A fifth Member of Parliament has announced he won't be running in the next election. Jim Abbott from Kootenay – Columbia, BC was one of 10 remaining MPs first elected from the then-new Reform Party in 1993, when he defeated NDP M.P. Sid Parker.

The B.C. Member of Parliament is the fourth Conservative incumbent to announce his retirement. Bloc Québécois M.P. Jean-Yves Roy is the fifth retiring incumbent. A complete list can be found on the "Search the Database" page under "Nominations Progress in Ridings with Retiring Incumbents". I don't know what we should read into the fact that Abbott and New Brunswick Southwest M.P. Greg Thompson have both decided to announce their retirements just before the Commons returns from this break.

Abbott is the second-oldest of the 10 remaining Class of 1993 Reformers, but the Conservative caucus includes a further three MPs their senior. [UPDATE: He is the 10th remaining member *of the Conservative caucus* first elected as a Reformer in 1993. Of course Keith Martin was also elected then, but crossed the floor to the Liberal Party in 2004. Sorry for the confusion.] You can find a full list of MPs by age at the Library of Parliament's ParlINFO website. I also compiled a list of MPs in the 40th Parliament by year of first election.

Looking at its Google Map*, the riding straddles the lower part of the BC-Alberta border: from Yoho National Park outside Banff, it reaches through Golden and Glacier National Park as far west as the railway town of Revelstoke and then down to Nakusp in the north; and also south along skiing country through Invermere to the sister cities of Kimberley and Cranbrook (the focal point of some of the province's worst forest fires earlier this decade; coincidentally the very week my partner and I had scheduled a two-week driving trip through the area). To their east are the mining communities of Fernie and Sparwood; while the farming community of Creston, the Mormon community of Bountiful, and most of Kootenay Lake lies to the west. It includes territory claimed by the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council in their treaty negotiations, and the former residential school outside the St. Mary's Indian Reserve near Cranbrook has been converted into a conference centre and resort hotel with golf course and casino.

Before Abbott's six-term tenure began, the seat swang back and forth between Parker for the NDP and Stan Graham for the Progressive Conservatives. A former well-known local broadcaster, Abbott took the seat in 1993 with 48% of the vote, and in subsequent years collected as much as 68% before tapering back to a vote share in the mid-50s in the last 3 elections. The NDP has fallen from its earlier mid-40s vote shares of 20 years ago but is still the strongest contender in this seat, the Liberals having fallen to fourth behind the Green Party there in 2008.

I've suspected for some time that Abbott might be ready to retire soon, given that the Prime Minister has made some high-profile trips to the riding, and it ranked very high in several recent compilations of stimulus funding by riding. It was also targetted with a lot of federal and provincial radio advertising about the introduction of the provincial carbon tax and the proposal for a federal carbon tax in the summer before the last election, which I noticed on another driving trip through the area with my partner's daughter.

In any event a similar suspicion may also have led the NDP to delay nominating here until it was clear whether they would be recruiting for an open seat or one occupied by a strong incumbent. The party holds 3 of the 4 provincial seats in the Kootenays (which federally comprise this seat and neighbouring BC Southern Interior). But it doesn't currently hold Kootenay East which includes Cranbrook, where they ran Ktunaxa treaty negotiator Troy Sebastien. Sebastien, BC Treaty Commissioner Sophie Pierre, and retired former MLA Corky Evans from Nelson-Creston would probably appear on their ideal candidate search list, were 2008 candidate Leon Pendleton not to run again. I'll have to catch up on my reading to see who the likely Conservative candidates would be, although BC Conservative Party leader Wilf Hanni also ran provincially in the Cranbrook seat as well. The Green Party has already nominated new candidate Bryan Hunt, and I haven't seen any Liberal names surface as yet.

I've deleted Abbott's entry from the list of nominated candidates, and added his seat to the list of retiring incumbents. One thing's for sure: he'll be retiring to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, lucky guy! Thanks to commenter "Shadow" for drawing the clipping to our attention.

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* To the commenter who wrote the other week to say not enough detail appears in the rural maps, please note that these maps are fully interactive, which means that you can click on the + sign to zoom in, or else just double-click on the spot you want to zoom in to. You can also click and hold down your mouse to pan map right or left, up or down.

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

Time to pass along a few accumulated developments in party apparatus news from here and there:

• Liberal Party - As a result of their posting which ended on January 6, the Liberal Party has hired a new National Director, Ian McKay from B.C., who will be starting in early March, when he's to "continue the modernization of our Party's communication and technological infrastructure and give him the tools to drive our membership engagement process," according to party president Alf Apps' letter to the membership. A financial services consultant, McKay ran in the 2000 general election in West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast, BC. Next on their agenda is the hiring of a new President for the National Liberal Fund: in effect the party's new chief fundraiser.
  
• Conservative Party - A re-organization of the party's Quebec office was first reported by Le Devoir at the end of January, and followed up on by L. Ian MacDonald's weekend column for the Montreal Gazette. The changes appear to have been set in motion when director-general Claude Durand decided late in the year to step down and take care of her son's health concerns. Her resignation took effect at the end of January, by which point she had reportedly identified some 60 candidates in the 75 Quebec ridings (not all of whom have been nominated or announced, apparently). It was revealed this past weekend that in fact the party is now closing its Montreal office, and opening one in Québec City instead, to be run by one of the successful organizers in the recent by-election in Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, Ghislain Maltais, who is also a former provincial Liberal MNA. Maltais will be backed up by Joseph Soares, based out of party headquarters in Ottawa, who was also a part of the by-election campaign team, MacDonald reports.
  
  Meanwhile, new party president John Walsh had the recent task of taking control of the Calgary West, AB Conservative riding association (aka EDA or electoral district association), which had been planning to conduct a referendum requesting an open nomination meeting at its upcoming annual general meeting, even though incumbent M.P. Rob Anders was already renominated last May along with the rest of his caucus. Kevin Libin ran down the inside story in a blogpost for the National Post's online "Full Comment" website, which reports a lot of perspective I had not read before.
  
• Green Party - There have simply not been enough hours in the day to keep on top of every twist and turn in the on-going debate about when and how to elect, re-elect, review or reconstitute the leadership of the Green Party and repair its finances, although party activists have been pouring themselves into debating the issues at great length in the comment sections of a number of different Green blogs, including DaveBagler.ca, Not an Official Green Party Canada Site (NAOGPCS), the democraticSpace.com blog, and of course Report on Greens. I'm unaware whether there has been any final resolution on the leadership convention question. In addition, the party's Revenue Sharing Agreement, whereby the national party distributes a third of its quarterly public subsidy to the EDAs, is also being questioned in light of its current debt situation.
  
  The big news, at least to me, is that there is a third potential leadership candidate on the horizon -- a woman -- who has been meeting people at private dinners, but has not yet announced her campaign. I've made several attempts to find out who it is, but no luck as yet. Apparently a communications plan is in place regarding the timing of the announcement, and the trigger may yet not be pulled. However, she appears to be supported by the BlueGreenBlogger at NAOGPCS, who teased her candidacy at the end of a recent blogpost. The woman, whoever she is, would be joining former federal and Ontario party leader Frank de Jong, and presumably Elizabeth May herself. As the party's constitution is currently written, May's fixed four-year term ends at some point in 2010.
  
• Bloc Québécois - In a reply to a recent blogpost on the partes' quarterly contributions by Chantal Hébert at l'Actualité, the directeur-general of the Bloc Québécois confirmed that their party's approach to fundraising is to favour the constituency associations as well. Gilbert Gardner pointed to 2008 numbers showing that the Bloc raised over $800K through its constituency associations, as compared with some $700K by the party headquarters, and suggested that the 2009 reports from their EDAs which are due this May would show a similar pattern.
  
• New Democrats - The first initiative springing from the NDP's recent Federal Council meeting to plan its strategy leading up to the next election has emerged, and it's focussed on riding fundraising as well. A Facebook group has just popped up for the "Local Victories Challenge", which according to NDP blogger The Jurist at Accidental Deliberations, is designed to make a central investment into riding associations, to help them build their local fundraising infrastructure. We've reported before that party national director Brad Lavigne and leader Jack Layton have been citing statistics about the performance of their candidates who are able to spend close to the spending limit, so it appears this initiative stems from that analysis. After the party's decision in the last election to put in place the financing necessary to spend the national limit (they wound up spending around 84% of the limit in the end), this time according to the promotional material for the Local Victories Challenge they're hoping to finally raise candidate spending up from the 20-25% or so of the limit across the board where it's stayed for the past 5 elections. You'll recall that Professor Bill Stanbury and I studied candidate spending in a two-part series last spring, in which we found that this 20-25% was in fact concentrated into a number of ridings that the party had targetted, and was highly correlated with the percent of the vote NDP candidates obtained.

Tomorrow: some new functionality for the Pundits' Guide database, and the importance of examining candidates' share of the electorate in order to understand vote switching.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, Party Finance

OK, who's up for a bit of nomination news? There are a few items that have piled up, and some of them are quite interesting; starting with:

• St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL - A Memorial University prof reports in his blog, Tickling Bight, this week that well-known Conservative television pundit Tim Powers is "rumoured to be sizing up a run" in this riding, currently held by first-term Liberal M.P. Siobhan Coady. Although based in Ottawa, Powers has also maintained good relations with the Newfoundland & Labrador government, even serving as an unofficial spokesperson for Premier Danny Williams when questions were first raised about his seeking medical treatment outside the country. In the wake of the "ABC (Anyone but Conservative) Campaign" run by the Premier during the last federal election campaign, a thawing of relations between the two conservative parties would be a precondition for federal Conservatives to become electorally competitive in the province again, and Powers undoubtedly played a backroom role recently in smoothing the way for the Prime Minister to visit the Premier in St. John's just days before Williams left for his surgery. As the blogger also notes, his entry could also open up the very close two-way race (2.8% of the vote, or 5.1 votes per poll) this riding saw in 2008 between Liberal victor Coady, and the NDP's Ryan Cleary, who has already been renominated for a second run at the seat. Taking a closer look at the riding map, I see that the boundaries have changed from the way I remember the St. John's West of old: it now takes in the part of downtown around the harbour (including Water and Duckworth streets) up to and including Quidi Vidi village, and has lost much of the southern part of the Avalon peninsula (basically everything south of Petty Harbour) to neighbouring Avalon riding. So, will he run? @powerstim himself is telling his tweeps entertainingly that "no moving boxes will be required", but of course that could still mean pretty much anything.
• St. John's East, NL - Staying in St. John's, the same blogger passes along news apparently originating with the CBC's Dave Cochrane (no link available) that former provincial Cancer Society director Peter Dawe "is considering" a run for the Liberals against the NDP's Jack Harris in this riding. Dawe headed the Cancer Society as the case of the inaccurate breast cancer tests became known and was being investigated, but he stepped down in the middle of last September to "seek other work". The timing of Mr. Dawe's resignation, not long after Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's announcement in Sudbury last September that he would try to bring the government down, leads the blogger to believe that Dawe has been considering the run for some time. Harris commanded a 74.6% share of the vote last time, with Liberal candidate Walter Noel placing a distant second at 12.6%.
• Saskatoon – Humboldt, SK - Further west, a former M.P. today announced another run as an Independent candidate to try and regain his old riding. Jim Pankiw was elected as a Reform M.P. in 1997, serving two terms, and finally losing his seat while running as an independent in 2004. Three-term Conservative M.P. Brad Trost won the resulting four-way race in 2004 with just 26.7% of the vote, but has since increased his vote share to 49.1% in 2006 and 53.8% in 2008, with the Liberal vote declining, and the NDP moving firmly into second place. New Democrats are already revising the riding's priority upwards in light of Pankiw's return, a reader writes to confirm, and have had their candidate, health policy consultant Denise Kouri, in place since early last fall. The riding is home to the University of Saskatchewan, and encompasses the northeast part of Saskatoon and the rural areas further northeast, including Humboldt, Domremy, some farmland and a number of first nations' reserve communities.

Next time, some updates from B.C., and a round-up of a few more candidates who have stepped down.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Independent Candidates, Liberals

A few items of political party news have accumulated that might be of interest to readers.

• The Liberal Party Rocco Rossi is irreplaceable, it turns out; at least by one person. After the Liberal national director's resignation to pursue the Toronto mayoralty, the party split up his previous functions and posted two separate jobs with a January 6 deadline: a new national director, and a new president of the National Liberal Fund who will serve as a chief fundraiser for the party. No word yet on when the results of the competitions will be announced. The Opposition Leader's Office (OLO) party liaison officer Heather Chiasson and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's new chief of staff Peter Donolo are both said to favour more of an NGO-style of management for the party, according to a Hill Times story from last week. Harris Maclead also reported that the new staffers can expect to earn a lot less than Rossi, and won't be able to expense weekly round trips to Toronto either.
  
• The Conservative Party New table officers were elected in early December, headed by both a new party president, John Walsh (fun fact: he's a constituent of NDP Leader Jack Layton's in Toronto – Danforth), and a new vice-president, Kara Johnson. The party's executive director is Dan Hilton. They are undoubtedly celebrating two recent court decisions that went in whole or in part in their favour. More on that in a subsequent post. (h/t Dr. Roy's Thoughts)
  
• The Green Party As we noted in a blogpost at the top of the year, the Green Party has been deliberating on what to do about part of its Bylaw #2, which mandates a leadership convention every four years. The problem they're grappling with is that the four years since their last leadership convention (where Elizabeth May beat David Chernushenko and Jim Fannon) is nearly up, but we're in a permanent election scare, and meantime the party has taken a strategic decision to focus their resources on getting their leader elected in Saanich – Gulf Islands, BC. The party's federal council debated a resolution last night that, if approved by the delegates to their August Biannual General Meeting (BGM), would replace the current bylaw s.2.1.4.5 "The Leader shall be elected in 2006 and every four (4) years thereafter" with a new version reading "The Leader shall be elected by the membership at a meeting of members constituted as a leadership convention, and a vote of confidence in the leader shall be held following a federal general election". Apparently the council has tabled the resolution with directions to consult with the membership, then rewrite the proposed by-law change, and submit it to the August BGM. Should it not be adopted, the resolution provides for a leadership convention before the end of 2010. There is a lot of discussion and debate going on, mainly at the blog of some critical Green party members, and on the party's internal email group. More background from last fall can be found at the democraticSpace blog.
  
  Meanwhile, having recruited some 200 candidates (I'm missing a few names, but thanks to a reader for sending me a list to cross-check against), the party recently laid off 4 three of its 7 regional organizers [UPDATE: and cut a 4th vacant organizer position], which has set off another round of internal debate in the comments section of another Green party member's blog.

In other political party news, it seems a new political party is starting to get organized. A regular correspondent writes to say:

I just wanted to let you know that there could be a new force soon on the political scene. I and many of us have left the Progressive Canadian Party to join with the United Party of Canada. The UCP was started by ... a long time Liberal strategist who left them to come to the PC's. His good ideas to grow the party were spurned so he and others like myself are working to make a party that takes the best ideas of the PC's Liberals, Greens and even the CAP Party. We are looking to gain from all parties but we are also looking for growth from Canadians who are disenfranchised from our current political system. We are especially looking to reengage Canada's youth in the our party and the system .... [M]any of the policies ... [from the Progressive Canadian Party] ... will find their way to the UCP .... [W]e are on the web (the page is rough but will improve).

Last summer we covered three other groups who were trying to register themselves as political parties with Elections Canada: the National Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (whose domain-name registration seems to have expired), along with the Pirate Party of Canada and the True North Party of Canada. To date, it does not appear as though the latter two been successful in meeting the registration requirements.

We also reported last summer that the recently-elected leader of the Canadian Action Party (CAP), Andrew Moulton, quit to join the Christian Heritage Party. Moulton had been elected to replace long-time CAP leader Connie Fogel. Melissa Lee Brade is now the Interim CAP Leader, taking over after the resignation of previous Interim Leader Dave Wilkinson. Brade intends to run again in Yellowhead, AB.

Labels: Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, Political Parties

A fourth M.P. has announced his retirement from politics at the next federal election. The Saint John Telegraph-Journal is reporting that New Brunswick Southwest M.P. Greg Thompson is retiring from cabinet effective immediately, and has decided not to re-offer in the next election.

The story concentrates more on Thompson's reasoning and history, and the implications for New Brunswick at the cabinet table, and contains no speculation on who might be in the wings to run in his stead, although we can assume that story is coming next.

The former executive director of the John Howard Society in that area, Kelly Wilson, was acclaimed to represent the Liberals in this riding this past October, and she has not been joined by any NDP or Green candidates thus far.

The riding has been a PC or Conservative bastion since the first Trudeau election of 1968, although funnily enough it had been a Liberal seat before that. Thompson himself has represented the riding since 1988, with only one break from 1993-1997 when it returned Liberal Harold Culbert for a single term.

I've deleted Thompson's entry for the 41st General Election from the database, and have added his riding to the list of Ridings with Retiring Incumbents on the "Search the Database" page.

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

Conservatives must have been in a good mood on September 4, because they celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 1984 majority government by nominating 7 non-incumbent candidates in Québec, followed by another 2 candidates there three days later.

Continuing our catchup of party nominations for the forthcoming election, I've done the best job I could to scour publicly available sources, and assemble reader tips and news clips to generate this list of new Conservative candidates: some of them appearing here for the first time, hence the look back all the way to September.

• Sep 2, 2009 - Willowdale, ON - Chungsen Leung - acclaimed - Willowdale businessman Chungsen Leung (known as "CS" to his friends, his website points out) is making his third run for public office, after running for the PCs in Willowdale in 2000, and then for the Conservatives in nearby Richmond Hill in 2008. He will now face two-term Liberal M.P. Martha Hall Findlay, along with first-time candidates Mehdi Mollahasani who owns a design and advertising company, for the NDP, and geo-analyst and IT consultant Yama Niwand for the Green Party (fun fact: the two are Facebook friends).
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Gaspésie – Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC - Régent Bastien - other - This teacher and former mayor of Paspébiac was one of 7 Québec candidates nominated on the 25th anniversary of Brian Mulroney's decisive victory in that province, ironically taking over the candidacy from 2008 candidate Darryl Gray who had won the seat for the Progressive Conservatives back in 1984. Bastien will now face three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Raynald Blais and Green Party candidate Julien Leblanc who works for Télé-Québec. No NDP or Liberal candidates have been announced as yet. The Liberals and Conservatives have swapped second place between them over the past few elections.
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Laurier – Sainte-Marie, QC - Charles K. Langford - other - UQAM management prof Charles Langford is returning for another try against Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, joining first-time candidates Philippe Allard for the Liberals and Olivier Adam for the Greens. The NDP has not selected its candidate yet, but claimed this riding as its only 2nd place finish in 2006, falling behind the Liberals here in 2008.
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Outremont, QC - Rodolphe (Rudy) Husny - other - I'm pretty sure we covered Mr. Husny's nomination before. He works in an accounting firm and maintains a french-language blog, and will be right in the thick of the battle between former Liberal MNA Thomas Mulcair, who is currently the two-term NDP MP for this riding, and former Liberal MP for the riding Martin Cauchon. No Bloc candidate has been identified as yet, and Mulcair is one of 4 NDP incumbents yet to be officially renominated.
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC - Nicole Charbonneau Barron - other - Back for another run in this south shore riding is a city councillor and former spokesperson for the Opus Dei movement in Québec. Charbonneau Barron will be facing three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Carol Lavallée, alongside Liberal candidate Michel Picard, a specialist on economic crime and fraud, who was nominated last June, and has been helping develop his party's policy on responding to the situation of investors with Earl Jones and others.
  
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Saint-Lambert, QC - Qais Hamidi - other - Hamidi, of Afghani background, and runs a professional services firm that works with overseas governments, has moved from Laval – Les Îles where he ran in 2008 2006, to this south shore riding currently held by first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Josée Beaudin. They will be joined on the campaign trail by 2008 Liberal candidate Roxane Stanners, while the NDP and Green Party have yet to select their standard-bearers.
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Brossard – La Prairie, QC - Maurice Brossard - other - Retired educational administrator Maurice Brossard was renominated in this riding that has become a perennial squeaker as it's moved back and forth between the Bloc Québécois and Liberals since 2004, but also earned a spot on the list of 3-way and 4-way races in the last election thanks to Brossard, along with the NDP's Hoang Mai, a notary and the treasurer of the federal party's Québec section. Returning for the Bloc will probably be former M.P. Marcel Lussier, who has declared his intention to run again but is not yet nominated, while the Greens will have a new candidate in Kevin Murphy. All will be gunning for first-time Liberal M.P. Alexandra Mendès who won the seat last time in a surprise upset, by just 69 votes, the 4th closest race in the country last time around.
  
• Sep 4, 2009 - Vaudreuil – Soulanges, QC - Claude-Marc Boudreau - other - A lawyer in private practice for 25 years and the co-chair of last fall's Québec Conservative fundraiser with the Prime Minister, Claude-Marc Boudreau, is taking over as the new candidate in this riding commuter distance from Montréal, replacing Michel Fortier. He'll be joining new Liberal candidate, businesswoman Lyne Pelchat who nominated 10 days later, and returning Green candidate Jean-Yves Massenet, a business consultant. Three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Meilli Faille has yet to be renominated, while the NDP has yet to name a candidate either.
  
• Sep 7, 2009 - Bas-Richelieu – Nicolet – Bécancour, QC - Réjean Bériault - other - This has the potential to be a very interesting riding, given that long-long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Louis Plamondon, the Dean of the House of Commons, who was elected as a Conservative 25 years ago in that 1984 sweep before crossing the floor, could very well retire before the next election. Plamondon is not renominated as yet, but Bériault, who has a 20-year career in real estate is the first challenger out of the gate. He placed a distant second to Plamondon in 2008, but this south shore riding borders on other areas of recent Conservative strength in the province, and could return to its bleu roots without a strong incumbent.
  
• Sep 7, 2009 - Berthier – Maskinongé, QC - Marie-Claude Godue - other - Just across the St. Lawrence Seaway on the north shore, businesswoman and former Conservative political aide, Marie-Claude Godue is back for a third try against three-term Bloc Québécois, Guy André. Godue obtained 31.4% of the vote against André in 2006, falling back to a 22.2% share in 2008, as the Liberals regained most of their earlier vote share and the NDP also inched up. Still André's vote share has trended downward from nearly 60% of the vote in 2004 to just 45.8% last time out. Also looking to make a dent in his support is new Liberal candidate, Francine Gaudet, a former Liberal MNA for the area, who was nominated in late August. No NDP or Green candidates have surfaced in my research as yet.
  
  
• Sep 9, 2009 - York South – Weston, ON - Jilian Saweczko - acclaimed - Long-time party and community activist businesswoman Jilian Saweczko has switched to this west-end Toronto riding after two earlier runs in Parkdale-High Park. She joins returning NDP candidate Mike Sullivan, who founded the Weston Community Coalition to fight the Blue22, a PPP rail line proposal that would divide the community of Weston with no local stops (hope I have that right), and a new Green candidate Sonny Day, an IT analyst at York University. They will be facing four-term Liberal M.P. Alan Tonks, who ousted former Liberal-turned-Independent M.P. John Nunziata in 2000. The riding ranks in the top 5 poorest ridings in Ontario (depending which census measure you use for income), and reported over 50% of its population as belonging to a visible minority in the 2006 census.
  
• Sep 9, 2009 - Etobicoke North, ON - Priti Lamba - acclaimed - A teacher at Humber and Seneca Community Colleges, Lamba was nominated as the new Conservative candidate in this riding, which also ranks in the top 5 poorest ridings but reports over 70% visible minority population. She'll be joined on the campaign trail by returning Green party candidate teacher Nigel Barriffe, where they'll face first-time Liberal M.P. Kirsty Duncan. The NDP has yet to select its candidate.
  
• Sep 11, 2009 - Vancouver Centre, BC - Rachel Greenfeld - acclaimed - Meanwhile on the west coast, Conservatives in this 4-way race have picked a dazzling new candidate whose line of business until now promised to teach people about "living a lavish lifestyle and working only three days a week as your own boss" by starting a social club, which sure makes a "chicken in every pot" sound so last century, doesn't it! She joins Green Party Deputy Leader Adriane Carr, who was renominated here in mid-April, and long-time Liberal M.P. Hedy Fry, with an NDP candidate to be named later. UBC Professor Michael Byers, who ran for that party in 2008, had said on election night that he wanted to run again, but has since moved to Saanich-Gulf Islands, and I haven't heard any further news on that score.
  
• Sep 17, 2009 - Welland, ON - Leanna Villella - contested - The owner of a travel agency and daughter of a long-time Catholic school board trustee in the area, Villella won a contested nomination in mid-September over 2008 candidate Alfred Kiers and municipal councillor Bruce Timms, and will now face former Liberal M.P. John Maloney, and the man who defeated him in the last election, first-time NDP M.P. Malcolm Allen. No Green Party candidate has been selected to date. The riding, which occupies the most southeastern tip of the province, has been amongst the closest 3-way races in each of the last three elections, and the closest 2-way races in the last two, Allen having won by just 300 votes (or 1.1 vote per poll) over Maloney in 2008.
  
• Sep 28, 2009 - Guelph, ON - Marty Burke - acclaimed - Airline pilot and 23-year member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Marty Burke, was acclaimed the new Conservative candidate in this western Ontario riding. He joins new Green Party candidate Bob Bell, who won a contested nomination over Russell Ott in late October, after 2008 candidate Mike Nagy announced he would not run again. They'll be facing first-time Liberal M.P. Frank Valeriote, and an NDP candidate yet to be named.
  
  
• Sep 29, 2009 - Ajax – Pickering, ON - Christopher A. Alexander - acclaimed - A big catch for the Conservatives, this former Canadian Ambassador and UN representative to Afghanistan announced his intention to seek the Conservative nomination in mid-September, after apparently being approached by the Liberals to run for them and meeting with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. He was acclaimed the Conservative candidate in this riding east of Toronto ten days later, and will now face three-term Liberal M.P. Mark Holland, returning Green candidate music video production and farmer Mike Harilaid, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
  
• Sep 29, 2009 - Mississauga – Brampton South, ON - Salma S. Ataullahjan - acclaimed - Realtor Salma Ataullahjan, President of the Canadian Pashtun Cultural Association, will be returning as the Conservative candidate in this riding west of Toronto, currently held by three-term Liberal M.P. Navdeep Bains. Joining her is a new Green candidate naturopathic counsellor Benjamine Stone, while the NDP has yet to name its candidate here.
  
• Oct 3, 2009 - Burnaby – New Westminster, BC - Paul E. Forseth - acclaimed - This former four-term Conservative M.P. missed the deadline to run for the nomination in last fall's New Westminster--Coquitlam by-election due to a business trip abroad, but secured his party's nod in this neighbouring riding on his return. He'll be joining returning Green candidate Carrie-Ann McLaren, and facing three-term NDP M.P. Peter Julian. The Liberals have yet to set a nomination date here.
  
• Oct 14, 2009 - Ottawa – Vanier, ON - Rem Westland - acclaimed - We wrote earlier about this former Director General of Specific Claims at the Department of Indian Affairs, who is taking a run against long-time Liberal M.P. Mauril Bélanger. They'll be joined on the campaign trail by Caroline Rioux, who won a contested nomination to represent the Green Party, and an NDP candidate yet to be chosen.
  
• Oct 15, 2009 - Hamilton East – Stoney Creek, ON - Robert A. Silenzi - acclaimed - This restaurant manager and rehab specialist for people with brain injuries was acclaimed in mid-October, and will join returning Green candidate Dave Hart Dyke and a Liberal still to be decided upon. The riding is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Wayne Marston.
  
  
• Oct 17, 2009 - Vancouver Kingsway, BC - Trang Nguyen - contested - Ms. Nguyen won a contested nomination over Irene Yacto, the editor of the Philippine Journal. (2008 candidate Soloman Reyak, the BC Chair of B'nai Brith Canada, was also in the race early on but withdrew before voting day). Nguyen will now face returning Liberal nominee Wei (Wendy) Yuan, and first-term NDP M.P. Don Davies.
  
• Oct 17, 2009 - Vancouver Quadra, BC - Deborah J. Meredith - contested - UBC lecturer and 2008 candidate Deborah Meredith, bested lawyer Tony Fogarassy in another contested nomination held the same evening. Meredith narrowly lost the riding to Liberal M.P. Joyce Murray in a surprisingly close by-election race in March of 2008, and doubled her vote as turnout went up in the 2008 general election, but still fell short in the end. This will make her third matchup against Murray, in which she'll be joined by new Green candidate Laura-Leah Shaw, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
  
• Oct 20, 2009 - Hamilton Centre, ON - James W. Byron - acclaimed - The acclamation of retired public servant James Byron in this riding in mid-October rounded out the Conservative slate in steeltown (where the Greens are also fully nominated, and the NDP holds the three seats). The Liberals have yet to fill any of their slots although apparently Bob Bratina has not ruled out a run here against three-term NDP M.P. Dave Christopherson.
  
• Oct 20, 2009 - London North Centre, ON - Susan Truppe - acclaimed - This former political aide who now works in conference centre management rounded out the Conservative slate in London the same evening, and is currently the only nominated opponent to two-term Liberal M.P. Glen Pearson.
  
• Oct 31, 2009 - Bramalea – Gore – Malton, ON - Singh Parvinder - contested - The winner of a vigourous four-way nomination contest, Homelife United Realty owner Singh Parvinder, is hoping to improve on the 37% vote-share of 2008 candidate Stella Ambler (who has moved and may be set to switch over to Mississauga South, according to one Blogging Tory forum member). The riding is currently held by six-term Liberal M.P. Gurbax Singh Malhi.
  
  
• Nov 8, 2009 - Victoria, BC - Patrick Hunt - contested - A former Nova Scotia MLA and retired navy-man, Patrick Hunt, defeated the chair of Camosun College Christopher Gillespie, and writer Hugh Kruzel in early November, for the right to face off against former Oak Bay mayor Chris Causton running for the Liberals, new candidate Jared Giesbrecht for the Greens, and three-term NDP M.P. Denise Savoie.
  
• Nov 11, 2009 - British Columbia Southern Interior, BC - Stephen Hill - contested - Another contested nomination three days later saw business-owner Hill defeat 2008 candidate Robert Zandee for the right to take on three-term NDP M.P. Alex Atamanenko. To date no other party's candidates have been selected.
  
• Nov 15, 2009 - Mississauga East – Cooksville, ON - Wladyslaw Lizon - acclaimed - The President of the Polish National Congress, mining engineer Wladyslaw Lizon, was acclaimed his party's new candidate in this riding west of Toronto, where he'll be joined by Jaymini Bhikha for the Green Party and Waseem Ahmed of the NDP. The riding is currently represented by long-time Liberal M.P. Albina Guarnieri, who was first elected in 1988.
  
• Nov 23, 2009 - Malpeque, PE - Tim Ogilvie - acclaimed - We earlier wrote about the acclamation of this former president of the Atlantic Veterinary College, who will now be running against six-term Liberal M.P. Wayne Easter, and returning Green candidate Peter Bevan-Baker.
  
• Nov 27, 2009 - Charlottetown, PE - Donna Profit - contested - Later that week, educator Donna Profit defeated retired RCMP officer Robert Campbell, as we wrote earlier, and will now join new Green candidate Corin McFadden in facing off against four-term Liberal M.P. Shawn Murphy.
  
  
• Dec 9, 2009 - Louis-Hébert, QC - Pierre Paul-Hus - acclaimed - Finally, in early December two Québec City area candidates were nominated, the first a former infantry officer and currently the co-editor of french-language military magazine, Prestige. Pierre Paul-Hus will be challenging first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Pascal-Pierre Paillé (whose uncle was also just elected in the Hochelaga by-election), alongside new Green candidate Claude Guimond.
  
• Dec 10, 2009 - Québec, QC - Pierre Morasse - acclaimed - Next door, a communications manager got the nod to run against long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Christiane Gagnon (who is not renominated yet, but is running again). Also running so far are nutritionist Anne Gagné for the Liberals, and Denis Poisson for the Greens.

This list of 32 candidates includes 11 women, 7 (or more, depending on the definition) members of visible minority communities, and 7 contested nominations.

I have another list of six nominated candidates for whom I don't have the date or type of nomination, and thus can't be entered into the Pundits' Guide database. But given the length of this post, I guess I have to save something for next time!

If you have nomination news to share, I'm just about all caught up now, so please do send it along and you won't have to wait weeks and weeks to see it posted (apologies to my regular correspondents who've been very patient). You can also follow along @punditsguide on Twitter.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Conservatives

A second Conservative M.P., Rick Casson from Lethbridge, AB, has announced his retirement from politics at the next election. Casson was first elected in the Class of 1997, and was returned by his constituents four more times to Ottawa. Previously announced retirees are Conservative Inky Mark from Dauphin – Swan River – Marquette, MB and Bloquiste Jean-Yves Roy of Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia, QC.

I've deleted Casson's nomination record from the 41st General Election, and have added the riding to our list of Ridings with Retiring Incumbents on the Search the Database page (in addition to removing the four by-election ridings from that list; oops, sorry, should have done that before).

Other nomination updates are on-going, and I hope to have a clear evening to get everything else updated tonight.

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

The NDP launched a campaign last Friday with a radio buy, website, web ads, a joint federal-provincial leaders news conference in Ottawa and probably mailings and/or print ads, all focused on the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) votes being held this week in Parliament.

What was unusual about this announcement, at least compared with past practice, is that they named the ridings they're targetting (opens video; fast-forward to 1:05): 10 Conservative-held ridings, 5 each in Ontario and British Columbia (see below).

The move appears designed to meet multiple simultaneous objectives:

1. first, obviously is to raise the party's concerns about the shift in the tax base from business to consumers being accelerated by the HST, and to urge public action to block its implementation
   
2. second, they are trying to recast their own positioning on taxation, and raise questions about the Conservatives' positioning as tax-cutters, amongst the group of voters who swing between their two parties: primary resource and secondary manufacturing workers and retirees who are being squeezed in the current economic climate
3. also they may want to demonstrate, after the Conservatives targetted opposition-held rural and remote ridings with mailings and radio ads about the long-gun registry vote, that two can play the same game; and also to
   
4. build support and local organization for their early-nominated candidates in those ridings (and perhaps give a bit of support to neighbouring first-time incumbents)
5. take the opportunity to mute the future usefulness of strategic voting strategies against them by demonstrating that their vote and potential support doesn't only switch between the NDP and Liberals, and
   
6. subtly try to recast the public debate on this issue, and no doubt others in the future, as being between the NDP and Conservatives
   

At first blush it's a bold approach, particularly when most insta-pundits use narrow margins as a proxy for the winnability of ridings, and assume that an issue being raised potentially months or years away from an election will have no impact later on. [Not raising any issues until the eve of the election is another strategy, I suppose, but I'd wager it's even less effective.] Yet the NDP has apparently picked ridings where it placed third last time (4 of the 10 seats) or has large margins to make up in order to win.

Once it was decided to target Conservative seats, the choice of ridings could be reasonably guessed by looking at the list of the NDP's best Conservative-won seats in 2008, by vote-share, for both Ontario and British Columbia. The party has held all but 3 of the 10 at some point in the last 20 years federally. And Leader Jack Layton personally attended the nomination meetings of 5 of the 8 currently nominated candidates, according to my notes, and many of these communities were also visited during the party's spring task forces on the recession and recovery, so they've evidently had the seats in mind for some time.

Where the 2008 margins were large in BC, they often represented Liberal voters who stayed home or switched to the Conservatives (as suggested in an earlier analysis of BC voting patterns), and short of those Liberals returning home, the NDP needed a new strategy to shrink the Conservative vote in those ridings.

In Ontario, they've picked their only unheld seat in the northwest, and four seats in southwestern Ontario who've been hit by the decline in the manufacturing sector, and where the party had reasonably strong local campaigns in 2008 and has strong local candidates in place. While the party's vote dropped somewhat across southwestern Ontario in the last election, I did notice a lot of movement back and forth between the NDP and Conservatives in the southwest during the daily tracking polls of a number of pollsters over the course of the campaign.

So, by an incrementalist narrow-margin approach to targetting seats, not all these would be next on their list. But one thing long-time stalwarts of all parties learned in 1993 is that hot-buttons and a desire for change can make large margins melt away. We may not be there yet, but political veterans also know not to wait for opportunities to appear, they work to create them and to be ready to maximize their advantage.

As a sidebar, it's also nice to see that 3 of the 10 ridings being targetted by the NDP have nominated women candidates (and 2 of the 3 are aboriginal women candidates). On the other side of the balance sheet, 3 of the Conservative MPs being targetted are women.

Riding Nominated Cons & NDP	Contest 2008 %Mrg	2008 Cons	2008 NDP	2008 Lib
St. Catharines, ON DYKSTRA, Richard (Rick) (M) WILLIAMS, Mike (M)	Cons-Lib 17.2%	45.9%	18.4%	28.6%
Elgin – Middlesex – London, ON PRESTON, Joseph (Joe) (M) DOLBY, Ryan (M)	Cons-Lib 24.9%	48.4%	19.2%	23.5%
Sarnia – Lambton, ON DAVIDSON, Patricia (Pat) A. (F) SINOPOLE, Crissy (F)	Cons-NDP 28.4%	50.0%	21.6%	20.3%
Essex, ON WATSON, Jeff (M) NATYSHAK, Taras (M)	Cons-Lib 10.9%	40.0%	26.6%	29.1%
Kenora, ON RICKFORD, Greg (M) CAMERON, Tania (F)	Cons-Lib 8.8%	40.5%	23.2%	31.6%
Cariboo – Prince George, BC HARRIS, Richard (Dick) (M) [none as yet; Bev Collins in 2008]	Cons-NDP 29.5%	55.4%	25.9%	10.5%
Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo, BC MCLEOD, Cathy (F) CRAWFORD, Michael (M)	Cons-NDP 10.3%	46.2%	35.9%	9.8%
Surrey North, BC CADMAN, Dona Marie M. (F) SANDHU, Jasbir (M)	Cons-NDP 3.2%	39.4%	36.2%	15.0%
Pitt Meadows – Maple Ridge – Mission, BC KAMP, Randy (M) [David Murray is announced]	Cons-NDP 18.8%	51.8%	33.0%	6.6%
Vancouver Island North, BC DUNCAN, John M. (M) BELL, Catherine J. (F)	Cons-NDP 4.4%	45.8%	41.4%	4.2%

I'm trying to assemble a comparable list of ridings that were targetted by the Conservatives with their long-gun registry ads and mailings on policy towards Israel, for future posts in this series. If anyone can point me to such lists, please do get in touch.

Labels: 41st General Election, Conservatives, NDP, Target Seats

Let's move on to the part of the country's largest province that's home to both a significant part of the franco-Ontarian fact and the nation's loyalist roots, alongside Algonquin and Mohawk first nations obviously, and many newcomers as well: namely Eastern Ontario, plus the National Capital Region (NCR) which means Ottawa.

NCR (6 seats)

• The Green Party has fielded a full slate of candidates already.
• The Liberals have nominated in all but their two incumbent seats (and as their incumbents are protected from facing contests whenever the time comes, it's only a question now whether either of them would retire).
• The Conservatives have nominated in all but Ottawa South and Ottawa Centre, although we've previously reported that Bruce Kyereh-Addo is interested in the Centre nomination, along with a few other unnamed candidates. The 2008 candidate in South, Elie Salibi, is now working for a cabinet minister on Parliament Hill. My sources tell me that no nomination meeting has been planned there at all for the time being.
• The NDP has nominated in all but Ottawa – Vanier and Nepean – Carleton. I haven't heard any news as to their plans in those seats, but if I had to guess, some Nortel retirees are probably on the candidate search lists.

Here are the ridings from east to west. (Some have argued that Carleton – Mississippi Mills should be included in the NCR list, but I put it into Eastern Ontario because of the rural nature of the riding, and its voting patterns. Certainly part of that riding is in greater Ottawa, however. UPDATE: A geographer has written and convinced me that it truly is an Ottawa riding. Hey, I grew up in the east-end; what can I say! When I make revisions to the construction of the so-called "local regions", I'll be moving that riding over.):

• Ottawa – Orléans, ON - This east-end riding has the lowest percent of immigrants of the six NCR ridings, the largest percents of married and common-law couples, and the greatest concentration of families with children. It's a bedroom community of newer developments on what was farmland when I grew up, and has the highest proportion of folks whose mother-tongue is french in the area. The riding is currently held by (my former family neighbour) long-time consultant and two-term Conservative M.P. Royal Galipeau. The former Liberal M.P. he defeated in 2004, Marc Godbout, gave up after two attempts to win his seat back, and so after a hotly contested three-way nomination contest this past September, Galipeau has a new Liberal opponent in lawyer David Bertschi. Also running are 2008 Green candidate Paul Maillet, a retired Air Forces Colonel, and new NDP candidate John Courtneidge, a chemist and anti-poverty activist, who was just nominated this past Monday, November 30. The riding has featured two-way Liberal-Conservative contests for most of its history, and in one of its earlier incarnations was represented by John Turner in the 1960s. The two main parties here have both spent nearly the full limit in recent outings, with the other parties spending under 10%.
  
• Ottawa – Vanier, ON - Next door is this traditionally francophone riding which also contains the University of Ottawa, Byward Market, National Defence Headquarters, and the eastern part of downtown Ottawa, along with the extremes of 24 Sussex Drive and Rockliffe Park on the one hand and Lowertown on the other. It has the largest proportion of people who speak french at home of the six ridings, but unlike Ottawa – Orléans which has the highest percent of home-owners and lowest percent of tenants, Ottawa –Vanier has the second-highest percent of tenants (and the second-lowest of homeowners). It has been the closest thing to a Liberal dynasty in the area, although six-term Liberal M.P. Mauril Bélanger's vote-shares have come down somewhat from the stratosphere in more recent years. This past October 14, the Conservatives (who have run as high as 29% here in recent times) nominated a new candidate in Rem Westland, a former military man who was the long-time Director General of Specific Claims at the Department of Indian Affairs. And in late August, the Green Party selected a new candidate, software designer Caroline Rioux, in a contested nomination. The NDP, which itself has run as high as 22% of the vote here lately, has yet to announce plans about its candidate search.
  
• Ottawa Centre, ON - Next door is the riding that contains Parliament Hill, Carleton University, the Experimental Farm, and most downtown government and private offices, and then continues west along the Ottawa River. It's currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Paul Dewar, a regular fixture on TV political panels due at least in part to his proximity to all the downtown TV studios on the weekend. He was elected after the retirement of Ed Broadbent (formerly of Oshawa), who won the riding for a single two-year term from 2004-06, when then-new NDP Leader Jack Layton urged him to come out of retirement. Dewar has been winning with a vote-share in the high 30s, but a divided opposition, and certainly the riding has been an NDP-Liberal contest since the 1980s, but always with a significant Conservative presence. His new Liberal opponent, pharmaceutical executive Scott Bradley, won a contested nomination in a bit of an upset back in September over presumed Ignatieff-favourite, communication executive Janet Yale. The 2008 Green candidate, software executive Jen Hunter, is also returning, and as mentioned above the Conservatives have yet to announce any candidate selection timelines but have several folks apparently interested.
  
• Ottawa South, ON - I just looked it up now, because I wasn't sure which McGuinty brother was older: the Ottawa South M.P. David or the Ottawa South M.P.P./Premier Dalton (it's Premier Dalton, by 5 years; their youngest brother Brendan has held behind the scenes positions municipally in Ottawa as well). David McGuinty won the federal Liberal nomination in 2004, when former Chrétien-era cabinet minister John Manley retired, but that nomination was not without controversy, as two women candidates were hampered by a combination of rules, process, and influence (documented here (PDF) the following year by former Liberal national director Sheila Gervais, as part of a paper for the Queens University Centre for the Study of Democracy). The riding contains the highest proportion of immigrants of the six Ottawa-area seats and the largest number of Muslims, and has to this point been a two-way Liberal-Conservative contest. McGuinty, should he run again as expected, will be facing at least two of his 2008 opponents as well: the NDP's Hijal de Sarkar and Qais Ghanam for the Green Party. No Conservative candidate selection process has been launched to date.
  
  I just noticed that Ghanam's 2008 campaign spending represented a very large hike over Green Party spending in this riding in 2006 (23% of the limit, up from 3%), however it was not enough to bring him over the 10% threshold for a candidate rebate, and garnered him only another 1,020 votes over the party's earlier total of 2,900 or so. Earlier, in 2004, the NDP invested heavily in the riding campaign of Monia Mazigh (best known for her advocacy on behalf of her husband Maher Arar), spending an unusually-high-for-them-here 89% of the limit on Mazigh's campaign. This helped to more than double their vote totals from 2000 (up over 8,000 votes from just under 3,500), and then 2006 candidate Henri Sader was able to hold this new vote in spite of spending significantly less. Other than those two cases, the parties spent pretty much as you'd expect for a two-way race.
  
• Ottawa West – Nepean, ON - Another two-way contest is usually found in this west-end riding, currently represented by two-term M.P. John Baird. It has the local reputation of swinging with the government (although former Liberal M.P. Marlene Catterall broke that spell by winning in 1988), it has the highest proportion of folks who only know English of ridings in Ottawa (over 70%), the lowest proportion of people who know both English and French, and the second-highest concentration of visible minorities. It would have been home to many Nortel and other high tech workers during the high tech boom, given the location of so many of those tech companies in the city's west end. Taking his second try at returning to public office is former Liberal M.P. David Pratt, who was acclaimed their candidate earlier this year (after Janet Yale briefing mused about running against him, but demurred in favour of Ottawa Centre). Pratt came late to the 2008 election in this riding, after sitting out the 2006 campaign. The NDP's Marlene Rivier, a psychological consultant, is returning to fly her party's colours one more time, while the Greens have a new candidate in Mark MacKenzie who runs his own organic lawncare business. Baird was first elected in 2006 after Marlene Catterall retired and he was able to move ahead of her replacement, and he then kept the seat in 2008 with roughly the same margin of victory (9% or so).
  
• Nepean – Carleton, ON - Furthest southwest, we find another growing bedroom community, where over half the homes were built within the last 20 years, there are fewer apartment buildings than any other city riding, residents pay both the highest rental payments and housing costs in the area, and most people drive to work. The riding was Tory for years under Richard Bell, Walter Baker and Bill Tupper, with brief Liberal interregnums from 1963-65, and a term when Trudeau first ran in 1968. But Liberal Beryl Gaffney broke that stranglehold in 1988 when she edged Tupper out, and was succeeded after serving two terms by another Liberal M.P. David Pratt. Pratt served two terms until he was defeated by Conservative Pierre Poilievre in 2004, who has been reelected twice since then with over 55% of the vote and margins of 25% or higher. Poilievre will face a new Liberal challenger this time, laywer Ryan Keon (whose dad is Conservative Senator and heart surgeon Dr. Wilbert Keon), and a new Green candidate, IT security consultant Jean-Luc Cooke. Unlike Ottawa South, a big spending hike in the 2008 Green campaign (from 7% of the limit to 22%) was associated with a doubling in Green support to some 8,000 votes, pushing them slightly ahead of the NDP candidate who had spent the party's usual 15% of the limit. No NDP candidate has been selected for this riding as yet.

We'll finish off Eastern Ontario next time with the rural ridings.

Don't forget to cast your ballot in the Canadian Blog Awards for the best political blogs. Voting in the first round continues until next Saturday December 12.

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

Before we move onto the first in a series of Ontario catchups, there are a few follow-ups to note from our earlier catchups in Québec and the Atlantic.

• Charlottetown, PE - Educator Donna Profit won the contested nomination over retired RCMP officer Robert Campbell last Friday, November 27, and will now carry the Conservative banner against four-term Liberal M.P. Shawn Murphy. Already nominated for the Green Party is arts administrator Corin McFadden. No NDP candidates have been nominated anywhere on the Island as yet, although this was the riding where they obtained their only second place finish in recent Island history in 1997 under former candidate, lawyer Dolores (Dodi) Crane. Since 2000 when he was first elected to replace former Liberal M.P. George Proud with 42% of the vote, Murphy has polled 50% or better on election day.
  
• West Nova, NS - The next day, New Democrats met in Digby to formalize the nomination of their new candidate, Andrew Baxter, who will now join first-time Conservative M.P. Greg Kerr, former Liberal M.P. Robert Thibault who was renominated at the beginning of October, and a Green to be named later. After coming within 512 votes of defeating Thibault in 2006 (2.3 votes per poll or 1.1% of the vote), Kerr returned in 2008, holding more of his vote than Thibault could, and defeating him in the process. The riding has always been a Liberal-Conservative two-way contest, with a reasonably constant third-place vote-share for the NDP, and typically fairly evenly matched campaign spending between the two lead candidates. Even in the recent provincial election that elected an NDP government province-wide, 4/6 of the provincial ridings within this riding's borders returned Liberals and 2/6 returned Conservatives. So, it will likely see direct combat between the two main challengers, now entering their third match against one another.
  
• Halifax, NS - First-time NDP M.P. Megan Leslie was renominated in her riding the next night (Sunday, November 29), where she'll be facing Liberal candidate Stan Kutcher who won a nomination contest last fall, along with first-time Green candidate Anthony Rosborough, and a Conservative to be named later. Leslie maintained most of former NDP M.P. Alexa McDonough's raw vote in the last election, but saw her opponents' strength equalize somewhat as the Liberal vote fell and turnout dropped. Neither major opponent matched Leslie's campaign spending either (she spent 91% of the limit, to the Liberals' 54% and the Conservatives' 71%).
• Joliette, QC - Bloc Québécois House Leader Pierre Paquette was also to have been renominated on Sunday, for the fifth time in his case, in this north-shore riding which he has always won with 50-60% of the vote. He will face returning 2008 candidates Suzie St-Onge for the Liberals, and Francine Raynault for the NDP. No Conservative candidate has or Green candidates have surfaced as yet. MORNING POST-COFFEE UPDATE: 2008 Green candidate Annie Durette has been renominated. Sorry, Ms. Durette.
  
• Laval – Les Îles, QC - A sixth NDP candidate has now been officially nominated in Québec, as Laval municipal workers' union vice-president François Pilon was acclaimed on Saturday, November 28. This is Pilon's fourth run for the NDP, although his first in a Laval riding (he previously ran in Honoré-Mercier from 2004-08).
  
  With the arrival of Jack Layton as NDP leader, the decision of a number of FTQ activists to run for the NDP in 2004, while others were running for the Bloc Québécois, put the FTQ (Fédération des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Québec) into a difficult situation, such that it took pains to clarify that it endorsed neither party, but supported its members who were running for office, and recognized that as a labour central, some of its member unions were supporting each of the parties directly. It was interesting to read, as part of NDP backroomer Brian Topp's series this week on last year's coalition negotiations, that it was the FTQ which had facilitated discussions between Layton and the Bloc early in the Fall of 2008 about replacing the Conservative government (Topp himself has a grounding in the party's Québec strategy, being fluently bilingual and a former organizer and aide for one-time NDP M.P. Phil Edmonston).
  
  Many of the NDP's candidates in the last campaign originated from the house of labour, including candidates from the CEP (e.g., recent Hochelaga by-election candidate Jean-Claude Rocheleau), CUPE, the Postal Workers and Steelworkers. Meanwhile, the Québec wing of the Autoworkers strongly supports the Bloc Québécois (something the Liberal Party may not have realized when it played footsie with former CAW President Buzz Hargrove in 2006), and it has provided them with a number of candidates, as has the CSN labour central, the electrical workers, and the fraternity of forestry and manufacturing workers among others. In the wake of the Hochelaga by-election, where the NDP challenged the Bloc candidate for being anti-union and too conservative, I'm going to be following this trend, and taking a look at how the Québec labour movement is represented in the two parties' slates (and other parties' too of course if they show up there as well).
  
  Back to the choice of riding: it includes the west half of Thomas Mulcair's former provincial riding of Chomeday, and is currently represented by five-term Liberal M.P. Raymonde Folco. She found herself facing her former political aide, Agop Evereklian, as a Conservative candidate in the last campaign (he placed 3rd). Then last summer she appeared on Denis Coderre's list of M.P.'s he wanted to have retire to make way for new candidates. After a personal entreaty to new Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, Folco received his commitment of support for another run, and indeed it was in her riding where Ignatieff attended his first Québec fundraiser after Mr. Coderre's resignation (probably a welcome event, since the Liberal riding association there had run a deficit in both 2006 and 2007, and still has not filed its 2008 annual return some six months after the May 2009 deadline).
  
  Both the Bloc Québécois (which placed 2nd last time) and the Green Party (which placed 5th) have renominated their 2008 candidates, while I have no record of any Conservative candidate being installed as yet. Folco's vote-share has moved down from the 50-odd% she obtained in 1997 and 2000 (with campaign spending of 82% and 93% of the limit respectively) to 40-some% in the three elections since then (with declining spending of 60%, then 56% and recently as little as 52% of the limit), but the Bloc vote-share has been falling along with its spending as well. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the other parties would try to find the kind of candidates they believe might be able to take advantage of any further weakening in Liberal organization there.
• Outremont, QC - On Tuesday, December 1, 2009, Coderre's nemesis Martin Cauchon was finally formalized by acclamation as the Liberal candidate in his former riding, his last remaining opponent Comlan Amouzou having withdrawn from the race weeks before. It's hard not to conclude that this riding will be the battle-royale to watch on the Island of Montréal in the next election, given the stakes for both Cauchon and the lone NDP Québec M.P. Thomas Mulcair who now holds the seat, as most commentators are assuming each man would be a contestant for his party's leadership whenever it next opens up. Seated next to Cauchon at his nomination meeting, meanwhile, was one of his likely competitors for that leadership: Papineau Liberal M.P. Justin Trudeau.

With those updates out of the way, we'll move on, as planned, to Eastern Ontario in the next nomination news roundup.

Meantime, as this blog approaches its second anniversary, it was kind of nice to be picked as one of the "Sites of the Week" on the Bloggerheads panel of CBC "Power and Politics" this evening, especially when the nod came from as experienced a blogger as @JeffJedras of BCer in TO (thanks, man).

Also, you can vote for Jeff's blog, or mine, or any of a number of excellent Canadian political blogs from right across the spectrum, during the first round of voting for the Canadian Blog Awards, which ends next Saturday, December 12 (that's a week from today, by the time you read this post). Pundits' Guide was also nominated in the "best blog post" category for the summer post "May-Day in Saanich-Gulf Islands" where I broke the news that Elizabeth May was being challenged for her nomination.

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

Leading the non-Bloc nomination news in Québec in the last few days was the announcement by the Green Party of its new Québec Deputy Leader: not Stéphane Dion or Janine Krieber, per Wells' First Rule of Politics, but rather retired Radio-Canada environment reporter Jacques Rivard.

The only question I have is where Rivard will run, given that he's Montréal-based and the Green Party has already filled virtually every Montréal-area riding. I've just updated all the GPC nominations for Québec, and the only vacancies I see are: Saint-Léonard – Saint-Michel, Hochelaga (assuming Christine Lebel isn't hoping to run again), Alfred-Pellan in the Laval area, Saint-Lambert and Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert on the south-shore, or maybe Beauharnois – Salaberry if he doesn't mind going that far. Unfortunately none of Rivard's former colleagues in the media thought to ask, so we'll just have to wait for the answer from the party.

The Green party has now nominated candidates in 50/75 Québec ridings, more than even the Bloc Québécois, with only about a third of them return candidates from 2008 (18/50). Former deputy leader Claude William Genest does not seem to be running again so far, given that the three ridings in which he's previously run are all now filled by other Green nominees. There's also a candidate again in Stéphane Dion's west Island riding of Saint-Laurent – Cartierville.

Meanwhile, thanks to a forgetful Hill denizen and the ever-alert Steve Maher of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, we know from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's schedule (PDF) that he was to meet Eastern Québec Liberal candidates and their organizers Wednesday night in Québec city. I count about 12 nominated candidates who would fit the bill, if you include everything from Manicouagan to Joliette on the north shore, and from Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia to Brome – Missisquoi on the south shore (roughly 33 ridings all told).

Summer Liberal nomination news in Québec was all about Outremont, and extensively covered by all the traditional sources, but for those who missed the dénouement, Martin Cauchon's only remaining competition for the nomination, Liberal riding executive member and president of "Médecins d'ailleurs" Comlan Amouzou, withdrew from the nomination race in late October, according to Le Devoir. Resigning his post as riding vice-president at the same time, Amouzou charged that forces within the party had been urging him to pull out of the race; saying

«Je me pose de très sérieuses questions sur la place des communautés ethniques au sein du Parti libéral du Canada au Québec, dit-il. Ce parti est devenu une chasse gardée pour quelques privilégiés qui agissent en fonction de leurs intérêts et de leurs ambitions au détriment des aspirations des militants de la base. Je ne reconnais plus les véritables valeurs libérales.»

Meanwhile, the departure of Denis Coderre as Québec lieutenant has left a few more nominations up in the air (we reported on some others earlier here):

• Trois-Rivières, QC - Former radio host Robert Pilotte confirmed to Le Nouvelliste in late September that he was the candidate Denis Coderre had been holding the riding for. Readers will recall that Coderre ran afoul of local Liberals in the Trois-Rivières in his late August bid to court former ADQ House Leader Sébastien Proulx, deemed a bit on the conservative side by some members of the local riding. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had just visited riding activists there a few days before the September story on Pilotte appeared. In it, the regional president of the federal Liberal association in Québec argued strongly for an open nomination so that "the best candidate can win", noting that other names had also been circulating. Riding president Jean Boulet, meanwhile, was being a lot more circumspect about the nature and timing of the nomination meeting, and we learned why in early November: he had been considering a run himself, although he eventually ruled it out, as did another prospective candidate: Serge Lafrenière of Investors Group. This has left Patrice Mangin, director-general of the "Centre intégré des pâtes et papiers", as the only candidate in the race so far with no meeting date established in the foreseeable future. The riding is currently held by three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Paule Brunelle.
• Beauport – Limoilou, QC - Another former radio host courted by Coderre ruled himself out of the running for the Liberals in mid-October, reported the Journal de Québec. Martin Pouliot said the fact that there would not be an election made his decision easier, but also cited the resignation of Mr. Coderre and the ensuing "collapse" of the federal Liberals in Québec. The riding is currently held by two-term Conservative M.P. Sylvie Boucher.
• Québec, QC - Also unknown, according to Le Soleil last month, is the current status, or even interest, of former provincial Liberal cabinet minister Jean Leclerc, who was reportedly interested in Coderre's approaches about running in this other Québec City riding earlier in the summer. The riding is currently held by long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Christiane Gagnon who, although she is not yet nominated, told me at the Equal Voice reception on Tuesday night that she was indeed planning to run again, but keeps her nomination meeting to the last minute, since the Bloc campaign has often launched in her riding, which presumably makes for a quick and easy opening day event for them.
  
• Louis-Hébert, QC - However for every door that closes another potentially opens, since former M.P. Hélène Chalifour Scherrer, who had wanted to run but was being apparently being blocked in that ambition by Coderre, may now be willing to run, the same Le Soleil story suggested. I'm also told by a reader that the Conservatives have a candidate in this riding, Pierre Paul-Hus, who publishes a french-language military magazine. I've been trying to confirm his status as a candidate, so if you can help with details such as when he was nominated, and was it a contest, please do get in touch and pass it along so I can enter him into the database. The seat is now held by first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Pascal-Pierre Paillé, whose family name may sound familiar to you, as he is the nephew of recently-elected Hochelaga Bloc M.P. Daniel Paillé.

As for the NDP, it has not approved too many ridings to hold nomination meetings in Québec as yet, although for some reason it has a pocket of three nominees in the Mauricie-Lanaudière ridings, including an elected municipal councillor, Manon Perrault in Montcalm, returning labour candidate Réjean Bellemare in Repentigny, and returning candidate Francine Raynault in Joliette.

Also renominated are party Québec section treasurer and pharmacist Hoang Mai in Brossard – La Prairie, QC (the 5th closest four-way race of the last election), and community activist Christelle Bogosta in Brome – Missisquoi, QC (the 5th closest two-way race in Quebec last time, and also mathematically very close to the criteria for three-way and four-way races).

Finally, both the NDP's by-election candidates, Jean-Claude Rocheleau in Hochelaga and François Lapointe in Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, have told their local papers that they could run again in the next election.

We'll pick up next time in Ontario, which has seen a lot of new Conservative and NDP candidates since we last checked in.

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