Stories of the Week

After spending the week talking about Liberal leadership on this blog, a brief look at what else is making news.


1. The Harper government has made noise about pension reform, prompting a round of howls from the opposition benches about Harper throwing grannies out on the street. I'll reserve judgment until I see the final plans, but I'll give Harper some credit for tackling such a politically charged issue. At the recent Liberal convention, the party made a big deal about "fact based policies" and the fact is Canada has an aging population, so it's foolish to pretend the existing system is perfect and doesn't need to be reformed.

And now is the perfect time for the Harper government to make these reforms. This will be their first majority government budget, and it comes at a time when neither opposition party has a permanent leader in place. The Conservatives don't have to worry about an irate electorate for another three years, so why not make some tough decisions now? After all, they can always buy voters off with a nice tax cut in 2015.

Moreover, I'm not even positive the public opinion backlash would be as devastating as some predict. Sure, you ask people if Seniors should get old-age security benefits at 65 or 67 and OF COURSE they'll say 65. Any poll which asks "do you want more or less" is going to break at least 3:1 in favour of "more". The real question is what kind of backlash this move would lead to?

So what if the changes are grandfathered in so they don't affect anyone over 50, and what if they're announced along with plans to scale back MP pensions ("we're all making sacrifices")? Suddenly, I'm not so convinced this would be the PR nightmare everyone is predicting.


2. Jim Flaherty’s budget will also be Tony Clement’s: So get ready for a gazebo tax credit program...


3. Speaking of tough medicine budgets, it sounds like Dwight Duncan's budget will also be Don Drummond's. Drummond's much-anticipated report is rumoured to be released on February 15th, laying the ground for the Ontario budget.


4. The 2011 fundraising numbers are out, and the Tories are still well ahead of the competition.


5. Also released are the NDP leadership fundraising numbers, which show just 3% of NDP members have donated to a campaign.

We must fight this hailstorm of praise!

Oh, the challenges of fundraising when you can't blame the opposition or Liberal Senators for defeating your agenda:

CPC appeals to party supporters to finance fight against media, pundits

With a stable majority government for the next four years and the Liberal Party still reeling from the election results, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party is calling on supporters to dip into their wallets to help the party counter a new foe.

In a letter sent out in the past few days, Conservative Party President John Walsh is urging supporters to help the party counter a “hailstorm” of negative attacks from the media, pundits and the “opinion elite.”

Walsh says the party had to fight off attacks during the last election and expects them to continue.

“During this election campaign, we faced an onslaught of negative attacks like never before from the media, from pundits and from anti-Conservative lobby groups and union executives,” Walsh wrote in a copy of the letter obtained by iPolitics.

For those who may not remember all of the nasty things the opinion elites said about the Conservatives during the election, feel free to browse the editorial endorsements from the 31 (out of 34) media organizations who endorsed the Tories.

It's that time of the year again...

...quarter 1 fundraising numbers are out! Yay!

The Conservatives have outfundraised all of the opposition parties, combined, in the first quarter of 2010. According to the first quarter returns, just posted on Elections Canada’s website, the Conservatives have raised $4,023,923.14 from 32,466 donors. That’s $2,846,507 more than the other parties, including the Greens.

The Liberals raised $1,589,953.81 in the first quarter from 15,255 people, while the Bloc Québécois raised $123, 069.64 from 1,381 people and the NDP raised $900,198.01 from 12,982. The Green Party raised $233,285.57 from 2,919 donors.

Even though most news stories, including the above, will spin this as good news for the Conservatives, the numbers are probably most disappointing for them.

As the always-useful Pundits Guide shows, the number of Conservative donors is down 18% from Quarter 1 last year, while the number of Liberal donors has stayed relatively consistent. The drop in the amount raised by the Liberals merely reflects an absence of the big ticket fundraisers we saw at the start of last year - presumably the usual suspects will get hit up for their thousand dollars at some point this year.

Of course, context is always key. Remember the "grassroots fury" and the thousands of Canadians up in arms over prorogation? Well, maybe that led to a drop in Tory donations, but it did little to increase the number of people donating money to the opposition parties.

The $200 Gap

The 2009 fundraising numbers are out. The good news for the Liberals is that they've closed the fundraising gap. The bad news? It's still an 8 million dollar gap, which grows to about 11 million when you consider the per-vote subsidies.

Via Pundits' Guide, here's a look at the year-over-year numbers, since Harper cut the donation cap:


Pundits Guide also has the dollar breakdown - it's not perfect since this still includes "double dip" donations, but it clearly shows the Tory advantage remains on the small donation front. The Liberals actually out-raised the Conservatives slightly on donations over $200, but the Tories hold a commanding $12 million to $3 million lead when it comes to the small cheques.

So, despite some incredible progress in 2009, there's still a lot of work to be done.

(And, you know, if you're so inclined to help close the gap, just click through here)

Nomination Watch

Allow me to draw your attention to a pair of recent items on Pundits' Guide:



1. The pace of candidate nominations has picked up, but the parties still have a long way to go, if you assume an early October writ drop. The Tories have nominated 175 candidates, the Liberals 77, the Greens 33, the Bloc 21, and the NDP 16. Thia may, in part, explain why the NDP are cool to the idea of a fall election.



2. There's some interesting analysis on political donations here. The short of it is this: even though the Liberals have made monumental leaps and bounds forward with fundraising - to the point where they're only 1.6 million behind the Tories so far this year - they've maxed out a lot more donors than the Conservatives have.

If I had more money honey. Would you love me...

Liberal fundraising numbers:

Q1 2009 - $1,831,843
Q1 2008 - approx $846,000
Q1 2007 was under $600k


When put into context, there's still a long way to go, but it's encouraging nevertheless...

Rossi's Challenge

The 2008 fundraising numbers are out:

CPC: 21,190,928.22 (up 25%)
Lib: 5,900,511.89 (up 30%)
NDP: 5,466,434.84 (up 37%)
Green: 1,631,293.79 (up 66%)
Bloc: 713,415.22 (up 66%)

On the bright side, Liberal numbers were up 23% in Q4 while most other parties only matched their Q3 numbers, but this may have been due to the leadership "race". Either way, the Tories' 6.3 million to 2.3 million Q4 edge shows that Rocco Rossi and friends have a lot of challenges ahead of them.

But just how bad is it? Well, if you add in the public finance numbers, these are the 2008 totals:

CPC: 31.6 million (67% from donations)
Lib: 14.6 million (40% from donations)
NDP: 10.5 million (52% from donations)
Bloc: 3.7 million (19% from donations)
Green: 2.9 million (56% from donations)

So, no matter how you slice it, the Conservatives had a 17 million dollar advantage in 2008, and the Liberals are still hopelessly addicted to public party financing - which, for them, will be dropping by 1.6 million in 2009, due to low vote numbers last election. If donations stay the same in 2009, here's what the different parties can expect to rake in:

CPC: 31.3 million (68% from donations)
Lib: 13.0 million (45% from donations)
NDP: 10.4 million (53% from donations)
Green: 3.5 million (47% from donations)
Bloc: 3.4 million (21% from donations)

It may not be a sexy topic but, when you look at these numbers, it's clear that increasing party fundraising numbers should be priority number 1 for the LPC right now.

V is for Victory

Back in May, I posted about the Liberal Party's Victory Fund and invited readers to suggest what riding I should donate to. Danielle Takacs wrote up a post in support of Brant, Saskatoon-Humboldt sent me a top ten list, and I got compelling e-mails in support of Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, Fredericton, Burlington and a host of others.

So when I noticed the Skyline BBQ for Victory Fund members coming up on Centre Island in Toronto next week, I figured it was time to stop dithering and just make a choice. With the Democrats competitive in states like Virginia, Montana, and Indiana (and Texas?), it seems obvious to me that Dean's 50 state strategy is paying dividends. In Canada, the Conservatives won in 1984 and 2006 when they realized they couldn't write off 75 seats in Quebec every election. Yet, the Liberals gladly write off that many in Western Canada, a region whose political importance keeps growing.

So, between that, and the fact that it's the friggin' Calgary Grit blog, I felt I should pick a Calgary riding. And, as luck would have it, the riding that received the most votes for my donation just happened to be Calgary West. The 5$ a month is a small price to pay for the satisfaction in knowing you're doing something to help defeat Rob Anders so that's where half my direct deposit will be going.

If You’ve Got $120 And 120 Hours To Spare…

Since I’ve been bitching about the Liberal Party’s fundraising problems for ever and ever, it’s only fair to help them publicize this latest initiative.

Meet “The Victory Fund” – a stab at trying to get those small time donors the CPC have so effectively recruited with their “give us 20$ because the CBC is eeeevil” direct mail campaigns.

Here’s the pitch:

Stéphane Dion and the Liberal Party need your help and that of all our members to defeat Stephen Harper and build a strong Liberal Party.

Your contribution of as little as $10 per month – the equivalent of just $2.50 per month after your year-end tax rebate (that’s the price of a coffee and muffin!) – will make this happen.

$2.50 for a coffee and muffin? Maybe the Liberals are catering to the Tim Hortons, rather than the Starbucks, crowd!

“But what’s in it for me?” I’m sure you’re asking yourself.

Victory Fund supporters will be invited to participate in 120 hours (each year) of live online dialogues with senior members of the Liberal caucus and other key party figures. In addition, at the upcoming biennial convention, there will be a Victory Fund reception area, lounge and preferred seating.

Although the thought of someone wanting to chat on MSN with Garth Turner for 120 hours is a bit disturbing, I’m all about preferred seating so I’ll definitely be signing up, and I encourage other Liberals to as well.

As part of the plan, you need to pick a riding association to sponsor, and since I’ve been nomadic for the last few years, that poses a bit of dilemma. So here’s what I’ll do: e-mail me with the reason I should donate to their riding association - whoever sends in the best reason gets the donation for their riding: calgarygrit@gmail.com

The Data Game

For those who missed it last night, The National’s report on how political parties use personal data should be mandatory watching for anyone in the Liberal Party’s head office. Despite some talk of renewal during the leadership race last year, it’s abundantly clear that the party is still eons behind the Tories structurally and it puts us at a huge disadvantage going into the next election. So far this year, the CPC have raised over 12 million dollars, versus 2.6 million for the Liberals…and the NDP. When you can’t even beat the NDP, something is terribly wrong.

And it’s not just fundraising – the CPC are going to start the next campaign with more identified voters and sign locations than us, and they’re going to start the next campaign with their massive fear factory. And, between now and then, they’ll keep softening the Liberal support up with their hokey, but effective, attack ads. Let’s face it – despite some communication weaknesses, Dion hasn’t actually had an awful first year as leader but the perception that he’s a weak leader has set in, mainly due to the Tory ads.

So what needs to be done? Well, rather than cry about the massive Conservative database of voters as being an infringement of privacy, get your own. The CBC piece featured the Liberal Manage Elect program but the problem with that system is that the data gets flushed after every campaign (at least in Alberta it does…it is possible that the party is more organized in Quebec Ontario). To the best of my knowledge, there’s no central database with donations history, voting patterns, volunteer records, and demographic data that could help the party tailor messaging directly to voters.

On the fundraising side, the LPC needs to take a close look at what those people named Barrack, Hillary, and Howard have done in the states and they should just bite the bullet and hire someone who knows what they’re doing to take over fundraising for the party. Get volunteers or hire people to phone every party member asking for a donation. Go through the list of party and leadership donors from last year and make sure they donate again this year, and next year, and the one after that (hell, if you keep good enough records, you’ll be able to hit up the Volpe kids legally in a few years). The LPC needs to get Liberals into the habit of donating to the party – and it needs to bluntly tell people that Stephen Harper is going to be Prime Minister for a long time unless average Liberals cut the yearly cheques to the party. Even the ALP have a fairly large direct deposit list for donations to the party but I’ve never seen anything like that for the federal party (again, Ontario may have it, but it just shows how the party needs to centralize more since there’s a ton of money to be milked from Alberta, if not votes).

Another good idea I heard from someone a lot smarter than I am is to structure field worker pay on an incentive system. If you’re going to hire party staff, why not make a couple hundred fundraising phone calls part of their job description, with a large chunk of their salary being determined on how much they can raise? Ideally, you’d also include incentives for membership renewals and other firm benchmarks that help grow the party.

The bottom line is there’s a lot of work to be done. There needs to be a comprehensive plan in place to build a database of comparable size and detail as the Tories’ and to get the LPC to the point where they’re raising at least half as much money as the Conservatives every year. At this point, the party’s financial and structural health is a lot more important than some of the policy and strategy debates no doubt going on inside of it.

On the Attack

The Tories have pounced on Dion’s somewhat misguided GST musings with a new attack ad. Apparently Dion has made "billions of dollars" in spending promises which is news to me because, outside of the environment, I haven’t really heard any promises. We also learn in the ads that 5 4 3.5 10 a nebulous number of priorities beats 3 pillars.

As for the ads themselves, yeah it looks like Ben and Rachel put them together, but it's still smart politics. With Dion down, might as well keep punching. And for the Tories flush with cash, they can certainly afford to run them.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the biggest problem with the Liberal Party isn't the leadership, MPs, policy positions, or recent baggage. The biggest problem is the structural inability of the party to fundraise. And the most discouraging thing is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of plan out there to turn things around.

Pass the Hat

The Globe has a story on how much money different Tory MPs have donated to the Conservative Party over the past year. James Moore has given more than any other Conservative MP to his own party. So clearly just writing a cheque doesn't guarantee you a Cabinet spot. Apparently, neither does being an extremely bright and talented MP. But I digress.

Apparently, there has been some "displeasure" over the fact that 18 Cabinet Ministers haven't donated cash to their own party this year. Luckily, after asking some questions in the right places, I've come up with the top 8 excuses by Tory Cabinet Ministers for not donating to the party:


8. Lost all my money in that income trust flip-flop.

7. Stockwell Day: "Already donated to get the Big Valley Creation Museum started".

6. Gordon O'Connor: "I did donate money. What? I didn't. General Hillier said I did."

5. Made an "in kind" donation by giving Stephen Harper fashion advice.

4. To be honest, I don't do anything unless explicitly instructed to do it from the PMO. I'm afraid to even order a donut on my own.

3. Tony Clement: "Now that Belinda's a Liberal, I've had to finish paying off my own leadership campaign debt."

2. John Baird: "After thirteen long years of Liberal corruption...I'm sorry - what was the question again?"

1. Felt it could be better spent donating it to the Stephane Dion leadership campaign.