By way of a postscript to yesterday's blogpost on the dawn of the era of the political "pre-announcement", and the danger of guiding strategy using only short-term measurable goals, this morning's news contained a little kernel of what I had suspected when writing yesterday.

Yesterday I argued that media and blogging attention to measurable party metrics such as fundraising levels and nomination counts had the potential for danger if parties governed themselves only towards meeting such short-term targets. As on Wall Street, at least two parties are making a regular practice now of "pre-announcing" certain results (before the reporting period is even concluded this time), as a way to spin the numbers to their advantage, or at least to minimize the hit from bad results.

I also argued that, just as when pre-announcing results came into vogue on Wall Street, it could also be a sign that people should be looking for what the spinners didn't want you to see. And we may see a hint of that in this morning's Toronto Star.

Veteran Liberal-watcher Susan Delacourt reported, from her interview with Liberal national director Rocco Rossi on the fundraising numbers, that:

It's better news than the bleak set of figures the Liberals are due to file to Elections Canada today.

The new party president, Alf Apps, has said the Liberals took in only $5.9 million in 2008 – almost $1 million less than the year before.

Rossi said the 2008 report will show "relatively low fundraising, an election and therefore a lot of debt loaded on."

Better numbers are to be found in the Liberals' more recent past, Rossi argues. Everything the Liberals raise from here on in this year can be poured into the war chest for an election that could come as soon as September, he said.

Delacourt provided some further details of that interview in her blog earlier today, including Rossi's impression of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's commitment to fundraising and attention to the machinery of the party, and his assertion that "There’s clearly a goal as stated by Senator (David) Smith, to have all nomination meetings, or the bulk of nomination meetings, at least called if not completed by the time the House returns in September. So there’s a very very large push on all fronts".

Some other commentators are noticing the parties' efforts to spin this set of fundraising numbers for the media as well, from Kady O'Malley at macleans.ca to the editorial board of the National Post.

As I suspected, the Liberals knew that their financial statements from last year, which were not due to be filed with Elections Canada until today and could show up on the Elections Canada website at any time (and thus become a story), might not contain the best news for them. The problem is the reporting lag between the end of the fiscal year and the filing deadline, and they believed the progress they've made in the meantime may not be given proper weight when their end-of-year performance is compared to that of other parties. Hence their interest in spinning the good news from the first two quarters of this year -- which won't be released for another month -- now.

This is one of the reasons I've assembled the calendar of financial data release dates, which I hope will clarify reporting periods and data release dates. And, I'm hoping to have a comprehensive database reference to all the party fundraising, expenditure, and balance sheet metrics done by the end of July.

Labels: Liberals, Party Finance

There aren't many things that readers from across the spectrum can agree on: the importance of a vibrant democracy, and a fascination with numbers might be only two. And in our complicated national polity, not everyone can even agree on celebrating Canada Day. But as someone who's had the privilege of seeing whales on both coasts, of driving across the country twice (using two different routes), spending time in the most agricultural parts of the prairies, the most urbane parts of Montréal, enjoying Folklarama, and a walk down Spring Garden Road, I do like to celebrate Canada Day in my own way, and it does mean something special to me. Even if I can't be in Lake Louise to watch Myron Thompson's successor lead the parade this year!

So, no blogging tomorrow. And Happy Canada Day to all readers of the Pundits' Guide wherever you are.

It also means we better do a good catch-up today. Starting with last night's nomination news:

• Alfred-Pellan, QC - According to the Liberal Scarf blog, Denis Coderre's Facebook status is reporting that Angelo G. Iacono was the winner of last night's contested nomination. Iacono will now face three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Robert Carrier, who was already renominated earlier this month on June 4. Liberals have high hopes that their current horse-race polling numbers in Québec could spell a gain for them in this seat, which they last held in 2000. The Bloc's margin of victory has remained under 10% in two of the last three campaigns, and the Liberals narrowly captured its predecessor seat, Laval East, for a term in 2000. However, previous Liberal candidate Wilson Saintelmy pulled back on campaign spending in 2008 (down to 60% of the spending limit from 90-91% in the two previous elections), while Carrier hiked his spending from 50% to 70%, perhaps trying to match the newly well-funded Conservative campaign of Alexandre Salameh (83% of the limit, up from 20% in 2006). Saintelmy's drop in spending might be attributed to the very small amount of local fundraising done by Liberals in that riding before and during the election ($4,000, down from over $80K in previous outings), and indeed the Liberal riding association was showing a negative balance sheet (~-$47K) at the end of calendar 2008. The other parties' 2008 riding association statements are not yet posted on the Elections Canada website.
  
• Sault Ste. Marie, ON - Area Liberals are hoping the Provenzano name can return them to contention in this northern Ontario riding, as Christian Provenzano, their 2006 candidate and the son of former Soo Liberal M.P. Carmen Provenzano, was acclaimed for his party's nomination yesterday. Historically, the riding had been a Liberal-NDP contest under Carmen Provenzano, however the Conservative vote has been growing here since 2004, making the riding into a three-way race or nearly so in 2004 and 2006, and with the Conservatives finally overtaking the Liberals' then-new candidate Paul Bichler in 2008. However, the elder Provenzano apparently lost his seat in 2004 more at the expense of a rising NDP vote than through Conservative gains, which did not appear to cut into the Liberal vote share until 2008 when they put Conservative candidate Cameron Ross within 2.7% of defeating three-term NDP M.P. Tony Martin. Ross was also able to challenge Martin in campaign spending (97% of the limit to Martin's 99%) thanks in part to a $68K transfer from Conservative party headquarters, while Bichler fell to half of previous Liberal spending levels (down to 43% from 86%). Meantime, as we've written here before, Martin may be facing some new and more aggressive Conservative competition from Mayor John Rowswell this time around, which along with Provenzano's return will make the race for the Soo a very interesting one to watch going forward, to be sure.
  
• Elmwood – Transcona, MB - First-time NDP M.P. Jim Maloway was acclaimed his party's candidate once again last night in this eastern Winnipeg riding. Maloway is his party's first incumbent M.P. to be renominated, and has just hit #5 on another interesting list if you follow Winnipeg Free Press correspondent Mia Rabson's blog, "Capital Chronicles". [Note: I wish an RSS feed were available for Free Press blogs, hint, hint.] As yet, Maloway has no nominated competition in a seat that the NDP managed to hold even through the 1993 election under predecessor Bill Blaikie.

In other nomination news:

• Ottawa Centre, ON - Adding to the long list of rumoured potential Liberal candidates for this NDP-held riding, James Bowie has heard from several sources now that soon-to-be-retiring Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine is considering a bid for the Liberal nomination here: apparently to mixed reactions, judging by the comments on Bowie's blogpost. The riding is currently represented by two-term NDP M.P. Paul Dewar.
  
• Leeds – Grenville, ON - We wrote earlier that 2008 Liberal candidate Marjorie Loveys hoped to run again in this eastern Ontario riding, but it now appears she may have some competition for the job, according to the Brockville Recorder & Times. A former journalist and Prescott city councillor, Heather Rothgeb, announced her candidacy this week, and other candidates have until the middle of July to declare for a meeting expected some time in August. The riding is currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. Gord Brown. h/t the Liberal Scarf
  
• St. Boniface, MB - Winnipeg Radio station CJOB is reporting that former Liberal M.P. Ray Simard has been renominated in his former seat. No details as to the date, or whether he was contested, are currently available. Simard lost the riding to first-time Conservative M.P. Shelly Glover in the last election. I ran down the riding history here earlier this month. Credit for finding this reference again goes to the Liberal Scarf.
  
• Dauphin – Swan River – Marquette, MB - Another reader has written to advise that two-time Green Party candidate Kate Storey was in fact renominated by acclamation for a third try in this riding back in April. This makes Storey the first candidate to be nominated in retiring M.P. Inky Mark's seat. She was also elected the chair of the party's national council in April, 2009.
  
• Vancouver Centre, BC - The reader also passed along that Green Party Deputy Leader Adriane Carr was herself acclaimed once again in April, in this riding boasting the 3rd closest four-way race and her party's 4th best showing of the last campaign. Carr will likely be rejoined by 2008 NDP candidate Michael Byers, who announced on E+1 that he planned to run again. The riding is currently held by long-time Liberal incumbent Hedy Fry.

Speaking of seats with strong Green Party showings last time, party leader Elizabeth May has conceded that the issue of where she runs is now being subjected to a strategic review, telling Steve Maher of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald that polling data and other considerations may result in her moving on from Central Nova, NS. Seats currently under consideration reportedly include:

• Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS - the seat vacated by Independent M.P. Bill Casey, next door to Central Nova
  
• a London riding - presumably London North Centre, ON where she ran in a 2006 by-election
  
• Bruce – Grey – Owen Sound, ON - the party's 2nd best showing of the last campaign, after Central Nova
  
• Guelph, ON - the party's 3rd best showing of 2008
  
• Saanich – Gulf Islands, BC - the party's best riding in 2004

On tap for tonight is the Liberal nomination meeting in Mount Royal, QC, where incumbent Liberal M.P. Irwin Cotler is expected to be acclaimed.

For those who are counting these things, Ray Simard is the 8th former Liberal M.P. to be renominated. And just two candidates have been nominated to date in the prospective by-election ridings: Scott Armstrong in Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS for the Conservatives, and Fin Donnelly in New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC for the NDP.

Celebrate Canada Day by sending any news of nominations and candidates to the Pundits' Guide and share them with your fellow Canadians. Then follow us on Twitter for all the latest.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals, NDP

We're not even at the end of the second quarter of 2009, and the Liberals' are already pre-announcing their results. Again.

Last Monday, party president Alf Apps told a Winnipeg audience that Liberals were expecting to raise over $5 million in contributions for the first two quarters. Today, Liberal national director Rocco Rossi again told CP that the party has in fact raised over $5 million in the first two quarters, but issued an urgent last minute email appeal this morning which "urged prospective donors to make a contribution within the next 48 hours, maintaining the second quarter results 'will have an enormous effect on how Canadians view our organization'."

The quarter ends tomorrow at midnight. The parties' quarterly financial returns are not due at Elections Canada until sometime after that, and would not normally be made available on the Elections Canada website until just before the end of July.

Welcome to the age of the political "pre-announcement". Just like publicly traded companies, Canadian political parties are becoming aware that aspects of their performance not only can be measured, but are, whether by sites like mine, the mainstream media, or their competitor parties.

And the Liberals aren't the only ones pre-announcing financial results these days.

The NDP's Brad Lavigne told the Hill Times earlier this month that his party's decision to withdraw from fundraising in the four provinces having provincial elections and leadership races this year would affect both their first and second quarter results, but that they would return to fundraising full force on June 10.

Then last week he told Sun Media that the NDP had experienced a boost to its coffers over the intervening period, and in particular had "raked in tens of thousands of dollars in recent days".

Just because I like to measure these things, and even like to beat the mainstream media once in a blue moon by staying up way too late, it does not mean I think the obsession with short-term numbers is a very healthy trend. Measureable metrics are one neutral way to measure certain aspects of the parties' performance against each other, but they don't get at every important aspect of what a party has to do to accomplish its objectives.

The perception of a constant public demand to meet short-term goals, often pursued at the expense of long-term progress, is arguably a big part of what created so many problems on Wall Street. I can't imagine such a preoccupation will be terribly healthy for party politics in Canada, whether over quarterly contribution totals, nominated candidate counts, horse-race polling numbers, or anything else, if it winds up trumping other less-measurable but equally vital objectives.

So, keep your eyes on the the prize, and don't sweat the small stuff. Because the other lesson to learn from Wall Street is that when companies were pre-announcing too often, it could start to make you wonder if there wasn't something else buried in their results they hoped you wouldn't notice. And you don't want to be raising those questions, either.

UPDATE: Kady weighs in with some thoughts from the media's perspective.

Labels: Liberals, NDP, Party Finance

The Hill Times is reporting this morning that Liberal campaign veteran Senator David Smith expects "to complete nominations in 100 ridings, including the 77 held ridings, across the country by July 1". Senator Smith continued by saying that "By the time we come back on Sept. 14 that the bulk, there'll always be a few that are later on, the bulk of the nominations have either been held or called".

Well, I'm going to need some help from readers, then, because I can only document 15 of those nominations. Perhaps the Senator is referring to a process whereby the provincial-territorial association and party headquarters clear a riding to commence the nominations process, or some variation on that. I've been to all the PTA websites and have scoured Google News, but haven't found the other 85 of them yet, although I did find some more nomination meeting dates for Ontario ridings, which I've now been added to the list in the left-hand column.

Meanwhile, in another (subscription only) story, the Hill Times' Abbas Rana reports on the NDP's pre-election planning and target ridings in Nova Scotia, following the success of its provincial cousins in the recent provincial campaign. National Director Brad Lavigne says the party is targetting:

• South Shore – St. Margaret's, NS - where former M.P. Gordon Earle came within 2.3% of the vote of defeating five-term Conservative M.P. Gerald Keddy in the last federal election, and where the NDP won all 5 of the provincial seats contained within it, defeating Keddy's wife Judy Streatch in the process.
  
• Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS - which of course is currently vacant and awaiting a possible by-election call, after Independent M.P. Bill Casey stepped down, and in which the NDP won 3 of the 5 provincial seats.
  
• Halifax West, NS - which the NDP last represented from 1997 to 2000 when Gordon Earle displaced Liberal M.P. Geoff Regan for a term, and where the party won another 3 of 5 seats.
  
• Cape Breton – Canso, NS - the riding Elizabeth May had originally planned to run in, before switching to Central Nova, and now represented by four-term Liberal M.P. Rodger Cuzner.
  

Curiously not on the list are:

• Dartmouth – Cole Harbour, NS - which has been a priority in the past, and which contains Nova Scotia premier Darrell Dexter's provincial Cole Harbour riding; and
• Central Nova, NS - where the NDP has previously placed a strong second prior to the candidacy of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, and where it captured 4 of the 5 provincial ridings.
  

Three nomination meetings are on tap for tonight: a contested Liberal nomination in Alfred-Pellan, QC, an expected acclamation of NDP incumbent Jim Maloway in Elmwood – Transcona, MB, and a Liberal meeting in Sault Ste. Marie, ON that I haven't been able to find any information about in terms of who's running.

The Green Party is reporting another nomination in the Elections Canada database:

• Nepean – Carleton, ON - A new candidate, Jean-Luc Cooke, was acclaimed on June 11, and will be facing three-term Conservative M.P. Pierre Poilievre in the next election. 2008 Green candidate Lori Gadzala posted a significant enough increase in Green support in this riding last time to qualify the party for a candidate election expenses rebate, obtaining 11.0% of the vote.

Do you have nomination news to share with Guide readers? If so, please drop me a line so I can include it in the next Nomination News update. Then follow it all on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals

Via Twitter comes news of the contested nomination meeting going on this afternoon in British Columbia:

• New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC - Coquitlam city councillor Fin Donnelly has won the NDP nomination in this riding, and will now try and replace former M.P. Dawn Black in the next election or by-election, whichever comes first. Donnelly defeated fellow Coquitlam city councillor Barry Lynch and New Westminster city councillor Lorrie Williams on the first ballot, as we learned from another reader report. Next to nominate may be the Green Party, whose nominations close on Tuesday June 30. Conservative Party nominations have closed, and although we don't know all the candidates whose papers may have been accepted, we do know that former Conservative M.P. Paul Forseth was out of the country for the deadline, and that Port Moody city councillor Diana Dilworth and former municipal candidate Lorraine Brett have both announced their candidacies. Port Moody mayor Joe Trasolini had been approached to run for the Liberals and was at least report said to be considering it, while a former Liberal candidate in a neighbouring riding, Gerry Lenoski, is now actively organizing for the nomination himself.
• Thornhill, ON - In a story by Jennifer Ditchburn of the Canadian Press on Liberal and Conservative approaches to the Jewish community, former Liberal M.P. Susan Kadis says that she is "looking at running again". Thornhill, which in the 2001 census had the highest percentage of adherents to the Jewish faith in the country (religion data was not collected in 2006), was a key target of the Conservative pre-election campaign last time around, and Kadis ultimately lost the seat to first-time Conservative M.P. Peter Kent, who also by the way massively outspent her, 96% of the expense limit to 65%. Thanks to another reader for passing along this clipping.
  

Meanwhile in New Brunswick, the Christian Heritage Party is also getting ready for the next election, reports the Miramichi Leader. While the party has not run candidates in New Brunswick for some time, it is now hoping to run a candidate in every riding in that province during the next election. Already identified as a candidate is Jason Farris, who will be running in Tobique – Mactaquac against Conservative M.P. Mike Allen, and Farris says there are two additional candidates identified to date.

Send the latest nomination news to the Pundits' Guide, and we'll pass it along to others. You can follow all the latest details by following us on Twitter as well.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, NDP, New Westminster – Coquitlam

Two items to share today:

• Ottawa – Orléans, ON - Former Liberal M.P. Marc Godbout is ruling himself out of a forthcoming nomination contest in his old riding, citing current professional commitments, reports the Orléans-East Ottawa Star. This leaves Ottawa city councillor Rainer Bloess, businesswoman Judith Cane, and lawyer David Bertschi in the race. I am not aware of the date of the meeting or whether it has even been set as yet. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Royal Galipeau. Already nominated is Green Party candidate Paul Maillet.
• Calgary West, AB - A reader has written to advise of a contest for the Liberal nomination in this riding, featuring 2006-08 candidate and former School Board chair, lawyer Jennifer Pollock, and newcomer Ernie Corbett, an IT consultant. No firm date has been set for the meeting, but it is expected to occur sometime in late July. The riding is currently held by long-time Conservative M.P. Rob Anders, whose own nomination was secured earlier this year after a referendum of party members conducted by party headquarters. Liberals have usually scored between 18-30% of the vote in this riding, the recent high watermark of 29% being scored by now-Calgary mayor Dave Bronconnier in 1997. Anders has scored between 47-57% of the vote since 1997 when he took over the seat from then one-term Reform M.P. Stephen Harper.

With Godbout ruling himself out, we are down to 19 former Liberal M.P.s either nominated, running for the nomination, or having expressed interest in running again. We also noted in an earlier blogpost that two more former Liberal M.P.'s have apparently ruled themselves out of future contention: Brent St.-Denis in Algoma – Manitoulin – Kapuskasing, ON and Carole-Marie Allard in Alfred-Pellan, QC.

Reader contributions help make the Pundits' Guide a more valuable resource for everyone, so if you have information to share about forthcoming meetings, and candidates who may be running (or who have ruled themselves out), please take a moment to send it along. Then you can follow all the fun on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

In a very good demonstration of why I stay away from polling data altogether, readers might be interested in a series of blogposts that started as a methodological debate between the author of the Paulitics Polls blog and the vice-president of Ipsos-Reid, and have intensified from there.

Essentially, Paul was asking statistically and methodologically why, in his examination of Ipsos-Reid polls versus their competitors', a consistent gap appeared between their results for two of the political parties. Ipsos-Reid VP John Wright challenged the assertion, but did not respond to Paul's methodological points in as thorough-going a fashion as Paul had hoped for. Paul introduced more data to prove his points, while Wright amended his originally claimed source for his data, but otherwise demurred from further detailed discussion. U.S. pollster John Zogby also appears to have entered the debate in the comments section.

There are a number of good aggregations of public domain polling data for federal politics, including:

• The list of polls maintained at the Wikipedia page
• NoDice.ca federal polls page - maintained by David, a graduate student at St. Francis Xavier
  
• Paulitics Polls - maintained and written by Paul, an M.A. in political science from Carleton University
  
• PollingReport.ca - (which I've just discovered you can now follow on Twitter) maintained by Kerry, another M.A. grad Kelly, an M.Sc. grad with a B.A. in Math [thanks to the commenter for correcting me]
  
• ThreeHundredEight.com - maintained by Éric, whose academic credentials I don't know, but he publishes his methodological approach here
• John Wright earlier claimed there was a complete set of polling results at Elections Canada. Although I can't claim to know every nook and cranny of that website, I do know it better than many folks, and I've honestly never come across any such data there.
  

The points of debate between Paul and Wright seem to boil down to:

• in making claims about differences between Ipsos-Reid polls and other firms' polls, what is the source of the other polls, and which source has the most complete set of other polls
• in making claims about differences between Ipsos-Reid polls and other firms' polls, is it valid to use an unweighted average of averages
• why has Ipsos-Reid not followed the example set by other polling firms in publicly releasing polling data details
• why would Paul invest so much effort to investigate this question

The two have a history of sparring over the same topic, but the current set of blogposts does make for an interesting and real-life question about the validity of different ways to assess polling methodologies. I know I learned a lot from reading it all.

Here are the blogposts in what I think is chronological order:

• That’s some mighty interesting polling data you’ve got there
• A response to Ipsos Reid, Part I
• A response to Ipsos Reid, Part II
• A Response to Ipsos Reid, Part III
• Ipsos Reid: 0; bloggers everywhere: 1
• Bloggers everywhere: 2; Ipsos Reid: 0

Labels: Data Analysis, Opinion Research, Polling Data

Well, quite a few developments to report today as things heat up, so let's jump right in:

• Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON -What a difference a day makes! As of yesterday, with nominations having supposedly closed on June 23 and me not hearing any news, I decided to enter Richard Harvey as the acclaimed Conservative candidate in this northwestern Ontario riding. Not so fast, there, alice, because earlier today NetNewsLedger.com broke the story that a challenger was expected to announce shortly, which was confirmed a little later by TBNewsWatch.com. Provincial riding president and retired Buchanan woodlands manager Michael Auld has announced his candidacy, and the race is now on, although no meeting date has been set as yet. The riding is currently held by first-time NDP M.P. Bruce Hyer.
• New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC - A reader has written to let us know that 2008 Liberal candidate in neighbouring Burnaby – New Westminster, BC, Gerry Lenoski, is getting set to announce his candidacy for the nomination in this vacant riding. Previous reports have named Joe Trasolini as considering a run for the Liberals in this likely by-election riding won by the NDP's Dawn Black in the last election. The Conservative nomination, as we reported earlier, will be contested on an unknown date, while the NDP are meeting this Sunday night, and Green Party nominations close on June 30.
  
• Ottawa Centre, ON - With Penny Collenette now out of the running for the Liberal nomination, a reader has written to pass along the latest rumours about who wants to run in her place. According to the reader, previous nomination candidate Scott Bradley is mulling things over, there is a move to draft former Allan Rock aide Cyrus Reporter, 2006 Carleton – Mississippi Mills, ON candidate Isabelle Metcalfe is putting out feelers, and Janet Yale, an executive with Telus, is also considering a run. There is also a rundown of previously interested Liberal nomination candidates and their chances of running again on the Liberal Scarf blog that includes 2004-06 candidate Richard Mahoney, former Mayor and current provincial cabinet minister Jim Watson, former MPP Richard Patten and Ottawa city councillor Diane Deans. The riding is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Paul Dewar.
  
• Algoma – Manitoulin – Kapuskasing, ON - Also from the Liberal Scarf, we learn of a brewing nomination contest for the Liberal candidacy in this northern Ontario riding. Duking it out in advance of an August 22-23 meeting are François Cloutier (website), a provincial public servant in the Ministry of Attorney-General and small business owner, and Marc Dupuis who is a VP of the Nord-Aski Regional Economic Development Corporation and a Hearst city councillor, reports the Kapuskasing Northern Times. The seat is currently held by first-time NDP M.P. Carol Hughes who managed to increase her vote from 2006 levels in spite of declining turnout that hurt both her Conservative and Liberal opponents. Interestingly, both Hughes and the Liberal M.P. she defeated, Brent St.-Denis, must have been anticipating a fight in 2008 after Hughes came within 3.7% of the vote in 2006, since both stepped up their spending substantially: from 58% of the limit to 93% in St.-Denis' case, and from 57% to 95% in Hughes'. Conservative spending meanwhile fell off dramatically, from 73% of the limit in 2006 to just 9% in 2008.
• Hamilton East – Stoney Creek, ON - We've previously reported on the apparent interest of former 2008 Liberal candidate Larry Di Ianni in taking another run at this seat, but according to the Liberal Scarf he may have company, since the riding association's candidate search committee is uncovering other prospective names. Being approached and considering a run are Maria Pearson, currently a city councillor in Stoney Creek, and Ivan Luksic who lost the nomination to Di Ianni last time, writes the Stoney Creek News. Candidate search is continuing and one should be selected within the month. The riding is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Wayne Marston.
• Miramichi, NB - A former MLA and past Mayor of Miramichi, John MacKay, announced his candidacy for the Liberal nomination here this past week (not to be confused with the current Liberal M.P. John N. McKay from Scarborough – Guildwood, ON). The House of Commons postal service be forewarned, because this is an accident waiting to happen! Luckily for them, they're both Liberals. MacKay will be joining Veronique Arsenault (previously reported here) in the contest which will be settled at a future nomination meeting, date as yet unknown, says the Moncton Times & Transcript. The riding is currently represented by first-time Conservative M.P. Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, whose last campaign outspent that of previous Liberal M.P. Charles Hubbard by a factor of 2 to 1 (70% of the spending limit vs. 28%). h/t again to the Liberal Scarf, which is fast becoming the go-to site for Liberal nominations info, at least in central and eastern Canada.
  
• Haldimand – Norfolk, ON - It's now official; former M.P. Bob Speller has declared his interest in running for re-election in the riding currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. Diane Finley, who beat him in 2004. Speller tried to regain his seat in 2006, but sat out 2008 in favour of Dr. Eric Hoskins. However, he's decided to try a return to politics and @M_Ignatieff was on hand for the announcement. Liberal spending has fallen slightly over those campaigns, from 91% of the spending limit in 2004 to 87% in 2006 and then 85% in 2008. Meanwhile, after accidentally overspending the limit in 2006 (103%), Finley's spending returned to 79%. Finley was one of four candidates (2 Liberals and 2 Conservatives) confirmed to have overspent the limit in 2006, but although one has already signed a compliance agreement with the Commissioner of Elections, as yet I don't find any evidence of one being concluded in this case. If successful in winning the nomination, Speller would be joining Finley and first-time Green candidate Anne Faulkner, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
  
• Lanark – Frontenac – Lennox and Addington, ON - 2008 candidate David Remington will be acclaimed at the Liberal nomination meeting in this riding on Tuesday July 7, as he was the only candidate to file papers, according to Mix97 radio. The riding is currently represented by long-time Conservative M.P. Scott Reid (and I just imagined the potential for grief in the Commons Post office if Liberal spin-doctor Scott Reid were ever to sit in the House at the same time as he did!). Thanks to a reader for this clipping.
• Newmarket – Aurora, ON - The Liberal Scarf is reporting that 2008 Liberal candidate Tim Jones has now withdrawn from the nomination race and is endorsing King Mayor Margaret Black instead. Chris Emanuel is also still in the running, YorkRegion.com reports. The riding is currently held by first-term Conservative M.P. Lois Brown.
• Alfred-Pellan, QC - Also according to the Liberal Scarf, there are two candidates remaining in the nomination race for this riding, which will be settled next Monday July 29. Still running are civil servant Martin Houle and lawyer Angelo G. Iacono, while former Liberal M.P. Carole-Marie Allard since withdrawn from the race. The riding is currently represented by two-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Robert Carrier who was also recently renominated. I'll write more about this riding after the nomination meeting.
  
• Edmonton Centre, AB - As expected, human rights activist and small businessperson Lewis Cardinal announced his bid for the NDP nomination yesterday, although no meeting date has been set as yet. Cardinal will be facing two-term Conservative M.P. Laurie Hawn, who himself defeated former Liberal M.P. Anne "Landslide Annie" McLellan in 2006 after her many previous close calls. INSTANT-TWITTER-UPDATE: According to the Edmonton TinyPerfectBlog, Cardinal's candidacy may have caused the 2008 Liberal candidate in this riding, James Wachowich, to rethink his plans to run again.
  
• Edmonton – Sherwood Park, AB - Richard Warnica of the Edmonton Journal is also reporting in the same story that Independent conservative candidate James Ford plans to run again against first-term Conservative M.P. Tim Uppal. Ford was the only Independent candidate to place 2nd in the 2008 election (and I apologize, I've just realized that that query page is not working right now, so I'll get to fixing it very soon), achieving 32.5% of the vote and coming within 3.4% of beating Uppal, in spite of being outgunned in campaign spending (95% of the limit for Uppal vs. 38% for Ford). Thanks to a reader for pointing out this clipping.
  

This has been the Liberal Scarf edition of Nomination News. Well, not exclusively, but if you would like to contribute some nomination news as well, please drop me a line or send me a link to your latest blogpost on nomination news, and I'll track it here. Then follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter for details.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Liberals, NDP

Sixteen year Bloc Québécois M.P. Réal Ménard confirmed this morning that he would resign his Commons seat of Hochelaga, QC on September 16 (the first Caucus meeting of the September sitting), in order to run municipally in Montréal.

[UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Chris for catching my obvious boo-boo in the blogpost title.]

We can thus guesstimate the relevant dates as follows (remembering that the exact dates will depend on when the Chief Electoral Officer receives the official notice of vacancy from the Commons Speaker):

Date of resignation:	Wed Sep 16, 2009
Earliest date the by-election could be called (11 days later):	Sun Sep 27, 2009
Earliest date the by-election could be held (first Monday at least 36 days after that):	Mon Nov 2, 2009
Latest date the by-election could be called (180 days later):	Mon Mar 15, 2010
Latest date the by-election could be held (first Monday at least 36 - [no maximum] days later):	on or after Mon Apr 26, 2010

Thus, it might be possible, if the Prime Minister were so inclined, to call all four vacant seats at the same time, since the last day to call New Westminster--Coquitlam, BC is Tuesday, October 13, and the Hochelaga by-election could be called any day on or after Sunday, September 27.

I'm adding Hochelaga to the list of vacant seats at the top of the main page, with all the relevant dates.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Hochelaga, Vacant Seats

Thanks to a reader for writing to let us know that the first NDP nomination meeting in an incumbent riding has now been scheduled:

• Elmwood – Transcona, MB - It seems that one of the newest additions to the NDP caucus will be the first one to be renominated, as the Elmwood – Transcona NDP has scheduled its nomination meeting for Monday, June 29. Current M.P. (and former MLA) Jim Maloway was first elected in 2008 to replace long-time NDP M.P. Bill Blaikie, and is expected to be the only candidate on Monday. He maintained most of Blaikie's previous vote share in 2008, while the Liberals fell below the candidate rebate threshold of 10% (obtaining just 6.6% of the vote) in the face of a strengthening Conservative vote under the candidacy of the Swedish former Winnipeg Jets hockey player, Thomas Steen. Maloway may have maintained Blaikie's vote share, but clearly took no chances in the campaign: spending some 95% of the limit compared with Blaikie's previous spending of 50-60% (down from a high of 67% in 1997). Steen, on the other hand spent less than the 2006 Conservative campaign but more than their 2004 one (78% vs. 95% and 48% respectively), while Liberal Wes Penner hiked Liberal spending somewhat from earlier outings.

The NDP, as mentioned, is also nominating its candidate for the possible by-election riding of New Westminster--Coquitlam, BC this coming Sunday, June 28, and will thus FINALLY have a bar on the chart on the front page. And that will apparently make the reader mentioned above quite happy indeed.

How can the Pundits' Guide make you happy? Get in touch and pass along details of candidates and nominations in your neck of the woods, and then follow us on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, NDP

When the Conservative nomination meeting in one of the vacant seats is held, there is at least one interested candidate who won't be able to run:

• New Westminster--Coquitlam, BC - Former M.P. Paul Forseth is out of the country on a planned trip, which has prevented him from meeting the deadline to file nomination papers for the Conservative nomination in this vacant seat and likely by-election riding, reports the New Westminster News Leader tonight. Meeting the deadline was Lorraine Brett, and presumably Diana Dilworth as well. Forseth had expressed concerns to the Hill Times last March that his party might try and prevent him from running, in favour of parachuting a "star" candidate into the riding. No date is mentioned for the Conservative nomination meeting, however the NDP meeting is set for this Sunday, June 28, while the Green Party has set a deadline of June 30 for candidates to apply. Meanwhile, the Georgia Straight online is reporting that Port Moody mayor Joe Trasolini has not completely ruled out running for the Liberals.

If you have nomination news to pass along, send me an email and I'll include it in the next update. Or you can follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter for all the latest tidbits.

UPDATE: I rushed to post this, but later didn't like the way the headline sounded, and so I've changed it to read "Conservative Nomination DEADLINE in New West...". Didn't mean to offend anyone.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, New Westminster – Coquitlam

Turning to the right side of the spectrum, we have news of one acclaimed candidate, and confirmation of the date for another nomination contest:

• Kingston and the Islands, ON - A reader was kind enough to write and advise that indeed, Brian Abrams (and I promise not to mess up the spelling this time ;-)) has been acclaimed the Conservative Party candidate once again in this eastern Ontario riding. Abrams succeeded in increasing his party's vote against long-time Liberal M.P. and Commons Speaker Peter Milliken in 2008, in a race that saw turnout decline from 66% to 60%, largely at Milliken's expense. Abrams also managed to run the most fully-funded campaign of the candidates, ringing in at 95% of the spending limit as compared with Milliken's usual 50-60% and the NDP's Rick Downes at 34%. 2008 Green candidate Eric Walton was also renominated earlier this spring.
  
• Winnipeg South Centre, MB - Meanwhile, the Conservative nomination meeting in this riding has been set for Thursday July 9, and will feature a contest between Hart Mallin and Raymond Hall. I ran down the riding history earlier here, however it is currently represented by four-term Liberal M.P. Anita Neville, who is one of her party's two remaining M.P.s between Vancouver and the Lakehead (that's Thunder Bay for those who don't know).

Speaking of the Lakehead, I believe Conservative nominations were to close in Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON today, with Nipigon mayor Richard Harvey the only candidate I'm aware of who's declared. If anyone has any news as to the status of that nomination (or any others for that matter), please get in touch and keep us up to date. Also, you can now follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter for all the latest news.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives

Further to speculation we reported here some time ago, it is now being reported by La Presse that a new vacancy will be opening up in the House of Commons (and thank heavens Paul Wells reads the french-language media, or many of us would miss these stories for another day or so):

• Hochelaga, QC - Six-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Réal Ménard, long rumoured to be interested in a provincial or municipal run, is now apparently set to announce tomorrow that he will run for a seat on the Montréal city council with the slate headed by former PQ cabinet minister Louise Harel, and would give up his Commons seat to do so. One of his party's original M.P.s from the 1993 election, Ménard has dominated this riding ever since, with the Liberals as his main competition. The NDP, however, counts this seat amongst their better performances in the province, having moved from barely 1.8% of the vote in 2000 to 14.4% under labour candidate Jean-Claude Rocheleau and pushing the Conservatives into fourth place. Perhaps not coincidentally NDP Leader Jack Layton was already attending a fundraising barbecue for Rocheleau this past Monday (you learn the darnedest things on Twitter). As Paul Wells implies, all the parties will be working to position themselves relative to their best enemy, and thus a by-election in this seat has the potential (this is me opining now) to give us a lot of clues about any change in the federal political landscape in Québec.

By the way, you can follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter now. I usually follow you back (hope that's not a problem), as it's helped me pick up a lot of political and nomination news along the way (although I wish @DenisCoderre would remember to tweet more of the nomination meetings he's been holding lately, hint, hint!).

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Hochelaga, Vacant Seats

Liberals have settled on one Thunder Bay candidate, while the contest for the other position is heating up:

• Thunder Bay – Rainy River, ON - Former Liberal M.P. Ken Boshcoff has been now been acclaimed his party's candidate for the forthcoming election according to TBNewsWatch.com, in spite of rumours that he might face a nomination challenge, since in the end no-one else filed nomination papers. Boshcoff will face first-time NDP M.P. John Rafferty. Meanwhile no name has surfaced as yet on the Conservative side in this riding, reports NetNewsLedger.com.
• Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON - Westfort city councillor and former aide to Joe Comuzzi, Joe Virdiramo, did (as we expected) announce his candidacy for the Liberal nomination yesterday. Virdiramo joins 2008 candidate Don McArthur and lawyer Yves Fricot in the race, and perhaps others as well given that nominations are not now expected to close until sometime in August, writes TBNewswatch.com. The riding is currently represented by first-time NDP M.P. Bruce Hyer, and also has Nipigon Mayor Richard Harvey apparently unchallenged for the Conservative nomination given that nominations were to close Tuesday (although I'm as yet unable to confirm this point).
  

Both these ridings have been three-way races in 2 or 3 of the last three elections. Meanwhile in eastern Québec earlier this week:

• Brome – Missisquoi, QC - As expected, former Liberal M.P. Denis Paradis was acclaimed his party's candidate on Monday night. I earlier ran down the riding's complete history here, but Paradis will be once again facing two-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Christian Ouellet in their fourth contest in a riding that was the 20th closest race of the last election.
  

Paradis and Boshcoff are the 6th and 7th former Liberal M.P.s to be confirmed as candidates for the forthcoming election, with another 13 in the running or said to be interested. They join 2 incumbents, 2 former 2008 candidates, and 2 newcomers on their party's slate of candidates nominated so far.

Meanwhile, Liberal Party President Alf Apps told a Winnipeg audience yesterday that his party expected to report over $5 million in political contributions for the first two quarters of 2009, which given that they raised $1.8M in the first quarter translates to over $3.2M in the second. He confirmed that party membership had dipped to 36,000 at the end of 2008, but has recovered to just under 90,000 currently, and they have set a target of 200,000 members by the end of 2009. In Manitoba they are hoping "at a minimum" to regain the seats of Winnipeg South and Saint Boniface lost to the Conservatives in previous elections, reports the Winnipeg Free Press.

[UPDATE: Later in the day, Liberal national director Rocco Rossi told SunMedia that membership has actually reached 80,000.]

Do you have nomination news to share with Guide readers? If so, please drop me a line so I can include it in the next Nomination News update.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Some unfortunate news in Ottawa-area Liberal circles this evening:

• Ottawa Centre, ON - The presumptive Liberal nomination candidate in this downtown Ottawa riding, Penny Collenette, announced this evening that she was withdrawing from the race due to health concerns. Collenette ran in 2008 against then first-time NDP M.P. Paul Dewar, placing second, and had been widely expected to run again with a website and attending many community events. No word on when the riding association will move forward with a nomination meeting now. Although she was prepared to run if a snap election had been called, Collenette will now be taking some time to attend to her scoliosis, the Ottawa Citizen is reporting this evening.

Thanks to a reader for drawing this news item to our attention.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

As I surf Canadian political blogs for nominations information and local colour, I occasionally come across some interesting entries that guide readers might find interesting. Here are two that surfaced in the last day or so:

• From Hoser-to-Hoosier, a thorough-going look at the application of game theory to the current parliamentary impasse.
• From Not an Official Green Party Canada Site, a look at the relationship between candidate spending and vote share for Green Party candidates in Ontario ridings in the last federal election.

I like to hear about sources of data analysis in Canadian politics with strategic significance, so if you're aware of more work in this vein, drop me a line.

Labels: Data Analysis

Thanks to a reader for passing along this news from this morning's Winnipeg Free Press:

• Dauphin – Swan River – Marquette, NB - Long-time Conservative M.P. Inky Mark has announced his retirement at the next election, the Free Press' Mia Rabson is reporting this morning. A former mayor of Dauphin, he was first elected to the Commons as a Reform M.P. in 1997 with just 35% of the vote, but increased his vote share in each election since, obtaining some 61% of the vote in 2008. Conservatives will be looking for a replacement candidate (and obviously Mark's announced retirement has the immediate effect of reducing their nominated count by one). The riding was held for one term by the Liberals in 1993, and for one term by the NDP in 1980, but has otherwise stayed in conservative if not Conservative hands the rest of the time since then.

I'll be adding the Dauphin seat to the list of seats with retiring incumbents on the "Search the Database" page as well, to help us track nominations in that special case of seats.

Do you have nomination news from your province or party? Send it along to me, and I'll share it with Guide readers and help make this a better dataset for all to use.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Retiring Incumbents

Thanks to the folks who helped me ascertain the names of the two Québec Liberal candidates nominated in last week's meetings. Running in the forthcoming election will be:

• Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC - 2008 candidate Denis Joanette was renominated by acclamation this past June 15, and will face off against first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Luc Desnoyers who took over the seat from former Bloc M.P. Gilles Perron on his retirement from politics.
• Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC - A new name, Michel Picard, will represent Liberals in this south shore riding, which is currently represented by three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Carole Lavallée. Picard's predecessor Pierre Diamond was able to move the party back into second place in this riding in 2008, after falling to third place behind the Conservatives in 2006. Picard was acclaimed at a nomination meeting held this past June 17.

Do you have information about nomination meetings and prospective candidates in your corner of the country or your part of the political spectrum? Then write and pass them on to me so I can share with Guide readers.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Another candidate has stepped forward to contest the Conservative nomination in one of the three vacant seats:

• New Westminster--Coquitlam, BC - Nominations opened June 11 for prospective Conservative candidates in this vacant seat in the Vancouver suburbs, and a second name is surfacing, reports the New Westminster News Leader. Former municipal candidate and area volunteer Lorraine Brett will join former Conservative M.P. Paul Forseth and Port Moody municipal councillor Diana Dilworth. The nomination meeting will be held scheduled for the week of July 23-28, the Leader reports. Meanwhile, the NDP's contested nomination meeting for the riding is being held this Sunday, June 28.

The Prime Minister could have called this by-election anytime after April 27, although to call all 3 vacant seats at once he would have had to wait until June 2. The earliest that the three seats could be called simultaneously was June 2 for a July 13 date, while the latest they could all be called is Tuesday, October 13 for a date November 23 or later.

My best guess is that they will be called on the August long weekend for the Tuesday after Labour Day (September 8), given that the House is now scheduled to return on Monday, September 14, following the vote on the Liberals' opposition day motion of last Friday. However, the PM could decide to defer the call until after Thanksgiving and wait to see what happens on the Liberals' autumn opposition day which is set for two days after the tabling of the blue ribbon panel's report on EI in the week of September 28.

The provincial by-election being contested by former Bloc Québécois M.P. Paul Crête, who vacated his Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC (MIKR) seat at the end of May is also being held today, and so we likely won't see many names surface for nominations there until later this week at the earliest.

Meanwhile, with the Nova Scotia provincial election out of the way, NDPers are Babble'ing about the favourable transposition of recent provincial results onto the federal boundary in Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS (CCMV) and speculating on when a candidate might be announced. One (as yet unnamed) candidate is said to be in the works, and the possible synergies with the party's Halifax Convention planned for August 14-16 are being considered. The Conservatives have already nominated Scott Armstrong, while 2008 candidate Tracy Parsons is hoping to run for the Liberals.

Labels: Conservatives, New Westminster – Coquitlam, Vacant Seats

A few more items to report today:

• Dufferin – Caledon, ON - In addition to nomination candidate Jeff May, whose candidacy we reported on here earlier, word comes from the Caledon Citizen that if former Liberal M.P. Garth Turner decides to run again, it may be in this riding rather than his former riding of Halton. The riding is currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. David Tilson. Thanks to a commenter on an earlier blogpost for pointing out this clipping
• Regina – Qu'Appelle, SK - Elections Canada is reporting that the Green Party renominated its 2008 candidate, Greg Chatterson, by acclamation on June 14, 2009 in this east Regina riding. Chatterson previously ran for the Canadian Action Party in 1997 in the same riding, which is now held by three-term Conservative M.P. Andrew Scheer.
• Malpeque, PE - The Green Party's candidate page is also reporting the renomination of Peter Bevan-Baker as their next candidate in this riding, which is now represented by long-time Liberal M.P. Wayne Easter.
• Edmonton Centre, AB - The TinyPerfectBlog from Alberta is reporting that communications consultant and recent municipal candidate Lewis Cardinal is set to announce his bid for the NDP nomination in this riding, currently represented by two-term Conservative M.P. Laurie Hawn. Cardinal's Facebook page appears to confirm this, and also shows former NDP candidate for the riding, Donna Martyn, as supportive of his candidacy, so one assumes she will not be running against him. Cardinal has a news conference scheduled for Thursday in Grant Notley Park, aptly enough.
  

In addition to Robert Bertrand, whose possible candidacy in Pontiac, QC we reported on in the last blogpost, Garth Turner makes the 20th name of a former Liberal M.P. who I've seen express interest in running in the next election.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals, NDP

Rounding up nomination news from the Liberal Party, we start with the results of Saturday night's nomination contest in the Beauce:

[UPDATE: I broke this post in two and did the Greens in the next one, but unfortunately forgot to change the title of this post, in case you're wondering where the Green nominations are. Sorry about that.]

• Beauce, QC - Liberals in the Beauce have selected a former ADQ MNA, Claude Morin, as their candidate for the forthcoming election, after a contested nomination meeting held this past Saturday night that saw Morin defeat 2008 Liberal candidate René Roy. With a history in the Canadian Forces and at the Department of National Defence, Morin served in the Québec assembly for eighteen months between the 2007 and 2008 elections, when he lost to former Liberal MNA Robert Dutil. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Maxime Bernier who was reelected with 62.4% of the vote, spending 80% of the expense limit as compared with 2% by Roy for the Liberals (note: neither the Bloc Québécois nor Green Party candidates' financial returns are entered into the Elections Canada database to this point).
• Hull – Aylmer, QC - Five-term Liberal M.P. Marcel Proulx was acclaimed his party's candidate once again this past Thursday, June 18 in this riding across the river from Ottawa. The riding has proven a four-way race in the last two elections, with the Bloc candidate Raphaël Déry placing second last time, and the NDP's candidate, former leadership candidate Pierre Ducasse, moving into third place ahead of the Conservative. Ducasse, however, has just announced his candidacy for the forthcoming November municipal elections, so may not be running federally next time around depending on the timing and his success in the forthcoming municipal campaign.
• Welland, ON - As expected, former Liberal M.P. John Maloney was acclaimed his party's candidate for the next election this past Friday in this Niagara-region riding. Maloney lost the seat to first-time NDP M.P. Malcolm Allen in 2008, placing third behind Conservative candidate (and former Christian Heritage Party member) Alfred Kiers who fell just 300 votes shy of Allen's result. Although he won, Allen was not the big spender of the last campaign, spending 76% of the limit compared with 95% by both Maloney and Kiers (virtually all of whose campaign expenditures were covered by an $84K transfer from Conservative party headquarters). A three-way race in each of the last 3 elections, the riding is set to receive its third visit since last fall from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff in a town hall meeting scheduled for tonight.
  
• Mount Royal, QC - Five-term Liberal M.P. Irwin Cotler ended the speculation about his possible retirement and has called a nomination meeting for Tuesday June 30, reports The Suburban. Looks like I made a typo in the left-hand column saying the meeting would be held Tuesday June 20, so I've fixed that up now. My apologies for any confusion this error may have caused.
• Northumberland – Quinte West, ON - Meanwhile, nominations remain open for candidates interested in running for the Liberals in this riding east of Toronto, although former Liberal M.P. Paul Macklin is still considering another run, reports NorthumberlandToday.com. Already nominated are two-term Conservative M.P. Rick Norlock and Green Party candidate Stan Grizzle.
• Western Arctic, ON - Former NWT Premier Joe Handley has spoken with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and has now decided (as earlier speculated here) that he will indeed run for the Liberal nomination in this North of 60 riding, which is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Dennis Bevington. No meeting date has been set as yet and Gabrielle Mackenzie-Scott, who represented the Liberals in 2008, has yet to announce her intentions. She fell to third place against Bevington as the strong showing of Conservative candidate Brendan Bell put him within 523 votes (3.8% of the vote) of defeating Bevington, in the 33rd closest riding of the last election. Bell spent 99% of the limit on his campaign (all of it raised locally), as compared with 47% by Bevington and 45% for Mackenzie-Scott.
• Pontiac, QC - This morning's Hill Times (subscription only) is reporting that in addition to former Liberal Party national director Greg Fergus, former 2008 candidate Cindy Duncan McMillan has also declared her candidacy for the nomination, while previous nomination candidate Richard Mahoney and former Liberal M.P. Robert Bertrand are said to still be considering their options. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Lawrence Cannon.
  

I am *still* looking for information about the Liberal nominations announced here for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC on June 15, and here for Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC on June 17, so if anyone out there is able to help out, please drop me a line here.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Further to yesterday's announcement of the Equal Voice 2009 Canada Challenge, the Ottawa Sun followed up with an interview of Carleton University political science professor and Equal Voice executive member Melissa Haussman, who hypothesized that parties might support women candidates less than male candidates.

Parties block female candidates says Prof

By LAURA CZEKAJ, Sun Media
Last Updated: 19th June 2009, 7:16am

Public opinion may favour having more women involved in federal politics, but it’s difficult to tell if that translates into more votes during an election, says an elections expert.

Melissa Haussman, a political science professor at Carleton University, said more research needs to be done to see how women fare when running against a male opponent.

Out of the 11 Ottawa-area federal ridings, Cheryl Gallant, MP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, was the only female elected in the 2008 election.

Research has shown that in close campaigns, candidate gender matters less than party affiliation.

Where women find roadblocks to their candidacy is at the riding association level, where they are selected in “unwinnable” ridings or not offered the same campaign resources and support granted male candidates running under the same party flag, claimed Haussman.

"The net effect is the same in that women get treated as weaker candidates by the party apparatus even though they are not," she said.

"We have to overcome this labelling. If women are given a fair chance we will do equally, or better than men."

She said voter reluctance is often used as an excuse at the riding association level not to support women who are willing to run.

I thought this was an interesting hypothesis to test, and quite easy to do with the data in the normalized Pundits' Guide relational database. Here is the result using the reported value for "Transfers from Registered Parties" for the best available candidate election return ("as reviewed by Elections Canada" if entered into my database, or "as submitted" otherwise), but expressed as a percent of the Candidate Spending Limit for that riding, to standardize the contributions across all ridings.

Registered Party Transfers to Candidates as a Percent of the Candidate Expenditure Limit, and Candidate Counts, by Party and Gender, 2004 - 2008 General Elections

Elec	Gen	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	ALL
2008 GE	F M	3.8% 6.5%	5.2% 3.7%	2.2% 0.4%	21.0% 21.1%	7.9% 8.6%	4.7% 4.6%
2006 GE	F M	9.3% 6.6%	4.3% 3.4%	0.3% 0.3%	13.0% 12.3%	23.6% 15.9%	6.4% 5.8%
2004 GE	F M	7.1% 7.4%	2.9% 2.4%	0.5% 0.5%	35.5% 25.4%	5.1% 5.4%	4.4% 4.1%
2008 GE	F M	114 192	105 203	89 213	21 54	62 243	446 1150
2006 GE	F M	79 228	108 199	71 234	23 52	38 270	378 1236
2004 GE	F M	75 233	96 211	74 230	18 57	36 272	384 1280

As we can see, women candidates across all three general elections examined obtained a slightly higher rate of transfers from their party headquarters than male candidates, contrary to Professor Haussman's expectation. This varied by party, however, with the NDP as the only party to consistently favour its women candidates in this regard, the Bloc Québécois and Green Party either favouring women candidates or treating them the same, and the Liberal and Conservative parties each favouring male candidates over female candidates in 2 of the 3 elections studied here.

Elections were chosen for inclusion above based on the quality of available data on central party support of candidates. Because of amendments to the reporting requirements in the Canada Elections Act that took effect in time for the 2004 General Election, candidates had to separately break out the transfers they received from party headquarters ("registered parties") and their local riding associations ("registered associations"), and thus we are able to more quickly identify the financial assistance they received.

Candidate gender is as collected by me from web searches and through other means, and is virtually complete for all electoral events at least for the major parties reported on above.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting dataset -- one that contradicts earlier expectations -- and so I hope readers will find it interesting.

Labels: Party Finance, Women Candidates

The organization Equal Voice held a news conference with women parliamentarians this morning as part of their "2009 Canada Challenge" campaign, to encourage the major political parties to increase the number of women candidates they run in the forthcoming campaign.

Opposition party leaders and the Minister for the Status of Women responded by making pledges in the Equal Voice news release (PDF) and during Members' Statements before Question Period:

• NDP Leader Jack Layton was first up, and pledged that his slate for the forthcoming election would include "at least 50% women".
  
• Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said that "we are going to do our utmost to reach that objective", and stated that their goal was "parity, which is only normal".
• Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff pledged on behalf of his party that "no fewer than one-third of our Liberal candidates will be women in the next election".
• Status of Women minister Helena Guergis quoted in the release stressed that women should have every opportunity "to make a meaningful contribution to democratic life in Canada, which includes the option of running for elected office," and in the House she highlighted her government's funding of the Equal Voice program to foster political education amongst women, and the record number of women appointed to Cabinet by the Prime Minister.
  
• Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, also quoted in the release said that "we need more women candidates to ensure that the issues important to Canadians are raised and important questions asked".

The Pundits' Guide will allow users to track how parties are doing in meeting their recruitment commitments; both overall (in the Nominations Progress table at the top of the main page), but also in various categories of seats, such as Incumbent Seats, Seats in which the party placed 2nd last time, Seats in which the party placed a strong 3rd last time, and other Seats.

For this latter breakdown, go to the "Search the Database" page, and select the second query under the heading "Nominations Progress" entitled "Nomination counts by party and previous rank for the 41st General Election".

This breakdown can be important to examine because, for example, while the Conservative caucus had fewer women going into the last campaign, their party made an obvious effort to recruit women candidates in vacant incumbent seats and next-tier winnable ridings. That progress ought to be able to be measured as well.

One statistic mentioned by Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was his party's record of success in actually electing the women candidates it runs. I've realized before that this was a desirable statistic to track, and when I revamp the Summary panes this summer I'll be adding it in there to provide us with a more complete picture.

I realize it's still controversial for some readers that parties might recruit candidates on the basis of a characteristic such as gender, rather than seeking to pick "the best person for the job". To this I would merely say that if the candidate were selected *only* on the basis of a characteristic, that would be a recipe for political failure. By the same token, I might argue, often when new candidates are allowed to bypass a competitive nomination process they may be missing out on a crucial testing ground that could serve them well later on. So the nature of the selection process may be as important as the candidates' attributes. However, we don't even debate the importance of regional representation in the Chamber or the cabinet, and some parties also observe conventions about alternating the language profiles of their leaders, as they did with religion in days gone by.

Much as many new participants were inspired to participate in politics in the United States this past year as a result of the candidacies of President Obama and Senator Clinton, I remember a time 25 years ago when the first woman nominee for Vice President was selected. That was in the summer of 1984, and the excitement this event generated is part of what led me to become involved in politics myself. I would like to see many more such role models, of many different backgrounds and with many different attributes and skills, included in the parties' slates for the forthcoming campaign, in the hopes of motivating another generation of young folks to become involved in the democratic life of their country.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Women Candidates

On Wednesday night's edition of CTV's Power Play, Tom Clark continued to use the figures of 50% nominated for Conservatives and 2% nominated for Liberal candidates (which I assume Clark got from this site, as I'm not aware of any other sites tracking them).

But when he put the 2% figure to Liberal campaign guru Senator David Smith, the Senator disputed it, saying that "our nominations or 'ridings called' would be over 90, not percent, of the 308 seats, and we'll be calling about 4 more in the next 3 days." He added that "I'm sure we'll have dealt with a third of them before the end of this month."

I've since re-confirmed my original understanding with Liberal Party officials, and want to stress again that the Liberals may have some 90 candidates *identified*, however unless the government fell and a snap election was called, all of them still have to be *nominated* at a meeting of their riding association (whether contested or otherwise).

Thus, I am perfectly correct to say that there are 7 nominated Liberal candidates (plus the two names we haven't learned yet for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC and Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC), and Senator Smith is undoubtedly also correct when he says they have 90 identified Liberal candidates. Once they're actually nominated, I'll be entering them into the database and including them in the counts.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Athough the immediate pressure is off, parties are nevertheless moving forward with nomination meetings and candidate announcements. Here is the latest:

• Ottawa – Orléans, ON - The local Green party renominated its 2008 candidate by acclamation in this east end Ottawa riding this past Tuesday June 17, reports the Orleans Star. Paul Maillet will return to challenge two-term Conservative M.P. Royal Galipeau and the winner of the contested Liberal nomination currently underway between Rainer Bloess, Judith Cane and David Bertschi and possibly former Liberal M.P. Marc Godbout. No NDP plans have emerged as yet in this riding pending the lifting of their nomination freeze.
  
• Kingston and the Islands, ON - 2008 Conservative candidate Brian Adams Abrams [sorry about that, Mr. Abrams; please see the comments] is hoping to be selected his party's candidate once again, reports the Kingston Whig-Standard, and he is currently the only candidate in their nomination race, although no meeting date has been set as yet. Adams Abrams ran second to Commons Speaker and Liberal candidate Peter Milliken, who has held the riding since 1988 but saw his margin of victory narrow in the last election as Adams Abrams outspent him 95% of the spending limit to 62%. Assuming Milliken runs again, which he gave every indication of doing in a recent Whig-Standard feature on a day in his life as Speaker, they will both be joined on the campaign trail by nominated Green candidate Eric Wilton, and an NDP candidate to be decided on later.
• Trinity – Spadina, ON - A reader writes to advise that 2008 Liberal candidate Christine Innes has announced her intention to run for her party's nomination in this riding once again. Indeed Innes was the only candidate to declare before the deadline of June 16, and is thus almost certain to be acclaimed at the forthcoming nomination meeting on Wednesday June 24. The seat will then play host to a contest between power couples, as Innes tries to reclaim husband Tony Ianno's seat from two-term NDP M.P. Olivia Chow, who is married to party leader Jack Layton. However, it was not Innes but her Conservative and Green competitors who were able to make a dent in Chow's raw vote last time out, even as turnout dropped by some 8 percentage points. Chow has spent at or near the limit on each of her three recent runs, while Ianno and Innes were both back around 80% of the limit.
  
• Hamilton Mountain, ON - The mountain may see be seeing some competition for the Liberal nomination, if the rumoured candidacies on this Liberal blog come to pass. The name of former provincial Liberal cabinet minister Maria Bountrogianni is said to be in the mix, along with that of 2008 candidate Tyler Banham who fell to third place last time behind recently re-nominated Conservative candidate Terry Anderson and two-term NDP M.P. Chris Charlton in spite of outspending them both (87% of the spending limit vs. 84% for Charlton and 64% for Anderson). 2008 Green candidate Stephen Brotherston has also recently been confirmed as running again. Interestingly, were Bountrogianni to run for and win the nomination, she and Charlton would be continuing a rivalry first started on the provincial scene in the election after Bountrogianni defeated Charlton's husband Brian, the then-NDP MPP, and later fended off Charlton herself in two more Ontario elections.
  
• Hamilton Centre, ON - Staying with Hamilton, one recent name who confirms he has been approached by the Liberals as a possible candidate to take on three-term NDP M.P. David Christopherson (now that former Liberal MP Stan Keyes has ruled out a return to politics), is city councillor and radio host Bob Bratina. The Liberal vote has fallen from Keyes' recent high watermark of 53% as the winner in 2000 to 17.6% and a third place finish in 2008, primarily to the benefit of the NDP. And although the Conservatives moved upwards into second place here last time, they had still not regained the combined PC-Canadian Alliance vote from 2000 either. Typical for a relatively secure incumbent, Christopherson's 2008 election spending fell back to 77% of the spending limit from 92-98% in earlier elections, while none of his opponents threatened him in that regard during the recent election.
• Ancaster – Dundas – Flamborough – Westdale, ON - Meantime, the Hamilton Spectator is also confirming (as is the Dundas Star) that retired CHCH-TV anchor Dan McLean has now decided to take the plunge and seek the Liberal nomination (as previously reported here) in this Golden Horseshoe riding, currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. David Sweet. However McLean may have some company in the race, as 2008 Liberal candidate Arlene MacFarlane-VanderBeek is also contemplating a return, reports the Flamborough Review. No nomination meeting date has been set as yet. Former Liberal M.P. Russ Powers (now MacFarlane-VanderBeek's boss as a Dundas municipal councillor) lost his seat in 2006 as he held his raw vote, but saw his opponents reap the benefits of the riding's growing population, particularly the Conservative victor David Sweet. Sweet continued to consolidate his lead in 2008 (in spite of reducing his campaign spending levels from 88% of the limit to 78%) as both the NDP and Liberals fell back, with only the Green Party making gains.
• Niagara West – Glanbrook, ON - 2004 Liberal candidate and Niagara regional councillor Debbie Zimmerman, who came very close to holding this redistributed seat in 2004 after Stoney Creek Liberal M.P. Tony Valeri moved over to Hamilton East – Stoney Creek, is now rumoured to be interested in giving it another try. The seat is currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. Dean Allison, who was able by 2008 to obtain a vote-share equivalent to the combined Canadian Alliance plus PC vote, even as he scaled back his campaign spending from 97-98% of the limit on previous outings to 82% this time around. 2008 Green candidate Sid Frere was also recently reconfirmed to run again.
• Brant, ON - As expected, former Liberal M.P. Lloyd St. Amand was renominated by acclamation on Tuesday, June 16, reports the Brantford Expositor. He will now face first-term Conservative M.P. Phil McColeman, and Nora Fueton for the Green Party. As NDP nominations in unheld ridings remain frozen, no New Democrat is confirmed as running here yet. With the departure of former Liberal M.P. Jane Stewart, and the uniting of the two conservative parties, this riding has become a two-way contest between the Liberals and Conservatives. St.-Amand narrowly won the seat in 2004 and 2006, losing by a slightly larger margin in 2008 but still under 10%. Candidate spending has also been evenly matched between the two leading parties, each racking up 85% of the limit or over in the last two campaigns
  
• Kitchener – Conestoga, ON - Another name making the rounds in Liberal circles as a possible candidate here is Kitchener mayor Carl Zehr. Typically a two-way Liberal-Conservative contest, former Liberal M.P. Lynn Myers lost the seat to current Conservative M.P. Harold Albrecht in 2006 in spite of increasing his raw vote, as Albrecht reaped nearly all the gains of the riding's increased population. Albrecht chalked up a further raw vote increase in 2008, even as turnout plunged from 65% to 56.5%.
• London – Fanshawe, ON - 2008 Liberal candidate Jacquie Gauthier has apparently declared her interest in running again against two-term NDP M.P. Irene Mathyssen, reports the Liberal Scarf blog. The Conservatives moved into second place in this riding last time, in spite of a falling raw vote, mainly due to Liberals switching or staying home (turnout fell from 62 to 55%). Mathyssen hiked her campaign spending from 73% of the limit in 2006 to 97% in 2008, slightly increasing her raw vote in the process.
• Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON - A third candidate has apparently announced his intentions for the contested Liberal nomination in this northwestern Ontario riding, advises a commenter at the Liberal Scarf blog. Thunder Bay city councillor Joe Virdiramo will join 2008 Liberal candidate Don McArthur and lawyer Yves Fricot whenever the nomination meeting is convened. Meantime Nipigon Mayor Richard Harvey has announced his nomination campaign for the local Conservative Party, reports TBNewswatch.com, while previous Conservative candidate Beverly Sarafin has decided not to re-offer. I ran down the riding's history in this blogpost last week. The riding is currently held by first-term NDP M.P. Bruce Hyer.
  
• Edmonton – Strathcona, AB - Thanks to the Conservative blogger Alberta Aardvark, we learn late tonight that former PMO staff Ryan Hastman has very narrowly won the contested Conservative nomination in their only unheld riding in Alberta. Hastman will be running against first-term NDP M.P. Linda Duncan who defeated former long-time Conservative M.P. Rahim Jaffer by just 463 votes (1% of the vote, or 2.1 votes per poll) and out-fundraised him, although she spent slightly less on the campaign (87% of the limit to his 99%). No other party's candidates have been nominated in this riding as yet.
  

I still have no information on the outcome of the Monday Liberal nomination meeting in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC, nor now on the Liberal nomination meeting Wedneday night in Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC. Can anyone out there help us fill in the details?

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals

Further to my blogpost of the other week, "Measures of Election Readiness", John Ivison of the National Post asked me to crunch some numbers for him, some of which appear in his latest column.

Here is the full set of calculations:

Central party finance --

Please see here for my overview of the party balance sheets from 2000-2007, along with links to each original return at EC: http://www.punditsguide.ca/prty_balsheets.php. The new ones aren't due out until the end of June.

Party net worth as at the end of 2007:

Lib - $2,826,315
NDP - $4,732,990
Grn - $ 275,321
BQ - $ 478,885
Cons - $4,878,406

Total raised: Total raised 2008 + raised Q1-2009 + 6 quarterly subsidies rcvd*

Lib - $ 5,900,511.89 + $1,831,843.33 + $12,615,205 = $20,347,560.22
NDP - $ 5,466,434.84 + $ 595,611.16 + $ 7,495,557 = $13,557,603.00
Grn - $ 1,631,293.79 + $ 211,268.53 + $ 2,064,999 = $ 3,907,561.32
BQ - $ 713,415.22 + $ 122,842.03 + $ 4,432,913 = $ 5,269,170.25
Cons - $21,190,928.22 + $4,361,540.04 + $15,549,922 = $41,102,390.26

* - 3 Jan 2008 to 1 Apr 2009; next one due on July 1, 2009

Spent: Net spent 2008 campaign (spent less 50% rebate) + est. 2008 natl spending (based on 2007 spending):

Lib - $7,265,926.5 + $14,459,099 = $21,725,025.5
NDP - $8,406,945 + $ 7,652,812 = $16,059,757
Grn - $1,397,900 + $ 2,085,198 = $ 3,483,098
BQ - $2,439,802 + $ 1,322,315 = $ 3,762,117
Cons - $9,709,290 + $27,710,664 = $37,419,954

Estimated net worth = (2007 Net worth + Total raised - Spent)

Lib - $1,448,849.72
NDP - $2,230,836.00
Grn - $ 699,784.32
BQ - $1,985,938.25
Cons - $8,560,842.26

Riding Level Finance --

Average Riding Association Net Worth by Party, end of 2008, partial data

Lib - $8,615.46 (105 EDAs reporting so far)
NDP - $2,859.11 (135 EDAs reporting so far)
Grn - $1,212.19 (106 EDAs reporting so far)
BQ - $8,040.10 (36 EDAs reporting so far)
Cons - $21,532.02 (142 EDAs reporting so far)

Candidate Finance --

Estimated number of rebates issued out of candidate returns filed, 2008

Lib - 4/289 filed (307 candidates)
NDP - 47/299 filed (308 candidates)
Grn - 45/284 filed (303 candidates)
BQ - 23/75 filed (75 candidates)
Cons - 84/301 filed (307 candidates)

Don't forget that candidates apparently eligible for a rebate get 30% of their estimated rebate paid to them right away, then after they file their papers and the papers are reviewed, then they get the other 70%. See s.464 of the Act (here: http://tinyurl.com/o7hvbo).

Labels: Election Readiness, Party Finance

To paraphrase Gilles Duceppe, I don't know if we're any closer to an election, but after yesterday we're one day closer to Friday, and have one more day's worth of nomination news to pass along:

• Mégantic – L'Érable, QC - 2008 Bloc Québécois candidate Pierre Turcotte has announced that he will be entering the contest to win back his party's nomination in this Eastern Townships riding, currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Christian Paradis. Already running for the right to carry the Bloc colours against Paradis is riding association president Kaven Mathieu. No date has been set for the nomination meeting, however Mr. Turcotte hopes it can be set for September to give the candidates some time, he told the Courrier Frontenac. Once a very close Bloc-Liberal contest, this seat was massively won by Paradis in 2006 as the Liberal vote collapsed and some of the Bloc vote bled to the Conservatives. By 2008, the Liberal vote recovered slightly apparently at the expense of the Conservatives, while a growing NDP vote cut into the Bloc vote still further. Paradis outspent Turcotte 75% of the limit to 61% in the last election. This riding has been in the news lately, as the home of Thetford Mines and the Canadian chrysotile asbestos industry.
• Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC - The Bloc renominated their 2008 candidate France Gagné by acclamation this past Sunday to face two-term Conservative M.P. Josée Verner in this Québec city riding, reports Québec Hebdo. Again, once a very close Liberal-Bloc contest, Mme. Verner was able to nearly take this riding in 2004 when former Liberal turned Independent M.P. Jean-Guy Carignan decided to run against his former party's candidate and split the vote. She went on to win the riding with 58% of the vote in 2006 and 47% in 2008, far ahead of her Bloc opponents neither whom spent more than 50% of the expense limit while Mme. Verner spent in the neighbourhood of 90% on both outings.
• Burlington, ON - Former Liberal M.P. Paddy Torsney is going to try and run one more time in this Golden Horseshoe riding, says a commenter on the Liberal Scarf blog. First elected in 1993, Torsney narrowly lost to two-term Conservative candidate Mike Wallace in 2006, and was unsuccessful in her bid to reclaim the seat in 2008, losing by three times the margin as 2006 in spite of being evenly matched with Wallace in terms of campaign spending.
• Hamilton East – Stoney Creek, ON - And former Hamilton mayor Larry Di Ianni, his party's 2008 candidate running against two-term NDP M.P. Wayne Marston, also appears set to take another run for the Liberal nomination here. Again, this riding featured close Liberal-NDP races in 2004 and 2006, however Marston increased his margin of victory in 2008, as his opposition appeared split in strength and he hiked his campaign spending from 65% of the limit to 97% between 2006 and 2008. Again, thanks to the Liberal Scarf blog for this tip.

This makes Torsney the 18th former Liberal M.P. mentioned as interested in running in the forthcoming election.

I haven't heard any news about Monday's scheduled Liberal nomination meeting in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC as yet, but if you know what happened, or have other nomination news to pass along, please jot me a note. And then follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois

As an update to my earlier blogpost, "Next Steps in the Current Election Scare":

• Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has asked the Prime Minister to respond to four further questions he believed were left unanswered in the budget progress report, and
• Ignatieff indicated in response to reporters' questions that were he to find those answers ultimately unsatisfactory, the Liberals would move to bring down the government by voting against the Estimates, rather than doing so on a confidence motion of their own.

Also, a correction to that earlier post on a key point of parliamentary procedure: I relied on a media report as to when the Estimates vote would be, without double-checking the timeline of the parliamentary budget process. In fact, if we consult the online Compendium of Parliamentary Procedure under the heading of "Supply Bills", it says:

Supply bills are considered on the last allotted day [i.e., the last Opposition Day] in each Supply period, at the end of proceedings on the opposition motion or the Main Estimates, as the case may be. At that time, the House must proceed through all the motions related to the Estimates, the Interim Supply and the Supply bills without further debate or amendments.

The last allotted day is the day allotted for the Liberal Opposition Day motion, which is currently Friday, June 19. Thus, after the vote on the Liberal Opposition Day motion all remaining votes to dispose of the budget will be put.

This means that the votes to watch will both occur on Friday, unless the Prime Minister takes up the Liberal Leader on his other to extend the sitting, presumably to the last day of the Supply Period, which is specified as June 23 (i.e., next Tuesday).

Labels: Election Timing

While we wait for this morning's scheduled news conference by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to announce his plans with respect to the upcoming budget votes, here are a few more items of nomination news:

• Rimouski-Neigette – Témiscouata – Les Basques, QC - First-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Claude Guimond was renominated by acclamation last Sunday June 7, according to the Elections Canada website. He handily won the seat in 2008, against Independent (and former Bloc) M.P. Louise Thibault.
  
• Brossard – La Prairie, QC - Liberals in this south-shore riding met Sunday afternoon, June 14 to confirm the nomination of their first-term M.P. Alexandra Mendès. Mendès narrowly won by just 69 votes (0.3 votes per poll, the 4th closest race in 2008) over one-term Bloc M.P. Marcel Lussier, even though she was considerably outspent by both Lussier and her Conservative opponent Maurice Brossard, who outspent them both (39% of the limit vs. 62% and 70%). She is the first Liberal incumbent and second Québec candidate to be nominated for the forthcoming election, tweeted @DenisCoderre.
• Kitchener – Waterloo, ON - Former Liberal M.P. Andrew Telegdi was expected to be renominated by acclamation Sunday afternoon in Waterloo. After winning the seat easily in 2006, Telegdi was defeated by first-time Conservative M.P. Peter Braid in 2008 by a margin of just 17 votes, in the closest race of the last election. Braid outspent him considerably (98% of the limit vs. 75%) in the process. Also running again this time is Green Party candidate Cathy MacLellan.
• Simcoe North, ON - The nomination by acclamation of Green Party candidate Valerie Powell was also to be confirmed at a meeting Sunday in this central Ontario riding. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Bruce Station, who was easily returned in 2008 after narrowly beating a new Liberal candidate in 2006 on the retirement of former Liberal M.P. Paul deVillers. The Liberals' 2008 candidate, Steve Clarke, has also recently been green-lighted for another run, according to the Blue Mountains Courier-Herald, although no nomination meeting has been set as yet. Clarke slightly outspent Stanton (97% of the limit vs. 93%), but fell about 10,000 votes shy of deVillers' winning total in 2004.

The new nomination counts also reflect the inclusion the database of two names I blogged about some time ago, but had forgotten to enter until now: Jen Hunter acclaimed for the Green Party in Ottawa Centre, ON on June 1, and Geoffrey Capp acclaimed for the Christian Heritage Party in Lethbridge, AB on April 21.

In other nomination news:

• Outremont, QC - The Journal de Montréal is reporting that Denis Coderre has approached former La Presse columnist and Le Soleil editor Alain Dubuc to run for the Liberals against the NDP's only Québec M.P., Tom Mulcair, although other candidates are also said to be "jostling" for the opportunity. A Liberal-Bloc contest since at least 1993, this riding saw a big movement from the Bloc to the NDP in the September 2007 by-election, where many Liberal votes also appeared to stay home. The raw Liberal vote returned to nearly 2006 levels by the 2008 general election under candidate Sébastien Dhavernas, but not quite enough to catch Mulcair, who also outspent his Liberal opponent (88% of the limit to 59%).
  
• Jeanne-Le Ber, QC - Still with the Journal de Montréal, it is also reporting that this Verdun-area riding is another top Liberal priority, and that unsuccessful 2008 Liberal nomination candidate, entrepreneur Marc Bruneau, is back for another try to win his party's nomination. The riding is currently held by two-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Thierry St-Cyr, and has been settled by very narrow margins in the last 3 elections, even meeting the mathematical criteria for being a 4-way race in 2008. In fact, the growth in NDP support in this riding last time cut into St-Cyr's vote enough to put 2008 Liberal candidate Christian Feuillette within 2.7% of the vote of defeating him. From examining recent results in this riding, it seems that as a gross generalization Liberal votes here bled mainly to the Conservatives in 2006, while Bloc votes bled mainly to the NDP in 2008. Unlike St-Cyr, Feuillette did not run a fully-funded campaign, however (68% of the spending limit vs. nearly 100%).
  
• Ahuntsic, QC - The same article reports that while (as we reported here several months ago) former Liberal M.P. Eleni Bakopanos would like to run again in her old seat, which is said to be another top Liberal priority riding in northeast Montréal, in fact she may have some as-yet-unnamed competition. Were Bakopanos to win the Liberal nomination, it would be her fourth contest with two-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Maria Mourani.
• Prince Edward – Hastings, ON - A reader writes to advise that 2008 Liberal candidate Ken Cole has announced his intention to seek his party's nomination once again. Cole ran second in the last election to three-term Conservative M.P. Daryl Kramp.

Reader reports help make the Pundits' Guide dataset complete. If you can help, please pass along the nomination news from your area, and then follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter.

Meanwhile, I'm going to start a list of upcoming nomination meetings in the left-hand column of the main page (as much for my own benefit to keep up), so you can see whether your meeting is already covered.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Greens, Liberals

A few developments should be recorded and a few new dates can now be confirmed in this spring's annual pre-summer adjournment election war dance, which we've been documenting here lately:

UPDATE: The Main Estimates vote will be held on the last opposition day (currently Friday), not on Thursday as an earlier media report indicated. Please see this later blogpost for further details.

• This past Thursday, June 11, the Prime Minister released the second progress report on the government's economic stimulus package which was mandated by his earlier agreement with the Liberal Party that allowed the federal budget to pass in February.
• Very quickly thereafter, NDP Deputy Leader Tom Mulcair told CBC Newsworld that "There's nothing in this report to allow us to support the government," adding that "We don't trust them. The NDP's not going to be voting for these guys anytime soon."
• And a little later in Question Period, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe told the House of Commons that "the Conservatives' economic action plan is a total flop. I am sure that their good news is not so good for the unemployed, whose numbers increase daily. The deficit is growing every day as well. We have no choice but to refuse to vote funding for this inadequate plan" [translated by Hansard].
• Then, after finishing an event in Montréal, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters that "I'm going to look at the report tonight if I get a minute and tomorrow, and then we'll make a decision. And we're not going to keep people hanging around. We'll make a decision and it will be clear: up or down".
• Yesterday, Elizabeth Thompson of the Sun media chain reported that Ignatieff would in fact be taking the weekend to consult and decide what to do.
• And today, we just learn courtesy of David Akin's twitter feed (@davidakin) that Michael Ignatieff has called a news conference for Monday, June 15 at 11:00 a.m. in the National Press Theatre to announce his decision.
• Monday, June 15 is also the Bloc Québécois' last opposition day motion of the sitting, and they will be debating a motion which asks the Government to reject a national securities regulator.
• On Tuesday, June 16, the House will be taking the deferred recorded vote on the NDP's opposition day motion from last Thursday proposing changes to the Canada Pension Plan (scheduled for just before the end of government business that day). This vote is not a confidence matter.
  
• On Thursday, June 18 the vote on the Main Estimates will be held (these are the departmental line-by-line expenditure plans associated with the federal budget), reports the CTV's Bob Fife. As a budgetary matter, this vote is by definition a matter of confidence in the government. The voting order on the motion will be Cons/govt-Lib-BQ-NDP-Independent. [UPDATE: This is not correct, however. The Main Estimates vote always occurs on the last allotted day of the Supply Period. See later blogpost for details.]
  
• And on Friday, June 19, if the Main Estimates pass on Thursday, the Liberals will present one of the 15+ opposition day motions currently sitting on the Order Paper under their caucus members' names, or else another motion ... which they must give notice of no later than Wednesday June 17. This motion could either be a confidence motion or not, at their discretion. The voting order on this motion will be Lib/movers-Cons/govt-BQ-NDP-Independent.
  
• If that vote is designated a confidence vote and passes, then the Prime Minister would have to pay a visit to the Governor-General and ask her to dissolve Parliament, with the earliest election date being Monday, July 27.
  
• If not, the Commons is expected to adjourn after the vote until Monday, September 21, with a set of 3 by-elections likely for Tuesday, September 8 (after Labour Day) or Monday, September 14.

INSTANT UPDATE: Kady has the announcement up on her blog.

Labels: Election Timing

Some updates from the mailbag, news sources and even my first Twitter-sourced nomination news! (You can follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter here):

• Pontiac, QC - Liberals are twittering about the entry of former party national director Greg Fergus into the nomination race in this western Québec riding that has been home to the 3rd or 4th closest four-way race in each of the last two elections. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Lawrence Cannon. An interesting sidebar: another former Liberal national director, Steve McKinnon, is rumoured to be interested in running in the neighbouring riding of Gatineau, QC, so if both nomination candidates are successful the Liberal Party would be represented by two former national directors and a former Québec lieutenant (Marcel Proulx in Hull – Aylmer QC) in the three Outaouais ridings.
• Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia, QC - We also learned from @DenisCoderre on Twitter this evening that Nancy Charest was acclaimed at today's (June 13) meeting, making her the first Liberal candidate from Québec to be nominated (OK, they put out a news release about it on Canada Newswire for non-tweeters, too). The seat is noteworthy because four-time Bloc incumbent Jean-Yves Roy is retiring at the next election, and also because Ms. Charest placed a very close second to Mr. Roy in 2008. Ms Charest will join Bloc Québécois candidate Jean-François Fortin who was nominated on June 7, 2009. For new users of the Pundits' Guide, you can always view the state of nominations in Seats with Retiring Incumbents (amongst other categories) on the "Search the Database" page, under the heading "Nominations Progress".
• New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC - Meanwhile, right of Twitter we hear from @mpjamesmoore who attended a barbecue fundraiser for what he calls the forthcoming "by-election" (interesting!) earlier this evening, and reported later that 6 candidates were in the running, including "1 city councillor, 1 fmr MP, 3 men, 3 women, ethnically diverse field. Strong group". Of course I replied right away asking when the nomination meeting might be held. Will advise when I receive a response. The NDP is holding its nomination meeting on June 28, 2009 and the Green Party riding association is holding its Annual General Meeting on Monday, June 15, 2009 to set their own nomination plans.
  
• Compton – Stanstead, QC - Courtesy of a commenter at the blog "The Liberal Scarf", we learn that 2008 Liberal candidate William Hogg is hoping to return for a second try. Hogg ran second last time to three-term Bloc Québecois M.P. France Bonsant. The Liberal Scarf has assembled a pretty comprehensive list of potential Liberal candidates by the way.
  
• Sudbury, ON - We learn from the Sudbury Star of yet another aspiring Liberal candidate for this northern Ontario riding, former CBC Radio editor and the owner of Le Voyageur newspaper, Rejean Grenier. He joins declared candidates Gary Holman and Janet Gasparini, and potentially several other undeclared ones as well. No meeting date has been set. The victor will face first-time NDP M.P. Glenn Thibeault, and recently acclaimed Green Party candidate Fred Twilley.
• Northumberland – Quinte West, ON - Area Liberals have opened up their candidate search process by soliciting expressions of interest, and will follow up with interviews. Former two-term Liberal M.P. and 2006/2008 candidate Paul Macklin has not ruled out another run, but will take until the end of the month to decide, he told Mix97 News. No meeting date has been set as yet. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Rick Norlock. Also running will be Green candidate Stan Grizzle.
  

Paul Macklin is the 17th former Liberal M.P. whose name I have heard linked to an interest in running again, by the way.

Thanks to readers and tweeters for passing along nominations information. If you have news about nominations in your neck of the woods, please do drop me a line and pass it along.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

I forgot to include this item in the last update:

• Sudbury, ON - Fred Twilley was acclaimed the Green Party's candidate on Thursday night, after his challenger former 2008 Sudbury candidate Gordon Harris withdrew from the nomination race. Twilley also ran in 2008, but in neighbouring Nickel Belt, ON riding. He will face first-time NDP M.P. Glenn Thibeault; the winner of the contested Liberal nomination that's shaping up; and a Conservative candidate to be determined. Thanks to a reader for passing this information along.

Join the network of Pundits' Guide nomination news reporters, by sending any news from your area here. And then follow us on Twitter for updates.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens

The Pundits' Guide is also neutral on the question of the play-offs, but she does have a few nomination news tidbits for those of you checking between face-offs.

• Bruce – Grey – Owen Sound, ON - 2008 Liberal candidate Thom Noble has decided against running again, reports the Owen Sound Sun Times, leaving his former nomination challenger, marketing specialist Kimberley Love, as the only confirmed candidate at this point for the Liberal nomination meeting, which is currently scheduled for Tuesday, July 14. The riding is currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. Larry Miller. It also saw one of the Green Party's better performances in 2008, and has thus been in focus as a possible seat for leader Elizabeth May to run in. Thanks to a reader for sending this clipping along.
  
• Halton, ON - Further to my earlier post, in fact the Halton Green EDA executive did confirm 2008 candidate Amy Collard as their candidate on June 7, once it was clear she was uncontested. Collard will be facing first-term Conservative M.P. Lisa Raitt, and possibly former Liberal M.P. Garth Turner.
• Niagara West – Glanbrook, ON - Meanwhile the Green Party EDA executive in this riding has also re-confirmed their 2008 candidate Sid Frere for the forthcoming election, reports NiagaraThisWeek.com and the Welland Tribune. The riding is currently represented by three-term Conservative M.P. Dean Allison.
• Thunder Bay – Rainy River, ON - The NetNewsLedger.com is reporting that former Liberal M.P. Ken Boshcoff may be challenged for the Liberal nomination, while no Conservative preparations are yet evident, in this northwestern Ontario riding, currently held by first-term NDP M.P. John Rafferty.
• Toronto Centre, ON - Finally, the Elections Canada database is now reporting a new Conservative nomination in this tony downtown Toronto riding. First-time candidate Kevin Moore, a Mennonite pastor, Conservative riding president and the executive director of City Hope charity, was acclaimed on June 1, 2009, and will face two-term Liberal M.P. Bob Rae (yes, I realize he had other terms in the 1980s, but they're not in this database ... not yet anyway), along with Green candidate Ellen Michelson.
  

Another reader writes to pass along a clipping from Le Soleil about former Québec cabinet minister Jean Leclerc being apparently very receptive to approaches by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and his Québec lieutenant, Bourassa Liberal M.P. Denis Coderre, to run somewhere, presumably in the Québec city region.

May the best team win!

If you have nomination news, please consider passing it along so we can share it with Guide readers. And you can now follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals

Two more Liberal nomination meetings are on tap in west and southwestern Ontario in the coming days, on top of one we already knew about:

• Sunday, June 14 - Kitchener – Waterloo, ON - As reported here earlier, the only approved candidate, former Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi, is expected to be acclaimed. The seat is currently held by first-time Conservative M.P. Peter Braid.
  
• Tuesday, June 16 - Brant, ON - The What-do-I-know-Grit blog is asking aloud whether former Liberal M.P. Bob Speller will return to the fray after sitting out the last election against Conservative M.P. Diane Finley in neighbouring Haldimand – Norfolk, ON in order to take on first-time Conservative M.P. Phil McColeman here. If true, that would mean Lloyd St.-Amand was no longer running for renomination in his old seat, as had been reported earlier when Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff visited Brantford to support his candidacy. [Does anyone know? If so, could you clarify for us in the comments.] [UPDATE: In fact, Bob Speller is believed to be interested in running in Haldimand – Norfolk, ON after all.]
  
• Friday, June 19 - Welland, ON - According to the Welland Tribune, former Liberal M.P. John Maloney is so-far unchallenged for next week's nomination meeting, which is scheduled for the same night at the Commons votes on the Main Estimates and Liberal Opposition Day motion. The successful candidate will be facing first-time NDP M.P. Malcolm Allen.
  

Have nomination meetings been scheduled in your area? Do you know of any candidates gearing up for a run? If so, let us know, by sending me a quick note. And then follow the news on the Pundits' Guide Twitter feed.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Some interesting news from the Green Party front tonight, courtesy of a reader update:

• Vancouver South, BC - Last election's 2nd closest two-way race will have an interesting added dimension this time with the expected entry of Jodie Emery into the race for the federal Green Party nomination. For those unfamiliar with the activist history of Ms. Emery and her husband Marc, you can start catching up here. Emery ran for the BC Greens in the recent provincial election against the former Vancouver Police Chief in Vancouver-Fraserview (not against Wally Oppal as it appeared last February in the above clipping, since Oppal later switched ridings). The federal riding is currently held by two-term Liberal M.P. Ujjal Dosanjh (himself the former Attorney-General of BC). I wonder what issue they'll be debating.
  

An update on the Green Party website's list of candidates: it seems that not all the candidates on the list have been duly nominated, because as I was Google'ing for candidate websites, I noticed that the nomination meeting for Oshawa, ON Greens is not until June 24. So Gail Bates is likely just a candidate *for* the nomination, and not duly nominated yet. Thus I've removed her from the candidate count for now. New names to appear on that list in the last day or so include party critics Ard Van Leeuwen in Dufferin – Caledon, ON (apparently not yet nominated, but already declared), Amy Collard in Halton, ON (again not apparently nominated, but working as party critic and thus likely to run again), and also David Rawnsley in Stormont – Dundas – South Glengarry, ON who says on his website that he would like to run again but is always "talent-spotting" for others who might carry on the fight.

Let us know what's going on with nominations in your neck of the woods: drop me a note and I'll pass it on.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens

Just catching up with a news release from Monday, announcing five new Liberal nomination meetings in Québec, as follows:

• Saturday, June 13 - Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia, QC -Nancy Charest is expected to be acclaimed at this weekend's meeting in Matane.
  
• Wednesday, June 17 - Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC -I have no information on this meeting, currently. [If you do, why not get in touch and pass it on.]
  
• Monday, June 29 - Alfred-Pellan, QC - I have no information on this meeting either [hint, hint].
  
• Tuesday, June 30 - Mount Royal, QC - The incumbent five-term Liberal M.P. is Irwin Cotler.
  
• Sunday, July 5 - Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – Lachine, QC - The incumbent five-term Liberal M.P. is Marlene Jennings.
  

Bourassa, QC Liberal M.P. and Québec Lieutenant Denis Coderre says that between the two announced series of nomination meetings, he will have met his March commitment to have 10 Québec candidates in place by the summer.

Please send news of Liberal or other party nominations to me, so I can share it with other readers. And, you can follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter now to receive updates.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals

Some new nominations posted at Elections Canada indicate that the Bloc has now re-nominated 16/49 of its incumbents, some 33% of them, in addition to one candidate in a seat being vacated by an incumbent, and a challenger in a Liberal-held riding, for a total of 18/75 candidates nominated.

• Montcalm, QC - As previously reported here, Bloc Québécois M.P. Roger Gaudet was in fact acclaimed his party's candidate once again this past Sunday June 7, in this north-shore riding which he has won handily four times now.
• Bourassa, QC - In a meeting I didn't have a notice for, Elections Canada is reporting that the Bloc renominated its 2008 candidate in this riding, Daniel Mailhot, by acclamation on May 31. Mailhot will be facing off against five-term Liberal M.P. Denis Coderre, who won the riding handily last time around.
• Alfred-Pellan, QC - Two-term Bloc M.P. Robert Carrier was also renominated by acclamation on June 4, according to Elections Canada.
  
• Manicouagan, QC - And long-time Bloc M.P. Gérard Asselin was selected his party's candidate for the sixth time by acclamation on Sunday June 7 in this northeastern Québec riding all or part of which has returned him to Ottawa handily since 1993.

If you know about any scheduled Bloc nomination meetings, or forthcoming nomination meetings for any other party for that matter, please get in touch. In addition, I am looking for candidate websites, so send 'em if you got 'em.

Follow the Pundits' Guide on Twitter for updates.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois

From this morning's mailbag comes news of a contested Liberal nomination brewing in Northwest Ontario:

• Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON - First out of the gates was 2008 Liberal candidate Don McArthur, who told TBNewsWatch.com that he plans to run again and "do some things different this time around". Then Thunder Bay lawyer Yves Fricot followed up, telling TBNewsWatch.com that he has also been green-lighted by the party. No meeting date is being mentioned as yet. McArthur lost to first-time NDP M.P. Bruce Hyer in the last election, in a contest for the seat being vacated by retiring long-time M.P. Joe Comuzzi. Comuzzi had represented it for the Liberals since defeating an NDP incumbent in 1988, but then left his party's caucus in March of 2007 after voting in favour of the Conservatives' budget and joined the Conservative party a few months later in June 2007 (I ran down the full history here with links).
  
  After coming within 1.8 votes per poll of defeating Comuzzi in 2006, Hyer was successful in winning his vacated seat in 2008, in the 6th closest three-way race of the last election, and after hiking his campaign spending from 43% to 87% of the expenditure limit, largely based on increased local fundraising but also with a $25K transfer from party headquarters. McArthur also hiked his own spending from what Comuzzi had previously spent to win (75% vs. 49% of the limit), with Conservative candidate Beverley Sarafin further back at 57%.
  
  Meantime, area Conservatives are also gearing up for an election, reports NetNewsLedger.com, as they have opened up nominations for this riding until Tuesday June 23.

If you have nomination news to share, we always love to receive emails, so don't be shy. Also, the Pundits' Guide is now on Twitter, and I'll be tweeting nomination count and other data updates there if you'd like to follow along.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Liberals

Thanks to Bill Curry at the Globe and Mail's Bureau Blog, we learn that Government House Leader Jay Hill has moved the date for the Liberal Opposition Day motion ahead to Friday June 19. And in a very unusual move, Hill has scheduled the vote on that motion for the same Friday night, along with the vote required on the Main Estimates (government expenditure plans emanating from the budget, for those not steeped in parliamentary procedure), the latter a definite confidence vote and the former a possible one.

UPDATE: From David Akin's Twitter feed, we are also reminded that the Liberals would have to put any potential opposition day motions on the Order Paper by Wednesday July 17 June 17 (thanks to commenter RamaraMan (Ken S from Ramara) from David's Twitter feed for pointing out the typo), and are hearing the rumour that the government plans to adjourn the Commons after the Friday night votes.

Thinking through the implications of this decision, and looking at the variables we considered in an earlier blogpost on relevant dates, here's what I come up with:

• The recorded second reading vote on Bill C-280 is scheduled for tonight. The NDP was hoping to get this bill into committee, amended and reported back to the House, in time for June 23. Could this all take place before Friday June 19? I'm doubtful.
  
• The Liberals will thus have to decide whether to push to bring down the government on either the spending estimates for the budget they already supported, or their own opposition day motion.

A lot of the tactics involved here depend on an interesting tidbit to do with the ORDER in which the MPs have to cast their votes on the different kinds of questions:

• A government bill or motion - The government benches vote first, followed by the official opposition, followed by the Bloc, followed by the NDP. The Liberals have to vote before knowing how the Bloc and NDP will vote. This will be the case with the vote on the Main Estimates.
  
• An opposition day motion - The party moving the motion votes first, then the government benches, then the remaining opposition parties in order. Again, the Liberals have to vote first before knowing how the Bloc and NDP will vote. This will be the case for the Liberals' opposition day motion.
• An opposition private member's bill - Votes on private members' bills are not done by party, but by *row*, starting (I think) on the government side. This would be the case for a vote on Bill C-280, but remember that C-280 can't come to a third-reading vote unless the NDP is successful in arriving at an agreement with the government on amendments and receives a Royal Recommendation for the amended bill before the third reading vote, which would numerically guarantee its passage in any event.

So, what does this mean? First of all, should the government fall on Friday June 19, rather than Tuesday June 23, the earliest date an election could be held would come a week earlier, i.e., Monday July 27 rather than Tuesday August 4.

Next, I think that by moving the Liberals' opposition motion forward, the government may be attempting to force the Liberals to decide on the confidence issue on its own merits. Curry is not reporting on the order of the two votes that evening, but I'm assuming the government would want to schedule the Main Estimates vote for after the opposition day motion vote if they could in order to increase that pressure further.

The move also has the effect I believe of increasing pressure on the NDP to decide whether to support the Liberals on the confidence question without knowing the likelihood of their own bill being able to be amended in committee. I'll be reading future news reports carefully for further details of the scheduling of all these items, to see whether this assumption in fact holds.

Finally, the move forces the Liberals in either case (defeating the government on the Main Estimates or on their own Opposition Day motion) to vote before knowing how the other opposition parties will vote.

So the way I'm reading the tea leaves now, Hill has made a sort of "put-up-or-shut-up" move, and we'll have to pay close attention next Friday night (Don Newman's last day on the "Politics" show, as he told George Stroumboulopoulos last night on The Hour) to see the outcome. Stay tuned.

Labels: Election Timing

With Tuesday's second reading vote on Bill C-280, and forthcoming votes on the estimates and opposition day motions raising the temperature on end-of-session election scares, maybe it's a good time to think about indexes of election readiness and what we can glean from the available data.

Plenty of bloggers (e.g., Far and Wide, Calgary Grit, and ThreeHundredEight.com) already regularly read the entrails of public opinion surveys, and so I would not presume to cover that well-worn territory again here. But what other boots-on-the-ground indicators can we generate from Elections Canada and other data sources?

1. Nominations progress - This is one contribution my site can definitely make, since the parties themselves don't like to release candidate lists until nominations close during the campaign period and the Elections Canada database doesn't contain appointments or other candidate selection methods that did not entail a nomination meeting. The network of Pundits' Guide readers coupled with my set of Google news alerts, web surveys and blog browsing has proven to yield a fairly reliable set of data on party nominations.
   
   I've been tracking overall numbers of nominations, counts by gender, and nominations according to how that party placed in the last election (i.e., how many candidates have been nominated in seats the party came 2nd in last time, etc., see the "Search the Database" page, 2nd query under "Nominations Progress"). Another way I could report those data is to show the number of incumbent vs. non-incumbent nominations, and I may add that to the front page, as well as in a new Nominations Progress query on the Search page. And this time I'll also be able to track them according to the date the candidate was confirmed as well.
   
   
2. Central party finance - There has been a lot of interest in the relative fundraising capacities of the various parties and the strength of their balance sheets. Thus far I've just been covering that in the website blog, but I have been collecting the raw data and getting it ready to properly model in the relational Pundits' Guide database for reporting and querying here ... I only need a nice long uninterrupted stretch of time to finish off that work. We won't have the parties' 2008 financial statements until the end of June, so best guesses now would entail looking at the 2007 balance sheets for net current assets, adding the 2008 quarterly fundraising numbers, subtracting actual 2008 campaign expenses from the election returns filed a few months ago plus some kind of estimate for 2008 expenditures, and then repeating the same for the first two quarters of 2009.
   
   I'm told that the Conservatives are closely tracking their fundraising performance to identify any effects of either the recession or partisan disaffection with the government's spending plans. The Liberals have been actively spinning their fundraising efforts; for example they released their first quarter fundraising results before their convention last month. And the NDP engaged in a bit of pre-warning spin themselves in this week's Hill Times, given that their decision to withdraw from fundraising in favour of its provincial cousins engaged in leadership contests and election campaigns is now expected to negatively impact the second quarter of 2009 as well.
   
   I've been thinking that expressing a party's most recent net worth as a percentage of the national spending limit would be a good indicator of how ready it is in this department, but taking a look at the debt-to-equity ratio might also give us a good indication of how able they are to raise financing if required.
   
   
3. Riding level finance - Registered party electoral district associations (aka "EDAs" or "riding associations") must also file annual returns with Elections Canada, and the 2008 ones were due at the end of May. I've been tracking their entry into the Elections Canada database, and so far am counting entered returns as follows 66-Liberal, 112-NDP, 77-Green, 30-Bloc, 90-Conservative.
   
   I'm going to be looking at the ridings' net worth as a percentage of their last riding spending limit as an indicator of their financial strength, and the amount of money they raise from individuals in contributions of $200 or less as an indicator of their organizational prowess. Looking at the average net worths of the ridings, they are considerably down from 2007 but that's hardly surprising when an election was held in the last six weeks of the fiscal year (see chart below). Perhaps the better comparison year is 2005 when the fiscal year-end fell in the middle of the 2006 election campaign period.
   
   
4. Candidate finance - Long-time Liberal backroomer John Mraz raised another important point in a recent column for the National Post's Full Comment blog, namely that many candidates have not yet received their riding rebates from Elections Canada as yet. Candidate returns were due in the middle of February, and I've got a pretty good dataset of them so far although that needs another pass-through to finish. For indicators, I will be looking at the campaigns' net deficit/surplus including rebates, but excluding transfers to and from the riding association, and adding that to the riding level finance indicators for that fiscal year.
   
   
5. Party Preparations - Has the central campaign booked a plane, hired an ad agency, completed its platform development work, etc. We won't really know, except based on journalists' reports such as the story in yesterday's Hill Times on the state of Conservative pre-election preparations, stories that are usually planted by the parties as part of the election scare war dance. So, while I'll anecdotally note those in the blog, there's not much to measure in that regard.
   

So, what do readers think of these indicators? Are there others you could think of that could be tracked and calculated based on publicly available data?

As a further update to the situation with Liberal incumbent nominations, the Hill Times reported on Monday that 3-4 incumbents may not have met the membership and fundraising criteria in order to be unopposed when they are nominated. However, the Liberal party did not issue any news release as to their status, and is not planning to publicly confirm whether a Liberal incumbent is entitled to run unopposed or not, leading some to wonder how they would know whether they could challenge an incumbent or not. Another Liberal quoted in the story suspects the 3-4 members who missed the deadline in fact may not be planning to run again, in which case the other speculation is beside the point.

Here is the raw data on Average EDA Net Worth by Party and Year. Note that while it's been widely assumed based on the central party financial statements that the Bloc Québécois is highly-dependent on the public subsidy funding, in fact they had quite well-endowed riding associations in 2006 and 2007.

UPDATE: One reader reported being unable to see any colour in this graphic. Is anyone else having similar difficulty? Please let me know if so, and I'll replace it with another file format.

Labels: Data Analysis, Election Readiness

Not all the news from Nova Scotia tonight is provincial. A new name has appeared in the Elections Canada database, and it means that the race is on for the Commons seat recently vacated by Bill Casey:

• Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS - As expected, Scott Armstrong was nominated by acclamation at a meeting this past May 30 to represent the Conservative party in any forthcoming contest here. whether a by-election or general election. Meanwhile 2008 Liberal candidate Tracy Parsons (herself the former leader of the Progressive Canadian Party) still seems to be running for the Liberal nomination as reported here earlier, the NDP is lifting its nomination freeze in the riding now that the provincial election is concluded, and of course Elizabeth May has yet to make her intentions known, and may not unless or until a by-election is called.

In other nomination news:

• Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia, QC - Meanwhile in a seat that isn't vacant now but will be by the next election, the Bloc Québécois has confirmed its new candidate in the seat currently held by Bloc M.P. Jean-Yves Roy, who earlier announced he won't be running again. After winning three earlier elections comfortably, Roy only narrowly defeated Liberal Nancy Charest in 2008, winning by just under 3 votes per poll. As reported here earlier, Charest also appears likely to make another run at the seat. Running for the Bloc this time will be Jean-François Fortin, the mayor of Sainte-Flavie, who won an uncontested nomination this past Sunday June 7 in Amqui, after other prospective candidates had earlier withdrawn.
• Edmonton – Strathcona, AB - Mark down next Wednesday June 16 on your calendar of upcoming nomination meetings, when three candidates will be vying for the right to represent the Conservative party in the only non-Conservative seat in Alberta. The Hill Times reported on Monday that former PMO staffperson Ryan Hastman, neighbouring riding president Cathay Wagantall and performance sports expert Linda Slade are in the running. A fourth candidate, University of Alberta student Matthew Sztym was not mentioned by the Hill Times, so I'm not clear what his status is (can any Alberta readers out there clarify for us in the comments section?). The winner will face off against first-term NDP M.P. Linda Duncan.
  
• Yukon, YT - Yukon Greens renominated John Streicker as their candidate at a nomination meeting this past Monday, June 1, a reader writes to advise. The riding is currently represented by four-term Liberal M.P. Larry Bagnall.

UPDATE: And in late-breaking news:

• Saanich – Gulf Islands, BC - I should know better than to click publish on a post without consulting Public Eye Online for the latest in BC nomination news. We already noted Sean Holman's reporting that Liberal backroomer Kit Spence would be running for the Liberal nomination in this west coast riding once Briony Penn ruled herself out of contention. Now he's reporting that another candidate, riding association director Renée Hetherington, has also taken out nomination papers. The riding is currently represented by long-time Conservative M.P. Gary Lunn.
  

I'll be updating the database with the new entries in a second to update our nomination counts, but in the meantime, if you have nomination news to share with Guide readers, please send it along.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, Greens, Liberals, Retiring Incumbents, Vacant Seats

More news from northern Ontario and Manitoba:

• Sudbury, ON - This long-time Liberal riding in Northern Ontario, which suddenly changed hands in the last election, is certainly inspiring a lot of competition for challenger nominations. First, as reported here yesterday, the Green Party will be having a contested nomination meeting this coming Thursday June 11. Now comes word from NorthernLife.ca of a very wide field opening up for the Liberal nomination as well. We earlier reported that Vale Inco media relations official and former ministerial policy aide Gary Holman was planning a run for the nomination. Reports today indicate that Holman could be joined by up to 4 others including city councillor and social planning council executive director Janet Gasparini, lawyer Gerry Guimond who briefly ran for the Liberal nomination in neighbouring Nickel Belt riding in 2008, "[a]nother prominent Sudbury citizen ... who does not want to be named" until his papers are filed, and even former candidate Louise Portelance is not ruling out a second bid for her party's nomination. Not mentioned as running is the former 20-year Liberal M.P., Diane Marleau, who lost the seat to first-time NDP M.P. Glenn Thibeault last fall in the 5th closest three-way race of the last election. No date has been set as yet for the Liberal nomination meeting.
  
• Winnipeg South Centre, ON - The Winnipeg Free Press' Mia Rabson is reporting this morning that the race is heating up for the Conservative nomination in what she rightfully dubs the "longest-held Liberal riding in Western Canada". Nominations close on Tuesday, June 16 for a meeting that must be held within 21 days after that. Running are Neville's first-cousin, downtown developer Hart Mallin, and Raymond Hall who is an Air Canada pilot and lawyer. Rabson is also reporting that Anita Neville is among the Liberal incumbents who met the deadline for the membership and fundraising targets needed to run unopposed for her own party's nomination. With a historically weak NDP vote in 2008, the Conservatives were able to make gains on four-term M.P. Neville, with their candidate retired Blue Bomber Trevor Kennerd coming within 6% of Neville's vote, nearly matching her in election spending, and out-fundraising her by a factor of 2:1 to the point that Neville's campaign incurred a shortfall of just over $40K.
• Saint Boniface, MB - Meanwhile in the riding next door, Rabson reports that former Liberal M.P. Ray Simard will try for a come-back in a seat Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff calls "a riding the party shouldn't have lost and can win back". Simard lost to first-time Conservative M.P. Shelly Glover in another historically weak NDP showing, where the NDP vote dropped 8 percentage points, the Liberals dropped 4 points, and Glover picked up 11 of the 12, even spending slightly less than Simard to do so.

This makes Ray Simard the 16th former Liberal M.P. to express interest in running again.

In other election gossip, Jane Taber is repeating the "hot speculation" that former Deputy Finance Minister and Bank of Canada Governor might be enticed back from Queen's University to run for the Liberals and become Michael Ignatieff's Finance Minister. No prospective seat for Mr. Dodge was mentioned in the story, but should any actual riding name surface, I'll be sure to report it straight away.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Liberals

A few more Green Party nominations to bring you this afternoon, along with a list of forthcoming nomination meetings, some other nomination news, and the latest on the situation with Liberal incumbents.

The Green Party has started a list of candidates on its website. It misses a few names that we have picked up on here (including Stan Grizzle from Northumberland – Quinte West, ON) and a few that are listed on the Elections Canada website, but contains some others not yet shown at Elections Canada. The new names are:

• Barrie, ON - Erich Jacoby-Hawkins will be the candidate once again for the Green Party in this central Ontario riding. The Green riding association had originally scheduled a nomination meeting for April 26, but I can't find any evidence of it as yet, so will have to wait for the details to appear at Elections Canada in order to determine whether it was in fact held on that date and whether it was contested. This will be Jacoby-Hawkins' fourth campaign. The seat is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Patrick Brown.
• Brant, ON - 2008 Green candidate Nora Fueten is set to run once again in this southwestern Ontario riding, won last time around by first-time Conservative M.P. Phil McColeman who defeated Liberal M.P. Lloyd St.-Amand by a margin of 8.8%. St.-Amand is one of the 15 former Liberal M.P.s said to be considering a return in the next election.
• Haldimand – Norfolk, ON - First-time Green candidate Anne Faulkner (no biographical information available) won the right to represent her party by acclamation at a May 23 nomination meeting. She will face three-term Conservative M.P. Diane Finley, and possibly former Liberal M.P. Bob Speller who may be interested in a return to Ottawa. No word on whether 2008 Liberal candidate Eric Hoskins would also be interested in another election.
• Hamilton Mountain, ON - Greens will be running their 2008 candidate Stephen Brotherston in this steel-town riding again. The seat is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Chris Charlton, who will also be facing her 2008 Conservative competitor, Terry Anderson, in the forthcoming race.
• Kitchener Centre, ON - Returning for another campaign here is 2008 candidate John Bithell. Bithell joins former Liberal M.P. Karen Redman who was renominated last Friday night, and first-time Conservative M.P. Stephen Woodworth to rewage the battle for the 10th closest race of the last election.
• Oshawa, ON - First-time candidate and registered nurse Gail Bates will represent the Greens in this auto-town riding, running against three-term Conservative M.P. Colin Carrie. Bates replaces 2008 candidate Patricia Gostlin who was tragically killed by a suspected drunk driver mere weeks after the last election.
  
• Richmond Hill, ON - Another returning candidate, Dylan Marando, will carry the party banner in this riding north of Toronto. The seat is currently held by five-term Liberal M.P. Bryon Wilfert.
• Toronto – Danforth, ON - And first-time candidate Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu, a parent and community activist, will represent her party against three-term NDP M.P. and party leader Jack Layton.
  

Upcoming nomination meetings for all parties include:

• Sunday, June 7 - BQ - Montcalm, QC - The incumbent Bloc Québécois M.P. is Roger Gaudet.
  
• Thursday, June 11 - Grn - Sudbury, ON - We will see a contested nomination meeting between Gordon Harris who ran in Sudbury in 2008 and Fred Twilley who ran last time in Nickel Belt riding next door.
  
• Sunday, June 14 - Grn - Simcoe North, ON - 2008 candidate Valerie Powell is the only candidate to have filed papers, and is thus expected to be acclaimed.
  
• Sunday, June 14 - Lib - Kitchener – Waterloo, ON - The only approved candidate, former Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi, is expected to be acclaimed.
  
• Sunday, June 14 - Lib - Brossard – La Prairie, QC - The incumbent Liberal M.P. is Alexandra Mendès.
• Monday, June 15 - Lib - Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC - I have no other information about prospective candidates; the seat is currently held by first-time Bloc M.P. Luc DesNoyers.
  
• Thursday, June 18 - Lib - Hull – Aylmer, QC - The incumbent Liberal M.P. is Marcel Proulx.
• Saturday, June 20 - Lib - Beauce, QC - I have no other information about prospective candidates; the seat is held by two-term M.P. Maxime Bernier for the Conservatives.
• Monday, June 22 - Lib - Brome – Missisquoi, QC - It's expected that former Liberal MP Denis Paradis will be running; I haven't read about any other competition here. The riding is now held by two-term Bloc M.P. Christian Ouellet.
  
• Sunday, June 28 - NDP - New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC - 3 candidates, all municipal councillors, will be contesting former NDP M.P. Dawn Black's seat.

In other news of who may be running and who won't be:

• Liberals are courting retired CHCH-TV anchor Dan McLean to run for them in a Hamilton area riding, reports the Hamilton Spectator. The riding being talked about is Ancaster – Dundas – Flamborough – Westdale, ON, currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. David Sweet. Also approached but ruling out a run is former Liberal M.P. Stan Keyes, who says he thinks "it's time younger, fresher faces come on the political scene".
• Another former Liberal M.P. ruling out a return to politics is Belinda Stronach (h/t National Newswatch from earlier this week).
• Being courted by both the Liberals and NDP is retiring Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine, who announced this week that he would step down at the end of his term on July 22. Fontaine hails from northern Manitoba and the Sagkeeng First Nation.
• Chatham-Kent – Essex, ON - As previously reported here, Chatham city councillor Steve Pickard has now taken out his nomination papers, and if approved to run, will contest the Liberal nomination in this southwestern Ontario riding against 2008 candidate Matt Daudlin. In an interesting twist, Daudlin's father was Essex-Kent Liberal M.P. Bob Daudlin (1974-84), and Steve Pickard is the son of former area Liberal M.P. Jerry Pickard (1993-2006). The riding is now represented by two-term Conservative M.P. Dave Van Kesteren.
• Although Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has still not settled on which riding to run in for either the next by-election or general election, she is reflecting on the last campaign in a rather interesting recent interview. Green insiders also report that the party is planning to add up to another $1 million in loans to finance the next election.
• And in light of cabinet minister and Halton, ON Conservative M.P. Lisa Raitt's prominence in the news this week, former Halton floor-crossing Liberal M.P. Garth Turner is now musing aloud about whether he should return to Ottawa, and asking the readers of his blog for advice.
  

Finally, an update on the situation of Liberal incumbents. I seem to have erroneously assumed that if Liberal incumbents met the membership and fundraising criteria by the Monday June 1 deadline, that they would then be automatically renominated. Not so. If they meet the criteria, they have the right to run uncontested in a riding nomination meeting. Not all of those meetings have been scheduled as yet: in fact, the above list includes just two of the Liberal incumbents.

Thus, and in response to some readers who have written to inquire why I haven't counted all 77 Liberal incumbents in the nominations progress charts and tables, in fact they aren't all nominated yet. Only 3 Liberal candidates have been nominated so far, none of them incumbents.

As always, if you have nomination news to pass along, we love to receive it here, so don't be shy: drop me a line.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens

Credit to David Akin, who is reporting that Elections Canada is urgently hiring bilingual supervisors for shiftwork to ramp up a call centre. The reason:

Due to a June 12th, 2009 contingency readiness date, it is vital for the Enquiries Centre core staff to review existing training modules and prepare for training exercises should there be a snap election.

To review the known dates and variables:

• From Monday's Hill Times, the scheduled Opposition Days are Thursday, June 11 (NDP), Monday, June 15 (Bloc), and Tuesday, June 23 which is also the last sitting day of the session (Liberal). NDP Leader Jack Layton has said that the NDP won't be using the June 11th day to put a confidence motion. [UPDATE: Government House Leader Jay Hill, in answering "the usual Thursday question" from the Opposition about upcoming House business, officially designated Thursday June 11 as an "allotted day" (i.e., an Opposition Day).]
  
• The NDP's private member's bill on EI changes (Bill C-280 in the name of M.P. Carol Hughes) received its final hour of debate on second reading and passed on a voice vote yesterday but will come to a recorded vote next Wednesday June 10, just before the time normally set aside for Private Members Business. Layton told Don Newman yesterday (link will only be good until next Wednesday) that they're not moving non-confidence on June 11 because they're hoping Bill C-280 passes second reading the day before and can go to Committee for hearings and amendments. He said they're "inviting any other parties to bring any amendments forward that they might have in mind", said "to the Prime Minister if he's watching today, I'm saying we're wide open to considering proposals to improve EI", and Layton hopes that the bill can be brought back to the House amended before it rises on June 23.
• The Speaker has yet to rule on the admissability of the Bill, which has budgetary implications and may therefore need a so-called "Royal Recommendation" (i.e., for all intents and purposes the support of the government to spend public funds). Speaker Peter Milliken said on February 25 that "Such bills may be introduced and considered right up until third reading on the assumption that a royal recommendation could be provided by a minister. If none is produced by the conclusion of the third reading stage, the Speaker is required to stop proceedings and rule the bill out of order."
• On May 7, Tom Lukiwski as Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader raised a point of order regarding the need for a Royal Recommendation on Bill C-280, arguing that it was similar to a bill from a previous parliament that was also found to require a Royal Recommendation (C-265), and that the Department of Human Resources and Social Development had calculated its additional cost to be around $2.3 billion annually. Deputy NDP House Leader Joe Comartin argued that the funds for changes in Bill C-280 come from employer and employee contributions, not from the Crown, and thus ought not to require a Royal Recommendation, and in any event urged the Speaker to follow his previous practice of allowing such bills to come to a vote at second reading before making a final ruling. The Speaker reserved his judgement.
• On June 3, the Deputy Speaker ruled that Bill C-280 was substantially the same as Bill C-265 and that it would require a Royal Recommendation before it could come to a vote on *third* reading on June 23, but that the vote on second reading could go ahead for June 10.
• If the government fell on Tuesday June 23, the earliest an election could be called for is the first Monday (or non-statuatory holiday thereafter) at least 36 days afterwards, which would put it on Tuesday August 4 (as the Monday is the Ontario civic holiday).
  

In other words, and now moving totally into the realm of speculation but only for the purpose of calculating dates:

• if Bill C-280 passes second reading as is now expected (both the Liberals and Bloc have said they will be supporting it, although I note that Bloc M.P. Yves Lessard was not too certain of Liberal support for the Bill in his second reading speech), and
  
• if the NDP does not move a confidence motion on June 11 and the Bloc does on June 15 but is not supported by both of the other opposition parties,
  
• then the only opportunity for a confidence vote is on the Liberal opposition day motion currently scheduled for June 23.

Some media reports have suggested that the government might make Bill C-280 a confidence vote, but (and I stand to be corrected by procedural gurus on this) I don't believe a private member's bill can be deemed a matter of confidence on the basis of being a spending bill. If the bill passes on second reading with the support of the Liberals and Bloc (as they've already stated), then either it gets amended in Committee and at Report Stage to the satisfaction of the government in which case they will attach a Royal Recommendation to it, or the Bill won't be brought to a third-reading vote at all.

Anyways, that's my reading of the dates involved. If others know better, I invite them to correct me in the comments. But that's what I think we're working with here.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Election Timing

I've accumulated a few items of nomination news from various sources in the last day or so:

• Chatham-Kent – Essex, ON - 2008 Liberal candidate teacher Matt Daudlin is hoping to carry his party's banner once again, and tells the Chatham Daily News that he has been officially approved by the party to run for the Liberal nomination in this south-western Ontario riding. Interested in joining him, but not yet approved, is Chatham city councillor Steve Pickard. No date has been set for the nomination meeting, however. The seat is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Dave Van Kesteren who was returned with nearly 48% of the vote. For an interesting perspective on the economic situation in this riding, take a look at Don Martin's profile from last fall's election.
• Kitchener Centre, ON - The Hill Times reported yesterday (subscription only) that former Liberal M.P. Karen Redman was in fact acclaimed as her party's candidate this past Friday, May 29. Redman's interest in running again was first reported here in April. She will be running against first-time Conservative M.P. Stephen Woodworth, in the 10th closest race of the last election.
• Hamilton Mountain, ON - The Conservatives renominated their 2008 candidate in this riding, insurance broker Terry Anderson, by acclamation at a meeting on May 14, according to the Elections Canada website. This makes Mr. Anderson the third Conservative non-incumbent to be renominated, all of them former 2008 candidates. Anderson was outspent by both two-term NDP M.P. Chris Charlton, and Liberal candidate Tyler Banham (64% of the limit vs. 84% and 87%), but still managed to move into second place ahead of Banham.
• Ottawa Centre, ON - The Green Party electoral district association in the riding that contains Parliament Hill renominated its 2008 candidate last night as well. Facilitator Jen Hunter will carry the banner for her party into the next election, continuing the strong performance shown by former Green candidate and leadership candidate David Chernushenko, in a riding that was the party's 19th best riding in Ontario in the last election, even though it fell below the 10% threshold for obtaining a rebate of candidate election expenses. Hunter will be facing two-term NDP M.P. Paul Dewar, and perhaps her former competitor Penny Collenette as well, who is also widely expected to contest the Liberal nomination in this riding once again. Thanks to a reader for passing this along.
  

The Liberal Party's deadline for incumbents to meet membership and monthly contribution requirements in return for automatic renomination was yesterday (June 1). The Hill Times is reporting that all incumbents are expected to meet the criteria, and Senator David Smith confirmed that 3/4s of them had met the two conditions as of last Thursday.

The nomination rules and process for Liberal ridings and prospective candidates have also been posted on the website of the Ontario section of the party.

Forthcoming Liberal nomination meetings include one we've already mentioned in Ontario, and five that were just announced by the co-chairs of the pre-election committee of the party's Québec wing:

• Sunday, June 14 - Kitchener – Waterloo, ON - where former Liberal M.P. Andrew Telegdi was the only candidate approved by the deadline, and is thus expected to be acclaimed. He will rejoin first-time Conservative M.P. Peter Braid and 2008 Green Party candidate Cathy MacLellan on the campaign trail in the #1 closest race of the last election.
  
• Sunday, June 14 - Brossard – La Prairie, QC - won in 2008 by first-time Liberal M.P. Alexandra Mendès
  
• Monday, June 15 - Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC - won in 2008 by first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Luc DesNoyers
  
• Thursday, June 18 - Hull – Aylmer, QC - now held by five-term Liberal M.P. Marcel Proulx
• Saturday, June 20 - Beauce, QC - currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Maxime Bernier
  
• Monday, June 22 - Brome – Missisquoi, QC - where as reported here earlier, former Liberal M.P. Denis Paradis will be trying to regain his party's nod and reclaim his former seat against two-term Bloc M.P. Christian Ouellet.

Meantime, on the potential by-election front:

• New Westminster – Coquitlam - Three city councillors are now confirmed to be in the race for the NDP nomination to replace former NDP M.P. Dawn Black, at a meeting scheduled for Sunday, June 29 June 28 [sorry for any confusion that typo may have caused]: Fin Donnelly and Barry Lynch from Coquitlam, and Lorrie Williams from New Westminster.
  

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, New Westminster – Coquitlam