Canada: Tory majority?

[blake 3:17]

I think it is a very distinct possibility. The two others are a Liberal majority or some other cluster fuck minority. I tend to think the left would be better off with a majority, which could provide some stable governance and somewhere to direct protest rather than this effed up games playing that the stupid Coalition, NDP+Tory, Tory/Bloc bs has helped to confuse issues. However, if Harper does pull a majority we're gonna get more fight than we're ready for at present...

Federal Tories pull away in new poll

TheStar.com - Canada - Federal Tories pull away in new poll
http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/01/3a/a901922545b582c788eb1908253d.jpeg MIKE CASSESE/REUTERS FILE PHOTO
Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to grasp what makes heads bob over coffee and fritters, James Travers says.

ANGUS REID STRATEGIES/TORONTO STAR POLL


Conservatives: 37%
Liberals: 29%
NDP: 16%
BQ: 9%
Greens: 8%



September 26, 2009
Bruce Campion-Smith
Ottawa Bureau Chief

OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper is outshining rival Michael Ignatieff and putting the Conservatives on track for a possible majority in the next election, a new Angus Reid Strategies/Toronto Star poll has found.
While party numbers remain static, Harper outscores Ignatieff on key questions of leadership that stand to give him a vital competitive edge among voters, said Jodi Shanoff, vice-president of public affairs for Angus Reid Strategies.
"This is not good news for Michael Ignatieff. ... Stephen Harper should be emboldened by numbers like these. They are pretty encouraging for him," she said yesterday.
The news is especially bad for Ignatieff since it suggests a TV advertising blitz and the Liberals' headline-making declaration to no longer support the minority Conservatives has had little impact.
"It doesn't appear that any of these things are getting any traction with Canadians yet," she said.
The poll found the Tories are up 1 point to 37 per cent support from earlier this month, the Liberals remain at 29 per cent and the New Democrats are down a point to 16.
"The polling numbers themselves don't suggest that Stephen Harper is in majority territory yet, even though his lead is widening. But all the other support indicators suggest (he) has all the momentum right now," Shanoff said.
Canadians see Harper as better suited than Ignatieff to tackle the economy (33 per cent to 23 per cent), health care (23 to 16) and crime (38 to 12). The Liberal leader is more trusted by Canadians than Harper on the foreign affairs file (30 per cent to 28 per cent) but, said Shanoff, "that's not a substantive policy area that we stay up at night thinking about. It's the economy, it's health care, it's other things that we think Stephen Harper is doing a decent job with."
The poll found that 27 per cent of Canadians favoured Harper as prime minister, compared to 16 per cent for Ignatieff and 12 per cent for NDP Leader Jack Layton.
The poll of 997 Canadians was conducted Sept. 23 and 24, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Edited to add: The single best commentator on this set of Canadian politics is Thom Walkom. You can find his columns at http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/94627 He used to have his columns on the lefty rabble.ca but they seem to have been pulled. Much more consistently to the left and a much better journalist than Klein will ever be.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Canadians don't want an election right now, and this is a signal from the pollsters. The spike will go down once the Conservatives get support from the NDP and/or Bloc on the Liberal report card confidence scheme. Electoral blackmail, or pollster blackmail?

This has happened frequently in the recent past: the threat of an election just after the election of a minority government increases support for that government almost to the point of majority, then recedes once either the government survives or voters realize they're not comfortable with a majority prospect (in the recent election, there was quite a bit of majority-minority waffling).

[blake 3:17]

Harper has been able to amazing things with his minority. The dude and his circle understand hegemony.



Stephen Harper appoints 5 judges with Tory links







By David Akin, Canwest News ServiceOctober 6, 2009Comments (2) (http://javascript<b></b>:jumpToAnchor('#Comments'))




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Less than a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper railed against "left-wing ideologues" in Canada's court system, Harper appointed five judges with ties to the Conservative Party of Canada, Canwest News Service has learned.

Photograph by: Chris Wattie/Reuters, xx




OTTAWA — Less than a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper railed against "left-wing ideologues" in Canada's court system, he appointed five judges with ties to the Conservative Party of Canada, Canwest News Service has learned.

In early September, in a partisan speech in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Harper said the Liberals, had they won the government last fall, would be putting "left-wing ideologues . . . in the courts, federal institutions, agencies, and the Senate."

But just a few days later, on Sept. 9, Harper and his cabinet signed off on five judicial appointments, one of whom was a Mulroney-era cabinet minister, and four others who contributed thousands of dollars to the Conservatives since 2004.

Dimitri Soudas, the chief spokesman for Harper, said all those appointments were made on the advice of a federal judicial advisory committee. JACs exist in each province. The membership of those committees is drawn from local courts, the legal profession and the law enforcement community.

"That independent body may recommend people who have political leanings that are not Conservative and those people still get appointed as judges because we take the advice of that independent advisory committee seriously," said Soudas. "Ultimately we appoint people who are qualified and recommended to us by an independent body."

The JACs, though, give a rating of "recommended" or "not recommended" to anyone who applies to them to become a judge. At the end of the process, it's up to the government of the day to select a new judge from a list of those with a "recommended" rating. Critics of the appointments process say that, given a choice between two "recommended" candidates, governments can then choose the candidate who might be more sympathetic to their political viewpoint.

The Conservatives campaigned on promises to make the JACs more independent.

The appointments made on Sept. 9 included:

- Peter Richardson-Bryson was named a judge of the Supreme Court Court of Nova Scotia. He gave $2,750 to Conservative candidates in Nova Scotia from 2004-06.

- William Burnett was named a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench for Manitoba. He gave $3,000 to the Conservative Party of Canada from 2004-06.

- Claude Dallaire was named a puisne judge of the Superior Court for the District of Montreal. He gave $500 to a Conservative candidate in the 2008 general election.

- Robert Dewar was named a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench for Manitoba. He gave $250 to the Conservative Party of Canada in 2008.

- Pierre Blais was named chief justice of the Federal Court of Appeal. He was one of Brian Mulroney's justice ministers.

Under Canada election financing law, individuals are restricted to giving no more than $1,100 to a party in any one calendar year. Individuals may also contribute up to $1,100 a year to riding associations, election candidates and candidates running for a party leadership.

The names of those who contribute more than $200 are published on the Elections Canada website.

While in opposition, Harper and other Conservatives frequently criticized the Liberals for appointing judges who had close ties to that party.

"This is a very serious matter, calling into question the independence of the judiciary," Conservative MP Peter Van Loan told the House of Commons in 2005. Van Loan is now the country's public safety minister. "At at time when Canadians are looking to the courts to deliver justice . . . this news corrodes public confidence in the courts."

With a file from Janice Tibbetts


Source: http://www.canada.com/news/Stephen%20Harper%20appoints%20judges%20with%20Tory %20links/2078830/story.html

Edited to add: And this is from CanWest the most conservative of mainstream media...