Canadian Federal Election 2015

[Master Gunner]

Elections Canada handles laying out the ridings at the Federal level, as it is supposed to be "arms-length" from the politics.

However, there are certainly no shortage of allegations of pressure from the Harper's government - if everybody voted the same way as last election, the Conservatives would pick up 22 of the 30 new seats. But the other side is that the new electoral map reflects significant population movement into suburban areas, which tend to vote conservative (and are subject to significant Conservative marketing efforts).

So if there is active gerrymandering going on, they are at least being more subtle about it on the maps, and up front about the effects.

[empath]

Yeah, the riding changes out here are, again, due to the 'oil boom' and the influx of industry people filling up communities that used to be a few cottages in the woods.

Lower down, on the provincial level, there's been even more changes due to the population changes, and there HAS been grumbling about the fear of gerrymandering...

But yeah, not nearly to the same extent, if it even is deliberate.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

One of my professors in undergrad actually sat on the 2003 redistricting commission for Ontario. I can pretty definitively say that there's no gerrymandering going on; the redistricting is fair. Or at least as fair as you can trust, say, a court of law to be fair. I trust that there's no shenanigans going on.

It really is almost certainly just coincidence that the redistricting which took place for this election tends to benefit the Tories. As has been pointed out, it's just how the demographics have worked out. Plus, it's not universal - there are also new ridings in downtown Toronto, which is in no way a benefit to the Tories.

Matt:

If you're still not 100% sure what your riding is, Elections Canada will tell you. Just go here and pop in your postal code.

You can also find out who your current MP is here, again by entering your postal code.

You can also see the current polling averages for your riding here.

If you are indeed in Vancouver-Kingsway, your current MP is Don Davies (NDP). The polling numbers are, at the moment, the following:

NDP: 55.6%
Liberal: 25.2%
Tory: 15.2%
Green: 3.3%
Other: 0.7%

The incumbent Davies, with these numbers, has a 94% chance of holding the riding.

It does seem that the boundaries of Vancouver-Kingsway have been altered this election, though. So, if you haven't already, I really would suggest making sure what riding you're in by using the Elections Canada tool.

[Matt]

Thanks for that. I'm located smack-dab in the middle of that riding.

-m

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Update: Leaders' Debates

The Maclean's Debate will be taking place at 8:00 PM EDT, August 6th, 2015. This is this Thursday. You can watch it on CityTV, CPAC, and online (on the Maclean's website and on YouTube). You can also listen to it on Rogers radio stations.

The Globe and Mail debate will be taking place at 8:00 PM EDT, September 17th, 2015. You can watch it on CPAC and online (on the Globe and Mail website and on YouTube). The big news here is that Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, and Justin Trudeau have now all confirmed their participation in this debate; Elizabeth May is still not invited.

[Lord Chrusher]

Memo: Canada redistricts every ten years after a census.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Exactly. The redistricting is done to ensure that each riding has as close to the same number of people in it as possible, in order to ensure that each individual ballot cast has (approximately) the same voting power. More than just raw population goes into how the ridings are drawn up, but that's the main gist of it.

[Lord Chrusher]

The two other requirements are that a province has to have at least as many electoral districts as it has senators (for reasons different provinces have different numbers of senators) and that a province can not have fewer seats than it had in 1985.

This means the provinces in Atlantic provinces - Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island - which have experienced much slower population growth have fewer people per riding. Prince Edward Island only had 140 000 people in the last census but has four ridings giving it 35 000 people per riding while Alberta had 3.6 million people and now has 34 ridings for 107 000 people per riding.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

There's more to it than that, though, when you get down to drawing up the actual riding boundaries. The commissions try to keep the boundaries grounded in actual reality by keeping communities together as much as possible - no arbitrarily running a boundary through the middle of a small town. The idea is to keep localities united as possible, given riding population limits, in order to ensure good local representation by MPs and specifically to avoid gerrymandering.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Update: Debates

Mulcair is kind of wiffle-waffling on which debates he's going to attend. He's confirmed that he will participate in the Maclean's debate tomorrow and in the TVA debate in October. But it's not clear if he will participate in the Globe and Mail debate on the economy and the Munk School of Global Affairs debate on foreign policy in September.

It had previously been thought that he had confirmed... now he's saying he hasn't. But that's not a flip-flop... because he only ever agreed in "principle" before now. So he says, anyway. We will, apparently, get final word on whether he's attending or not on August 10th.

Muclair is also apparently still open to the consortium debates, but only if Harper will be attending... which he won't be.

CBC Article

As to the other leaders, Harper has committed to the Maclean's, Globe, Munk, and TVA debates; he has refusedd to participate in the consortium debates. Trudeau has said he'll debate anyone, anywhere. May wants to get into any debate she can. And Duceppe... well, I'm not sure about Duceppe; he's in the TVA debate, and I imagine he'd be in the French-language consortium debate.

Seriously... if we learn nothing else from this mess, it's that we need a much better system for determining how the debates are going to work.

Ideally, I think, you'd have it set up through Elections Canada. They'd be mandated by law far ahead of time to organize debates according to a previously agreed upon formula - that way, you avoid this last minute scramble and nonsense that we're seeing this time around.

What I'd like to see is Elections Canada organize one debate for every week of the campaign. Any organization that wanted to would be allowed to tender applications to moderate the debate and determine some of the specifics of the format, but one debate per week would be required by law, and would be required to be carried on the major networks and be streamed online.

Each debate would have a specific topic (the economy, foreign affairs/defence, law and order, constitutional issues...) with one debate at the beginning of the campaign and one at the end being general in nature.

All debates would be in both official languages, to avoid the situation we have now where people only tune in for the debates in their language, and ignore the others.

Any party that has at least 2.5% of the popular vote would be invited to attend.

Interested civil society groups should be allowed to submit questions. Hearing from the Assembly of First Nations on aboriginal issues, or the Canadian Civil Liberties Association on anti-terror legislation would be very good.

The specific format of the debates should be varied, so that people have a chance to see the leaders in different settings and so different styles of speaking are encouraged.

And, for god's sake, get some moderators who will actually press the leaders. None of this softballing, or allowing a leader to just not answer a question. Get Don Newman or Rosie Barton or someone. They don't take shit, and would make sure the question was actually answered... or would make it clear that the leader is being evasive.

Anyway... maybe all that's pie-in-the-sky. But a politics wonk can dream, can't he?

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Well, this might be interesting, especially to any non-Canadians following this thread. I'm going to post a positive political ad and a negative political ad from each of the four major national political parties, just to give people a taste of Canada in campaign season.

NDP:

Positive Ad
Negative Ad

Tories:

Positive Ad
Negative Ad

Liberals:

Positive Ad
Negative Ad

Greens:

Positive Ad
Negative Ad

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Hm. Well this is an interesting wrinkle...

Background: suspended Conservative senator Mike Duffy is currently on trial on 31 charges. Some of these charges relate to accepting a $50,000 payment from the Prime Minister's chief-of-staff. There are serious questions as to whether or not PM Harper knew of or ordered the payment be made.

Harper has stated that, were he to be subpoenaed to testify at the trial, he would claim parliamentary privilege and refuse to testify, as is his right. He has done so previously - he was sued and claimed privilege to avoid testifying.

Now, the interesting thing is that parliamentary privilege expires 40 days after the dissolution of parliament, and resumes, retroactively, 40 days before parliament next sits. Not a problem, usually... but this is the longest campaign writ period in modern history. The privilege is set to expire on September 11th. Election day is October 19th.

It is therefore possible that PM Harper may be subpoenaed right in the middle of the campaign, and will be compelled to testify as his parliamentary privilege will have expired. Which, er, would be bad for him.

Though, if parliament were to sit immediately after the election, the privilege would be extended back 40 days retroactively, and Harper could not be called to testify. The privilege would resume on September 10th.

The problem is that, in this situation, Harper would need to argue in advance that parliament will sit immediately and that the retroactive privilege period should apply going forward rather than retroactively.

That's not a guaranteed win for him. If it comes up, he may lose and be forced to testify. Even if he wins, it's going to allow his opponents to make mincemeat of him. "Oh, don't want to face the music, eh? What does the Prime Minister have to hide?" Not good for him.

Of course, it may not come up at all. But the possibility is interesting.

[SAJewers]

What if he successfully argued that, but then lost his seat? I doubt he'd lose his seat, but still.

Kinda makes me think that he wouldn't be able to argue that.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Exactly.

There's also the issue that he'd be arguing that parliament would sit immediately following the election. But what happens if, even if they plan to sit then, something happens that prevents them from doing so? That could mean that the retroactive privilege period may not start until well after Harper was called to testify.

It's a hard legal argument to make. I doubt he could pull it off. And it would hurt him even to try.

But.. yeah. I do wonder if this is going to come up, given that Duffy has essentially said his goal is to take down Harper, not to stay out of jail. One to watch, at any rate.

[Master Gunner]

Could parliamentary privilege retroactively render his testimony inadmissible? I would think that's as far as you could really extend parliamentary privilege retroactively without seriously questioning causality (insert joke on science funding here).

[Arclight_Dynamo]

That's much more likely, and much more in line with what I expect the retroactive period's purpose is. Though I'm not certain, since this really has never come up before. New and exciting law would be made. The judge will love it.

Of course, that's not really material as far as the election is concerned. As far as electoral politics cares, Harper would still be saying those things, under oath, in a public forum. Doesn't matter if the testimony is later ruled inadmissible; he's still said everything, and people have heard. Before going to the polls. Hell, just the fact that he'd be called to the stand in this Duffy mess would be enough to seriously harm him.

So I'm not sure on the law, here. But electorally, this scenario could torpedo the entire thing for the Tories.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Reminder: Debate Tonight

The Maclean's English-language leaders' debate is tonight at 8:00 PM EDT.

This is currently the only debate that includes Green leader Elizabeth May, so if you want to hear from her, tonight's your only chance.

The debate is being broadcast on CityTV (English), CPAC (English and French), and OMNI (Italian, Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese); is being streamed by Maclean's, CPAC (CPAC stream starts at 7:00, debate at 8:00), OMNI, the Maclean's YouTube channel, and the Maclean's Facebook page; and the audio is being broadcast on Rogers radio stations.

Some details:

This debate is general in nature, but will be divided into four segments: the economy, energy and the environment, "institutions of democracy" (think senate, electoral system reform, and constitutional/federal-provincial issues), and foreign policy/security.

I think the interesting thing to watch for is the back-and-forth between Trudeau and Mulcair. They're both trying to set themselves up as the viable alternative to Harper. The split vote on the left means that's where the real battle is going to be, especially since, if we're going by the polling numbers, there's a lot of room for swing between NDP and Liberal voters.

Muclair, of course, is going into this with very high expectations - they've been calling him "Parliament's Prosecutor-in-Chief" for months now. Trudeau, on the other hand, has very low expectations. We've had months of the Tories basically calling him an air-headed idiot, and a Tory media rep just came out and said that if Trudeau shows up to the debate "with his pants on," he wins. That strikes me as a bit stupid - you generally don't want to lower expectations for your rival - unless the Tories are hoping to make Trudeau look good in comparison to Mulcair, to chip away the NDP vote.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

The stream is now live, and the debate is about to begin.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

That's the economics section out of the way.

Elizabeth May is killing it. Shame she has zero chance of forming government.

Mulcair is doing very well for himself. Sure of his facts, able to react to the other leaders, not getting flustered.

Trudeau is a bit wobbly, but with the low expectations, I think he's fine. Seems to be going for the zinger.

Harper is, well... he's getting slammed hard. Watching his body language, he seems either annoyed or rattled. Neither is great for him.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

And that's the environment.

May, again, wiped the floor with them. Utterly. Which you'd expect on this file. She even got pretty heated at times.

Trudeau improved a bit, still going for the zinger. Seems to understand this debate is going to be chopped up for online viewing. "Mr. Harper. Nobody believes you." is a hell of a good line. Does still seem to be struggling, though - pulled in two directions, trying to keep it all straight. Definite "I'm in third place" vibe.

Mulcair was a bit weaker, here. Going for the zinger, too, but he's not as pithy - it seems forced. He's also trying to keep things toned down a bit, but he's best when he's indignant. He should go off the leash a bit, or he'll come across as weak tea. The "concerned smiling grampa" thing doesn't work as well as the "angry indignant bastard" thing.

Harper is again getting pounded. He's really not terribly credible on this file, and it shows. Doing a good job holding onto his narrative, though, and not giving ground. One or two jabs at Trudeau that seem to have stuck. His performance will likely play well to his base.

(Also... Harper needs to stop saying "Let me be clear" and Trudeau needs to stop saying "Actually")

[Arclight_Dynamo]

That's the end of the democratic institutions portion.

Feisty little segment, here.

May went ahead and laid down the (literal, constitutional) law. I swear... if she were in charge of any of the other parties... Of course the talking heads entirely ignored her since she's never going to form government, which I think is a hell of a shame. Frankly, I'd say she's winning this whole show so far.

Trudeau nailed it on Mulcair's wishy-washiness on national unity and the Clarity Act. It certainly helps to have the Big T name here.

Mulcair came back hard on this one. "What's your number? He doesn't have a number... You're not answering..." Hell of a deflection.

Pretty good defence by Trudeau, though, and Harper seems to have hit Mulcair back pretty hard, too. Now that he has an in, Harper's really hammering on it. Best he's done so far.

Dissembling from Harper on the Fair Elections Act, none of the others let him get away with it. Even Paul Wells is nailing him to the wall on it. Same goes for questions on the senate. So, good points, but overall not the best performance for the PM, here.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

And that's the section on foreign affairs/security.

Not Mulcair's strongest segment. Gave a damned good effort at not looking wishy-washy, but the NDP has a long way to go to overcome their reputation on security issues. I thought he made good, considered points, but I'm not sure how it will play. He did go on one hell of a tear about C-51, though. As someone with a law degree in constitutional law, I've got to say he knows his stuff.

May provided a much more credible "leftist/dove" case than Mulcair, actually. Fantastic performance. Cut Mulcair off at the knees, ripped into C-51, came off like a very serious person. Seemed to understand the issues better than anyone else, or at least was better at explaining them.

Trudeau did well here, too. His party's record is stronger than the NDP's, though he still managed to distinguish himself from Harper's position on ISIL. Name-dropped Andrew Leslie, as well. Split the difference between his portrayal of Mulcair as a hippie and Harper as an irresponsible militarist quite nicely. Fiery points on the Harper government's approach to veterans, as well.

Harper was definitely in his element on this one. Played to his base with the ISIL talk, came across, if not convincing, then at least credible to the centrist vote. Nonsense on the C-51 issue, though. Weird inflection to his voice during the ISIL stuff, though. Sounded insincere somehow. Strained. Maybe that's just my impression, I dunno. Party line on Israel, though - not sure he did himself any favours outside his base, there.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Closing statements are done, and the debate is over.

As to the running of the debate itself, I think they managed pretty well. Kind of rough in parts (transitions, production values... a bit low rent, frankly), but not bad, cinsidering this was their first go at it. Not a fan of the Facebook "polls" interspersed throughout, though. No mention at all that these are not scientific polls. Misleading. Bad form, Maclean's.

My impressions:

I'm surprised by how impressed I was by Elizabeth May. I really, really wish she were leader of either the Liberals or NDP. She'd do damn well. Of them all, I'd like her best as PM. Shame we're not going to see her in any of the other debates.

Tom Mulcair did quite well, but the high expectations make that less relevant than you'd think. I think he came through just fine, but not a blow-out. As expected, I suppose.

Justin Trudeau didn't do as well... but his lower expectations are going to help him here. Did a good job coming out swinging, got a few zingers in, good understanding of how this stuff is going to be chopped up and put online. Overall, I think he came out of this pretty well. Bit of a weird, touchy-feely closing statement, though.

As to Stephen Harper, I think he did what he needed to do. No stumbles, still standing at the end of this. Didn't come across as incompetent or mean, kept to his base but reached out a little to the centre. Not terrible, not great.

Expect to hear that Muclair won, with Trudeau right behind. I tend to think that May won... but it doesn't matter, since she's not going to be PM. So, it's Muclair, I suppose. Which is a slight shame, since all he did was meet expectations. Wish he'd shown a bit more grumpy bastard, but what can you do?

I'm betting we'll see polls starting to hit this weekend or Monday. Those should be interesting; that's when we'll know how the debate actually played. Or if anyone other than me was paying attention.

[Master Gunner]

I found it interesting that large parts of the debate seemed to be dominated by Mulclair vs Harper, with Trudeau being left as a secondary player in the debate (though he certainly came out strong in some places). Obviously this reflects the results of the last election, but it's certainly a shift in the perception of the major parties, to have the Liberals shoved off to the side a bit.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Yep. I think that's a testament to how well Mulcair was doing, actually. Had Trudeau had his way, it'd have been between him and Mulcair. But Mulcair kept in control of it, and went after Harper as much as possible. Cements in the mind that this election is between the Tories and NDP, and the Grits are an afterthought. Exactly what Muclair wants, and exactly what Trudeau doesn't.