Contrarian reader Justin Ling thinks we're too impatient:
Come on now. The legislature isn't even sitting, and you're taking thinly-veiled jabs at the government-to-be for not doing anything?
28 July, 2009

The indefatigable Wallace J. McLean (note correct spelling; mea culpa) has risen to contrarian's challenge, and defended his view that the MacDonald government's paving proposals were as politically skewed as the Harper government's selective approvals thereof. This time he buttresses his case with a map, using traditional party colors in two shades: darker for ridings in which the government proposed  paving; lighter for those where it did not. Turning this map back into numbers, the Rodney government proposed work in two out of six rural Liberal districts (33%); three out of eight rural NDP districts (38%), and 13 out of 21 rural...

03 July, 2009
Some days ago, contrarian reader Wallace J. McLean challenged contrarian to determine how many of the paving projects Nova Scotia submitted for federal stimulus funding were in provincial Tory ridings. "Too much work," we said, and went back to surfing Digg and Stumbledupon. Well, turns out Wally is a blogger himself, and after days with a magnifying glass comparing project lists with the boundaries of Nova Scotia's 52 provincial ridings, he offers an answer:
Of the 37 projects put forward by the late Macdonald government in NS, five were located in Liberal districts, and five in NDP districts, based on the 2006 election results.... Twenty-six were located in districts which the Tories held, or had won in 2006.
30 June, 2009
Three NDP and one Liberal riding associations are racing to comply with financial disclosure requirements that could result in their deregistration. As reported earlier, the entire Green Party also faces imminent deregistration. Joanne Lamey, provincial organizer for the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party confirmed that three NDP riding associations have been warned of possible deregistration for failure to disclose financial information. She said financial statements for the Digby Annapolis, Yarmouth, and Inverness riding associations were in various stages of completion, and she expected to submit them "very quickly—perhaps this afternoon." Glennie Langille, who was co-chair of communications for the Liberal campaign, said one riding association had been asked to supply tardy financial statements, but she denied the deadline was imminent. She refused to identify the riding association because no official action had been taken against it.
26 June, 2009

[caption id="attachment_916" align="alignright" width="150" caption="CCF MP for Cape Breton South, 1940-1957"]Clarie Gillis[/caption] .. .. Cape Bretoner Joey Schwartz, now living in Toronto, is not impressed: ...

11 June, 2009

Victoria County Councillor Fraser Patterson, the NDP candidate in Victoria-The Lakes, scored a coup last week when he recruited fellow councillor Paul MacNeil to take him door-to-door in his home turf of Iona. The area is a Catholic Liberal bastion, and MacNeil's family has been Liberal since before the flood. At one stop, a homemaker poked her head out the door, eyed the two politicians, and said, "Paul, does you mother know what you're doing?"...

08 June, 2009
Paul DesBarres, president of Nova Insights, who claims to be the first pollster to project an NDP majority, thinks my squeamishness about using online polling results marks me as out of touch with current market research methods. A  recent article by DesBarres expands on the point:
The home landline is no longer necessarily the best way to garner public opinion:
  • Fully 84% of Canadians and 81% of Nova Scotians are online
  • 7% of Nova Scotians do not have a landline
  • 13% among males
  • 12% among 18-34-year-olds
08 June, 2009
Halifax arts and culture activist and New Democrat Andrew Terris weighs in on the union donation flap:
As I understand it, there are two critical factors: 1. Are the members of the [Building and] Construction Trades Council separately incorporated bodies?  If they are, their donations are not illegal. The [Members and Public Employees] Disclosure Act says "a trade union and all its members and affiliates are considered to be one organization." But it looks to me like the Council is an association of unions rather than a single, inclusive entity under the act. 2. Given #1, the NDP could well have accepted the donations in good faith. The real problem was the offer of the Council to reimburse the unions, an offer about which the NDP might well have known nothing until it was leaked to you and other media bloodhounds...
07 June, 2009
[caption id="attachment_777" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Dr. Chris Milburn"]Dr. Chris Milburn[/caption] What's disquieting about our New Democratic Party government-in-waiting is the same thing that's been disturbing about Nova Scotia for decades: a lack of compelling leadership. It's not simply that our once-upon-a-time socialists have moved to the dead center of the road. Contrarian is OK with that. It's Darrell Dexter's meticulous avoidance of anything that might challenge voters in any way. The NDP knew that to get elected, they would have to win seats in rural Nova Scotia. They took polls and conducted focus groups, and discovered that rural Nova Scotians are upset about emergency room closures. So the NDP promised to end those closures, even though every thoughtful observer knows that doing so would be a wasteful diversion of scarce health care dollars. Among other things, it will make recruitment of physicians to rural areas more difficult, not easier. Why would a fully trained physician want to sit in an emergency room all night to treat one or two patients?
07 June, 2009
The NDP have joined the Liberals in insisting that voters go to the poll without knowing who donated to their campaign. The party revealed the names of labour unions and corporations that gave to the campaign, but withheld the names of individuals who contributed a total of $287,013.12. "The initial advice we received from [Chief Electoral Officer]  Christine [McCulloch] is that there were privacy concerns," said N-dip campaign director Matt Hebb. "If she has different advice now, I will take a look at it.' McCulloch's press aide Dana Philip Doiron told contrarian last week that, in response to requests for an opinion, McCulloch merely told the parties they should seek their own legal counsel, because it was not appropriate for her to issue legal advice.
07 June, 2009
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