Tag: Federal campaign

Conservative platform’s a variation on the old bait-and-switch

Conservative platform’s a variation on the old bait-and-switch

Posted by | Sep 11, 2021 | |

Bait-and-switch is when a merchant advertises a product at a low-low price with the aim of tricking customers into buying something more expensive. The O’Toole Conservatives’ platform, revealed in its entirety this week, reverses the process. The big expensive promises they put in the window to lure voters turned out to be facade – Tiffany’s fronting a five-and-dime. After weeks of boasting about a platform implying they had plans for spending on health and day care to match the other parties, costing provided through the Parliamentary Budget Office revealed the moth-eaten tackiness of Conservative commitments. The ballyhooed $60 billion...

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This election there’s real $$ in the health care debate

This election there’s real $$ in the health care debate

Posted by | Sep 3, 2021 | |

It’s not unusual for health care to be selected by the Canadian public as a top election campaign issue. What is new this go around is the willingness of the Liberals and Conservatives to talk about it. Unlike the vague generalities characterizing their health care commitments in the last two federal elections, the two parties most likely to form government have been quick with some big-ticket commitments. We can probably thank the pandemic for that. It revealed the deficiencies in the health care system and shattered the over-riding obsession with spending restraint. The main plank in the Conservative platform,...

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Election 2019: Big parties downplay health care issue

Election 2019: Big parties downplay health care issue

Posted by | Oct 17, 2019 | |

Although polling has found that it ranks as one of the top issues for voters, health care has received little attention during the current federal election campaign. As Global News reported last week, a poll by Ipsos found that 35 per cent of respondents rated health care among their top three election issues, ahead of climate change at 29 per cent and affordability and taxes, tied at 26 per cent. The public opinion finding gave weight to complaints from doctors and other health professionals who lamented the absence of health from the list of topics chosen to frame the...

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Harper gloats while everyone overlooks the main story

Harper gloats while everyone overlooks the main story

Posted by | Sep 16, 2015 | |

After being knocked off course by (as a Prime Minister of the UK once famously put it  “events, dear boy, events,[1]”) the media took their cues from the sign bearers at Conservative rallies. As week seven of the election campaign began, they decided that the “economy” was once again the issue. Having the economy front and centre seems to work to the Conservatives’ advantage. Why else would they have ads and backdrops featuring people with faded-looking signs that say “Protect Our Economy?” And when they have the opposition parties attacking each other’s economic policies, can it get any better?...

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Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

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