and is behind a site called DoWire.org -- short for Democracies Online Wire -- which is a meeting place for resources, info, etc. on what you'd generally call e-democracy.... Check it out -- it's a little thin in some areas (how can you not have Garth Turner in your list of "Best Individual Candidate Websites"?)

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Just in from the Tory press office: OTTAWA – Statement by Owen Lippert: "I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech...   more »

The Green Party is organizing debate parties in pubs and restaurants across the country for the English language leaders' debate on Thursday night. Here's the list so far ..   more »

You can set your watch to it. With two weeks left in campaigning, the abortion issue has once against surfaced on the Conservative campaign. The issue came up at the same time in 2006 and in 2004. This morning at a press conference in Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was ...   more »

"...there are [those] who cut their political teeth with Harper who say he's abandoned "principled conservatism", that his government has let spending run out of control and broke his word on fixed election dates - just like the Liberal governments before him.... These are the philosophical small-c conservatives who wanted a government in Ottawa that would address judicial activism, turn the Senate upside down, introduce free-market principles for health care delivery, but most of all, lower income taxes by slashing government spending.

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I had a piece in a lot of papers today that reported on the latest results of our Ipsos Reid poll. Ipsos has the Conservatives at 40 per cent and has the Liberals at 23 per cent. (My friend Tonda M. reports on a poll today her paper commissioned that ...   more »

The Ottawa Citizen picks up a piece I put together over the last week in which we wanted to spotlight some of the local races that have a little extra spice in them. We called it Grudge Matches, Trend Setters, or Star Turns. Here's the 20 races the Citizen ran ...   more »

"The Natural Governing Party of Canada" is poised to hit new lows in terms of voter support.

We have a new poll out this afternoon that says that just 23 per cent of voters across the country would vote for a Liberal candidate. (Do click through this link for all ...   more »

...given that public debt provides a tangible and definite 'good' to society, the discussion really ought to be about how much debt is 'good debt' and how much debt is 'bad debt.' And if we agree that there is such a thing as 'good debt', then using scarce surpluses to pay off 'good debt' would seem to be a waste of surpluses that could have been used for some other public good, such as reduced taxes or spending programs. And so we come back to the policy debate for politicians: Where is the line between 'good debt' and 'bad debt'? Is at 25 per cent GDP and, if so, why?   more »

no matter how much global-warming activists feel as if they have won all the debates in think-tank meetings, editorial pages, and faculty lounges, it is going to be a tough battle to convince the voting public to make huge sacrifices based on the evidence that we have now.... Manzi believes a carbon tax, even if it were to be implemented globally, would be ineffective in actually solving the problem (he would find well-reasoned opposition to this position from many academics) but this paragraph, though written with John McCain and the Republican Party in mind, could have been written for Stephen Harper's Conservatives: .   more »