A few interesting stories from provincial politics:
1)
Wab Kinew won the leadership of the Manitoba NDP -- possibly the first-ever indigenous person to lead a major political party outside of the territories?
2)
Marjorie Lebreton is criticizing Patrick Brown for being shady. Given that, as the article notes, she's been a diehard PC loyalist going back to the days of Diefenbaker, for her to publicly criticize a fellow Tory means that there must be some really terrible stuff going on behind closed doors in the Ontario PC Party.
I don't remember who, but someone posted an article about how the 2015 election would spell a decline for one of the two left-leaning parties in Canada. Between the NDP's current decline and the Bloc Quebecois being close to a non-factor at this point, it seems that we may be headed into a U.S.-style two-party system where your only options are to vote against the party you don't want in power rather than the one who most closely share your beliefs (or vote swapping with someone in a competitive riding where someone belonging to a given party holds those views). That's a dreadful proposition should it come to pass (which I hope it doesn't).
Reminder: we're one election removed from nearly everyone saying the Liberals were on death's door. I remember reading an article saying that the Liberal brand was irreperably damaged, and that the coalition that had sustained them since 1896 had finally fractured. In fact, just last week, I read an article written by Tom Flanagan, one of Harper's top advisors, where he said that the Liberals inability to adapt to modern fundraising techniques meant that they'd be swallowed up by the NDP after the 2015 election. Then they picked a new leader, pulled themselves out of their death spiral, and overcame being a distant third at the beginning of the 2015 campaign to win the election. Go back a decade and a half, and you'll be able to find a lot of prominent pundits who thought that Paul Martin wasn't just going to win, he was going to win 200+ seats. We all know how that turned out. Likewise, look back at the period from 1984 to 1993: the PCs went from the largest majority in history to 2 seats, over the span of just two elections.
My point is that things can change very quickly, and that just because things seem grim for the NDP now, it doesn't mean that they'll be grim forever.
I mean, they should certainly be a little concerned. All of the leadership contenders have red flags: Caron is a non-entity, Ashton has terrible political instincts, Angus can't speak French, and Singh -- setting aside the obvious challenges he'll face as a visible/religious minority leading a national party -- has a stance on the OAS that seems tailor-made to sink him in a general election. If Singh wins, he'll do so entirely on the strength of the GTA and the greater Vancouver area, which doesn't show how he'd grow the party beyond the two places it's not in terrible shape; if Angus wins, if the Mainstreet polls are to be believed, it'll be thanks to a voter base that overwhelming skews age 65+; which doesn't bode well for their future prospects.
Even worse, they have major money issues. Being $3 million in debt is going to make fundraising for 2019 challenging, particularly because they've been struggling to adapt to a world where parties can't raise money from corporations/unions, and they can't rely on the per-vote subsidy. Theoretically, you'd think an increasingly polarized discourse would benefit them, but so far, that just hasn't been the case. I don't think it's impossible for them to do -- like I said, things can change surprisingly quickly -- but I'm not sure how they go about doing it.
No he never did, as his "surplus" in 2014/15 was the result of one time selling off GM shares at way below profitable value
Notwithstanding Boogie's point about Harper's first two surpluses -- the first of which was 100% attributable to the Liberals -- the number of accounting tricks the CPC pulled to claim a surplus in an election year was crazy. Beyond selling off the GM shares, they also sold off a bunch of overseas buildings, and they played around with how civil servant sick leave was counted. I knew of some people who were also very suspicious of the fact that nearly every single department returned significant amounts of their budgets at the end of the previous fiscal year. So technically, yes, it was a surplus, but it was based on a lot of magical thinking and unsustainable practices.
" as candidats for a Federalist Party
