Yukon – Page 2 – Doug Rutherford

April 25, 2011

One Week Left

The clock is ticking and there is still much to do.

The local campaign is winding down and all that is left is the main candidates’ debate. This, sponsored by the CBC, will be held Wednesday evening at 7 pm. While the other candidates’ forums were aimed at specific interests (i.e., post secondary education, youth, arts issues), this one is general and relates to the entire territory. A lot of us are really hoping that some differentiation between the candidates appears. I’ll be liveblogging the forum, and there will be other coverage as well.

Before that, at 6 pm, there will be a vote mob and lip-dub at the Canada Games Centre. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes and determining just how good several organizations are at getting out the youth vote.

One thing we have learned this election: we do have some idea of the importance of the north, though. Only one riding was visited by the leaders. The NWT saw Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton within a week. We, on the other hand, don’t seem to be on the dance card…

April 21, 2011

So, Who Do I Think Will Win Here?

I always tend to do poorly in projecting who’s going to win in elections. I do so poorly, I often think I may have jinx-like capability previously unseen in anatomically modern humans. This is why I am usually pretty reticent about predicting elections.

That being said, and with ten days left in the campaign, I’m casting the bones and reading the entrails (actually, it was a grilled cheese sandwich but few people tend to follow them anymore). Here’s my not so official guesses for the Yukon riding, based on people I’ve talked to:

1. Greens
2. Liberal
3. Conservative
4. NDP

I know lots of you are thinking I’ve now completely killed off the chance for John Streicker to be the first person to win a seat for the Green Party. However, unlike any poll based on less than 3,000 people that supposedly predicts how everyone in the country will vote, I’m putting my faith in the grilled cheese. After all, it’s probably a good a reflection on how Yukoners will vote as any polling firm can come up with. This, of course, is subject to the whim of next week’s sandwich…

April 20, 2011April 20, 2011

Yup. We’re Yukoners.

Note: This is also my next posting for the CBC Your Take blog.

I attended the all candidates forum on arts issues held in Whitehorse Tuesday evening and have noticed a trend. The candidates don’t want to disagree with each other.

Art forum — Audience and candidates at the All Candidates Arts Forum, Whitehorse, April 19, 2011.

I’m not the only one see this, either. I’ve had comments from people attending the forums that there’s been “a great deal of commonality” on the issues. The local papers have also noted the lack of debate at the forums as well. There have been minor discrepencies between the parties, but, to the greatest degree, the forums have been cordial, respectful and each party seems to put forward the same message: “Yes, we support … (insert issue here).”

It took me until this morning to understand what’s going on here. There seems to be some agreement between the candidates to not be antagonistic, aggressive or belligerent. In short, they have been conducting themselves much along the lines as we have been asking them to conduct themselves for years. They’ve given us what we’ve requested.

Here’s the problem. If they’re bickering, we call parliament a daycare. If they’re agreeable, it’s boring. We’re from the Yukon. We spend more than half of the year going, “It’s too cold” and the rest saying, “It’s too hot” in a pretty whiney voice. Most of us list Eeyore as our mentor.

As a Yukoner, I guess I should express this using a beer analogy. Not having beer is a bad thing but a case would probably be too much. I guess the official election request is “Give us a six-pack.” And, as a working philosophy goes, the six-pack thing pretty much works for me…

April 19, 2011

A Little Lull in the Action

I’ll concede that I’ve fallen behind in posting. However, if you follow the local campaign here, you’ll notice that there’s not much new.

Over the weekend, Candace Hoeppner, who proposed the private members’ bill last fall to abolish the long gun registry was in town. There was a bit of coverage in the local paper but really nothing much else. Yes, she was talking about the gun registry. Most people here tend to stick that topic under the general heading of, “Who really cares.”

There will be more to say this evening though. The Arts Issues forum for all candidates starts at 7 this evening at the Old Firehall. One party has already raised issues about the wording of the prepared questions given to the candidates, so this should turn out to be a bit interesting. I’ll let you know how things went. Here are the talking points on arts issues in Canada.

Let’s be honest, the really big news is that none of the candidates really seem to want to disagree with the others. One question in the last two candidates forums saw any really difference in opinion. Ryan Leef, the Conservative Candidate, did say that he was in favour of releasing the name of a young offender if he or she was considered dangerous. The other three candidates did not. For all intents and purposes, you’d think that the candidates were all running for the same party.

Maybe, the arts is a topic that will have them scrapping. Or scrapbooking. Or not…

April 10, 2011April 10, 2011

An Interesting Development

Note: This is my fourth submission to the CBC Your Take election blog.

It’s time to wonder what vetting goes into a political candidate for election. There is the understanding, or at least the given, that politicians are human and have pasts. Some of those pasts, however, are not what one would expect… particularly in light of the philosophy of the party for which they are running.

The Toronto Star is reporting that Conservative Party of Canada candidate for the Yukon was convicted in 2009 of falsifying a wildllife report while working as a big game outfitter. Further, he was, at the same time, a wildlife conservation officer who was charged with violating the laws he was supposed to uphold. (I’m also a little curious as to whether or not you’re supposed to be an officer and someone that officer is supposed to oversee but I have to check with Wildlife to see if this is common).

I have no issues with someone paying for an indiscretion. After all, none of us are perfect. However, I have a question for the party. Was the party aware of Ryan Leef’s record before he was nominated? If so, how do you reconcile the party’s tough on crime stance with nominating someone with a conviction and not making that point very clear at the outset of the campaign. Yes, Yukoners have tolerated a variety of politicians with criminal records, but not as a complete suprise…

April 9, 2011April 9, 2011

End of Week 2

Note: This is the second submission to the CBC Your Take blog. Since I need a summary of who’s running and how things went last time, I did repeat the results from an earlier blog post.

We’ve reached the end of the second week of the campaign. Here’s how things sit. We have four candidates in the Yukon and with the deadline for nominations coming, there seems to be little chance of an independent or one of the smaller parties running this time around.

Larry Bagnell (LPC) – Incumbent
Ryan Leef (CPC)
Kevin Barr (NDP)
John Streicker (GPC)

In case you are curious, or your memory needs refreshing, the results of the last election were:

Larry Bagnell (LPC) – 45.80%
Darrel Pasloski (CPC) – 32.66%
John Streicker (GPC) – 12.83%
Ken Bolton (NDP) – 8.70%

(Source: Elections Canada – http://www.elections.ca/scripts/OVR2008/default.html)

The second week of campaign is usually a little unentertaining. Since last Sunday, we have seen the release of the major parties campaign platforms. These offer a variety of programs and program spending, complete with the estimates of what they will, or will not cost. Estimate is often a big word, although the Green Party did submit their spending estimates to the Parliamentary Budget office to ensure the numbers do make sense. However, no one around the cafeteria at work has had much to say for or against any of the major parties’ platforms.

In many ways, the election seems to be a quiet surprise. There hasn’t been a great deal of hard core campaigning here and all of the campaigns seem to be very low key. This will probably change with the first of the candidate forums and progress through the (at least) three more to come. The generally held thought is that it will be either a Liberal or Green Party win this time.

The candidates have done some work today. It’s a sunny Saturday so getting out and around seems a good idea. Two, Larry Bagnell and John Streicker, attended the 18^th Annual Bridge Building Competition, where students build bridges using coffee stir sticks, dental floss and carpenter’s glue and these are tested to see how much weight they will support before failing. Ryan Leef was seen with a large group of supporters waving to traffic crossing the bridge into Riverdale subdivision. Larry Bagnell was also doing a walkabout in the Porter Creek neighbourhood today, as well.

The leaders’ debates come up next week. These and the candidate forums do often get people fired up. However, the main things we hear in the Yukon about the leaders’ debates are regarding the barring of Green Party Leader, Elizabeth May. It seems that, regardless of party affiliation here, most people seem to think it was a poor choice. It’s nice to know that most of us can actually agree on something…