Guelph Day 28: Goals and Candidates
Hello, hello!
Well isn't this shaping up to be an amazing campaign! Like the call and respond song that I love so much goes: “Can you feel it? I can feel it!” Oh, I can feel it! This is a dog race right now me thinks. It's the eye of the storm, and I just don't sense that any one party has the sort of momentum to blow any of the others out of the water. That's a good thing of us. We are in the thick of this, and things are heating up!
I've made some lofty goals for the last two weeks. As the phone canvassing coordinator in addition to campaign advisor for the campaign, the target I've set is to have volunteers make 10,000 calls in sum by the September 8. We're over 2,500 so it's not impossible. If you're reading this and just realized you committed to calling but haven't yet, please do. Not for my targets, but for my biggest goal: buying two tickets to Ottawa when this is said and done – one for me and one for Mike.
My other goal is to be double-full time this campaign, not to be confused with double-double if I am what I eat. I've done the math and through the first 4 weeks of the campaign I've done just over 80 hours of work a week. I want to push that and keep it up until the very end. I should add that that is not a burden for me, but an utter pleasure. It's a tremendous feeling to know that you can always be doing more when you've finished a task. It's also very rewarding.
Some notes to share on the candidates:
The NDP's Tom King has abandoned any attempt to discuss policy. It was clear after the first candidate debate, hosted by a local Muslim group, that policy simply wasn't his thing. Good on the NDP National office junkies to recognize that and tell him to be who he is, a witty and intelligent actor. It showed immediately in the next debate – hosted by a local seniors gated community – where he had the crowd it stitches at times. At a certain point, with the crowd accustomed to King's jokes, giggles spread in anticipation of him answering questions before he could say a word. Good flavour for the debates, but I'm not sure this election can be won with class-president tactics.
The Conservative candidate, Gloria Kovach is...I don't know. She has presence and certainly a voice that travels, but she is well trained in fear mongering and she appears to be on a crusade to perpetuate disinformation. With regards to a question regarding the carbon tax, she replied something to the effect of “I don't mind wearing a sweater to bed sometimes, but I don't want to wear snow pants, and jacket and a toque.” The elders who heard it didn't buy it, and it was pretty amazing to hear the resounding – and that is no exaggeration – sighs coming from the crowd, leaving Kovach reeling at times to explain her points, with the effect of spinning wheels making smoke but getting the car nowhere.
Liberal Frank Valeriote is a polished lawyer, and comes off cool and collected, with some pretty well thought-out one liners such as “I want to prepare the future for our children, and our children for our future.” He knows what he's doing up there, but a lot of people don't seem to buy it. It's too polished, too...Liberal. Take this for example: at the seniors debate he said that when he goes door to door he hears “Frank, I don't care about how much you know, but I know how much you care.” When I heard that, I felt the wrong kind of green...and his Canada flag signs still drive me mad. So arrogant!
Tonight's the monumental candidates debate in the campaign trail. It's the Guelph Chamber of Commerce debate and will be covered by CPAC. My feeling is that the quiet in the eye of the storm will pass tonight, and tomorrow will mark the beginning of the most intense campaign we have yet to see. Luckily, we have some tremendous campaigners and even better people coming in. Chris Alders, former Atlantic Organizer for the GPC and Danielle Roberts, former organizer of Alberta will join dozens of GPC'ers flocking to the Royal city for the final push – the push that puts us over the edge.
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Good Luck Tonight, Mike!
Good luck with the debate tonight, Mike, but from what I've been hearing up here in Sudbury is that luck won't have anything to do with it; if there's one person prepared for the debate, it's Mike Nagy.
A question for Mark: since the debate is being broadcast on CPAC, is there a chance of someone posting it somewhere after the fact and perhaps providing a link for the rest of us at some point in the near future?
Hope you're enjoying another double-double as you're reading this, Mark. Your efforts with the campaign have been amazing. Thank you for keeping us all up to date as to what's been going on, and what some of the local issues/matters have been! Keep up the awesome work!
"Sudbury" Steve May
How did the Guelph debate go last night?
I look forward to seeing it on CPAC and missed it on rogers last night. I looked in the Mercury online but there appeared to be no real coverage of it other than the independent candidate being escorted out.
This blog reflects my personal opinion.
It is not official Green Party Policy.
Nominated Candidate/Trinity-Spadina, Toronto
www.trinityspadinagreens.ca
http://stephenlafrenie.blogspot.com
www.twawareness.org
Guelph Mercury Article on Debate
http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/372746
Just gives the long term vision from each of the big 4 parties, nothing else of value.
Good answer Mike!
Quote -- Guelph Chamber of Commerce president Lloyd Longfield, who also doubled as the debate's moderator, asked the question: "Do you have a concrete long-term vision for Canada, and if so, what is it?"
And, he added, laughing, "in a minute or less?"
Mike Nagy, Green party
(one minute)
Greens have always talked about six months from now, two years from now, five and 20 years from now, seven generations from now. We have gone from environmental leaders to world environmental laggards. We are now not looked at as a peacekeeping nation but looked at as a warring nation. We also have, since the 1989 declaration from all the major parties and people, poverty has increased. We have more seniors and children in poverty since 1989, I agree with Tom fully on that. We need to attack that wholeheartedly because when you have people in poverty it drags your economy down, it's disrespectful to them so that's where we come into the job plan -- jobs for all skills. We want to give 0.7 per cent GDP back into our foreign funding for international affairs and aid and we want to develop our local economies here instead of dealing with just big oligarchies. More jobs from small to medium business and that's one big plan we have. Thank you." -- end Quote.
Thanks Mike for this answer. You could have chosen just to highlight a couple of issues but instead covered a lot of ground while hitting specific points of policy. You even had the grace to say that you agreed with Tom King rather than trying to separate yourself.
This blog reflects my personal opinion.
It is not official Green Party Policy.
Nominated Candidate/Trinity-Spadina, Toronto
www.trinityspadinagreens.ca
http://stephenlafrenie.blogspot.com
www.twawareness.org
seconded commendation
particularly about this not being the first time he has deliberately not distanced himself from his NDP counterpart where felt appropriate
Mike was Great!
Hey everyone,
Mike was a great last night as the answer Stephen provided attests to. My favorite part was when he asked the moderator (who by the way, called Frank Valeriote the Member from the Liberal Party), whether when Frank used "green" that everyone would understand they meant "Green". Mike was very strong on a number of issues, particularly transportation and energy. When he was asked do you think Canada should have a National Energy Policy, Mike answered "We do. It's called the Alberta Tar Sands. Canada is becoming a petro-state..."
His opening and closing remarks were a bit policy heavy in an audience that could have used a bit more rhetoric - Tom King certainly fed them with an abundant amount. In fact, Tom didn't even answer a number of questions but rather spoke, as the lyricist charming talker he is, about whatever he wanted to, without answering many of the questions. (Eg. Question: Would you bring the GST back to 6%? Tom: I want to talk about where taxes go and what we tax in general...He never answered the question) Problem is no one challenges him to answer it, and the audience forgets what the question was. He ALSO...and this is huge, said "we need a price on carbon." Interesting eh?!
I keep all of the info from each debate around, so that Mike can use it in the next debates. We have a lot of things to use. They basically hand it to us in these debates.
Cheers!
Thanks Mark
Thanks Mark. Excellent work on the part of the whole campaign team in Guelph and it proves the value of candidates like Mike Nagy and how important he is on shadow cabinet.
This blog reflects my personal opinion.
It is not official Green Party Policy.
Nominated Candidate/Trinity-Spadina, Toronto
www.trinityspadinagreens.ca
http://stephenlafrenie.blogspot.com
www.twawareness.org