The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Election Leadership and Predictions What about the leadership of Canada's political parties? The Green Party will take away some votes from the NDP and the Liberals, but really will not come close to winning a seat, so they are really not a factor. How has Paul Martin fared in this campaign? In the debates, and in his campaigning he has more and more tried to demonize Harper, seizing every opportunity to portray himself as the defender and saviour of the Canadian way of life, while saying Harper is unfit to be Prime Minister. The problem is the Sponsorship Scandal keeps getting in the way. His policies are a rehash of old Liberal promises, more promise of big government, and senseless things like the handgun proposal. Martin looks more and more like a 67-year-old should-be retiree. Stephen Harper has by far run the best campaign, with policies that make good sense and are appealing, especially to people who want some control over their own lives. He has done a much better job than he did last time, although he has a hard time convincing the media he is a real person. Harper is quite able to give back the hard rhetoric that Martin and his people are dishing out. Jack Layton is much better than last time, but as a fourth party he can only speak of holding the balance of power to support either a liberal or Conservative government (as long as they will go along with his big government spending policies.) Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe? He really is a smoothy, and some Canadians have said they wished he was running candidates outside Quebec so they could vote for him. He has concentrated the whole campaign on the scandal and winning as many seats as possible in Quebec, which he is likely to do, which will ensure the Liberals can't get a majority. Paul Martin has tried to portray his party as the saviour of Canada, and attacked the Bloc for its separatist tendencies, but the Liberal scandal is really the cause of the strength of the Bloc. The Corner is predicting 60 or more Bloc seats out of Quebec's 75. What have been the major issues in this winter campaign? Health care, taxes and government programmes, as usual, but the real issue is this: Do voters want another session of a Liberal government given the corruption and expensive policies such as child care? Believe it or not, only 25 per cent of Canadian parents use government day care, and in Manitoba it is about 15 per cent. Who will win on Monday? As you would expect, The Corner is predicting a Conservative minority, with maybe one seat in Quebec but no more, and lots in the West, including all of the Alberta seats, all, except maybe one in Saskatchewan, and a gain of at least one in Manitoba. Ontario is of course the major player and the Tories have to take more than the 20 they gained last time. Individual races? Don't expect old Ed Shreyer to overcome Manitoba Tory Bazan's 8,000-vote lead over the NDP last time. Shreyer has not contested an election since 1977, and one really wonders why the 70-year-old former premier and GG is really in the race Ð and how hard he will work. Bazan has a lock on the Rancher vote in Interlake and will really do well in the rural farming part of the riding. In Charleswood, Health Critic Steven Fletcher should clobber John Loewen, who really can't convince people why he is running for the Liberals. Tory Richards should beat weak liberal MP Anita Neville in the old Lloyd Axworthy seat. Why these predictions? The view from here is that the public is tired of the 12-year-old government and wants a change. Don't forget to vote on Monday!
