So What Happened In Saskatchewan?

The last of the provincial elections hora is over. It went from a Liberal win in Both PEI, and Ontario. To a NDP victory in Manitoba And two right wing parties winning in NFL and Sask. No incumbent party lost there power. In Sask the right wing party lead by Mr. Wall won a landslide victory! The Liberals well what is there to say about them. I read there platform It gave no specifics! Especially on the spending cuts. The Liberal party got not even a 1%. Last time around they got 9%. By the way the Green party got more votes than us! They ran a full slate and the Liberals didn't. It seems that these elections have taught us a few things.


1. The Orange crush in all provinces is no where to be seen

In Manitoba although winning the election actually lost support. In Ontario the NDP got nowhere where they were polled let alone there federal results in the province. In PEI they got less votes than the Greens at 3%. In NFL although getting 24% of the vote they not only are in 3rd party status to the Liberals, but also didn't reach there federal election results. In Sask they dropped in support even though the Liberals didn't run candidates in most of the province.

2. The Liberals aren't dead

With regaining nearly a majority In Ontario, a majority In PEI, at least one seat in Manitoba and being the official opposition in NFL Shows us that Liberals aren't gone. In Sask the Liberals lost terribly, but it's safe to say that even if the Liberals won a majority government in 2011 there was no way the Liberals would do any better in Sask.

I agree with my Blogger!

My Co-blogger says that the fact that the Liberal party walked out in protest to the Conservatives appointment for the auditor-general was outrageous. I think so, but for different reasons. If  you look at history many people do things that are very similar. When Iran speaks at the UN most of the developed world boycotted his speech. In many Parliament when a radical takes the stand and speaks his speech is boycotted in Parliament. The fact is that boycotting is an effective tool to show displeasure. Except I found that this situation isn't in need for a boycott. It wasn't completely as outrageous as Ahmadinejad dening the holocaust! I think marching out of the parliament should only be used when something completely outrageous is done. The fact that auditor general isn't bilingual is something to maybe disagree with, but not the kind of outrage that deems a complete walk-out of the parliament. On the question whether the Auditor general should speak french I think that it shouldn't matter, but the fact is that the Conservatives cheated there own legally binding rules. That's the problem. So I think if the Conservatives would have changed the rules from the beginning allowing all unilingual people a chance to go for such a job would have made it fair. But I don't think the appointment was a good enough reason to walk out. They should have stayed in the parliament and voted NO!

Walking Out is not Right

The new Auditor-General is not bilingual. Yet, that is one of the conditions of the job of Auditor-General.  No doubt then that the Conservatives are telling the truth when saying that he is the only qualified individual for the job. Out of the people in Canada, there must have been at least one who had all the competences and was bilingual.

Some say that being bilingual doesn't really matter to the job of Auditor-General. Maybe they do not need to be fluently bilingual, but a good knowledge of both languages should be a prerequisite. But, if the Conservatives are going to ignore the condition of being bilingual, then they should full out just say it publicly instead of lying.

I do not agree with the Liberal response to the government. The NDP had the right one. To walk seems like a desperate act to get attention and it does come off as one. If the decision isn't right then the job of the opposition is to show up in Parliament and vote against it, not to abandon its responsibilities as the Liberals did. 

Bob Rae and his Liberal MPs boycotted a Commons vote that approved a unilingual accountant, Michael Ferguson, to serve as Canada’s new Auditor-General. 

While Conservative and NDP MPs stood in the House, the real action was taking place outside the chamber, where an angry Interim Liberal Leader condemned the process as an “abuse” and “illegitimate.”

Read more at the Globe and Mail. 

Quebec Gun registry

If Harper kills the Gun registry then I would fully support a Quebec version of the gun registry. In fact if you calculate it 2 million for all of Canada about a quarter of that if not less would equal $500,000. Which is almost nothing on the provincial budget. The only problem is that our Conservative government will destroy all records to make sure that they make it the hardest possible to try and slow violence. Another problem Quebec will face is guns purchased in Ontario or other provinces. I think Dalton Mcguinty would make a Gun registry for his province, add the NDP premiers of Nova Scotia and Manitoba and probably BC you have practically a nation wide gun registry. With the exception of Saskatchewan and Alberta.  I guess this sort of Primer cooperation  will really put a punch in the Conservatives stomach. But with no old records we have to start the registry from scratch which makes it more expensive, because of start up cost of this program. No help from Harper again! I guess the Harper ideology stays true. Let the provinces deal with it!

Some good Polls

A new poll has the Liberals maybe in not so much good shape, but no where near invisible. The Conservatives are of course leading 37.7% and the NDP in second place at 30% while the Liberals are in 3rd place at 23.4%. If you compare this to the May results we went up 4% the Conservatives went down 2% and the NDP down 1%. In Quebec the New NDP buddy, still likes the NDP at 45% support. Our separatist Bloc friends are in third place at 15%. With these numbers the Bloc would be lucky to get one seat. Us Liberals are placed in second at 18%. Not much to brag about, but it's up. In Ontario the Liberals have been polling at a solid second place finish in Ontario.

Other good news Bob Rae is beating Nycole Turmel for second place on leadership issue's. On the issue of who is the most trustworthy.Harper dipped big time from high 30's to 30% from just a month ago! Turmel is now fighting May on this issue.From almost the moment Turmel became leader her Trustworthiness went from 33% to now 11%. Bob Rae at 16%. Not the best news, but this is the first lead on this issue since 2009.

On the issue of who is the most competent Harper faced a small dip now at 37% from just a month ago. NDP again similarly faced a major crash after Turmel become leader (from mid 20's to 7% by the way May is polling on this issue at 3.9%) Liberal leader Rae is up and at 18%.

On the issue of who is the best vision Harper again leads, but dipped by about 7% from just a month ago. On this issue the NDP faced crash again from 30% when Tyrmel became leader to now 13%.  Rae went up since he became leader and is now at 15%.

These polls are nothing much to brag about, but it's very nice to see that are party isn't dying away like many said we would. In fact if these trends continue the NDP and Conservatives will have to worry.

see the poll here