the 2003 representation order. The provincial section of the party had its own fires to put out, and Wascana Liberal Ralph Goodale’s seat was not affected, so the urban riding proposal had no defenders. and was scrapped by the Commission in favour of keeping essentially the status quo from the 1996 map. Ironically, Don Mitchell won the NDP nomination to try and win his preferred version of Palliser riding in 2008. It didn’t work.

This time around however, the NDP acceded to the opposite consensus emerging from academia and the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities association, and in spite of Tom Lukiwski’s attempts to re-open a rift between the Palliser and Regina NDPs, the party maintained a common front throughout the entire boundary commission process.

Meantime, media opinion came out against the rurban boundaries early and hard, and has maintained that posture during the remainder of the commission’s work. Last week’s boundary commission report has been endorsed in editorials and columns in both major provincial dailies.

UPDATE: I am reminded by Colby Cosh to point out that the Saskatchewan report included a dissenting opinion by David Marit. Marit's arguments are said to recapitulate a lot of the interventions he made during the hearings, but which did not find support from either Justice Mills nor Professor Courtney. The existence of a minority boundary commission report has been called "unprecedented", but I did uncover a minority report to a New Brunswick federal boundary commission in the past — again dealing with the continued under-population of certain "historic" seats in the province.

Were the out-going rurban ridings "gerrymandered"? You could argue it both ways. They weren’t designed to meet the political interest of just one political party in an unfair process; they were supported by all three parties, in one case of which the party supported them in spite of their best interest. Maybe it was an inept gerrymander on their part to try and influence the outcome. But the commission retained the final say, and if it had decided to proceed with urban boundaries in 2003, no-one could have stopped the commission from doing so.

Is the current Conservative effort to influence the final report through the Committee process at Procedure and House Affairs (led by Parliamentary Secretary and affected Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre M.P. Tom Lukiwski) and via the push-poll robocalls a "gerrymander"? Well, it is an attempt to influence the outcome, but the Prime Minister also understands that under the Act there is nothing his government can do if the independent Saskatchewan Boundary Commission rules against his Saskatchewan caucus, short of introducing an Act to suspend the entire Redistribution process. But that would mean running the next election without the 30 extra seats in Ontario, Alberta and BC, which is unlikely to be an acceptable trade-off to him.

Conservative Party operations director Jenni Byrne may end up taking the fall, but if so, it would not simply be over the robo-calls, but the perception that party headquarters dropped the ball with the pre-submission phase of the Saskatchewan boundary commission process last fall. Whether she deserves that more than, say, the former provincial Conservative and Sask Party organizer Tom Lukiwski, only the Saskatchewan Conservative caucus knows for sure.

The upshot will probably see at least one retirement from the Conservative backbench in the province, and maybe an incumbent or two running against each other for the nomination. At least one Saskatoon Conservative won’t be back after 2015, and perhaps more. And the Regina-Wascana and Regina-Lewvan seats look like opposition enclaves. Virtually untouched in the entire process has been the seat of Regina-Qu’Appelle, and who holds that seat again? Oh yes … the Speaker of the House of Commons.

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I will update this post a bit later with a bibliography and clickable references, but I've stayed up so late writing this that it got light outside somehow.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

It is just not sporting to declare a political contest over before the voting starts, and that's not something we at Pundits' Guide would ever do. But Justin Trudeau's leadership campaign raised fully 58.4% of the $1.15M in leadership donations reported by the Liberal Party in the fourth quarter of 2012.

If it's not over already, and that's not the writing on the wall, then please just ignore the rubenesque diva in the corner singing swan songs for the also-rans from here until April 14. It's not nice to call her a fat-lady-singing anyway.

The $673K reported by Trudeau's campaign through their party's fourth quarter financial return does not even include a further $90K raised prior to his registration as a candidate — funds, in that case, that were not eligible for a federal political contribution tax credit the way these donations directed through the party are (nothwithstanding the 10% tithe the party keeps in this case to cover the leadership contest overhead).

Liberal Leadership Contestant Fundraising Directed Through the Liberal Party, 2012 (Q4)

Seven of the nine candidates in the current Liberal leadership contest reported donations in the final three months of 2012, as did Vancouver Centre M.P. Hedy Fry, who is chipping away at the remainder of her debt from two contests ago. Fry hosted the first leadership debate of this contest in her downtown riding two weekends ago, where the new crop of candidates tested their lines against the prohibitive front-runner. The second debate will be held in Winnipeg this weekend.

Joining the race in time for the Vancouver debate, but not in enough time to raise funds before year-end was former Chrétien-era justice minister and then-Outremont M.P. Martin Cauchon. Also missing from the Q4 return was David Bertschi of Orléans, Ontario, another late official registrant even though he announced his candidacy last fall. Karen McCrimmon from the other side of the nation's capital was able to raise over $20K, albeit that 94% of it originated from within Eastern Ontario.

Bunched up in a rivalry for a distant second place finish financially are former Willowdale, Ontario M.P. and 2006 leadership aspirant Martha Hall Findlay, Westmount–Ville Marie, QC M.P. and former astronaut Marc Garneau, and Toronto-based tech lawyer George Takach who has never run for office but served a stint as a political aide back when Liberals actually ran things in Ottawa.

The regional distribution of funds raised by the various candidates does tend to confirm what is known anecdotally about their relative pockets of strength, but again Trudeau wins in every Postal District (first letter of the postal code) except BC, where he finds himself slightly behind the province's home-grown candidate Joyce Murray. Murray however comes up short in the national comparison, hovering somewhere between Takach and the two smaller campaigns of Karen McCrimmon and Toronto lawyer Deborah Coyne.

Martha Hall Findlay's campaign is showing more strength in the west financially than other non-Trudeau candidates, except for Marc Garneau who passed her for second place in Alberta. She also shows some fundraising prowess in Ontario, though Takach beat her in Toronto, and Garneau bested her in Eastern Ontario. And finally, she won the non-Trudeau candidate sweepstakes for fundraising in Nova Scotia.

But frankly, the lion's share of money being raised for this leadership contest, as with the party's vote in the last election, is coming out of Greater Toronto, Montréal, and Ottawa (65% of all leadership fundraising came from the H, K. L, and M postal districts). Only BC came close to breaking 10% of the take, while the economic powerhouse of the country, Alberta, provided just 5.1% of the funds for the Liberal leadership race before Christmas.

[Click on image below to open PDF containing the regional distribution by Postal District.]

Looking at the cumulative fundraising by leadership campaign out of this dataset (and remember it doesn't include the $90K already reported on Mr. Trudeau's leadership registration report), Mr. Trudeau nearly doubled his take in the final days of the calendar year, a good part of that coming from an apparent leadership dinner in Sudbury, ON, along with some ceiling contributions from Regina, the Toronto area and elsewhere dated December 31.

[Click on image to open full-sized version]

Federal Party Quarterly Returns

Meanwhile, the federal parties reported their own fundraising totals for the fourth quarter of 2012 at the same time. No doubt these will be spun various ways by all concerned, but the thing that struck me was how three of the political parties came down off their election year highs the way you would normally expect to see in the first non-election year of a majority mandate, while the NDP and Greens more or less held onto their 2012 fundraising levels, with the NDP increasing theirs every so slightly.

What the NDP wasn't able to do, however, was move the needle ahead of the Liberal benchmark even as their red rivals receded a bit comparing annual hauls year over year. Liberal Party Executive Director Ian McKay told reporters in January that the party had had the "best December ever", which I haven't verified but seems plausible. However they didn't have a better fourth quarter than 2006.

Other popular spin-o-matic explanations for fundraising numbers include the old stand-by "Our members were also being hit up for leadership contributions", in which case you would have to add $1.72M to the NDP's total for 2012, and $1.28M to the Liberals'.

As for the Conservatives, they did not raise more in the fourth quarter than all the other parties combined, but they continued to raise more than any of them, from more donors both large and small. Also of interest, the Bloc Québecois put on a year-end push and got their fundraising back into a post-Québec provincial election high gear, raising a good enough chunk of money from large donors in the fourth quarter for us to remark that they aren't rolling over and playing dead yet.

You can see the full results here, but for now a quick table of the parties' fourth quarter and year-to-date 2012 fundraising results..