Fasten your seatbelt and get out your programme ... there's a lot to follow in the latest update of nomination news.

Retirements and candidate deletions:

• Tobique-Mactaquac, NB Liberal candidate, Stewart C. Paul recently announced that health concerns were forcing him to step down.
• Etobicoke North, ON M.P. Roy Cullen, first elected in a 1996 by-election, announced yesterday that he will not run in next election. This adds Etobicoke North to the list of seats with retiring incumbents, a query I am going to make a permanent fixture of the site this weekend (stay tuned).
• I earlier wrote that Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo, BC Conservative M.P. Betty Hinton would also be retiring, however forgot to actually delete that entry from the database until now. Thus the Conservatives erroneously appear to have lost a candidate in the totals below; and this riding should be added to the list of seats with retiring incumbents as well.
• 2006 candidate Mike Robinson is wrongly listed as the Green Party's current candidate in the BC riding of Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca at the Wikipedia page, whereas several blog posts at the party's website name Brian Gordon as the nominated candidate there, so I have made that change to this database as well.

New candidate entries:

• Replacing Cullen as the Liberal standard-bearer in Etobicoke North, ON will be appointee Kirsty Duncan, a Health Studies professor from the University of Toronto and member of the Nobel prize winning panel of climate change scientists.
• The Greens have announced that a former provincial and federal NDP candidate, Len Sawatsky, will run for them in Winnipeg Centre against NDP M.P. Pat Martin. [Sawatsky was not in this database prior to that announcement, so must have run prior to 1997. Due to shortness of time, I will have to look up those details later.]
• The Bloc Québécois has also tapped a former NDP aide, composer Marius Tremblay, as their candidate against Conservative M.P. Lawrence Cannon in the Pontiac, QC.
• Meantime, the Nunavut NDP nominated Land Claims specialist Paul Irngaut this past week to run for them in another incumbent-less seat, being vacated by retiring Liberal M.P. Nancy Karetak-Lindell.
• Simcoe North, ON Liberals are expected to acclaim Orillia restauranteur Steve Clarke as their federal candidate to take on first-time Conservative M.P. Bruce Stanton, at a nomination meeting to be held March 2, 2008.

Nominations to watch for:

• Three candidates have so far announced their interest in winning the Conservative nomination for retiring Conservative M.P. Brian Pallister's riding of Portage – Lisgar, MB, at a meeting to be held sometime in April, 2008.
• Six candidates are now on the books for the Liberal nomination meeting to be held March 2, 2008 in retiring Liberal M.P. John Godfrey's riding of Don Valley East, ON [CORRECTION: Don Valley West, ON]. [UPDATE: This one will definitely be worth watching now. I seem to have missed this story earlier.]
• As many as three candidates could vy for the NDP nomination in retiring NDP M.P. Bill Blaikie's riding of Elmwood-Transcona, MB, at an upcoming meeting (date unknown).

Other announcements and nomination news:

• Former Gatineau, QC Liberal M.P. Françoise Boivin has all but confirmed she will join now represent the NDP in that riding in the forthcoming election in a rematch against the Bloc Québécois candidate and current M.P. Richard Nadeau.
• The NDP is promising some more surprising good news at the end of February in Beauport-Limoilou, QC, currently held by Conservative M.P. Sylvie Boucher.
• According to former Green Party leader Jim Harris, the current Leader Elizabeth May wants to keep her party's nomination in Ottawa Centre, ON open for her former leadership rival and past candidate there, David Chernushenko. The riding is now represented by the NDP's Paul Dewar.

In that same recent blog post, Jim Harris urges party activists to find candidates for the remaining 136 empty ridings, suggesting that the Green Party has identified 172 candidates (55%). I have been trying ... by scouring Elections Canada, their own website list, Wikipedia, and Google ... to identify who the (172 - 104 =) 68 or so Green candidates are that are not currently listed in the Pundits' Guide database. However, commenting on Harris' blog post, Green organizer Sharon Labchuk explains that candidates cannot be listed on the party website until their local nomination has been vetted by the party and cleared by the leader. Details on how the party's constitution and protocol handles this are explained further in the post.

Thus, these are my latest totals by party and province.

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									58					58	19%	17	29.3%
Cons	1	1		31	26	11	10	94	54	7	7	2	4	248	81%	38	15.3%
Grn	1			10	9	1	3	55	15	3	7			104	34%	27	26.0%
Lib	1		1	27	22	7	9	89	32	8	9	4	6	215	70%	78	36.3%
NDP		1	1	27	17	10	6	56	30	4	8	1	3	164	53%	61	37.2%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Beauport-Limoilou