The London Free Press is reporting that the Conservatives are holding a nomination meeting for the riding of London North Centre on October 24th. This is the riding recently vacated by Liberal Joe Fontana and could signal that a by-election will soon be called to replace him in Parliament.

I hope the NDP is ready. D’oh! Somebody fetch me my clue by four.

This isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that it took these authoritarians so long to do it.

Garth Turner, an outspoken MP from Halton, Ont. has been suspended from the Conservative Party caucus.

Rahim Jaffer, the national caucus chair, said the suspension was due in part to Turner’s blog, which he often uses as a soap box to make his opinions known.

Members of the Ontario caucus felt “the theme of confidentiality was not being respected,” Jaffer said .

“This is not something that one person has felt. There were attacks that were made on individuals, including the prime minister, on his blog at different times,” Jaffer said.

Speaking to reporters after the weekly Conservative caucus meeting, Jaffer said Turner’s indiscretions were hurting the caucus’ ability to function behind closed doors.

I don’t know why Garth has hitched his wagon to these losers anyway.

Update: Garth Turner’s reaction.

In the spirit of bipartisanship I’m offering up this idea to the Green Party and its supporters.

After reading this post by Garth Turner it struck me how unreasonable it is that the leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May can only partake in the House of Commons as a spectator in the visitor’s gallery despite the fact that she represents more than 600,000 Canadian voters (4.5%). Now I realize this injustice could be corrected by replacing our first past the post electoral system with a proportional representation one, but the reality is that it’s not going to happen any time soon. The Liberals have never, to my knowledge, expressed an interest in such a change and the Conservatives have dropped their interest now that they’re once again a united party and can take advantage of FPTP.

So here’s the solution. Go for something smaller, like just getting May into the House of Commons. The way to accomplish this is to push for a change that would see the leaders of the federal parties no longer representing a riding but instead getting an automatic seat in Parliament for as long as they retain their party’s leadership.

This change wouldn’t burden our system since it would only add 5 additional people to the HOC (to be reasonable a minimum limit of say 1% of the popular vote would have to be reached before a party gained a seat in this manner).

These leadership seats would retain all the powers they now have but for one exception. To counter the fact that the leaders would no longer be directly elected by Canadian voters in a general election, it would be reasonable to strip them of their vote in Parliament. Since the party leaders generally run in safe ridings, the party would most likely retain those ridings so the current balance of power would not be affected. And as an added benefit, these ridings would actually get better representation than they do now by overworked party leaders.

This change would effectively give the Green Party representation in our democratic process and it’s a realistic plan that can be accomplished if the party and its supporters do the necessary work (ie. researching the legal aspect) to expand on my basic outline.

I’ve been meaning to ask about this for quite some time.

We have a 62,000-strong force with less than 4000 “boots on the ground” abroad yet not another pair to spare anywhere else.

How is it possible that with an army of 62,000 we can’t come up with more than 4,000 combat troops? I understand that like anything else, the frontline people need support, but why is it so excessive with a ratio of nearly 15 to 1?

The latest poll from Strategic Counsel.

The leaderless federal Liberals have caught up to Stephen Harper’s Tories in electoral popularity for the first time since the federal election campaign, according to a new poll that shows the parties in a dead heat.

The survey, conducted for The Globe and Mail-CTV News, finds that the two parties would each receive 32 per cent of the votes were an election to be held today.

The poll has the NDP at 17% and the Green Party at 9%.