My colleague Andrew Mayeda reports that Conservative Jason Kenney, his party's point man in Canada's immigrant communities, accuses the Liberals of playing dirty pool when it comes to ethnic politics: Kenney slams Liberal ethnic outreach Tory accuses Grits of funneling grants to 'community godfathers' Andrew Mayeda , Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008 LEVIS, Que. - The man charged with spearheading the Harper government's "ethnic-outreach" efforts has accused former Liberal governments of running "Tammany Hall"-style operations that funneled grants to local immigrant "godfathers." "Typically, I think, the Liberals pursued what some people have called an ethnic-brokerage model of outreach, where they would identify leaders of certain groups who somehow magically would become the recipients of substantial grants and subsidies for their community organizations," Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism, said when asked how his government's approach differs from that of the Liberals.

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said George H.W. BusH: "No new taxes". IL N’Y AURA PAS DE NOUVELLES TAXES !   more »

The Prime Minister, in a speech tonight at a BBQ in Québecm lays down his most explicit challenge yet to the Leader of the Official Opposition: FRIENDS, I SEE MR. DION IS CHALLENGING ME TO DEBATE HIS CARBON TAX.

...AND HE DOES EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO SLOW THE BUSINESS OF PARLIAMENT - OBSTRUCTION AFTER OBSTRUCTION, DELAY AFTER DELAY.... THEY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO KEEP GOVERNING, TO ADDRESS ISSUES THAT MATTER TO THEM, TO KEEP THE COUNTRY MOVING FORWARD.

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Here's the blurb from the Liberal campaign: Mr. Valeriote and Mr. Brison took specific aim at Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who earlier this year told a business audience that Ontario is “the last place” to invest.... He's up against NDP candidate Tom King -- he of CBC's Dead Dog Café fame -- as well as city councillor and Conservative candidate Gloria Kovach and the Green Party's environment critic Mike Nagy.... Kovach has been winning municipal elections for a long time in Guelph but the Conservatives put themselves behind the eight-ball when the national party stepped in earlier this year to fire the locally-chosen candidate Brett Barr.

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Just as there is a new top dog in the communications shop at Conservative PMO, there is a new communications top dog at the Conservative Party. Ryan Sparrow, I learned this afternoon, officially assumed the role of Director of Communications for the party on July 1. If there was a director of communications for the party before Ryan, I didn't know about it...   more »

In the pre-Internet days, one of the standby reference books on the desks of most Canadian journalists was a book called Sources.... Sources is still published but I suspect most newsrooms and most journalists might use the electronic version.... A journalist would e-mail a query to ProfNet and then the query would get circulated to the PR shops at universities and colleges across the continent (but mostly in the U.S.).

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Elections Canada today announced the "Preliminary Candidate Election Expenses" limit for the three byelections that will take place Sept. 8. This is the first of two spending limits that Elections Canada will establish for the byelections to take place in the ridings of Westmount-Ville-Marie and Saint-Lambert (both in Québec) and in Guelph (Ontario).... It will be the maximum that registered political parties can spend to support the candidates in these elections.   more »

The Greens were to meet in New Glasgow, NS from Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 but with the recent announcement that three byelections will be held on Sept. 8, the Greens have decided to move their convention to Sept. 19-21. From the Green Party news release: “When we learned that the by-elections would be the day after our national convention, we feared Greens would be forced to choose between the policy convention and campaigning on the last weekend before the by-elections,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “With Deputy Leader Claude William Genest running in Westmount—Ville-Marie and Environment Critic Mike Nagy running in Guelph, moving the convention after the by-elections made sense.

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On holiday, finally getting a chance to read Jean Chrétien's My Years as Prime Minister.

After working on Bay Street, covering technology companies for nearly a decade, I moved to Ottawa to try my hand at political reporting in the winter of 2005, just as Paul Martin's tenure as PM was winding down. As a result, I missed the Chrétien years and, as I start to read his memoirs of his time in power, I'm keen to see what he has to say, particularly in light of what I know about the current incumbent and how he conducts himself in office..   more »

Liesl, an old friend who was a great director back in the days when I thought I'd be an actor, has a reading in Toronto next week of her new play.... Canary By Liesl Lafferty with Tasha Lawrence and Kathryn Haggis Canary is a comedy about Lily, a bright young woman who suffers from a debilitating aversion to artificial light. Her journey into the toxic world of environmental illness brings her to radical resolutions and raises the question, ‘Are you next?’

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