The bbq season's over and soon, so too will their reign as captain of the SS Canada..
Welcome back Steve..
Sin,
4 more dead soldiers and a report saying it's only going to get worse..
Try selling that to your majority hopes in Quebec
In related news today:
New Brunswick tells the Conservatives to go fuck themselves and boots them out.
Liberals oust Tories in New Brunswick vote
Sep. 18, 2006. 08:04 PM
CANADIAN PRESS
FREDERICTON — Shawn Graham’s Liberals ended seven years of Conservative rule by winning a majority in Monday’s New Brunswick election.
Graham, 38, ousted Premier Bernard Lord’s Conservatives in a race that was initially as tight as the pundits predicted.
Graham, who was easily re-elected in his riding of Kent, campaigned extensively on the need for change and it seemed to resonate with voters.
The result was the culmination of an uneventful, four-week campaign that was characterized by caution on the part of Lord, Graham and the NDP’s Allison Brewer.
Throughout the campaign, opinion polls suggested the race between the Tories and the Liberals was too close to call.
That proved to be true in early returns as the parties traded leads, but the Liberals soon opened a lead over the Tories that proved insurmountable.
With so much at stake, both Lord and Graham ran smooth, safe campaigns that promised New Brunswickers a lower cost of living, more jobs, and better opportunities under their administrations.
Lord, 40, seeking a third term for his government, appealed to New Brunswickers to stay the course of balanced budgets and lower taxes.
In the final days of the campaign, he attempted to open some ground between himself and Graham by pledging to cut the province’s income tax by eight per cent.
Lord also reminded voters that he enjoys a close, personal friendship with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, suggesting that those ties will translate into greater federal largesse for New Brunswick.
Commentary edit.... that probably wasn't such a smart idea
“We have a positive plan for the future,” he told supporters during the campaign. “Don’t risk it by returning to the ways of the past.”
New Brunswickers traditionally are very patient with their governments. Every administration since 1960 has served at least three terms in office.
For his part, Graham stumped on the reliable old standby in politics — time for a change.
Graham told voters that seven years of Tory government have produced a record of failure and lost opportunity.
He struck the most effective chords when he reminded New Brunswickers that their children are leaving the province, searching for better, more prosperous futures in Western Canada.
“It frustrates me, and I know it frustrates you, that we are losing a planeload of New Brunswickers every single week who are travelling to Alberta to work,” Graham said during one campaign stop.
“It’s my commitment to bring those New Brunswickers back home.”
Although Lord painted a rosy economic picture of the province, its economic outlook is uncertain. Population decline due to the exodus of young people is one of the biggest clouds on the province’s horizon.
Brewer, 52, the rookie leader of the NDP, struggled to deliver a clear message.
The party, which traditionally gets about 10 per cent of the vote and has never had more than two seats in the legislature, often appeared to be in disarray during the campaign. It fielded only 48 of a possible 55 candidates.
Brewer portrayed Lord and Graham as philosophically identical.
“To save on gas, they should be riding on the same bus,” she said at one point in the campaign.
She appealed to voters to at least give her party a voice in the legislature.
The NDP didn’t have a seat in the legislature at dissolution. The standings were 28 Tories, 26 Liberals and one Independent.
The election became inevitable when a backbencher told Lord he was resigning his seat to return to private life, a move that would have plunged Lord’s fragile government into minority status.
Lord said that rather than hold a byelection this late in his mandate, it was better to go to the people.
A new electoral boundaries map in effect for the campaign made predicting the outcome of the election much more difficult.
Many of the ridings have been changed, some significantly. Two rural ridings were eliminated and two new urban ridings created.
The Liberals said they were happy with the boundary changes since they would have won the last election in 2003 had the new ridings been in place then.
The Liberals lost one of their big election issues about midway through the campaign when gas prices started to plummet.
“The early Liberal attempt to really make hay on gasoline prices at the pump entirely dissipated when the price of gasoline went down by 17 to 19 cents a litre as the campaign unfolded,” said Tom Bateman, a political scientist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
By the time prices started dropping, both the Liberals and the Conservatives had promised significant cuts to the excise tax on gas — the Liberals by an immediate 3.8 cents a litre and the Tories by 4.5 cents a litre over four years.
