Tonight’s debate, hosted by Horsney Parish Church and moderated by Father Bruce Batstone, invited candidates from the five largest parties running in my constituency, Hornsey and Wood Green:

• Suhail Rahuja from the Conservative Party
• Gordon Peters from the Green Party
• Catherine West from the Labour Party
• Lynne Featherstone from the Liberal Democrats (incumbent)
• Clive Morrison from UK Independence Party

The other three candidates were invited to submit questions for the debate.

That’s not what happened though.

Before the debate could even start (to a full church), a man walked up to the front of the room with a chair and set up beside the Tory candidate. Once the introductions happened, he announced he was Geoff Moseley from the Hoi Polloi party and he had a democratic right to attend the debate but hadn’t been invited.

He rambled and argued with the Father Bruce for a couple minutes while the audience booed and heckled for him to leave. He continued to refuse, getting increasingly obstinate until finally Father Bruce capitulated and said his rambles counted as his two minute introduction. We then had the introductory remarks from the other candidates, after which Father Bruce invited Helen Sbipy-Vann of the Christian Peoples Alliance to the stage to present her party. Finally, Moseley argued for another 2 minutes and got to make his introductory comments.

We were promised a 5 party debate and got 2 more candidates for free. Sadly Frank Sweeney of the Workers Revolutionary Party wasn’t there.

Further chaos ensued after the first round of questioning, when Moseley began arguing with the Tory candidate during his attempt to answer the question (which was about protecting local government services). The audience got rowdy and a number of people rushed the stage to encourage Moseley to leave. During this confrontation, Morrison (UKIP) started blowing a whistle.

Finally, Father Bruce asserted control over the situation and calmed everyone down. He reminded both Moseley and the audience that he was in charge and he would allow the debate to proceed if everyone could maintain some level of respect for his chair.

At some point during this altercation, someone called the police because later they were observing the debate from the back of the church.

The debate ended far more peacefully than it proceeded with a moment of silence led by Father Bruce.

So what was actually said during the debate?

Rahuja argued Tory party lines about the dangers of putting a Labour-SNP government in charge and how his government had made necessary cuts. He was condescending to Moseley (who snapped at him too) and West.

Peters argued for action on climate change, inequality and democracy. He was much more passionate during the questions and earned some supportive applause from the audience.

West was articulate and intelligent. She showed compassion for Moseley’s right to present his views. She wants to lobby for local businesses to pay a living wage – a commitment beyond the Labour manifesto. She drew strong support from the audience on numerous occasions. Easily tonight’s winner.

Featherstone talked about her values (live and let live, taking care of those less able, internationalism, civil liberties) and took credit for introducing same sex marriage to England & Wales and a campaign to end female genital mutilation. She wasn’t as strong as West but earned some support from the audience.

Morrison was not your typical UKIP candidate (not just because he’s black). He identified himself as a foster carer, a community activist, a Christian and an immigrant since 1969. He talked mostly about community and his disillusionment with mainstream parties and actually very little about the UKIP platform (though he mentioned it was fully-costed). He complained about having to deal with the perception that UKIP is a racist party and he wanted to cut across racial barriers (as he identified that racism is still a part of our culture). He was a bit soft-spoken and not deep on policy beyond supporting the community.

Moseley started his own party after being disgusted by all the mainstream parties – except the Greens. He gave up on Labour because of Iraq and blamed the LibDems (who he voted for in 2011) for getting into bed with the Tories. Not very deep on policy but very amusing.

Spiby-Vann began with “I’m a Christian and I love Jesus” and her platform stemmed from that. She was very soft spoken, read from her policy leaflet (although to be fair, she didn’t know she’d be invited on stage tonight) and focused on how the breakdown in marriage was the cause of most social ills.

As it’s late and this post is already long enough, I’ll just pull out some of the most amusing quotes of the night (as close to accurate as possible when in quotes, paraphrased otherwise) from my notes.

Spiby-Vann would make sure that our education system teaches men to respect women and strengthen traditional marriage. She would give £10K grants to newly married couples and provide marriage training courses because in her faith communities, she doesn’t see the difficulties of divorces coming up. She also suggested we could solve part of the housing crisis by removing the “stigma” of young adults living at home while starting university through advertising campaigns.

Rahuja seemed to suggest that voting for a Labour Government would mean people would die (based on the people who died in the NHS Staffordshire issue). He also said rent control is a ludicrous idea that would be a disaster – we only had to look to Venezuela or Moscow (where he lived) to see why.

Rahuja to Moseley: “This a democracy, but I guess in your case it’s more dim than democracy.”

In answer to a question about removing legislation around hiring practices for small businesses, Featherstone gave a strong defence of employment law protects us from discrimination and called it “absolutely vital.” She pointed out that under her push to improve employment for black and minority ethnic communities, the Department of Work and Pensions did an experiment where they sent fake job applications to employers – half with British names and half with more ethnic sounding names (all with equivalent qualifications). Unsurprisingly, the British sounding names were more frequently offered interviews.

In answer to the same question, Moseley said “I don’t know what kind of policy you expect me to come up with, I’m not in it to win this election.” To which Rahuja remarked that at least he was right about that.

Rahuja: “Very rarely I agree with these panellists” in reference to West, Featherstone, and Peters who all supported keeping the number of MPs around 650.

Moseley started his closing statement with: “What Gordon [Peters] said” and “I love the Greens – the only mainstream party worth a spit”.

Morrison: “I’m not tied to a political party.”

Spiby-Vann’s closing statement discussed the need for a “new moral vision” and to “promote godliness.” She said “marriage is the safest setting for sexual intercourse” and that “marriage demonstrates a man loves a woman – he pledges to remain faithful and she pledges to take care of him.” She then described how marriage protects women. I think this level of Christian fundamentalism managed to shock the relatively godless and liberal residents of Crouch End.

Amid his party’s plummeting polling numbers, Progressive Conservative Premier Jim Prentice needed to re-connect with voters and rebuild trust for his party during the leaders debate last night.

Instead, he told the only woman on stage that “I know the math is difficult…” in a discussion around tax increases. Very soon after #MathIsHard started trending in the province and NDP leader Rachel Notley was able to remind viewers that this is the leader who doesn’t want Albertans to “worry their pretty little heads.”

There’s an adage that governments typically lose elections, rather than opposition parties win them. In this case, I think Prenctice just lost it and Notley has a truly unexpected chance to win it.

For more on the debate, read Don Braid’s analysis in the Calgary Herald.

To my mind, no humanist group in Canada has ever hosted a similar event, but the first major difference here was how, in their opening speeches, nearly every candidate identified as either being a member of the BHA or an atheist. This was especially surprising for some as all major parties, including the Tories and UKIP, were in attendance.

I live tweeted the event, so you can find my reactions under #HHEP14. I thought I’d just post some additional thoughts here.

First, the strongest speaker was, by far, UKIP candidate Tony Brown. Faced with a largely antagonistic audience, Brown made his best case to connect with the audience, discussing his upbringing in an “atheist family” and noting his admiration for Richard Dawkins. He repeatedly tried to draw a link between the EU, and particularly the large European People’s Party (representing numerous Christian Democrat parties), and the Catholic Church. It was a fairly novel argument and could appeal to a nationalistic secularist. Nevertheless, his line that “I’m not a climate change denier, the climate has always been changing” and subsequent denial of man-made climate change was met with heckles.

The other stand-out speaker was Caroline Allen of the Green Party. Her smartest line was to admit that the Green’s science policy had been pretty weak in the past but that they’ve done a lot of work on it and people should give it another look (I will, the link is here). Unfortunately, she lost some credit on this front (in my mind) by maintaining the party line against fracking and GMOs.

Otherwise, the Liberal Democrat, Matt J McLaren, and Tory, Caroline Attfield, both sounded a bit nervous, although McLaren caught his stride near the end and made a strong argument about secularism as a core Lib-Dem value. Attfield, meanwhile, went off policy on a couple points, suggesting that Europe could play a bigger role on security issues (she clarified that she meant foreign policy when probed) and that the role of the Church of England is shrinking.

Dr Louise Irvine of the National Health Action Party made a spirited defense of the NHS and represented her single issue party well. On other issues, she sided between Labour and the Lib Dems (ironically also where she was seated).

Finally, Mary Honeyball, representing Labour and the only sitting MEP at the debate, gave a decent defense of her party, but I got the sense after that she didn’t really inspire anyone. Whether she was aiming to play it safe or not, I think there was a missed opportunity by Honeyball.

My question, prefaced with a thanks to the parties that voted for recent clinical trial regulations (#AllTrials), was on how the candidates would involve evidence in their decision making in the future. Each gave a relatively predictable answer (evidence is widely seen as a good thing), with Dr Irvine mentioning the value of publishing all clinical trials and Brown admitting that the UKIP vote against the regulation was about keeping the policy within the UK, rather than being personally against the idea.

I realised later I should have asked if the candidates would publicly change their mind if evidence proved them wrong. When I asked this to Brown after, he pointed out that Nigel Farage has repeatedly done just that, in particular, noting where his party has been far off.

After the event, I went for a couple drinks and finally managed to meet Andrew Copson, the BHA’s Chief Executive, who very expertly chaired the evening.

Few predicted any chance of him losing his position in yesterday’s election and perhaps the only shock was the size of his victory, with 74% of the city voting for him.

Meanwhile, Edmonton saw a heated race as popular incumbent Steve Mandel opted to retire on a high note (rather than be unseated like most of his predecessors). Three councillors stepped forward to challenge for the seat, with Don Iveson’s ‘policy wonk’ campaign taking over 60% of the vote in the end. Iveson’s campaign drew on his time at the University of Alberta and engaged a number of my friends.

Both mayors have promised to slow urban sprawl by investing in urban density, mass transit, and bicycle lanes. This approach is familiar and popular in Vancouver, where Gregor Robertson is equally popular.

The results aren’t too surprising for anyone who closely follows Alberta politics. Despite the province’s tendency to vote overwhelming for Conservative provincial and federal parties, the cities tend to be more liberal and many mayors of both major cities have been further to the left than their provincial and federal colleagues.

Meanwhile, a right-wing slate of candidates for Airdrie’s city council was rejected in favour of the incumbents.

And congrats to my aunt who was re-elected to the Rocky View Municipal Council.

Premier Alison Redford is a red-Tory. Once thought extinct, this political species truly represents the “Progressive Conservative” brand. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative, these politicians have no desire to restrict human rights, while also want to keep deficits small and let business operate more freely. Redford won her party’s leadership by promising to support teachers and doctors.

Danielle Smith is a pure libertarian, direct from the Fraser Institute, and seems to legitimately have no interest in legislating along morality. Unfortunately for her, her party comes from a combination of fringe far-right parties (Wildrose and the Alberta Alliance) which sought to push these socially regressive policies. Smith, believing that free speech means speech should have no consequences, refused to distance herself or her party from the racist and homophobic views that were all too common in a slate of fringe nutcases, and consequently her party was trounced in the city that recently elected a brown Muslim university professor as mayor and in the other city that has a popular Jewish mayor.

The Liberal Party of Alberta is cursed by their name, despite being entirely independent from their federal cousins who forever tarnished the big red brand in Alberta. Their leader, Raj Sherman, is a former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, who was kicked (or quit, I forget) from caucus for openly criticizing the government over its handling of health care. He joined and then became the leader of the Liberals, but failed to make a break through. Many thought with a PC leader that the Liberals would curve right and attempt to bleed soft PC support from the left while the Wildrose tore in from the right. Instead, he released a platform to the left of the NDP, promising new taxes on the rich (Alberta currently has a flat income tax) and free university tuition.

The NDP doubled its caucus and nearly won in Lethbridge with a popular local candidate. Its leader, Brian Mason, was the only veteran leader, but he has yet to break through in quite the way that Jack Layton did for the federal NDP. They almost sadly consider getting 11% of the vote and 4 seats to be a rousing success.

Finally, the Alberta Party started basically through Twitter and Web 2.0 fads, focussed on “doing politics differently”, nominated and targeted only a few ridings, and failed to even make a dent in any. The Alberta Greens were de-registered after the previous election for failing to file their paperwork, and their former leader was just elected as a Wildrose MLA (basically the Greens were really big on property rights which aligned with the Wildrose). In place of the Greens was the EverGreen Party that failed to even register on the radar (can anyone name their leader?).

Party loyalty and tribalism being what they are, there is little to no chance that the Liberals, NDP, and other left or centre alternatives will make efforts to cooperate or merge. Therefore, under first-past-the-post, these parties will continue to split the vote in many ridings and the best hope for progressive policies in Alberta in this election was in many of the PC candidates.

Moderate, pragmatic, and relatively progressive ideas were starting to take hold. Plans were on the way to improve the Alberta School Act and mass transit was taking precedence over freeways.

But now polls are suggesting that Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Party are on track to a majority government. Of course, polls can be wrong, and things can still turn around for Redford (or for that matter for Brian Mason or Raj Sherman), but we’re sitting in dangerous territory.

Much ink is starting to spill on Smith’s dangerous flirtations with so-called conscience rights whereby marriage commissioners and physicians would be free to discriminate against gays, lesbians, interracial couples, and women. Dave Cournoyer took a closer look at some of the candidates carrying the Wildrose flag, showing that a Wildrose government could very easily put homophobes, Christian extremists, and bigots into cabinet.

I think the key to understanding Albertan politics is that it’s not so much about left or right, conservative or liberal, but about pure populist tribalism.

In over 100 years, the province has been represented by 4 different governments. The leaders change, but the governments are routinely re-elected, so long as they maintain the air of competence (actual competence is not required).

When government change occurs, it seems a bit like dominos falling. Once a certain threshold of legitimacy is crossed by the opposition – or perhaps illegitimacy by the current government – voters move en masse to the new choice.

This is why the federal Conservatives win with more than 60% of the vote in many Alberta ridings and arguably even how Linda Duncan increased her share of the vote in 2011. It also explains the quick rise of Naheed Nenshi, the rising support of Stephen Mandel, and the lasting strength of other mayors like Dave Bronconnier and Al Duerr.

It’s this key that also worries me most. With the Wildrose is seen as the alternative and the PCs looking like corrupt crooks, it could very well shift even more. Hence, my bets (and fears) for the final result are Wildrose – 50%, PCs – 19%, Liberals & NDP – 11% each, Alberta Party/EverGreens – 4% each, others – 1%.

Each candidate has their strengths and weaknesses, many of which were obvious at the start of the campaign, some have been exposed through the race, and a couple have tried to counter their weaknesses . To determine my ranking I compared each candidate to each of the other candidates, determining subjectively which I would rather see lead the party.

My key issues for leader are:

1. They must be able to grow the party in Western Canada. We need to win seats in Saskatchewan and Alberta and build on our strength in BC and Manitoba. We also have to break into Ontario. These are where the new seats are coming, and its where any future government will need its base. This means understanding rural and western issues and reaching those voters where they are.
2. Obviously we also need to hold Quebec. Polls are starting to show that wave of support simmer down. While we’re still competitive, we can’t slip much further. I want a leader who can hold 30-60 seats without costing ones in Western Canada. Nothing alienates Albertans more than extra deference to Eastern issues.
3. Our leader must be able to articulate a positive, progressive vision for Canada. We won’t beat Harper by going negative and we don’t need to be Liberals – there already is a party for the mushy middle. This includes reaching out to non-voters and those disaffected by the poisonous partisan rhetoric.
4. A strong commitment to keeping Canada secular.

Before I get to my rankings, here’s what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate:

Brian Topp

Strengths: Well developed progressive policy, establishment support, strategic experience, provincial government experience

Weakness: Lacks a seat

Improving: Charisma

Martin Singh

Strengths: Pharmacy, small business, and reaching new Canadians.

Weaknesses: Inexperience, his association with the Faith and Social Justice committee, and his willingness to use religious organizations for partisan purposes.

Peggy Nash

Strengths: Progressive and union bona fides, urban Ontario issues, social media reach

Weaknesses: A number of debate gaffs, not sure she understands Western or rural Canada, I didn’t find her very personable, most likely to take NDP back to the 90s

Thomas Mulcair

Strengths: Name recognition, Quebec organization, caucus support, environment, a shrewd politician, provincial cabinet experience

Weaknesses: Vague policy that mostly mirrors the 2011 platform, not clear how he will build Western strength by “repeating the success in Quebec” (the politics are quite different), most centrist, no commitment to electoral reform.

Paul Dewar

Strengths: Experience, intelligence, ability to connect with the grassroots, policy, support across Western Canada

Weaknesses: Weak French raises flags in Quebec,

Improving: French

Nathan Cullen

Strengths: Positive message, progressive values, definitely gets rural/Western Canada, best sense of humour, willing to question the monarchy

Weaknesses: the Cullen plan, lack of support in Quebec

Niki Ashton

Strengths: Positive and progressive message, cares and understands Western issues, appeals to young non-voters, intelligent

Weaknesses: campaign fundraising numbers point to organizational weakness,

Now, with no further ado my tentative Rankings

1. Niki Ashton
2. Brian Topp
3. Paul Dewar
4. Nathan Cullen
5. Thomas Mulcair
6. Peggy Nash
7. Martin Singh

Were I to fill in a ballot today, I would potentially reserve my right to omit Martin Singh and potentially Peggy Nash from the list. Singh singlehandedly knocked himself off my preferences on day one when he discussed his desire to use the leadership race as a platform for his Sikhism. While totally within his right, such a flagrant disregard for the unwritten secularism of Canadian politics causes him to lose my vote. Nash drops to the bottom from what might have been a much higher ranking because of her consistently poor showing through the entire race. Examples of her missteps are numerous including some serious concerns about her adamant support of the hated gun registry. She lacks passion and her Toronto-centric feel would drive alienated Western voters back to the Conservatives.

Niki Ashton on the other hand has a deep understanding of Western Canada as Canada’s only opposition MP from the rural prairies. She is smart, quick, and has demonstrated through this campaign that age should be no barrier to becoming leader of the Official Opposition. My few concerns about her are easily negated by the growing strength of the NDP and her demonstrated experience in her own constituency. While she is still a long shot in this contest, a strong showing will serve her well for the next leadership race when people may be more willing to grant her the respect she has already earned.

The rest of my rankings are fairly close and are subject to some shuffling up to and on the day of the convention. I see Mulcair as having slightly better than even odds of winning the race, but I remain concerned about his lacklustre policy announcements and his unclear plan to apply the success he (at least claims to have) crafted in Quebec to the rest of Canada. I also wonder about his previous stances on Israel and his curious doubts over photos of bin Laden’s death. While likely the best placed to hit the ground running toward an election, it bears remembering that with a majority government and the Liberals in interim leadership for another year, there is time for any of the candidates to craft their public image enough to be a strong contender against Harper in 2015.

So until the convention I will continue to watch for the subtle differences, announcements, and signs that could shift any of these candidates. I think any of my top 5 choices would be a strong contender and I would continue to support the party under the leadership of any of them. I’ll let you know if this ranking changes significantly (and will likely be on Twitter on convention day).

I noted that it didn’t seem like it violated any of the NDP or Canada Election rules, but one further recollection I realized that the rules being broken weren’t by Martin Singh’s campaign but by the Malton Gurdwara.

A Gurdwara is a Sikh Temple and the Malton Gurdwara is operated by a federally registered charity: Sri Guru Singh Sabha Canada. From its T3010 return we learn that its charitable mandate is 70% “Places of worship, congregations, parishes, dioceses, etc.” and 30% “Food or clothing banks, soup kitchens, hostels”. In its 2011 return it claimed to perform no “political activities during the fiscal period.”

From the Canada Revenue guidelines around charities and political/partisan activities:

149.1

(6.1) Charitable purposes

For the purposes of the definition “charitable foundation” in subsection (1), where a corporation or trust devotes substantially all of its resources to charitable purposes and

(a) it devotes part of its resources to political activities,
(b) those political activities are ancillary and incidental to its charitable purposes, and
(c) those political activities do not include the direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, any political party or candidate for public office,

the corporation or trust shall be considered to be constituted and operated for charitable purposes to the extent of that part of its resources so devoted.

(6.2) Charitable activities

For the purposes of the definition “charitable organization” in subsection (1), where an organization devotes substantially all of its resources to charitable activities carried on by it and

(a) it devotes part of its resources to political activities,
(b) those political activities are ancillary and incidental to its charitable activities, and
(c) those political activities do not include the direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, any political party or candidate for public office,

the organization shall be considered to be devoting that part of its resources to charitable activities carried on by it. [emphasis original]

Furthermore from that advisory:

A registered charity is prohibited from directly or indirectly supporting or opposing a candidate for public office as well as a political party. In deciding whether a charity is engaged in prohibited activity, we generally consider whether the activity can reasonably be construed as intending to influence the outcome of the election. [emphasis mine]

The rules get a bit murkier as “hosted a leadership poll for a single candidate” is not specifically outlined in the examples cited by the CRA but this feels like its crossing a line into a church endorsing a specific leadership candidate.

To contact the Canada Revenue Service call 1-800-267-2384. Let me know if you take this story farther.

In a typical election there is one or two days when you have to make your way to the local community centre, school, or (begrudgingly) church where officials check your identity, give you a ballot and a little cardboard cubicle to mark it in.

The NDP leadership contest, on the other hand, is done by mail-in or electronic ballot – or live at the convention.

So it’s very interesting to see this release from Martin Singh’s campaign about “easily accessible voter polling stations” in Ontario, which happen to be his Mississauga campaign office and a local Gurdwara.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing against this practice in the NDP Leadership rulebook [pdf here] or the Canada Election Act. In some ways it’s a creative way to ensure that every member gets a chance to vote.

Of course the timing for what might be considered a shady electoral process couldn’t be worse for Singh. But in a race where every last vote is likely to make the difference between an early ballot loss and a late ballot victory, I guess every candidate has to exhaust every option they have.

In which case, it becomes increasingly hard to justify that whoever wins will have a sweeping mandate to implement their personal platform. Perhaps in light of the attack ads during the last election, no candidates are talking about how they would view a late ballot win. What would will they compromise to attract voters from other camps?

For most candidates, I wouldn’t argue that this is an issue. There are (at least) two candidates though that I see this being an issue.

First, and most obvious, is Nathan Cullen and his plan for joint nominations. I’ve heard and read a number of people who really like Cullen and his approach to politics but are very wary of him winning and implementing a strategy that might compromise the party and throw the next year into wild media speculation.

There is currently little evidence that Cullen has the first-ballot support to win on the first or second ballot. In which case, if he manages to pull off a win, it seems most likely that it will come from other supporters who maintain some reservations about Cullen. This leads to the obvious question: Will Cullen claim to have the mandate to implement his plan if he wins on a late ballot?

On the other hand, there may be enough ballots remaining (in person and online) on convention day for Cullen to discuss what parts of his plan are negotiable to gain support for later ballots.

The second candidate facing a similar issue is Thomas Mulcair’s plan to “bring the middle to us.” His social democratic bona fides have been routinely brought into question during the race as many (I believe justifiably) fear he will move the party more to the mushy middle to win over soft Liberals.

The question for Mulcair at this stage is if he doesn’t win on the first or second ballot (and he is probably the only one with the chance to), what will he offer those remaining sceptics to join his camp?

I’ll try to offer up my final thoughts and endorsements in the next day or two, which will be subject to change until I get to voting (electronically) on election day. With luck the Vancouver Point Grey constituency association will be organizing a pub day viewing and voting session if you want to hang out (if we can ever get the schedule from the NDP). For now, I encourage you to check out Greg Fingas’ comments on his blog (which I mostly agree with).