My guess is that they thought they could knock Trudeau out of the race early with the barrage of attack ads and fight the campaign on leadership with Mad Mulcair. A fight they might have won.

As you say, the ridiculously long campaign worked against them in the end.

Farewell $10k TFSA limit

I don't believe there are a whole lot of people out there who will miss that one.

That is the one tragedy in all this.

Website urges Doug Ford to succeed Harper | | Toronto Sun

Frying pans and fire come to mind !!

More like political suicide.

They should have rewatched that silly boxing match where he was - on paper - hopelessly outclassed ...

That said, he's not, and never will be, anywhere near his dad's calibre. I suspect a lot of us will be moaning, groaning & bitching soon. It was more an anti-Harper vote than a pro-Liberal one.

Exactly !! The obvious choice is surely ROB !!

when it talks about what a politician or his/her party will do if they win power, rather than talking ad-hominem about why the public shouldn't vote for the other guy. I'd have thought that is a fairly elementary question.

Somewhere in the middle, of course, there's the negative campaign ad that puts down the other party's policies but doesn't actually stray into belittling its leader. Those have been around for decades.

Nobody can deny that attack ads are effective (they absolutely scuppered Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff before their campaigns had even got off the ground). Of course, that might have some unintended consequences: I'd love to see an analysis of how much the anti-Ignatieff campaign helped Jack Layton to build the NDP's Orange Wave through Quebec in the 2011 election. That doesn't mean they are any less despicable as a political campaign tool.

In UK terms, it's the difference between the sharp-but-acceptable "Labour isn't working" ad in 1979 and the "demon eyes" image in the "New Labour, New Danger" ad that was deemed unacceptable by the ASA (before they abrogated responsibility for political advertising altogether).

I think the only people concerned about "Canada's international standing" are Canadians.

True. They're all using their spare cash to pay debt and relying on their home equity and/or government to see that they're ok in retirement.

But on the plus side, folks will soon be able to rob their RRSP even more to buy that dream home. That should make Toronto and Vancouver more affordable

My apologies. I didn't think that anyone would take my question seriously.

As I have said before, relying upon the electorate to make informed decisions about which candidate they should vote for is a complete waste of time. They don't vote for candidates anymore but leaders of parties and IMVHO, this is nonsense. Take the parties' name off the ballet and require the electorate to at least do a minimal amount of research before they mark their paper, failing which, let's have a "Canadian PM" reality type show where they can vote for people in a way similar to Canadian Idol.

It's not nonsense. The leader sets the direction and tone for the next government and MP's who are members of the same party will generally have the same views. Are you suggesting that people are stupid for simply voting on who they would prefer to be the PM?

Funny story on radio today

Lady said she was at the poll station and a 18-20 yr old male asked why Justin T name was not on his ballot paper he was handed ?

No, I am suggesting that they are, in fact, voting for the candidate that they believe will best represent their interests in Parliament. If that candidate happens to be a member of the governing party then your assertion is correct; providing, of course, that that party's caucus does not chose to oust the leader, as seems to frequently happen in Canadian jurisdictions or as recently occurred to the voters that voted Labour in the UK recently (for different reasons).

If the goal is to appoint a "national leader" then why not implement proportional representation on a national level and permit the leaders to then appoint members of their party to parliament based upon the number of votes they received (35% of the vote = 35% of the members) and simply do away with the "local" representatives?

This is purely a personal issue for me but, if I had voted, I would want to vote for an individual that had the balls to vote independently of the whip if members of his/her electorate wanted them to do so.

A house full of independents would be bliss. Nothing would get done but, one assumes, only sensible laws/budgets would be passed. Having to convince others each time one wishes to do something is far more onerous that having to convince others once every term and would ensure far more accountability than the present system does.