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October 08, 2008 20:15 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Green Party Liberals NDP Politics 0

The CBC hosted a televised debate for Vancouver-Centre candidates not too long ago and they'll be running the show tonight at 4:30pm, 7:00pm and 11pm PST on CBC Newsworld. While the "victor" has not been released, the following claims that the Greens did very well. If you're currently living in Vancouver-Centre or are just interested in how some of the lesser candidates are doing, it might be worth checking out:

The X Challenge with Mark Kelly / 4:30 pm, 7:00 pm and 11 pm PST

Tune in today (Wednesday, October 08) to CBC Newsworld and watch Green Party deputy leader and Vancouver Centre candidate Adriane Carr triumph in debate and studio audience polling on The X Challenge with Mark Kelley. The program airs at 4:30 pm, 7:00 pm, and 11 pm PST.

Adriane appeared with two other Vancouver Centre candidates, the NDP's Michael Byers and Conservative's Lorne Mayencourt, as well as Liberal Ujjhal Dosanjh, in a debate format that enabled voters to put their questions directly to the candidates, and to vote on the results.

After 90 minutes of debate, questions and answers, and voter polling, a final poll asked the audience to indicate if any minds had been changed.

We promised not to reveal the results of this pre-taped program, but let's just say that Green Party supporters will be delighted by Adriane's performance in the debates, and thrilled by her final placement in the polls.

It would be hard to imagine a better outcome!

The audience of about 100 was selected to represent political leanings as indicated by CBC's latest rolling poll and the idea was to gauge how many voters were influenced, and in which direction, by candidate's participation in the debate and answers to audience questions.

The X Challenge will air today, Wednesday, October 08, at 4:30 pm, 7:00 pm and 11 pm Pacific Time on CBC Newsworld. Don't miss it!

Strange that Hedy Fry, the Liberal candidate in Vancouver-Centre didn't show up and sent Dosanjh instead. I'm interested to hear their reasoning on that one.

I have no idea if it'll be available online, but if I find it, I'll post the link here.

Update: 2008-10-09 00:04:14 -08:00

True to form, the CBC has posted the entire debate online. Enjoy!

October 02, 2008 23:38 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Green Party Liberals NDP Politics 1

I just got an email from someone promoting voteforenvironment.com and I really wanted to rant here.

I really, really hate that site. Aside from the fact that it flat-out tells you not to vote for a party that wants to make the environment better, it openly advocates for a party with a long record for doing the opposite. Has everyone forgotten that the Liberals are the ones who actively gutted health care and the environment for twelve years before they were finally kicked out of office? How can anyone claim that they're better than the Conservatives on either of these issues when they've done everything they could to support big business over clean air and fresh water in the last two decades?

Sure Stefan Dion might be different from his predecessors, but you can be sure that the people under him like Hedy Fry (my current MP) haven't changed. Innaction and fear-mongering are the tennets of the Liberal party and claiming to support them in the name of the environment is either naive or misleading. Take your pick.

It's sites like this that foster fear and promote a complete lack of action on issues that they claim to support. If they just wanted to advocate that Harper's Conservatives are bad for Canada, I'd be right behind them, but claiming that a Liberal government would be better for the environment is like claiming that white cats don't eat mice. It's laughable.

Elections are at the core of democracy. We take what the people want, tally up the votes and move our government in that direction as a result. It's not a betting pool, it isn't a chess game. To use a phrase I read earlier today: "Don't vote for the lesser of two evils, vote for the one that isn't evil". It's not like you don't have a choice ladies and gentlemen, there are at least 4 candidates in every riding in this country and if you're interested in the health of the environment, I can promise you that the Liberals and Conservatives aren't the least bit interested in doing anything about it.

October 02, 2008 18:14 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Green Party Liberals NDP Politics 1

For those of you not following the federal election, the Big Debate is tonight, and for the first time in history, the Green Party will be represented.

It all starts at 9pmEST, which for the West coast folks, that's 6pm. I'll be attending a shindig at Soho pub on Denman with the rest of the Greens to watch Elizabeth May in action. If the French debate is any indication, it should be a really good show.

For my friends living outside the country, the CBC will be hosting the debates online as well. Just go to CBC.ca and follow the links from the front page. They use a form of streaming Windows™ media, but it should work on a Mac as well.

Is anyone else annoyed that CBC hasn't done more stuff with Bittorrent?

Also, for those interested in the U.S. election, the Vice Presidential candidates debate will be held at roughly the same time down south. I expect Palin to look like the complete idiot that she is. That too should be a fun show, and you can expect the guys at OneGoodMove to have some really good video when it's finished.

September 13, 2008 20:32 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Green Party Liberals NDP Politics 2

Slate has a humbling article about the past few years in Canadian politics:

If you're at all confused or curious about how things have been going in our country; who's said what, or changed what laws, it's worth a look. Among the topics mentioned, it covers our about-face on Kyoto, the disappearance of our financial surplus, and censorship in our cultural sector.

September 10, 2008 19:24 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Democracy Green Party NDP Politics 1

Stephen Harper and Jack Layton have rescinded their statements that they'd withdraw from the debate if Elizabeth May is permitted to attend. It may have taken an impassioned letter to the Globe and Mail from former Prime Minister Joe Clark and a barrage of hate mail from their supporters to shame them into doing the Right thing, but regardless, my faith in our electoral system is slowly returning.

Update: 2008-09-10 16:16:31PST

Elizabeth May's twitter status has been updated to say "I am celebrating my inclusion in the televised leaders' debates! Going out to dinner at my favourite restaurant in New Glasgow."

September 09, 2008 06:38 +0000 | Canada Conservatives Democracy Green Party Liberals NDP Politics 7

The old white men have spoken. They don't want Elizabeth May kicking their asses in the debates, so they threatened to pull out completely if she was permitted to participate:

The Consortium approached the parties to explore the possibility of including the Green Party in all or part of the Leaders' Debates. However, three parties opposed its inclusion and it became clear that if the Green Party were included, there would be no Leaders' Debates. In the interest of Canadians, the Consortium has determined that it is better to broadcast the debates with the four major party leaders, rather than not at all.

For further information: Jason MacDonald, Spokesperson for the Network Consortium, T (416) 482-1357, C (647) 205-4744, macdonald@veritascanada.com

Or to use Adriane Carr's words: "Five men can agree with three men to exclude the only female national leader in Canada."

The lines split like so: the Liberals were cool with her inclusion, The Bloc were on the fence, and Conservatives where dead against it. But I reserve my foulest bitterness for our "Champions of Electoral Reform": the NDP, who like the Conservatives, flat out said that they would not attend if she were permitted to participate. Shame on them. ...and people wonder why I ditched those cowards when I did.

If their platform wasn't enough to compell you to vote Green, maybe the blind rage appropriate for this situation will. They didn't even offer a challenge this time, instead they just said that they'd take their toys and go home if they had to play with the new kid.

How juvenile.

May said that she'd go after them in court over this and I hope she does. If we can't have our democracy in the debates, then I can only hope that we can take it back through the courts.

September 02, 2008 18:09 +0000 | Canada Environment Green Party Politics 14

For those who haven't yet heard, Canada's Green Party is now an official parliamentary party. Blair Wilson, the MP for West Vancouver has defected from the Federal Liberal party to the Green Party of Canada. This move pretty much solidifies the Green Party's right to enter the debates for the upcoming election, and believe me when I tell you that Elizabeth May will rip the other four to shreds.

This election is likely to be a lot more fun than I initially expected.

For those of you who haven't yet heard the news, CBC has lost the rights to the Hockey Night in Canada theme. You know the tune, "da dada dada, da dada dada..." -- I'd include an MP3 here but I'm having trouble finding one.

It turns out that the song's composer and owner Dolores Claman was asking for just too much money for the re-use of the song on the CBC. They offered her $1million and she turned it down, asking instead for a cool $2.5million to $3million! The CBC is taxpayer-funded people. It can't justify that kind of expense.

And so the song was instead sold to CTV/TSN, a component of CTV Globe Meia's massive conglomerate. They can afford an insane price for a jingle and frankly, it's quite the coup for them. Those notes are Canada's unofficial second anthem. Everyone knows it, and everyone knows it means hockey.

A lot of people are really pissed off about this, and they should be, but not for the reasons about which they seem to be shouting.

Some people are mad at Claman, who's simply exploiting an opportunity for the maximum available profit. It may be a pretty mean thing to do, but she "owns" the song and under our laws, she has every right to do what she's done.

Others are mad at the CBC for not just paying the $2.5million. I'm guessing that these people just have no understanding of what little money a public prodcaster has to work with.

No one however, is talking about the real problem here: that song has been part of Canadian culture for 40 years. Claman has been fully compensated under the terms of a financial contract for the entirety of those years and by all rights, the Canadian people should own that song to do with as we please.

How long should we allow copyright to exist on something so tightly woven into our culture? Isn't 40years of royalties enough to push a song into the public domain? Why should one person have the right to sign over the "ownership" of a song to a corporation in perpetuity?

Listening to CBC Radio One yesterday the broadcasters were joking about how they couldn't even hum it anymore, because the song is owned by someone else. One of the men thought he'd be light-hearted about the whole thing: "How 'bout we just do it one last time? Da dada dada --"

"Ahh, lets not do that" the second man cut in. Clearly, he was nervous about the legal implications of humming our unofficial national anthem.

January 10, 2006 19:08 +0000 | Canada Politics 3

From my father via email this afternoon:

Martin, Harper and Layton are flying on a small private plane to a political gathering on Salt Spring Island when Martin turns to Harper and says, chuckling, "You know, I could throw a $1000 bill out the window right now and make someone very happy."

Harper shrugs and replies, "Well, I could throw ten $100 bills out the window and make ten people happy."

Not to be outdone, Layton says, "Well I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw all three of them out the window and make 32 million people happy."