Free Republic

Remember when Liberal leader Stephane Dion unveiled his carbon tax plan earlier this year? The green lobby was thrilled. It had finally found a mainstream politician ready to fight an election on a promise to implement a tax on heating fuels, diesel and other traditional sources of energy that households consume. Environmentalists were convinced voters would rally around the plan, particularly since the carbon tax and ensuing higher energy prices would be offset with tax cuts targeted to low-and modest-income earners. Canada was set to become a world leader in the climate change debate. Dreams of a carbon tax are...

YEAR PARTY SEATS 1988 Reform 0 1993 Reform 52 1997 Reform 60 2000 Canadian Alliance 66 2004 Conservative 99 2006 Conservative 124 2008 Conservative 143 In most Toronto ridings the CPC made strong second place showings. In my riding, York Centre, the trend is: YEAR Conservative Vote % 2004 26 2006 30 2008 38

Conservatism may be a busted flush south of the border (as the experts assure us), but up north Stephen Harper has survived as Prime Minister and modestly improved his position by some 20 or so seats. He was on course for a Tory majority government until the global financial Armageddon hijacked the news cycle halfway through the campaign. Still, he's an incrementalist and he'll be reasonably satisfied not just with the Conservative gains but also with the vote-splitting among the opposition. After all, one unstated goal of his campaign was to weaken Canadians' assumption that the Liberals are the country's...

Canada's parliamentary elections entered the home stretch Friday with the start of three days of advance voting ahead of the main polling day on October 14. Elections Canada -- the independent federal agency that oversees the voting process -- said those who need to cast their ballots early could do so on Friday, Saturday or Monday. Tuesday was meanwhile the deadline for putting one's name onto the electoral list.

Why does the Elections Canada Web site deem it necessary to offer a feature that breaks down each riding's candidates by gender? (They throw in a couple stick figures, one wearing a skirt, one wearing pants, just in case we're truly confused.) For one thing, even the weakest-minded of us should be able to figure out for ourselves whether a candidate has two X chromosomes or not. First, there's the candidate's name as a clue. And if that's not good enough ("Lee"s and "Leslie"s can be confusing), we can conduct further investigation ... like doing a two-second Google search. Second,...