l-r: Paul Martin, Liberal; Stephen Harper, Conservative; Jack Layton, NDP; Gilles Duceppe, BQ

A federal election is going on in Canada, although you’d hardly know it.
Even so, the election that’ll take place in less than a month — on June 28th — ranks as one of the most important Canadian elections in more than 30 years (because of the fact the possibility exists that the right-wing Conservative party might gain power, and do to Canada that which Bush has done to the United States, Gordon Campbell has visited upon British Columbia, and Mike Harris did to harm good government in Ontario).
Today, VanRamblings offers a few blog links to provide some perspective on the events that will take place over the course of the next month.

• Macleans writer Paul Wells is keeping a regularly updated online diary that, in recent days, has proved invaluable reading.
• Terminal City writer Ian King’s Vancouver Scrum is must reading.
• The Globe and Mail have teamed up with the McGill University Observatory on Media and Public Policy to provide statistics on how the leaders and parties are faring in terms of positive or negative coverage. The links and informative commentary provide worthwhile reading.
• CBC’s Peter Kavanagh provides a a daily analysis of cross-Canada newspaper election coverage.
• Jim Elve’s E-Group Elections Blog continues as a must visit blog for perspective on the election. Don’t forget to click on the links to the left.
• Ian Welsh and Kevin Brennan’s Tilting at Windmills blog has emerged as a favourite, although I don’t always agree with them.
• Don, at Revolutionary Moderation, is updating political commentary daily.
• The folks at Politics Canada suggest that they provide a ‘balanced perspective’, as if anything such things exists. Still, worth a look.
• The Montreal Gazette’s E-File has joined the campaign blogsphere, while The Globe and Mail’s blog Globe reporters unwired offers pithy commentary from Campbell Clark, Brian Laghi, Steven Chase and Daniel LeBlanc.
• Then there’s Canada 2004, an independent site, “owned and operated by David MacDonald, a political science student and J. P. McCarthy Scholarship winner attending St. Francis Xavier University.” As Tom at Trail Spotter says of David’s site, “Good, basic info on ridings, candidates, historical and house stats, and a rolling newsfeed.”
• And while we’re at it, Trail Spotter has a pretty damn good election blog.
• Longtime Liberal apparatchik Warren Kinsella’s Politics Watch, which he humbly calls ‘Canada’s Political Portal’, is well worth a look.
• Torontonian Andrew Spicer believes there’ll be a Liberal minority government.
• And, in all fairness, I suppose, on the right I should include Norman Spector’s Norman’s Spectator — not a terrifically good looking site (but the links work). Spector is a regular commentator on Victoria’s new VI.

If you’ve got more links to bloggers — or online journalists — who are providing daily coverage of the federal election, that you’d like to see added to the list above, either write to VanRamblings, or click on Comments below. VanRamblings will update the listings as more links become available.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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