Category Archives: Politics

Decision 2021 | Day 4 | Tories | A Split Vote Leads to Tory Losses

August 18, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

At the outset of David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne’s Curse of Politics podcast yesterday, the three ‘given to being profane’ / celebrated pundits regaled Conservative Party of Canada leaders, Andrew Scheer — leader of the Conservative Party in the 2019 federal election — and Erin O’Toole, the Conservative Party’s current, beleaguered leader, for achieving the near impossible: losing the vote of the single most reliable portion of the electorate, those folks who will move the sun, the Earth, the moon, the stars, and push any boulder or impediment out of their way in order that they might exercise their democratic franchise, and vote, vote for the candidate and party of their choice: those members of the seniors’ population, those of us poor, woebegotten folks who are over age 65.
Yes, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole have lost the votes of seniors!

David Herle presented the following demographic breakdown figures …

“Under age 35, 30% NDP, 28% Liberal, 23% Conservative. In the 35 to 49 age category, 34% Conservative, 31% Liberal, 21% NDP. In the next age group, 50 to 64, 41% Liberal, 29% Conservative, and 15% NDP. And age 65+, 38% Liberal, 33% Conservative, 14% NDP.”

“And now gender. Among men, 37% Conservative, 29% Liberal, 19% NDP. Among women, 40% Liberal, 22% Conservative, and 22% NDP.”

Jenni Byrne’s reaction: “The thing that jumps out at me is the breakdown of the 50 – 64, and the over 65 categories of the electorate. The Conservative Party has owned these two demographics since voting began, and the vast majority of the time I worked for Prime Minister Harper, even during our time in Opposition, and after we formed government. The same was true in Ontario when I worked campaigns in that province. More mature voters have always voted Conservative. But no more, it seems. The fact that the Liberal Party now owns the votes of that portion of the electorate age 50+ jumps out at me as something that will prove to be a significant factor in the current federal election.”

Scott Reid weighed in with this: “The Conservatives have lost the seniors vote, and the older middle-age vote, which is fascinating, and a watershed change in voting patterns for the most reliable sector of the population when it comes to finding their way to the ballot box. Maybe in this election, the move of these 50+ voters to the Liberals has something to do with the pandemic: during the pandemic, the people in that cohort have felt vulnerable, they’re anxious about their jobs and their prospects, CERB and rent subsidies have made a huge difference for many of Canada’s older citizens. The Liberals have created the conditions that has allowed people to feel as secure as it is possible, given the current set of conditions impacting on all of our lives.”

In the 2021 election, the loss of the seniors vote is the least of the worries dogging the beleaguered Conservative Party of Canada campaign.

The western separatist, far right-of-centre, libertarian and Prairie-based Maverick Party, formed by former Prince George-Peace River Conservative Member of Parliament (from 1993 – 2010) and a former Government House Leader in the House of Commons during his tenure an an MP, the scandal-ridden Jay Hill, will have an impact on the ability of the Tories to retain, or win new, seats in western Canada.

Jay Hill, leader of the western Canada separatist Maverick Party

Shortly after retiring from Parliament — when he was feted at a dinner held in Fort St. John and attended by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Premier Christy Clark, Reform Party of Canada founder and former Opposition Leader Preston Manning, among other right-of-centre luminaries — Hill was found to have breached ethics rules in the Conflict of Interest Act when he took advantage of his previous position and contacted ex-colleagues about a forthcoming multinational energy deal. Canada’s federal ethics watchdog found that Hill used his former position to facilitate access to the ministers on behalf of his spouse, Leah Murray, and her employer, National Public Relations, a firm that had drafted a communications plan for the deal.
What better way to revive one’s tarnished reputation that to form a right-of-centre, in the pocket of corporations, western separatist party?
In the 2021 federal election, Mr. Hill has stated that his Maverick – The West’s Federal Party will run more than 50 candidates in the current federal election, in ridings across northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. To date, more than 27 Maverick Party candidates have won nominations: three in British Columbia, including Dave Jeffers in the riding of Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, Dr. Stacey Gastis in the riding of North Island-Powell River, and Bill Howie in Surrey-Newton, with another dozen B.C. candidates set to be announced this week or early next; 17 current Maverick Party candidates in Alberta, with another dozen set to be announced soon; six Maverick Party candidates in Saskatchewan, and another six who have accepted a Maverick Party nomination but are not yet on the party’s website, and one lonely Maverick Party candidate in Manitoba, with another three who have accepted a party nomination.
Each of these Maverick Party candidates — many of whom are running in ridings where the Conservative Party barely eked out a victory, or in 2015 and 2019 came within a spitting distance of winning the riding — will cost the Conservative Party votes, and in many cases cause the Tories to lose in ridings they either hold or otherwise might have won.
Jay Hill, leader of the western independence Maverick Party, recently told a reporter for the Western Standard online that the election of Conservative leader Erin O’Toole as prime Minister would do nothing to address the feelings of Western alienation, telling The Standard that the Maverick Party is running on a Western independence platform, and intends to elect members to Parliament in order to facilitate the separation of western Canada from the Canadian federation.

“We are running against a system that doesn’t work,” Hill told The Western Standard. “Many people in the West have given up, and we in the Maverick Party want to lay the foundation of independence,” indicating that following the Québec model would be a good start towards achieving western Canada separation.

Poor Erin O’Toole and the beleaguered Conservative Party of Canada — they just can’t seem to win for losing.

Maxime Bernier lost his Conservative Party leadership bid in 2017, so he went out and formed The People’s Party of Canada.

Seems that no one in the Conservative Party can get along.
Former Tory Jay Hill doesn’t like the fact that current Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole isn’t a westerner — about which he feels alienated — so he goes out and forms the separatist, independiste Maverick Party, and picks up all his Tory marbles to do everything in his power to defeat his former Tory comrades, and that dastardly Erin O’Toole in particular.
Meanwhile, former Conservative Party leadership hopeful Maxime Bernier was so angry with Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party when he lost his 2017 leadership bid that he went out and formed the far-right-of-centre, libertarian People’s Party of Canada, whose claim to fame these days is that — apart from the party’s bona fides as a homophobic, transphobic, anti-immigrant and white nationalist federal political party — is proudly home, now, to the avowedly anti-vaxxer crowd, every single one of their candidates who believe that COVID is a hoax, from the leader on down.
The People’s Party of Canada will run candidates in all 338 ridings across Canada. The Maverick Party — a latter day version of the 1990s western independence Reform Party, and long home to Stephen Harper — will run more than 40 high profile candidates in Alberta and Saskatchewan and, if history offers any lessons, has a good chance of displacing the Tories as they did in 1993, when the Reform Party won nearly as many seats and replaced the Progressive Conservatives as the major right-wing party in the Commons, although the party won only one seat east of Manitoba.
Combine the information above with the fact that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is the least popular Premier in Canada, heading up a so-called United Conservative Party that, if an election were called tomorrow, would lose to Rachel Notley and her New Democratic Party — well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Conservatives will lose votes to the Liberals or NDP in Alberta (a protest vote against Kenney), while the PPC will garner the quite substantial anti-vaxx vote in Alberta and across western Canada, and look ready to take at least 8 percentage points of the vote away from Erin O’Toole and his Tories come September 20th, in Tory strongholds across western Canada, while Jay Hill and his merry band of western separatists in the Maverick Party look to pick up 20% of the vote, or better, in the ridings they’re running in across western Canada.
What does all of the above mean — if you ain’t already figured it out?
Whereas in 2019, Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives won 70+% of the popular vote in each of Alberta and Saskatchewan, in 2021 the Tories have a strengthened, anti-vaxx People’s Party of Canada running, and running hard, against them, with high profile candidates set to run in all western Canadian ridings, from British Columbia to Manitoba, with an eye to picking up the quite substantial anti-vaxx / anti-immigrant / white nationalist vote, and when you combine that vote with the western alienation vote of the Maverick Party, Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives are likely to hold on to only 50% of their vote in Alberta and Saskatchewan, losing enough votes to the PPC and Maverick Party in urban and rural ridings across western Canada, that it is almost a certainty that the Tories will lose as many as a dozen seats across western Canada, most particularly those where they barely scraped by with a victory at the polls in 2019.
And, hell, we’ve not even written about how badly Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives are doing in Ontario thanks to the unpopularity, verging on hatred / disgust with current Ontario Conservative Party Premier, Doug Ford, or how badly the Tories are doing in Québec and more particularly in the Maritimes — despite how well newly-elected Progressive Conservative Party leader / Premier Tim Houston did in Nova Scotia last evening …

Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party Premier-elect Tim Houston declares victory Tuesday, August 17th evening after running a left-of-centre winning campaign for office.

… at the end of a brutal, 32-day summer provincial election, who throughout his campaign for office ran as far away from Erin O’Toole and his band of intolerant, far right-of-center Tory ne’er-do-wells as he possibly could — folks, he said, with whom he shares absolutely NO values …
Yes, the Conservative Party of Canada is, by far, the best funded of the federal political parties, with $63.5 million in their coffers at campaign outset — but despite all the incessant Tory ads you’re seeing during the evening news and throughout the day and late into the evening, the Conservative Party cannot buy this election, cannot buy your affection, fealty or devotion, cannot convince women to vote for them, and cannot stop the People’s Party of Canada and the Maverick Party from hiving off substantial vote totals in dozens of ridings across western Canada.
Little wonder that Justin Trudeau set about to call a late summer election.

Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper gets a well-deserved drubbing at the polls in 2015.

And now, once again, David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne weigh in on the current federal election, in their own inimitable and idiosyncratic way …

The indispensable Curse of Politics podcast on #Elxn44, for Wednesday, August 18, 2021.

Decision 2021 | Day 3 | Erin O’Toole | Conservatives on the Ropes

August 17, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Erin O’Toole, the beleaguered leader of the Trumpian-right Conservative Party of Canada

Poor Conservative Party of Canada leader Erin O’Toole. After winning the leadership of his party at the convention held on August 23rd, 2020, almost exactly one year ago, it’s been downhill for Mr. O’Toole ever since.
In order to secure leadership of the Tory party, and beat out rival, former Progressive Conservative Party leader & Conservative Party Cabinet Minister, Peter Mackay, O’Toole made a deal with the devil, in the form of far-right-of-centre leadership hopeful, anti-vaxxer & strident pro lifer, Ontario Conservative MP Derek Sloan, promising Mr. Sloan a prominent seat at the table of an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative Party of Canada.
When Mr. Sloan dropped off the ballot, he encouraged his supporters to cast their ballot for Erin O’Toole, in the process securing victory for Mr. O’Toole over Mr. Mackay.
Less than four months later, on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021, Mr. O’Toole ejected the controversial Ontario MP from the Conservative caucus, due to what he termed Mr. Sloan’s “pattern of destructive behaviour,” including the revelation that Mr. Sloan had accepted a donation in 2020 from a known white nationalist, causing Mr. O’Toole to declare that “there’s no room in (the Conservative Party) for far-right extremism or racism.”
During his 15 months as a Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Mr. Sloan had faced accusations that he was racist and had drawn condemnation for his views on LGBTQ rights and for his strident anti-abortion stance, all leading to repeated calls that Mr. Sloan be tossed from the party’s benches.

“I’ve worked well with many social conservatives in our party over the years. They are welcome in our party, but Derek Sloan’s behaviour is not,” wrote former Conservative cabinet minister John Baird on social media in the lead up to Mr. Sloan’s ouster.

Following on Mr. Sloan’s ejection from the Conservative Party, an as yet unhealed and destructive rift in the Conservative Party occurred.
Most recently, 62 of the 119 elected Conservative Party MPs and former Conservative MP turned Independent Derek Sloan drew outrage from Canadians across Canada, when they voted against legislation brought in by the Trudeau government that would ban “conversion therapy”, the widely condemned practice of trying to change someone’s LGBTQ identity to heterosexual. The final vote was 263-63 in favour of the Liberals’ Bill C-6, passage of the bill banning conversion therapy, include talk therapy, hypnosis, fasting and the use of electric shocks.
The Conservative Party had outed itself as a federal political party largely comprised of homophobes and transphobes, regressives in the manner of Donald Trump and his many hateful acolytes. VanRamblings will expand on this story and theme in a post to be published next month.

Tasteless, sexist, misognynist, objectionable Conservative Party ad attacking Justin Trudeau.

At campaign outset, the Conservative Party and Mr. O’Toole came under fire from their own members over a ‘tasteless’ Trudeau ad. Todd Doherty, a British Columbia Conservative MP wrote on Twitter that he expected the Conservative Party to be better: “This is embarrassing,” wrote Mr. Doherty.
On Sunday, the day the writ was dropped, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole came out against the implementation of a vaccine passport, told the press that unlike the other major political parties, he would not mandate that his MPs or Conservative Party candidates be vaccinated, and if elected to government would revoke the Liberal party’s edict requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The deadline for full vaccination for employees in the federally regulated rail, air and marine sector would have to be completed by the end of October, according to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who said that all public servants and employees in federally regulated sectors must comply with the vaccine mandate or risk losing their jobs.
The measure will also apply to all commercial train, air, and cruise ship passengers. Upwards of 500,000 people work directly for the federal government, the military, RCMP or a Crown corporation. Nearly a million more work in federally regulated industries, such as airlines and banks.

“Being vaccinated makes the workplace and travel safer for everybody,” federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced last Friday, August 13th. “We will work closely with key stakeholders, operators, and bargaining agents, in particular, to develop a measured and practical approach to requiring vaccines in these sectors as quickly as possible.”

Eighty-two per cent of Canadians 12 year of age and older have had at least one dose of vaccine, while 70+ per cent have been fully vaccinated.
The vaccine requirement for federal and federally regulated employees, however, would not be implemented by Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, despite garnering the support of public sector unions & 82% of Canadians.
To dig the hole even deeper for the prospect of Mr. O’Toole and the Conservative Party forming the next government of Canada, on Monday, despite the widely popular and economically sound initiative of the federal Liberal government to implement $10-a-day childcare across Canada — the first national, universal social programme to be implemented since 1964, when the Liberal government of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson mandated universal medicare, and successfully moved legislation that brought the Canada Pension Plan into existence — and despite the fact that eight provinces and terrritories have enthusiastically signed onto the universal child care programme (including provinces led by Conservative governments), Mr. O’Toole went on record to state a Conservative Party would not implement any sort of national child care programme, but would instead create a tax credit for the parents of young children.
Make no mistake, the Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O’Toole is not your parent’s Progressive Conservative party, not the progressive party of Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark or Brian Mulroney.
Rather, the current Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O’Toole has become a far right, Trumpian party that ill represents the values of Canadians across our land, and as such have not a hope in hell of either being elected to national government, or even holding onto a goodly portion of the 119 seats held by the Conservative Party at dissolution.
Tomorrow’s VanRamblings column will explore in some detail, why it is that Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives have almost an insurmountable uphill battle to hold onto their seats in northern British Columbia, across Alberta and Saskatchewan, in Ontario — particularly in the 905 Metro Toronto region — in Québec, and across the Maritimes.
A dire situation, indeed, for Erin O’Toole and Canada’s Conservative Party.

Once again, the Curse of Politics panel — David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne — weigh in on Elxn44, reviewing the release of the Conservative Party platform, among a raft of other issues that have come to the fore in Day Three of the current federal election.

Day 3 | The Curse of Politics panel weigh in on #Elxn44, and Charlie Brown … er, Erin O’Toole.

Decision 2021 | Day 2 | Public Polling | Entertainment Value Only

August 16, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Over the course of the next five weeks, when you turn on your TV to watch the evening news — be it the national news, or a local broadcast — or you go online to read The Globe and Mail or one of the local newspapers, almost inevitably you’ll be presented with a graphic, such as the one above, presenting the latest election “polling results” from one of Canada’s nationally recognized polling companies — EKOS Research, Ipsos-Reid, Forum Research, Quitto Maggi’s Mainstreet Research or, as above, Nanos Research, and you’ll read about or hear intoned the weight and the meaning of the latest election polling results.
VanRamblings is here to tell you don’t for a minute believe any of the results from these national pollsters. Why not? Because, the meaning of that polling serves a number of functions, none of which contribute to your understanding of where the parties stand at any point during the current 36-day election period. Rather the poll results serve as “earned media” for the polling companies (more often than not, the pollsters supply the polling information for free, as “advertising” for the work they do outside of election periods), or more simply as “entertainment” for the viewer, contributing to the notion that there is not an election of import going on addressing issues of concern to the electorate, but rather the election is little more than a horse race, a form of political amusement or diversion.
In a story published in The Globe and Mail over the weekend, the paper’s Ottawa bureau chief, Robert Fife, wrote …

“The Liberal Party appears to be losing its momentum and now faces the prospect of eking out another minority government … The poll by Nanos Research, completed Friday, shows the Liberals with only 33.4% voter support, a drop of 5.9 percentage points from four weeks ago when the party appeared headed for a majority government.

“They are not in majority territory any more — and based on our internal seat projections — the hot election speculation has turned off enough voters for the Liberals to go from a majority to putting 40 Liberal [potential] wins at risk,” said Nik Nanos, the polling firm’s founder.”

If you believe that palaver, VanRamblings has a bridge we’d like to sell you.

Public polling has fallen out of favour in recent years, with pollsters in Canada and the United States wildly wrong in their predictions as to the outcome of various elections. Why?
Polling respondents, more often than not, lie to pollsters — who also fail to survey a broad cross-section of the public. Pollsters fail to compensate or adjust their figures factoring in that those members of the electorate under the age of 45 are significantly less likely to turn up at the polling booth, or mail in their ballot, than voters over the age of 45 — but pollsters give these “younger” respondents equal weight in calculating their polling results. As a consequence of their continued failure to accurately account for the intention of the potential electorate, pollsters face an existential crisis, and a disaster for the polling industry and for media outlets and analysts that package and interpret the polls for public consumption.
The polling that counts, and the polling the general public never gets to see is the polling conducted for the two leading parties, in Canada, the Liberals and the Conservatives, each of whom dedicate between five and eleven million dollars of their campaign budgets to paying private internal pollsters who, unlike the 1,000 respondents contacted for the Nanos Research poll above, conduct daily polling in the two hundred or so ridings the two mainstream political parties believe they have chance of winning, contacting between 300 and 500 respondents in each riding every day, as well as conducting in-person demographically diverse research groups in these ridings, among those members of the electorate who are engaged and likely, or almost certain, to vote in the current federal election.
The following “story” illustrates the meaning behind what you read above.

Approximately six months before Premier Christy Clark went to the polls in 2013, B.C. Liberal party campaign manager Mike Macdonald engaged the services of longtime Stephen Harper pollster, Maple Leaf Strategies’ Dimitri Pantazopoulos, one of Canada’s leading strategists and public opinion researchers, with more than 25 years of experience and practical knowledge in providing strategic advice to right and centre-right political parties and their leaders, and renowned for his dogged, thorough and in-depth, and almost invariably accurate, public opinion research studies.
Following in-depth polling in all, then, 84 ridings across British Columbia, approximately one week before the provincial writ was dropped in 2013, Mr. Pantazopoulos advised Ms. Clark and Mr. Macdonald that despite the public polling that had the B.C. Liberal party popularity languishing between 33% & 36% in the “public” polls, with NDP leader Adrian Dix polling in the range of 47% to 51% — and assured of an overwhelming victory and majority government in the coming provincial election5 — in fact, he believed Ms. Clark could secure a majority government, advising Mr. Macdonald to “write off” 34 “unwinnable seats”, and focus on the 50 “winnable” ridings that could secure a victory for Ms. Clark and her B.C. Liberal party.
Although many in the B.C. Liberal party were aghast at the advice Mr. Pantazopoulos provided to Ms. Clark and Mr. Macdonald, both chose to take his advice. Mr. Pantazopoulos and his team conducted in-depth polling nightly in each of the “winnable” 50 ridings, and crafted a message for the candidates in each of those ridings to present to the electorate the next day to address the specific concerns of the electorate in those specific ridings. Long story short, despite the public polling that had the B.C. Liberal party and Ms. Clark going down to flaming defeat, come election night, the B.C. Liberal party secured victory in every one of the fifty ridings that Mr. Pantazopoulos had identified, as Ms. Clark and the B.C. Liberal party went on to form their much cherished majority government.

According to information provided to VanRamblings by informed sources within both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties, pre-election internal polling has the Liberal Party on track to win 200+ seats come the end of the current federal election, with the federal Conservative party hoping to hold onto 99 of their current 121 seats — the details of which VanRamblings will provide in the coming days.
Over the course of the next 35 days, both mainstream federal political parties will conduct daily and nightly polling in the ridings they’ve identified for victory, and craft both a national and a local message for the electorate to respond to concerns that have been identified by internal party pollsters, many of whom will be out door knocking in ridings across Canada.
Of course, there’s still five weeks to go until election day and anything could happen, but despite the $63.5 million the Conservative party has in its kitty to “secure victory” s, as VanRamblings will explain tomorrow, it’s going to be an uphill battle for Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole to hold onto a good portion of their current seats in the House of Commons.

As always, VanRamblings will publish the daily Curse of Politics podcast …

Day One | August 16, 2021 | David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne weigh in on Day 1 of the 44th Canadian federal election, joined by Politico Canada’s Nick Taylor-Vaisey.

David Herle, pollster, and founder of the Air Quotes Media podcast conglomerate.

In addition to the daily Curse of Politics podcast, David Herle has also created the new Through the Looking Glass podcast, today’s début episode presenting ‘swing voters’, where rather than focusing, as per usual, on interviewing political figures or insiders, instead the Through the Looking Glass podcast takes viewers through the looking glass of a focus group boardroom, done virtually, and into the minds of everyday people.
Through the Looking Glass: Swing Voters 2021 will meet with a group of swing voters from the greater Vancouver and greater Toronto areas as they form opinions about the federal election. Both of these Canadian metropolitan areas have a surfeit of seats up for grabs, and are home to some of the most competitive ridings in the country.
Through the Looking Glass will check in with this group of swing voters once a week throughout the campaign period to hear what they’re thinking and feeling about the issues that have come to the fore, the leaders of the four main political parties, the party platforms, the debates (upcoming, in English Canada, on Thursday, September 9th), party ads, and ultimately, how they intend to vote as we head into Election Day.
Here’s the début episode of the Through the Looking Glass podcast …

Episode One | August 16, 2021 | The new Air Quotes Media Through the Looking Glass podcast.

Decision 2021 | Day 1 | Canadian Federal Election | Sept. 20th

August 15, 2021Decision Canada 2021, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

David Herle, Scott Reid & Jenni Byrne will provide daily coverage of Decision 2021

As of this morning, Sunday, August 15th, following on the visit of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the residence of the recently-installed Governor General, Mary Simon, to request that she dissolve Parliament — a request to which she acceded — Canadians now find themselves in the chaotic midst of the 44th Canadian federal election since Confederation, in 1867.
Thirty-six days from now, Canadians will elect a new government — whether that is a status quo Liberal minority government or a majority Liberal government, as Mr. Trudeau might wish (quite simply, there are no reasonable and foreseeable other options on the table) we’ll know come the evening of Monday, September 20th, E-Day in every region across Canada — or within 10 days afterwards, as election returning officers conduct a hand count, post E-Day, of the more than five million ballots that are expected to be cast by mail during the latter two weeks of the writ period.
We oughta know whether it’ll be a minority or majority Liberal government Canadians have elected somewhere around Friday, October 1st.
VanRamblings will provide our usual in-depth daily coverage of the federal election each week, Monday through Thursday, over the course of the 36-day election period, providing insight, publishing polls, exploring the issues raised by each of the parties, and in the final days of the election period postulating as to the specific probable outcome of the federal election.
For the 4% of you out there who give a good goddamn about Canadian federal politics — which, in some measure, brings you to VanRamblings today — there is no more important activity to which you might turn your attention than the current federal election, which will serve to determine what kind of country we will become over the course of the next four years, and what values will be reflected in the legislation brought before government by the governing party. Make no mistake: your vote counts!
As always, elections are a crapshoot: in the early going, you just can’t predict the outcome.
In 2015, Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberal party began the election with only 23% support among Canadians, while Tom Mulcair and the NDP were rock steady at 35% popularity in the polls, in all regions of Canada, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper following closely behind with 31% support in each of the 10 provinces and three Canadian territories.
Following an unprecedented 78-day election period, on Monday, October 19, 2015 Canadians elected a majority Liberal government to Parliament, and a new Prime Minister. At election outset, no one could possibly have imagined that outcome, so entrenched was the Harper government, and so popular was the New Democratic Party under the leadership of Mr. Mulcair.

At the top of the page of today’s post, you’ll see a graphic of the relatively new Curse of Politics podcast, created to provide daily, informed coverage of the 2021 Canadian federal election.
David Herle is a Canadian political consultant and Principal Partner at leading polling and research firm, The Gandalf Group, and a regular CBC political commentator. Scott Reid is a political analyst and commentator currently working for CTV News, and a columnist and contributor to the Ottawa Citizen, CBC.ca and Macleans, among other publications.
As is the case with his colleague David Herle, Mr. Reid has acted as a political advisor to a number of Canadian politicians, having served as Advisor and Director of Communications in the Prime Minister’s Office of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. Along with Macleans columnist Scott Feschuk, Reid owns and operates Feschuk.Reid, a strategic communications and speechwriting consultancy.
Jenni Byrne is a political advisor, political commentator, and government relations expert. A member of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, she is a former senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former Principal Secretary to Doug Ford. Once referred to as “the most powerful woman in Ottawa,” she currently operates her own consulting firm, Jenni Byrne + Associates.
Messrs. Herle and Reid and Ms. Byrne will cover the 44th Canadian federal election with greater, and more informed insight than you’ll find anywhere else in the media during the election period. Each of them has been inside the rooms where decisions have been taken by government, over the course of the past 40 years in the case of Messrs. Herle and Reid, and more than a quarter century, in the case of Jenni Byrne. As the three opined recently, “You know that you haven’t made it in politics as a senior political advisor until the Prime Minister has told you to fuck off,” a signal event which each of the three hold proudly & closely to their bosoms to this day.

The Curse of Politics podcast will be available on (just click on the links) …

VanRamblings looks forward to seeing you back here tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the début episode of the Curse of Politics podcast, above.
Update. Here’s the kick off to the election Curse of Politics podcast …

David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne weigh in on the kick-off to the 44th Canadian federal election, in a podcast published mid-afternoon on Sunday, August 15th.

The 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival will run from Friday, October 1st thru Thanksgiving Monday, October 11th, screening 100 features & 100 shorts this year.

After a seven and a half month break, today’s VanRamblings column — our first in 2021 — marks the beginning of 516 consecutive days of publishing.
Over the coming months, we’ll cover the current federal election, followed by coverage of the 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, and begin coverage of the 2022 Vancouver municipal election. Of course, each Monday through Thursday, we’ll cover much much more of a political nature, as you will come to see in the days, weeks and months ahead.
As per usual on VanRamblings, Fridays will be given over to arts coverage (mostly, but not just, film) on Arts Friday, Saturdays to our must-read and indispensable Stories of a Life feature, and Sundays to the Music we love.
Hope to see you back here often. We promise you, it’s gonna be a ride!