The Toronto Star has run a story on an EKOS Poll showing good growth potential for Dion. I like that. The front runners in the federal Liberal campaign apparently are carrying too much baggage to really grow much on subsequent ballots. It is going to be a cliffhanger Dec 2 in Montreal for the federal Libs on all accounts. But I, like everyone else, am just guessing. Lots of time left and campaigns matter.
Now I wonder if we will see the "baggage issue" develop around the leading Alberta PC candidates. Oberg for sure deserves a serious second look by those who support him or are inclined his way. Albertans are now just starting to pay serious attention and are just begining to understand the implications of the PC leadership campaign for the future of the province and themselves. If they start to get nervous about the "baggage" of the front runners and seek alternatives they will also start to look around in earnest for a rational capable candidate instead of those in the front of the pack. My bet is they land on Hancock.
My friend Will McBeath at Noisefromtheright - active in the Ted Morton campaign - disagrees in his posting today and thinks Hancock is done. Three weeks left and he figures it is all decided. Maybe. But with the one person one vote right up to and including election day - anything can happen. Remeber how "scary" Harper was in the last week of the 2004 election as a result of his vocal social conservative supporters? Could it happen again, this time to Ted Morton? Rememeber how Stephen Mandel became the rational alternative from the baggage laden front runners in the last mayoralty race in Edmonton?
If people begin to realize the rough road some of the "leading" candidates will send us down they may engage and participate. If Albertans want a capable change agent of character, experience and proven capability - Dave Hancock is the obvious alternative.
But politics is never obvious and the wisdom of the crowd that shows up in the dying days of 2006 will decide the nature and nuance of the next Alberta for the rest us. Time will tell.
Monday, November 06, 2006
“Send ‘Em A Message” Survey Update #2
We are at the end of week 2 of the “Send ‘Em a Message” Survey on Policy Channel.
The analysis done of the top relative priority issue still shows the Managing the Environment is #1 with a weighted score of 22.88 – twice as high as the next priority issue Ensuring Access to Quality and Timely Healthcare weighted at 11.45. The 3# issue of Focussing on Quality Education K-12 with a weighted scoring of 10.04.
This priority is reflected in the recent Ipsos Reid traditional national poll results pegging 26% of Canadians saying the environment is the top priority issue that Canada’s leaders need to pay attention to. Ipsos Reid notes this is the first time since 1990 the Environment is the top priority issue for Canadians. The times they are a changin'.
Last week we reported Managing Growth and a Diversified Value Added economy and the third and fourth. Things have changed. Scoring in #3 position is a Quality K-12 Education and Managing Growth is now weighted as #4. Diversification and Value Added Economy has fallen down to #8 in the weighted score ranking.
Continuing at the very bottom of important issues in the survey are Lowering Taxes and Resolving Problems Facing Aboriginal Albertans. Both of these are recently identified with Dr. Oberg’s campaign. He is big on tax cuts in his policy. No new voter traction will be coming from an Oberg promise to lowering taxes according to this weeks survey results.
Aboriginal Albertan’s issues are not on the radar screen of Albertans in this leadership campaign. They will have to do more than just a candidate endorsement to get some traction and momentum on their issues for any candidate endorsement to make a difference to the voting intentions of the rest of Alberta.
Responses continue to come into the “Send ‘Em a Message” survey but participants are mostly from Edmonton and Calgary and region. We will be reaching out to rural Albertans this week to get more participation from them. It will be interesting to see how that changes anything in the survey results. We know from Environics Research work that rural and urban Albertans hold the same social values but the intensity and priority might be different. Time will tell. Take the time and do the survey and come back to this Blog for a further updates and commentary on the survey findings.
The analysis done of the top relative priority issue still shows the Managing the Environment is #1 with a weighted score of 22.88 – twice as high as the next priority issue Ensuring Access to Quality and Timely Healthcare weighted at 11.45. The 3# issue of Focussing on Quality Education K-12 with a weighted scoring of 10.04.
This priority is reflected in the recent Ipsos Reid traditional national poll results pegging 26% of Canadians saying the environment is the top priority issue that Canada’s leaders need to pay attention to. Ipsos Reid notes this is the first time since 1990 the Environment is the top priority issue for Canadians. The times they are a changin'.
Last week we reported Managing Growth and a Diversified Value Added economy and the third and fourth. Things have changed. Scoring in #3 position is a Quality K-12 Education and Managing Growth is now weighted as #4. Diversification and Value Added Economy has fallen down to #8 in the weighted score ranking.
Continuing at the very bottom of important issues in the survey are Lowering Taxes and Resolving Problems Facing Aboriginal Albertans. Both of these are recently identified with Dr. Oberg’s campaign. He is big on tax cuts in his policy. No new voter traction will be coming from an Oberg promise to lowering taxes according to this weeks survey results.
Aboriginal Albertan’s issues are not on the radar screen of Albertans in this leadership campaign. They will have to do more than just a candidate endorsement to get some traction and momentum on their issues for any candidate endorsement to make a difference to the voting intentions of the rest of Alberta.
Responses continue to come into the “Send ‘Em a Message” survey but participants are mostly from Edmonton and Calgary and region. We will be reaching out to rural Albertans this week to get more participation from them. It will be interesting to see how that changes anything in the survey results. We know from Environics Research work that rural and urban Albertans hold the same social values but the intensity and priority might be different. Time will tell. Take the time and do the survey and come back to this Blog for a further updates and commentary on the survey findings.
Most Recent OpEd for LaPresse
We write a regular column for LaPresse on policy issues through a western lense. Here is our most recently published offering.
A Relevant Decision
October 29, 2006
By Satya Das and Ken Chapman
Justice Douglas Rutherford’s decision striking down the “thought crime” portions of Canada’s anti-terror law is a belated and welcome restoration of fundamental freedoms in Canada.
It is especially relevant since the United States continues its inexorable slide into a Stalinist abyss, with its frightening new law allowing the indefinite detention of anyone who comes under suspicion of posing a threat to the state.
The section struck by Justice Rutherford enabled the detention of a Canadian on terror charges if there were religious, political or ideological motivations behind the act. The judge quite rightly rules this provision is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Indeed, removing the “thought crime” requirement may make it easier to apply the rubric of terrorism to supplement other criminal charges. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Kimveer Gill’s murderous rampage was surely an act meant to terrorize. Had he survived to face trial, it would have been extremely useful to add terrorism charges.
Rutherford’s ruling should remind us our fundamental freedoms must not be subject to partisan filters. Let us remember that the portions of the law struck down were in fact introduced by a Liberal government, in the furious aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terror strikes in the United States. At the time, many of us with misgivings about the Draconian sweep of the law held our tongues, perhaps acceding to the argument famously made by Michael Ignatieff that we must sometimes feel necessary to use drastic measures to combat terrorism. Yet we now see where such thinking can lead.
With President George Bush signing into law his anti-terror bill, which enables the U.S. to hold anyone merely suspected of terrorist intent without ever bringing them to trial, the United States is abandoning the fundamental freedoms for which the West fought, in the decades-long struggle against Stalinism and other forms of totalitarianism. The truly frightening provision is that the accused need never be shown the evidence against them, nor to be informed of the specificity of the allegations and charges they face. In Canada, we have seen the tragedy of Maher Arar, and there may indeed be others similarly maltreated. Yet the Bush law means that hundreds and even thousands of people like Maher Arar may simply vanish into Kafkaesque darkness.
The abiding concern is whether Canada’s new government will uphold this necessary restoration of Canadian freedoms, given its readiness to seek accommodation and friendship with Bush regime. Indeed there is significant merit to the approach of being open and collaborative with our neighbour and trading partner to the south. This is a refreshing change from what sometimes appears to be a national sport of gratuitous criticism of the United States. Yet as we saw in softwood lumber, there is a difference between principled friendship, and an appeasing pact that surrendered every victory won under international trade law and defied the fundamental principles of free trade.
On the matter of fundamental freedoms, Canada’s new government must resist any temptation to appeal the Rutherford ruling. Indeed, as the anti-terror law comes up for review later this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper can set a bold and distinctive course for Canada by refusing to renew a flawed law hastily drafted by a shocked and impetuous Liberal government. As we now see with time and distance, there is ample provision within Canada’s criminal code to deal with threats to our individual and collective security.
Canada’s new government must assert that we cannot compromise and sacrifice our fundamental freedoms for the convenience of the state, in the name of public security.
. Qu’en pensez-vous? satya@cambridgestrategies.com; forum@lapresse.com
A Relevant Decision
October 29, 2006
By Satya Das and Ken Chapman
Justice Douglas Rutherford’s decision striking down the “thought crime” portions of Canada’s anti-terror law is a belated and welcome restoration of fundamental freedoms in Canada.
It is especially relevant since the United States continues its inexorable slide into a Stalinist abyss, with its frightening new law allowing the indefinite detention of anyone who comes under suspicion of posing a threat to the state.
The section struck by Justice Rutherford enabled the detention of a Canadian on terror charges if there were religious, political or ideological motivations behind the act. The judge quite rightly rules this provision is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Indeed, removing the “thought crime” requirement may make it easier to apply the rubric of terrorism to supplement other criminal charges. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Kimveer Gill’s murderous rampage was surely an act meant to terrorize. Had he survived to face trial, it would have been extremely useful to add terrorism charges.
Rutherford’s ruling should remind us our fundamental freedoms must not be subject to partisan filters. Let us remember that the portions of the law struck down were in fact introduced by a Liberal government, in the furious aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terror strikes in the United States. At the time, many of us with misgivings about the Draconian sweep of the law held our tongues, perhaps acceding to the argument famously made by Michael Ignatieff that we must sometimes feel necessary to use drastic measures to combat terrorism. Yet we now see where such thinking can lead.
With President George Bush signing into law his anti-terror bill, which enables the U.S. to hold anyone merely suspected of terrorist intent without ever bringing them to trial, the United States is abandoning the fundamental freedoms for which the West fought, in the decades-long struggle against Stalinism and other forms of totalitarianism. The truly frightening provision is that the accused need never be shown the evidence against them, nor to be informed of the specificity of the allegations and charges they face. In Canada, we have seen the tragedy of Maher Arar, and there may indeed be others similarly maltreated. Yet the Bush law means that hundreds and even thousands of people like Maher Arar may simply vanish into Kafkaesque darkness.
The abiding concern is whether Canada’s new government will uphold this necessary restoration of Canadian freedoms, given its readiness to seek accommodation and friendship with Bush regime. Indeed there is significant merit to the approach of being open and collaborative with our neighbour and trading partner to the south. This is a refreshing change from what sometimes appears to be a national sport of gratuitous criticism of the United States. Yet as we saw in softwood lumber, there is a difference between principled friendship, and an appeasing pact that surrendered every victory won under international trade law and defied the fundamental principles of free trade.
On the matter of fundamental freedoms, Canada’s new government must resist any temptation to appeal the Rutherford ruling. Indeed, as the anti-terror law comes up for review later this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper can set a bold and distinctive course for Canada by refusing to renew a flawed law hastily drafted by a shocked and impetuous Liberal government. As we now see with time and distance, there is ample provision within Canada’s criminal code to deal with threats to our individual and collective security.
Canada’s new government must assert that we cannot compromise and sacrifice our fundamental freedoms for the convenience of the state, in the name of public security.
. Qu’en pensez-vous? satya@cambridgestrategies.com; forum@lapresse.com
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Do the "Send 'Em a Message" Survey
Tomorow, Monday November 6, in the afternoon, I will be doing an update posting on the results to date of the "Send 'Em a Message" survey hosted on Policy Channel. We have had over 165 completed surveys last week. We will be reporting results, trends and changes every Monday on this Blog. By doing the survey you get your two-bits of opinion and insight reflected in the results. It take about 5 minutes and makes you think.
It is a web based survey so it is not scientific but if enough Albertans participate and the results are consistent the survey will undoubtedly have an impact on the public policy priority agenda for the next Premier.
Do the survey and let us know what you think are the most important policy issues for the new Alberta Premier to deal with. Also rate the Alberta government's performance on 15 key policy issues. Then tell us the likelihood of you making a recommendation to your friends and family for support of each PC leadership candidate.
It is a web based survey so it is not scientific but if enough Albertans participate and the results are consistent the survey will undoubtedly have an impact on the public policy priority agenda for the next Premier.
Do the survey and let us know what you think are the most important policy issues for the new Alberta Premier to deal with. Also rate the Alberta government's performance on 15 key policy issues. Then tell us the likelihood of you making a recommendation to your friends and family for support of each PC leadership candidate.
Hancock Wins the Website Traffic Wars
PC Leadership Candidates are using the Internet and websites more seriously and significantly in this campaign than political parties did in the last provincial election. The reasons are obvious. One-person-one-vote means you need to have a direct relationship with a citizen to convince them to buy a membership, show up to vote and then to vote for you. The Internet is the perfect tool for this kind of relationship building. It is self- selecting, direct, content rich, timely, accessible, effective, convenient and inexpensive compared to paid advertising.
The Internet is a pure unfiltered, diverse, independent, decentralized and an aggregated collection of fact, fiction, fad, fuming and fulmination. It is an election friendly way for the collective wisdom of citizens to be expressed and is changing the way democracy is practiced and maybe even how it works.
Increasingly influential in the opinion forming process of citizens is the chatter of the collective wisdom (or pooled ignorance) of the Internet based web forums, chat rooms, website traffic volumes and the bleating babble of us “blogger-mouths.”
I did some research about how this new technology is working for the candidates and which ones are seeing website traffic and activity. I used a website ranking site called Alexa.com. Alexa “crawls” the web and reviews over 16 millions sites every day to determine rankings. It collects data on site visitors, the number of pages they read and the paths and links they used to get to the sites and so forth. A ranking of 150,000 or less means you are a force to be reckoned with on the Internet…you draw interest, traffic, comments and connections.
Here is what I found. At the low end of candidate website ranking we have the Doerksen and Stelmach sites are so little used they generate “No Data” at all. I guess their supporters are not Internet users and those who are curious about them are not users either. Even Alana Delong’s site still registered data (with a feeble ranking of 4,496,033) and she is not even in the race any more. Victor was Minister of Innovation and Science – and in charge of the SuperNet...but perhaps innovative in name only given this No Data Internet ranking.
The next group ranked in the 2million range. McPherson’s site ranked 2,799,479 surprisingly low because he is a late entry candidate and one who could really benefit from the Internet to connect with citizens. I thought he would be "all over" the internet as a campagin tool. Next was Morton at 2,198,606 which is not really a surprise because he really doesn't need it. He has a built in old Reform party and religous support base who are die-hards who don't need more information about him, particularly from the Internet.
Next lowest was a big surprise. Jim Dinning’s site ranked at only 2,139,003. He has the most money, a raft of advisors and consultants, and a vast array of technology at his disposal and has been campaigning the longest. I find it most interesting that he is not generating traffic on his website and I wonder what it means. Just under the 2m ranking we have Oberg at 1,999,438 and Norris at 1,939,596. Again, not all that impressive and not all that surprising looking at the nature of their support base.
Finally the winner of the website traffic rankings is the Dave Hancock site…way ahead of everyone else at 1,017,641 - but still not a real big deal in terms of effective Internet ranking. People interested or attracted to Hancock are obviously using the Internet and the Web more than the supporters of the other candidates. That is all one can really conclude from the traffic rankings.
Given the relative lack of traditional news coverage for the Hancock campaign this traffic does show considerably more interest in him than one would assume from “reading” the newspaper coverage only. We know Albertans want change. The question is who is the real agent of change in this leadership campaign? For me the real and serious agent of change has always been Hancock. Looking at his relatively higher website traffic rankings it appears that lots of others are taking him seriously as an agent of change too.
The Internet is a pure unfiltered, diverse, independent, decentralized and an aggregated collection of fact, fiction, fad, fuming and fulmination. It is an election friendly way for the collective wisdom of citizens to be expressed and is changing the way democracy is practiced and maybe even how it works.
Increasingly influential in the opinion forming process of citizens is the chatter of the collective wisdom (or pooled ignorance) of the Internet based web forums, chat rooms, website traffic volumes and the bleating babble of us “blogger-mouths.”
I did some research about how this new technology is working for the candidates and which ones are seeing website traffic and activity. I used a website ranking site called Alexa.com. Alexa “crawls” the web and reviews over 16 millions sites every day to determine rankings. It collects data on site visitors, the number of pages they read and the paths and links they used to get to the sites and so forth. A ranking of 150,000 or less means you are a force to be reckoned with on the Internet…you draw interest, traffic, comments and connections.
Here is what I found. At the low end of candidate website ranking we have the Doerksen and Stelmach sites are so little used they generate “No Data” at all. I guess their supporters are not Internet users and those who are curious about them are not users either. Even Alana Delong’s site still registered data (with a feeble ranking of 4,496,033) and she is not even in the race any more. Victor was Minister of Innovation and Science – and in charge of the SuperNet...but perhaps innovative in name only given this No Data Internet ranking.
The next group ranked in the 2million range. McPherson’s site ranked 2,799,479 surprisingly low because he is a late entry candidate and one who could really benefit from the Internet to connect with citizens. I thought he would be "all over" the internet as a campagin tool. Next was Morton at 2,198,606 which is not really a surprise because he really doesn't need it. He has a built in old Reform party and religous support base who are die-hards who don't need more information about him, particularly from the Internet.
Next lowest was a big surprise. Jim Dinning’s site ranked at only 2,139,003. He has the most money, a raft of advisors and consultants, and a vast array of technology at his disposal and has been campaigning the longest. I find it most interesting that he is not generating traffic on his website and I wonder what it means. Just under the 2m ranking we have Oberg at 1,999,438 and Norris at 1,939,596. Again, not all that impressive and not all that surprising looking at the nature of their support base.
Finally the winner of the website traffic rankings is the Dave Hancock site…way ahead of everyone else at 1,017,641 - but still not a real big deal in terms of effective Internet ranking. People interested or attracted to Hancock are obviously using the Internet and the Web more than the supporters of the other candidates. That is all one can really conclude from the traffic rankings.
Given the relative lack of traditional news coverage for the Hancock campaign this traffic does show considerably more interest in him than one would assume from “reading” the newspaper coverage only. We know Albertans want change. The question is who is the real agent of change in this leadership campaign? For me the real and serious agent of change has always been Hancock. Looking at his relatively higher website traffic rankings it appears that lots of others are taking him seriously as an agent of change too.
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