I don't understand what's going on with the wild Liberal/Conservative swings, but they've now got the NDP at a record high: As of May 30th: Party Support Liberal 36% Conservative 26% NDP 20% Bloc 13% Green 5% As of May 29th: Party Support Liberal 34% Conservative 31% NDP ...

Serious question: does The Clarity Act clarify anything? More to the point, will it -- in the long run -- help avoid Québec separation? Everyone would reflexively answer 'yes', I'm sure. But look a little deeper. We know The Clarity Act gives the federal government and the provinces veto power over any referendum result. Either through declaring a majority vote 'unclear', or by rejecting terms of separation, either level of government could theoretically cancel a province's re...

CPAC and SES Research are conducting a joint tracking poll, public released each day during the election campaign. Sign up. As of May 29th: Party Support Liberal 34% Conservative 31% NDP 19% Bloc 12% Green 3% As of May 28th: Party Support Liberal 34% Conservative 34% NDP ...

Leslie McKinnon, CBC News, Toronto : "First, there is no evidence of a 'rapid rise' in deaths of homeless people in Toronto, in the years Jack Layton was talking about." Wrong, says a 1997 article in The Toronto Star : "According to Diane Patychuk, city public health social epidemiologist, a look back at deaths of people with no fixed address or from hostels and drop-ins, revealed some 40 a year from 1979 to 1993. 'That's an underestimate,' she says." "From P...

Jack Layton : "I believe that when Paul cancelled affordable housing across this country it produced a dramatic rise in homelessness and death due to homelessness. I've always said I hold him responsible for that." As journalists furiously typed, Jack Layton's passionate criticism of Paul Martin's neglect of homelessness was distorted beyond recognition in a matter of hours. Layton's comments are clearly an attack on policy: Martin's choice to cancel federal funding for ...

It seems more than a little ironic that Susan Delacourt, author of Juggernaut , should write this : "No human being could live up to the hyperbole that surrounded Martin's reputation all that time he was the Liberal heir-apparent and the darling of everyone at all points on the political spectrum."

UPDATE: The Toronto Star is reporting much larger numbers regarding both tax cuts and increases. More information will be available soon, when the NDP posts it's full platform online. UPDATE II: Apparently the the NDP's tax plan does not include $9.5 billion in tax increases, as originally posted, but actually nets $9.5 billion in increased taxes over five years. However, the vast majority of the NDP's tax measures are still revenue neutral, paying for tax reduction on middle- and ...

Prime Minister Paul Martin unveiled his healthcare platform yesterday. It was billed as a generational plan for Canadian Medicare. But the Liberal plan turns out to be little more than a numbers game -- and Martin still falls $700 million short of closing the Romanow gap. Let's get right to the Enron-style numbers. Until recently healthcare payments to the provinces were made through the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) which is now being split into the Canada Health Trans...

So, the Paul Martin Liberals have gotta brand spanking new ad . Go watch, I'll wait. While everything the ad says is true, it still manages to be shamelessly dishonest. This is the same Paul Martin that said Canadian taxes "must continue to come down" to ensure our tax rates are competitive with those in the United States . The same Paul Martin that said Canada's corporate taxes and capital gains taxes should be "lower than the United States". The same Paul Martin ...

Well, the funniest line of the campaign so far has got to be from the NDP's " Reality Check ": "The Liberals are right about one thing: Jack Layton's campaign launch was a show - it was a show that Canadians will stand with a party that is standing up for the issues that matter to them, like public health care, the environment, and education." "Not everybody's campaign launch has to look like a funeral. But that's what you do when you are trying to bury something -- like the Li...

Ian Welsh , the moderate conservative blogger at Tilting at Windmills and BlogsCanada eGroup , offers these thoughts as the election begins: "I’ve only seen Jack Layton once. It was budget time in Toronto and I thought I’d go watch city council in session. I arrived late in the day, after work, to one of those interminable sessions where citizens give depositions to the city government...." "Most of the people obviously cared a great deal. One man had an entire box of docu...

Horse Race : Good: "A new Ipsos-Reid poll, conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV this week, showed the Liberals falling four percentage points to 35 per cent..." Better: "The Ipsos-Reid poll also shows the New Democratic Party, not the Conservatives, picking up the support that the Liberals are losing...." Best: "The Liberal strategy of painting Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as scary is ineffective because respondents do not think he wil...

As we all know , Liberals and Conservatives launched attack websites against one another this week, StephenHarperSaid.ca and TeamMartinSaid.ca . The Liberals' launched their website in support of a negative ad campaign, meant to get out ahead of Stephen Harper. But the Conservatives taught Team Martin a lesson in quick response: the Tories' site went online Tuesday morning -- just as the major newspaper's began covering the original, Liberal ads. Now the Conservatives have redoub...

Medisys, Paul Martin's private healthcare provider, was apparently amongst those Jean Chrétien threatened to have shutdown in 2000: "Yesterday, echoing earlier warnings by federal Health Minister Alan Rock, Prime Minister Jean Chretien threatened to penalize Quebec and other provinces that allow private clinics to do magnetic resonance imaging." Quoted in defence of two-tier healthcare is one Sheldon Elman, CEO of Medisys and personal physician to Paul Martin : ...

Two weeks ago, Canadians learned that Paul Martin frequents a Montreal based private healthcare provider . It appears, however, that Medisys -- Martin's clinic -- not only provides private medical services, but may be exploiting a Medicare loophole allowing it to practice outright two-tier healthcare. Martin claims that his own treatments at Medisys are all covered under Medicare; however, many patients may not be so lucky. Here's how it works. Medisys offers expensive executive ...