Fucking Finally

http://www.mississauga.com/article/13631

Mississauga South Conservatives will vote for the party's nominee in the next election in early June, as central party HQ finally cleared the party to have a candidate vote. A few thoughts:

1. Assuming Mississauga South is still high on the Conservatives target list, (they came within 4.1% of winning it in 2006, the 12th seat they came the closest to winning, and along with next-door Oakville, which they came within 1.3% of winning, form the Conservatives best shots at forming a GTA West beachhead) why could they not find a star candidate? Did they simply want to avoid a repeat of the provincial fiasco and let the nomination play out? Could they not find a candidate worthy of "star" status?

2. Is Mississauga South no longer the prime target it once was? With Paul Szabo only winning by 4.1%, he should be a vulnerable incumbent, but with his Chairmanship of th Ethics committee, he has gained valuable face time and recognition. Has Szabo's increased clout scared off Conservative challengers? Have dips in the polls in Ontario lowered all Ontario ridings down on the target list for Conservatives, to focus more on Quebec?

3. What is the state of the unity of Mississauga South Conservatives? With the provincial Conservatives torn by the Tim Peterson fiasco, have all wounds healed? Will the looooong freezing of the race turn off Conservatives from supporting the party and it's nominee? Will still bitter Phil Green supporters (Phil Green was barred from running for a third go, and no reason from party HQ was given) boycott both the nomination battle and the election? This is in comparison to the Mississauga South Liberals, as with the election of Charles Sousa as MPP, with plenty of help from Paul Szabo, divisions in the association most recently brought up by Sousa's challenge to Szabo in 2004, have healed, and Sousa, who managed to successfully pull Conservative votes in his election, will be ready to throw his weight behind Szabo.

4. Who will actually win the Conservative nod? I won't pretend to have expert knowledge of the race, and I have no idea who has the strongest campaign, who has been signing up the most members, who has the support of who, etc. Based on circumstantial evidence, I will guess either Ward 2 Peel District School Board trustee Don Stephens, the only candidate with any sort of real name recognition, or Major Ted Opitz of the Canadian Royal Regiment. If any other candidate wins though, don't claim I was telling people to place bets.

Oh, and the Mississauga South Conservatives are having a meet and greet during the Mississauga Marathon, near the Port Credit lighthouse between 9 am and 1pm, on Sunday May 11th. Anyone who wants to come and perhaps ask some questions should.

Mississauga South MP Paul Szabo: "Election Before Summer"

http://www.mississaugablogs.com/2008/04/election_winds_wafting.html

John Stewart with another good scoop.

Mississauga South Liberal MP Paul Szabo thinks there will be a federal election "before the summer."Asked how much longer this amazing minority government of Stephen Harper's can continue to breathe, Szabo issued a sigh down the telephone line from the House of Commons this morning and said, "It's hitting a critical mass."

"I like our team," says the chartered accountant turned politico. "As far as I know, our platform is very solid."

With a statement like this from the hardest working MP in Parliament, interesting to see if the Mississauga South Conservatives, whose nomination race could more accurately at this point be described as a test of endurance, move into high gear. Or this could simply be Szabo, who is an excellent campaigner, being crafty and trying to throw the oppposition off in a seat he only won by 4% in 2006. With Effie responding to my blog post earlier with an e-mail to Stewart saying she hadn't been approached, or wasn't pursuing the federal nomination (although it was hardly a Sherman statement) I really don't know who is the presumed front-runner in the Conservative race. Don Stephens is the only candidate with real name recognition, although he has made some controversial statements regarding the place of religion in public schools, which might hurt him if he were to win the nomination. Either way, it looks like Szabo is gathering his resources, throwing out quotes like these, and hunkering down, while the Conservatives are spinning their wheels. Call me crazy, but I'll give an early edge to Szabo.

Mississauga Conservatives left hanging

First of all, let me say the OYL AGM was a blast, and congrats to all the winners, particularly our new Eastern co-ordinator, Krista Balsom.

http://www.mississaugablogs.com/2008/03/doubts_linger.html

John Stewart of the Mississauga News gives a pretty good summary of the MSCPC AGM the other day, and discusses some things I've mentioned in previous blogs:

President Don Plett of the Conservative Party, who was the special guest speaker at the agm, didn't make the announcement so many were anticipating.Instead he faced some pointed questions about why the five-and-waiting candidates in the race (Tom Simpson, Ryah Shadursky, Don Stephens, Hugh Arrison and Ted Opitz) must wait even longer for a date with destiny.

Hugh Brown, who is the campaign manager for Arrison, gently pointed out that the Liberal incumbent, Paul Szabo, is well-entrenched in the riding, has just received oodles of national face time as the chair of the Commons ethics committee looking into the Mulroney-Schreiber standoff, and is getting off to a nice head start.

...And, oh yes, Plett explained, Harper and the Conservatives are very interested in recruiting women and ethnic candidates, and even better if they come in one package.

...Plett took some umbrage at the suggestion that the fix is in, and pointed out that even a fresh, ethnically-pure, gender-correct superstar with a party-issue blue parachute would not be appointed because Mr. Harper is opposed to appointments.But, as one long-time Tory who attended last night's function said, "something really doesn't smell right here. Something's wrong."

I've long thought that Effie Triantafilopoulos, who would have likely gotten the provincial Conservative nomination had John Tory not appointed the floor-crossing Tim Peterson, might be a good shot to get appointed as the federal Conservative candidate, and I think Plett's comments, as well as the refusal to call a nomination date lend more credence to this. The appointment of Tory candidate Melissa Bhagat in Mississauga East-Cooksville shows that the Conservatives are definitely looking for female and ethnic candidates in the GTA West, although considering that riding is basically unwinnable for the Conservatives, as opposed to Mississauga South, which other than Oakville is really the only shot for the Conservatives in the region, it is unusual that the Conservatives would want to let Szabo get out to an unchallenged head-start, particularly at a time when his name-recognition has never been higher. I honestly thing Mississauga South Conservatives are being strung along by the central party, just another example of how fast Conservatives are to ignore residents of urban Ontario, even the party members themselves.

Liberals and Conservatives on getting things done for Mississauga citizens

The Liberals: http://www.mississauga.com/article/8758

Mississauga South Liberal Paul Szabo has been named the hardest-working MP in Ottawa for the second consecutive year.

Pat Martin can childishly name-call and disrupt the Parliamentary process all he wants, but Paul Szabo, my member back home, is very effective for the people of Mississauga South.

The Conservatives: http://www.mississauga.com/article/8760

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the 86-year-old mayor of Mississauga should shut up and stop whining about her city's infrastructure problems and get to work fixing them.

It is fairly rich for the former Minister of Downloading and Locking up the Homeless, whose most high profile actions as Finance Minister federally have been a broken promise on income trusts, and a GST cut the vast majority of economists have been critical of, to speak so ill of the Mayor whose city has become associated with successful urban growth, balanced budgets, and lack of debt. While a general urban bashing makes sense from a Conservative stand point (they won't win any seats in the major urban core areas, and bashing big cities and big city values plays well in rural areas and among SoCons, the Conservatives bedrock supporters) the sheer hostility towards much of the suburban areas, and Mississauga in particularly I can't understand.

If the Conservatives wish to win a majority, Mississauga is an area in which they will need to make gains. On the Mississauga South Federal Conservative webpage, one of the lines they have states "Who will represent Mississauga South in a Conservative majority government?" The line is more than just filler, it has real substance. Mississauga South is among the top targets for the Conservatives, missing it by less than 5% in the last election, and if any real Conservative beachhead will be established in the GTA, it will be on the banks of the Credit River.

It isn't as if Mississauga is downtown Toronto, beyond the South, the Conservatives even have an incumbent in the city in Mississauga-Streetsville (albeit via a floor crossing), and have a realistic shot at Mississauga-Erindale, meaning that in the best of times, they could control half the city riding's, meaning Mississauga is not exactly an electoral wasteland.

The only possible explanation I can think of for the cold shoulder the Conservatives are showing towards Missers is they have figured that general urban bashing will secure more rural seats than developing actual urban policies would gain urban seats. Mississauga voters need to realize that Conservatives ultimately do not care of them, which is a real reflection that the Conservatives are willing to ignore and trash a city that ultimately represents so much of what is right with Canada; economically successful because of moderate and balanced approaches, wonderfully multicultural, and based around a successful federation.

Pat Martin's histrionics

Pat Martin has a bit of a history of pulling vulgar stunts like these:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/071120/national/mulroney_schreiber_circus


The non-partisan committee advisers employed by the House of Commons had informed Szabo that the motions dealing with the Mulroney-Schreiber affair were not within the written mandate of the ethics committee.

So far following the advice of non-partisan employers, Pat Martin calls the Member for Mississauga-South a "son of a bitch" and a "disgrace". Martin, who has long been one of my least favourite MP's because of his seemingly pathological and often aimless hatred of the Liberals, shows again why the NDP is ultimately a protest party. Had the situations been reversed, and Szabo used unparliamentary language to disrupt important committee meetings, much more focus would be on Szabo. Actions like these show the NDP is more focused on creating shows like these than the business of Parliament.

I also want to include this bit of smack down my hometown member put on the NDP finance critic:

Paul Szabo, a Liberal MP for Mississauga South disputed Wasylycia-Leis's credibility on May 10, 2007 in the House of Commons. Wasylycia-Leis charged that the Liberals were unduly influenced by the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors (CAITI) who, she asserted, had donated $282,000 since 1993 to the Liberals and $53,700 to Liberal leadership contenders in 2006. Szabo pointed out that the CAITI did not exist until January 2007, after the Liberal Leadership Convention and continued "The member has immunity in the House. She can say whatever she wants, whether truthful or not, but she cannot say those things, I believe, outside the House. Will she go outside the House and say the same things to the media and expose herself to the consequences of misleading of the House of Commons?"
During the same Parliamentary session Szabo read the following email into the record written by CAITI to Wasylycia-Leis: "You need to publish a[n] immediate retraction of your false statements and assertions made in today's House of Commons today about our association funding the Liberal Party. CAITI did not come into existence until January 11, 2007. Please provide evidence to support you[r] statement that we have funded the Liberal Party to the tune of some $280,000. We have provided no funding to any political party directly or indirectly' Never have, Never will. Please advise immediately. In the absence of an immediate response, CAITI will pursue legal recourse." To date, Wasylycia-Leis has refrained from repeating her remarks outside the House of Commons where her Parliamentary immunity does not apply.