On post-mortems

Alice offers up the definitive analysis of last night's federal by-elections, and I won't go over too much of the same territory. But I'll quickly add a few observations for each party - as everybody looks to have some reason for concern.

And yes, I include the Greens in that statement. They'll undoubtedly point to massive increases in vote share in Calgary Centre and Victoria as a key accomplishment. But a party with only one seat and a limited fund-raising base needs to take advantage of every opportunity to add to its resource base - and I have to wonder whether the Greens will be left asking what might have been if they'd focused on one riding alone, rather running campaigns which fell just short in two.

For the NDP, the major disappointment has to be Calgary Centre - where it lost ground despite a superb candidate due to a confused attempt at strategic voting. But given the common assumption that Ontario will largely determine which party forms government, I'm surprised there hasn't been more notice of the campaign and results in Durham. There, the NDP somewhat consolidated its second-place position thanks in large part to the type of candidate more easily recruited to an official opposition party - but still has some distance to go in catching up to the Cons.

Meanwhile, the Libs look to have lost the most on the night. While they put up a strong fight in Calgary Centre, the Libs dropped to fourth place in Victoria (which they held as recently as 2006) and lost ground in third place in Durham (which they held until 2004) despite ample promotion of fairly well-recognized candidates. And a fourth-place finish in the total vote only adds insult to injury for a party which still hasn't come to terms with its third-place standing in the House of Commons.

Finally, the Cons performed roughly to expectations other than the collapse of their support in Calgary Centre. While I'd like to think they'd learn some lessons from Joan Crockatt's near-loss in the heart of the Cons' home base, I'll leave it to them to prove they're actually willing to do so - and I'm not holding my breath.

In sum, last night's results serve first and foremost to confirm the dangers of taking anything for granted in Canadian politics. But we'll have to wait a few years to find out whether either that lesson or the support bases assembled for the by-election campaign result in any real change.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- The Toronto Star's Public Editor Kathy English discusses the wall being built around information by the Harper Cons. But at least as interesting to me is the Cons' determination to put up roadblocks in the way of information which can obviously be obtained through other means - such as this example from a report on their axing of Harold Leduc from the Veterans Review and Appeal Board after he exposed their breaches of privacy:

An outspoken member of a veterans appeal board, who said his privacy was violated and that the federal agency treats ex-soldiers with disrespect, won't be reappointed.

Harold Leduc and two other members of the troubled agency have been shown the door, and in their places the Harper government has appointed a nurse with extensive experience in addiction treatment and former military officers.
...
Federal officials, speaking on background, refused to identify the other two board members who were dropped, but the names William Watson and Ellen Riley do not appear on the latest order in council lists.

- Pierre Martin offers up two examples in support of an implicit theory that we should take fairer taxes on higher-income individuals off the table. So let's ask a question about one of those examples: would Barack Obama be happy to win only the votes of people who want tax cuts for the rich to expire?

(Hint: It might help to do some research before answering.)

- Alice takes a closer look at the upcoming federal by-election campaigns. And it seems particularly noteworthy that the NDP is seeing hotly contested nominations in both Calgary Centre and Durham after placing little emphasis on those seats in past federal elections.

- Finally, Michael Harris suspects that the Cons' secretive trade deal with China may be the type of action that forces MPs to start genuinely challenging Stephen Harper's decision-making:

(I)t is British Columbia that may prove to be Stephen Harper’s Waterloo. Has anyone ever been interred by a pipeline? Has anyone drowned in an ocean of bitumen? Or strangled on a tangle of national giveaways of the kind that lay snarled in the recent trade deal with China, the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA)? The deal is so bad for Canada that it was consummated with all the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. Astonishingly, it is set to become law on November 1, 2012 – without a word of parliamentary debate. 

And Deep Rogue Ram offers its own take on the China pact: