Blog-tacular

Since I (and probably most of you) are not ones to roll out of bed at 6 am on Remembrance Day, I didn't see this when it first aired. Fortunately, this CityTV story on blogging has been flagged by one of its protagonists, Kenton Larsen.

And I'm happy to see another local blogger, Christian Cassidy, saying some wise things about blogging. At this rate, he's becoming the community's official spokesperson! In all seriousness though, the points he makes about anonymity and the blogosphere's continued reliance on mainstream journalism are boht well taken.

Make sure you check it out:

The Always Entertaining Brandon Sun Op-Ed Page Delivers Yet Again

Winnipeg has nothing on Brandon on two fronts: the entertainment value of its civic politics, and the entertainment value of its local paper's editorial page.

Further to last week's post on Brandon's 2010 mayoral race already being underway, The letters section in today's Brandon Sun features two side-splitting letters from two former mayoral candidates - one of whom continues to build her impressive case for why she should be Brandon's chief magistrate, and the other not only dousing cold water on his future political career, but also openly questioning the sanity of those who have decided to throw their hats in the ring.

First, Deveryn Ross, a bright and articulate - though highly polarizing - figure who ran for mayor in 2006. He finished a distant third to Dave Burgess, which in itself is an accomplishment given that a) he remains convicted of fraud (though he's maintained his innocence and filed a s. 696 appeal to have his conviction overturned) and b) two candidates for council seats said they would refuse to serve on council with him if he became mayor.

Anyway, it appears Deveryn has no desire to repeat his performance in 2006, and questions why anyone else would attempt to do the same:

Now that Shari Decter Hirst and Deborah Boschman have announced that they will be candidates in the upcoming municipal election, I have received numerous telephone calls and emails from persons wondering if I will be running again in 2010. In response to all of those inquiries, and in order to render further calls and emails unnecessary, this will again confirm that I have no intention of running for mayor or any other elected position.

Having settled that issue, there are a number of questions that any potential candidate for mayor or city council should be asking him or herself before they make the jump:

• Do you really, seriously, honestly, have a genuine chance of winning? If not, why are you even thinking of running?

• Is it because dozens, or even hundreds of Brandonites are asking you to? Or is it because you love to hear the sound of your own voice at debates, along with the media attention that comes with being a candidate?

• If you are considering running for mayor, do you have at least 200 volunteers willing to work long hours for your campaign? Do you have at least $10,000 to spend on advertising and campaign materials? Dave Burgess spent more than that in an election that was almost impossible for him to lose. If seriously challenged, I suggest he could spend upwards of $20,000 in 2010. Can you compete with that kind of spending?

• If you are running for city council, are there at least 20 people willing to help you put up signs, make phone calls and walk door to door with you? Are you willing and able to spend at least $1,000 on advertising, brochures, signs and other materials?

• How much of your privacy and family time are you willing to sacrifice? Are you really willing to be constantly stopped on the street, or to answer telephone calls at all hours to hear peoples’ complaints?

• Is your skin thick enough for a campaign? Are you prepared to have people gossip, speculate and spread rumours about your intelligence, sanity, honesty, ethics, marital status, sexual orientation and just about any other aspect of your personal life?

• Can you handle people pointing at you (and sometimes laughing with their friends) when you walk into a public place?

• Are you aware of — and willing to accept — the possibility that you will be ridiculed, threatened, spit upon or even punched while campaigning door to door? Those things happened to various candidates during the last mayoral campaign. In some cases, to more than one of us.

If after seriously considering all of those questions you remain willing to run for mayor or city council, then I encourage you to do so. But only after you have your head examined.

Ouch. Now, for a less cynical view, Ms. Deborah Boschman. Take it away, Deborah.

I just want the electorate to know that I think that we should be creating a buzz around Brandon.

I believe that people should be talking about Brandon continually for all of the right reasons. I think that everyone in the world should know where Brandon is.

I just contacted John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston last night via John Mayer’s Facebook account. (ed. note: Will they even show up together?)

I asked them to consider coming to Brandon because I told them that we are fundraising for all sorts of projects within Brandon and that their visibility would help us.

I then asked Mr. Mayer to contact Bono from U2 and I asked them to consider coming to Brandon and also doing a World End to Poverty concert or something from our city. (ed. note: Getting Willie Nelson to play a Farm Aid show might be more appropriate for the local, but I digress...)

I told them that we are located right smack dab in the centre of Canada and I asked them to consider this proposal and get back to me.

This is what I feel leadership is all about. It’s about wanting to create economic development, it’s about pursuing this and it’s about creating a buzz and having people talk about Brandon and what’s happening here.

This is what I am going to continue to do and just one of these times, after you have contacted enough individuals, someone may take you up on your offer and then off you go.

Leadership is about persistence, never giving up, never quitting, always pursuing, contacting leaders, countries, cities all over the world and connecting, communicating with them. (Ed note. Including when the file a restraining order?!)

I believe that leadership is about constantly moving forward and trying to improve the conditions for those that you were elected to serve and to represent.

Sweet Lord - pass the popcorn. This is going to be another fun civic race.

There's Always Time For Boot Camps

When I first heard the PC Party was toying with the notion of bringing back boot - scratch that, building kinder and gentler "wilderness camps" - for young ne'er-do-wells, I wanted to applaud them.

I just assumed with Tim Hortons backing out on its plans to build its own camp at Meditation Lake, someone else was stepping up to the plate and making sure the kids get out to nature.

A Day With Dr. Flanagan

This is extremely short notice, but if you're a political junkie and you have time to sneak over to the University of Manitoba today, there are not one, but two chances to learn a thing or two from one of the most interesting figures in Canadian politics today - Tom Flanagan.

Dr. Flanagan - perhaps best known as Stephen Harper's former campaign manager and one of the intellectual leaders of the former Reform party, but also a noted and somewhat controversial academic from the University of Calgary - has two speaking engagements today at the U of M. His first, at 12:30 in the University College lounge, deals with the last election campaign. Later, at 2:30 in 306 Tier, he's speaking to political science students. I'm busy earlier, but I'm going to try and check out Talk No. 2.

Given a) this lame attempt to keep Flanagan off campus and b) the frequent characterization of Dr. Flanagan on our local paper's op-ed pages as a Machiavellian schemer bent on wiping out Canadian progressives like the Jedi, why can't I shake the feeling the lecture will resemble this?

First CKX, Now This

This is not good news whatsoever.

A Moot Point, Perhaps?

A motion calling for the gun registry to be abolished passed second reading in Parliament last night, probably right around the time I fished one of those charming 10-percenter mailings out of my mailbox that accused the Liberals, New Democrats and Blocistes of colluding to criminalize law-abiding (and presumably hard-working and God-fearing) long gun owners.

Interestingly, when I scanned the list of MPs who voted for the private member's bill, my current Member of Parliament (Jim Maloway, Elmwood-Transcona, NDP) was among those who did not go with the majority in their party and said scrap the registry. While Maloway and NDP MP Niki Ashton (Churchill) voted to get rid of the registry, their other NDP colleagues from Manitoba -- Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) and Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North) -- as well as Liberal MP Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre) voted against the private member's bill.

Now, I doubt many of my fellow constituents will notice this distinction and may conclude - based on the tone of the ten percenters - that the New Democrats are nanny-state loving socialists who would regulate or prohibit anything fun like guns, or liquor, or sunshine.

So, I'd suggest two things here.

One, Mr. Maloway should tell his constituents, in no uncertain terms, he's against the gun registry, if that is indeed the case.

Two, to those Tories who feel the need to carpet bomb this riding with taxpayer-funded propaganda, send your missives about the gun registry elsewhere. Maybe add them to the pile of partisan crap you already jam into mailboxes in River Heights and Wolseley and count the number of votes your efforts to gut the gun registry win you in those areas.

It's 2000 Again

New York is much different than it was a decade ago. The Twin Towers and the House That Ruth Built are both gone - one destroyed by terrorists and the other destroyed by greed and tacky commercialism. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani handed over Gracie Mansion to Michael Bloomberg and ran for president, while Wall Street struck it rich and - like the Yankees - dug into the taxpayers' pockets in its time of need.

But tonight, when I flipped on the TV and watched the richest team in baseball cash in its voucher for its 27th championship, it felt it was like 2000 all over again.

There was Giuliani, in his FDNY Yankee hat, sitting beside the Yankee dugout.

There was Andy Pettitte on the mound, throwing the ball in a clinching game, just as he was when the Yankees won the Series in 1998.

There was Joe Girardi in pinstripes: except instead of crouching behind the plate as he was in 1996, when the Evil Empire won its first of four in five years, he was in the bench, where Joe Torre used to sit.

There were many new faces - Matsui, A-Rod, Mark Teixiera, Robinson Cano and a former Red Sock who cut his mullet, shaved off his beard and sold his soul - but the Yankees from way back like Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada were on the field.

Even in a new stadium, with new players and a new manager and different Steinbrenners in charge, it was as it was. Watching all of this, it felt the same way it did a decade ago.

Even if I'm a little older, a little heavier and probably not much wiser than I was in the late 90s, I feel no different than I did watching the Bronx Bombers when they dominated.

Yes, even though my chosen team has finally won not one, but two, world championships (and in the process probably turned into baseball's second most hated team) since the Yankees last celebrated a world championship.

Yes, even after seeing the field of the old ballpark in the south Bronx, in pouring rain, one spring day in 2005, when I told a security guard one of the dirtiest lies I've ever told and said I was a Yankee fan, just so he'd let me into the shuttered stadium, past the renovations, to get a brief glimpse of the House That Ruth Built.

After all of this, I can say the same thing I said in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Screw the Yankees. And there's always next year.

Black Rage in Brandon

I had no idea overlooking a MLA for a cabinet promotion was grounds for an entire region separating from Manitoba.

It would be an understatement to say the editorial writers at the Brandon Sun are in a black mood this morning. Their favourite social democrat, Brandon East MLA Drew Caldwell, did not get promoted to cabinet yesterday.

The lede on the cabinet shuffle story in today's Brandon Sun - ironically, right below a photo of homegrown MLA Jennifer Howard being sworn in as the province's new labour and immigration minister - read: "Western Manitoba has been denied a seat at the NDP government’s cabinet table yet again." Playing to the crowd, Tory leader Hugh McFadyen told the second city's daily paper: "I don’t know whether it’s because they don’t have confidence in Drew Caldwell or they simply don’t care about Brandon. (But) it’s a signal from Greg Selinger ... it demonstrates a lack of concern about that (sic) Brandon and that part of the province."

Not surprisingly, the opinion-givers were in high dudgeon when they wrote the editorial for this morning's paper. "Premier Greg Selinger has slapped western Manitoba in the face by refusing to include an MLA from this area in his new cabinet," they wrote. But the editorial team's capacity for hyperbole (been there, done that, have the T-shirt) reached entirely new levels when it came time to write the concluding graf:

"As for Westman, maybe we should be looking to cede from Manitoba and join Saskatchewan. While that thought is purely tongue in cheek, Selinger’s slap in the face does sting."

Vive le Westman, vive le Westman libre!

Given the invective, you'd be forgiven for concluding Caldwell's non-inclusion was the greatest tragedy that occurred in Western Manitoba yesterday -- next to this, naturally (and indeed, my heartfelt condolences go out to the Neufeld family).

So how was the rest of Brandon taking the news that its voice will not be heard at the cabinet table and that its lone NDP MLA will have to find something else to do on Wednesday mornings?

While I hate to legitimize discussion board chatter, here's a sample of what political watchers on a local website, Ebrandon, had to say about the Selinger Snub:

"The only thing that does is reaffirm what everyone already knows. "

"The Brandon East NDP association should be pretty frustrated/confused/angry. They have made Brandon-East one of the safest NDP seats in Manitoba (its been NDP since it was created in 1969), but they still can't get their MLA into cabinet."

"(Caldwell) had his chance and he blew it big time. The NDP is more vulnerable now than it has ever been in the past 10 years. They are going to run as much as possible a risk free government for the next two years because they want to get back into power. Calwell is too much of a risk. He is going to get re-elected, (and don't believe the conservatives when they say they have a chance of winning Brandon East), so there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by getting this guy into cabinet."

"Sadly as an NDP'er myself i could care less about whether or not Brandon East has a cabinet position."

"No need to reward a constituency with a cabinet minister if they're going to re-elect NDP every time no matter what. Save those posts for hotly contested seats in Wpg."

"Brandon (and all of Westman, for that matter) suffers by not having a voice at the cabinet table. If Mr. Caldwell doesn't measure up (despite being a three-term MLA and Selinger's only choice from Westman), then Westman needs a stronger representative. Drew has been judged by our new premier and found wanting. The message could not be clearer. Time for someone new."

While some people regurgitate the "slap to the face" meme, most seem to have concluded that either a) something is wrong with Caldwell that led to him not getting appointed or b) it's a matter of making tough political choices and there just wasn't enough room at the table for Drew. Either way, though, this small and admittedly unrepresentative cross-section of the broad community doesn't see this as a great slight to Westman, and they aren't exactly getting their shorts bunched in a knot about it.

In other words, it's nothing to leave Manitoba over. Move on.

The New Cabinet

The new provincial cabinet has been unveiled in Manitoba, and it's a little bigger and bulkier than it was before, with an extra deputy premier, more and different ministries, and a layer of new faces on top of the old guard. (Here's the news release, plus a helpful backgrounder which explains some of the extra responsibilities in greater detail.

First, no one is out, which is interesting. Despite media and blogger conjecture (guilty as charged) about Dave Chomiak and possibly Diane McGifford going off into the political sunset prior to an election no one expects them to run in, both ministers remain on executive council. McGifford retains the same portfolio (advanced education and literacy). Chomiak, as expected, is out as justice minister (handing the reins over to everyone's consensus pick, Andrew Swan) but he is now minister of "innovation, energy and mines," which appears to be the department formerly known as Science, Technology, Energy and Mines that was, until today, Jim Rondeau's bailiwick.
Plus, he gets to stay in charge of the perennially-contentious gaming portfolio, which is less fun than the name implies.

Second, two deputy premiers: New Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk keeps the title, but shares it with Eric Robinson. Symbolically, this is important - to my knowledge, no Aboriginal Manitoban has ever been deputy premier - and functionally it will lighten Wowchuk's load should the premier be out of town and someone has to answer questions about something other than dollars and cents.

Third, Manitoba has its first female finance minister and two new women, Jennifer Howard (labour and immigration) and the aforementioned Flor Marcelino (culture, heritage and tourism) are now in cabinet. This means Manitoba is closer to achieving gender parity in its cabinet (42% female) than in the legislature (33%). Two thumbs up for that.

Fourth, there is some slicing and dicing of cabinet responsibilities, as well as some renaming of existing ministries. Family Services and Housing has been carved up, with Kerri Irvin-Ross taking responsibility for the housing component as well as "community development," whatever that means, and Gord Mackintosh retaining responsibility for the less press-conferency and far less pleasant aspects (child protection, foster care, etc.) of the now extra-concentrated Dept. of Human Misery. Education deals just with, well, education under Nancy Allan, and the "citizenship and youth" part has been handed to new Healthy Living Minister Jim Rondeau, who is in his second stint in that department.

The government is also less focused on "competitiveness" than it was and the new department headed by Peter Bjornson to deal with economic growth, etc. has been rebranded as "Entrepreneurship, Training and Trade." Intergovernmental Affairs is now properly called "Local Government" under Ron Lemieux, which makes sense given that a large part of what constitutes "intergovernmental affairs" - dealing with Ottawa, the U.S., etc. - is actually handled by the premier.

Fifth, Steve Ashton goes back to dealing with highways, but he remains in charge of emergency measures and also gets responsibility for the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation. The construction industry will likely grumble a little after they got along fairly well with Lemieux, but such is life. Taken together, this is an adequately hefty portfolio for a defeated leadership rival.

Sixth, the other interesting news us political junkies will crave has to do with what changes Selinger makes to the unelected team in his office in the next little while, or if the same team that advised Doer remains in place. Will Michael Balagus stay on as chief of staff? Will Paul Vogt remain as clerk of the executive council? These decisions may have as much bearing on how the province is run during the next two years and the subsequent election campaign as who serves in a particular ministerial post.

Seventh, and finally, I have thoroughly enjoyed acting in my capacity as an unpaid, unelected and probably unwanted public advisor to Team Selinger. However, I'm glad to see they're either open to outside ideas or willing to be nice enough to not make me look like a complete fool by doing such things as:

Naming Flor Marcelino the minister of culture, heritage and tourism
Naming Nancy Allan education minister
Naming Stan Struthers agriculture minister
Naming Jennifer Howard to cabinet (though to labour and immigration rather than healthy living)
Naming Eric Robinson aboriginal affairs minister, while ensuring this portfolio places more emphasis on aboriginal training and education
Not naming Erin Selby to cabinet (because that would be as crass as, say, giving money to a community centre far down the priority list that just happens to be in a targeted constituency, and we know that's not how you roll, Premier Selinger...)
Keeping Christine Melnick where she is

... plus playing to pundit consensus by...

Naming Rosann Wowchuk finance minister
Naming Andrew Swan justice minister
Naming Bill Blaikie to cabinet (as conservation minister and government house leader instead of in charge of family services and housing)

The only real deviations here are that Selinger a) didn't name Drew Caldwell to cabinet, thus bringing a Westman presence to the cabinet table and b) failed to dedicate someone other than Wowchuk (whose plate is pretty full as finance minister) to specifically deal with the Hydro fallout and all the other associated issues with the Crown corporation. The former may not matter all that much, but I predict Selinger may regret the latter if Hydro becomes an all-consuming issue in the months ahead.

Flor Is In?

According to the breaking news ticker on the Free Press website, Flor Marcelino is the new culture, heritage and tourism minister, and she accidentally jumped the gun by sharing the news with some of her constituents.

Amazing - she's not even a rookie yet (at least not for a few minutes, anyway), and already she made a rookie mistake. Oops.

If this is true, I hope the Selinger brain trust doesn't hold the guy who counseled them to make that specific call accountable for Marcelino's unfortunate breach of tradition and protocol, and promptly decide in the next five minutes to rescind all of their cabinet picks.