Author: Blazingcatfur

Well, there goes the Globe and Mail. One of the few news outlets in the country that hadn’t been entirely captured by the Liberals gifted them with a smear of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday morning.

The story — headlined, CSIS Alleges India Organized Support for Poilievre’s 2022 Conservative Leadership Bid — contains almost no new information, at best 100 new words out of 1,100. Delivered on the third day of the election campaign, and laced with Liberal talking points about Poilievre’s “security clearance,” nothing about it smells right.

In the lead-up to most elections, pollsters and pundits usually have a good idea of what is most likely to happen.

We rely on signals beyond the popular vote race to form our assessments — signals like historical precedent, the mood of the electorate, economic performance, incumbency, inertia, and the desire for change.

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told Canadians on Tuesday that they should be more worried about Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s ties to China, amid allegations that India meddled in Poilievre’s favour in the 2022 Conservative leadership race.

Poilievre dismissed the newsworthiness of a Globe and Mail article Tuesday outlining the allegations about India, but said at a housing announcement in Vaughan, Ont., that he was glad the story broke when it did, because it raised the issue of Carney’s own questionable foreign dealings.

Two days into the campaign and a single phrase has come to define the Conservative case against the Liberals’ re-election: the lost decade.

It seeks to convey Canada’s poor economic and social outcomes over the past decade of Liberal governance. The most notable expression is Canada’s declining GDP per capita, which has fallen for eight of the past 11 quarters.

After taking part in many leaders’ debates during the 2015 federal election campaign, I may be in a unique position to comment on the Liberals’ refusal to participate in the now-cancelled TVA French debate.

When Canada’s main private French network said it wanted help in paying for its “Face à Face” leaders’ debate, there were some raised eyebrows. (Full disclosure: I work at TVA and its all-news channel, LCN).

TVA requested $75,000 from each of the four parties (the Greens have always been excluded from these debates for lack of any seats in Quebec).

Poilievre says he’ll pay broadcaster’s $75,000 fee for Carney if he’ll join French debate

OTTAWA — The NDP’s campaign launch, held in the eastern Montreal riding of Hochelaga-Rosemont-Est Sunday night, was as modest as its chances in the province.

The local NDP candidate, Julie Girard-Lemay, a spunky human rights lawyer and activist, was busy shaking hands with her fellow candidates and dozens of supporters huddled in her campaign office — a Mexican restaurant that recently closed — on Ontario Street.

Lucky for her, the walls of the restaurant were already painted orange.