Hello. We begin today with a file from the road. Janice Dickson, who is with the Conservative tour this week, reports that the Liberals aren’t the only ones facing transport troubles:
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his campaign had to switch to a different plane last night after a mechanical issue was discovered on the Conservative-branded plane.
Shortly after landing in Calgary Monday afternoon, the plane sat on the tarmac for an hour before being towed to the disembarking area. Mechanics determined the plane had a hydraulics issue with the ground steering, a spokesman for the party said, and that the party is expecting the plane to be back in commission soon.
This is the second time a federal party has faced a flying issue. On the first day of the election campaign, the Liberals’ plane was damaged after a coach bus drove under one of its wings.
Despite the similar setback faced by the Conservatives, they were eager to to embrace the replacement Airbus, which took the entourage to Winnipeg.
Speaking into the plane’s intercom, a Conservative campaign member said “Air Conservative will be back soon. See you on Scheer Force One tomorrow,” and played Mr. Scheer’s campaign song.
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DAILY TRACKING OF PUBLIC OPINION
- Conservatives: 36 per cent
- Liberals: 35 per cent
- NDP: 15 per cent
- Green: 7 per cent
- Bloc: 5 per cent
- People’s Party: 2 per cent
Analysis from Nik Nanos: “Conservative support trends upward and the two-way race between the Conservatives and Liberals continues. Support for Greens shows noticeable negative pressure.”
The survey was conducted by Nanos Research and was sponsored by The Globe and Mail and CTV. 1,200 Canadians were surveyed between Sept. 14 and 16, 2019. The margin of error is 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Respondents were asked: “If a federal election were held today, could you please rank your top two current local voting preferences?” A report on the results, questions and methodology for this and all surveys can be found at https://tgam.ca/election-polls.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
ICYMI on Day 6 of the campaign: It was all about families for two of the main parties. The Liberals promised funding for more before- and after-school care for children. The Conservatives said they would revive child fitness and arts-program tax credits, part of a suite of broad-based and targeted tax cuts that the party is promising. The NDP announced a former Quebec Green leader would run for them in the province. The federal Green Party announced their platform. And People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier was invited to take part in the official leaders’ debate.
Today on the campaign trail: Still all about families. The Conservatives said they would boost government contributions to Registered Education Savings Plans while the Liberals promised to make parental benefits tax-free – a different spin on a similar proposal made by the Conservatives earlier in the campaign. The NDP, meanwhile, pledged to build more affordable housing.
A central focus of the campaigns is on affordability, in an age when household debt continues to climb. The Globe and Mail did an analysis to find the most financially stressed neighbourhoods in the country. The results? They are almost exclusively in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver – the so-called “vote-rich” ridings that the parties keep targeting.
The federal government has reported its year-end fiscal numbers for the 2018-19 year that ended March 31. The deficit ended up at $14-billion, a slight improvement on the $14.9-billion that the Liberals had budgeted – though nowhere near the budgetary balance Mr. Trudeau had promised in the 2015 election.
The Liberals have pledged to eliminate all the boil-water advisories in First Nations by March, 2021. Neskantaga in Northern Ontario has the longest advisory in the country, lasting 25 years. Nearly a hundred residents were evacuated to Thunder Bay this week as homes lost what little water supply they had.
A senior RCMP intelligence officer who was arrested last week for breaching official secrets law was found out because of a separate organized-crime investigation. Police seized a laptop owned by Vincent Ramos, a Vancouver businessman linked to organized crime, in March and discovered an internal document that they realized had been leaked. Over the ensuing months, a source told The Globe, RCMP investigators worked to trace the alleged leak and ended up charged Cameron Ortis, the head of the police force’s intelligence unit. The federal government is currently doing damage control with its international allies who may be concerned that information shared with Canada could have been leaked, too.
And Saudi Arabia is asking the international community to condemn the perpetrators of an attack on the country’s oil facilities on the weekend. The Saudi government blames Iranian weapons for the attack. The price of oil surged on Monday on worries about how the attack could affect the supply of Saudi oil, but the price has gone back down on word that the Saudis expect to be back up and running within weeks.
Jessica Davis (The Globe and Mail) on the RCMP intelligence officer charged with breaching the secrets law: “The allegations he faces – betraying his country, as Mr. Ortis is alleged to have done by stealing and attempting to convey (or sell) this information – are not something that is done lightly. At the outset, this case looks like a classic insider threat – which is, in the spy world, the holy grail of espionage. But, if complicit, this does not necessarily mean that it was directed by a foreign country; insider threats can also emanate from people motivated by a wide variety of factors including grievance, ideology, compromise, extortion or ego.”
Bessma Momani (The Globe and Mail) on tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia: “Expect lots of Trump machismo on this issue for months, if not longer. But with Iran hawk John Bolton out of the White House, the chance of outright military confrontation with Iran is less than ever. Iran knows Mr. Bolton’s departure as national security adviser takes out the loudest champion for Iranian regime change and war. Tehran takes comfort in this White House staffing change, and the Republican base’s desire to avoid getting entangled in yet another Middle East war. Iran will take advantage of these circumstances until either sanctions are relieved or Mr. Trump is out of office.”
Daphne Bramham (Vancouver Sun) on expat voters and an unofficial gathering of Conservatives in Hong Kong: “Potentially, the Hong Kong votes could be decisive in Metro Vancouver, Toronto and even Calgary ridings because overseas Canadians vote in the riding where they last lived. But, so far, only 865 have registered as of this week, according to Elections Canada. Globally, fewer than 20,000 have registered with nearly half of those living in the United States and most of the others living in Britain, Australia and Germany.”
Sarah Boesveld (Flare) on Trudeau’s promised feminism: “This has not been a perfect past four years for women, but having a feminist government that has (mostly) put substance behind the branding and has shown that it cares about women through policy, has mattered to progressive women voters.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on the Green Party platform as a list of asks in a hung parliament: “None of those priorities would be acceptable to Conservatives. So, does that mean the Liberals can count on the Greens? Not quite. Another Green priority is electoral reform, which means moving away from first-past-the-post and toward some form of proportional representation. Justin Trudeau promised electoral reform, then broke that promise. Would Andrew Scheer agree to PR to get the Greens to support his throne speech?”
Christie Blatchford (National Post) on campaign promises: “And the few biggish ideas – the various parties’ child-care or climate change policies, for instance – are not as such debated, but rather presented as quid pro quos: You give me your vote, I with your own money, will return X dollars to your pocket. It all has the greasy transactional feel that is so very Ottawa.”
Just 35 days of the campaign to go...
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Chris Hannay