Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Fred Wilson weighs in on Thomas Mulcair's mandate as the NDP's new leader:

(M)any progressives with no interest whatsoever in a "Blairist" agenda had found their way to the Mulcair camp. They supported Mulcair for two reasons -- to maintain the party's base in Quebec, and to immediately step up to the role of Opposition Leader in Parliament and Prime Minister-in-Waiting.

Of course, there are also some in the party and labour who see the Mulcair win as an opportunity to realize a long-held goal of a "big tent" centrist party. But this leadership campaign and decision most definitely did not deliver any such mandate.
...
Tom Mulcair won a mandate instead to do what he obviously was the best prepared to deliver -- an immediate, polished, professional competence as an Opposition Leader and potential Prime Minister. And it's on this basis that Tom Mulcair begins his leadership with the support and goodwill of a much larger majority than his votes at convention.

- And Kathleen O'Hara mentions one intriguing possibility if Harper overplays his hand:

I did detect one area of disagreement between the declarations of the NDP and my employer: the timing of the demise of Stephen Harper. Booting him out in the 2015 election seemed to be the general plan among social democrats. May points out that unpopular leaders, most recently B.C.'s Gordon Campbell, have been pushed out of office well before the end of their mandate. In the name of anti-Conservative unity, I'm sure a compromise can be reached.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Cheadle and Tim Naumetz both report on the unprecedented outside voter suppression aimed at the NDP's members. And Steven Chase and Tamara Baluja report that Elections Canada isn't far from tracking down "Pierre Poutine" - and that higher-ranking Con insiders are on the verge of getting named as well:

Mr. Meier also told Elections Canada that “Pierre” initially telephoned him directly on his unlisted office extension and asked for him by name when setting up his robo-calling account.

“Pierre referred to knowing someone in the Conservative Party,” Mr. Mathews said of the call Mr. Meier received at RackNine. “In Meier's view, these facts mean someone must have given Pierre his contact information.”

- Bill Curry reports that one of the unions most affected by the Cons' anticipated federal budget has been barred from the budget lock-up - with its vocal opposition to austerity looking like one of the main reasons.

- Curry, Janet McFarland and Tara Perkins also point out that the same federal government which has used a tiny amount of provincial disagreement as its excuse for not strengthening the Canada Pension Plan is now trying to strong-arm Ontario into going along with its private-sector-first alternative.

- Finally, Danny Dorling comments on why any actual austerity should be aimed squarely at those who have made the most for themselves while most people have just barely scraped by.