For comparison, let’s look at CPC and LPC numbers during leadership races in the respective parties.

CPC sold memberships over a three month window December 2003-March 2004.
251,000 members, 109,000 new members
(source: Globe and Mail. March 12, 2004)

LPC sold memberships over a three month window April 2006-June 2006.
185,000 members; 92,000 new members
(source: Canadian Press, July 15, 2006)

Comparatively, the NDP sold memberships over a five month window October 2011-February 2012.
128,351 members; 39,219 new members
(source: NDP, Pundit’s Guide reports 44% increase from September 1 2011)

UPDATE: Chantal Hebert reports that fewer NDP members will vote for that party’s new leader than Bloc members voted for a new BQ leader. The NDP has 42 MPs in Quebec while the Bloc has 4.

Moins de Québécois vont voter pour chef #npd que pour celui du Bloc. 14 039 membres ont participé à la sélection de Daniel Paillé.

— chantal hébert (@ChantalHbert) February 21, 2012

These are not at all great numbers for Canada’s official opposition.

Justin Trudeau gives the speech of his, nay our lives.

Religious activists set to run for Conservatives

OTTAWA — Three high-profile religious activists have decided to try their handsat partisan politics by throwing their hats into the ring for the Conservative Party.

The moves have led to warnings that the party not push a moral-values agenda as it tries to show a moderate face for the coming election campaign.

“I think Canadians in general like to feel that their politics are secular,” said John Bryden, a Liberal-turned-Conservative MP who lost his party’s nomination to one of the new candidates.

“I think they get very uneasy when religion — any religion — becomes a factor in the nomination process or the election process.”

…

University of Waterloo political scientist Peter Woolstencroft, a long-time observer of conservative politics, said many candidates come out of social groupings, and it appears that only Christian or fundamentalist groups cause scrutiny.

Nonetheless, he said that many Canadians wonder whether religious groups are going to be responsive to a diverse community.

“The question of religion causes people concern,” he said. “They’re afraid that people are going to use their religious precepts as the basis for how they approach matters of public policy.”

The same week back in 2004, the Liberal Party was doing some push-polling. Again, the Globe and Mail reports,

Liberal Party pollsters were in the field last week asking Ontarians whether they were “more or less likely to vote for the Conservative/Alliance if you knew they had been taken over by evangelical Christians.”

This was clearly a campaign-style poll to test-drive a negative campaign against Mr. Harper.

Fast forward almost 8 years.

Here’s the Globe and Mail today,

Liberals fear pro-lifers trying to take over weakened federal party

Some federal Liberals fear single-issue pro-lifers are trying to hijack their weakened party.

Their fears have been stoked by the apparent re-emergence of a group calling itself Liberals for Life, which is promoting Trifon Haitas’s bid to represent the party in a March 19 by-election in Toronto-Danforth.

The group has issued an “urgent message” to Liberals in the riding, urging them to support Mr. Haitas, a Greek-Canadian journalist who formerly ran for the Green party.

“Trifon Haitas is the only candidate who is committed to stop the slaughter of unborn children in Canada,” the electronic message states.

The message includes a link to an endorsement of Mr. Haitas by Campaign Life Coalition, a national organization opposed to abortion.

Ottawa envisage de faire des coupes de l’ordre de 10 % dans son prochain budget, soit l’équivalent de 8 milliards $ par année, a précisé le ministre du Tourisme et de la Petite entreprise, Maxime Bernier.

Jusqu’ici, le gouvernement de Stephen Harper a toujours précisé que deux scénarios étaient envisagés quant aux coupes budgétaires, soit des compressions de l’ordre de 5 % ou de 10 %. Or, il semble qu’on ait retenu cette deuxième option.

Ottawa plans to make cuts of about 10% in its next budget, the equivalent of $ 8 billion a year, said Minister of Tourism and Small Business, Maxime Bernier.

So far, the Harper government has always said that two scenarios were considered with respect to budget cuts, cuts in the order of 5% or 10%. It seems that we have chosen the second option.

“All three candidates are saying the same thing — it’s kind of just with different levels of vitriol,” said [Snobelen, a] 57-year-old former MPP, seen as the most moderate of the three contestants.

“Reagan’s 11th commandment is not a bad thing to follow,” he said, referring to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s party-first axiom that “thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

Snobelen, from the Toronto Sun,

I vividly remember the day when my friend and colleague Rob Sampson resigned as Ontario Minister of Corrections.

…

The questions surrounding Minister Oda are more sinister than those that confronted Sampson. She is accused of misleading (read … well, you know) Parliament about her role in the defunding of Kairos. The specifics of how (or not) the word not came to be on a document aren’t important. What is important, at least to me, is the notion of what it is to be an honourable member of the government.

The definition of ministerial responsibility is always subject to the judgment of the government of the day. Reasonable people can disagree over where the bar should be set. But honour is a personal matter.

My friend Rob Sampson did the honourable thing. Oda should do the same [and resign].

We’ve seen the 11th commandment broken many times during the GOP debates. And, we’ve seen the Canadian conservative analogue of it broken during this Ontario PC race for PCPO President. But let’s not pretend that one candidate is above it all.

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

…

Pipeline shipping costs remain lower than rail, and a lack of readily available tanker cars may create a bottleneck.

The availability of tank cars may create a temporary “hiccup” in transport capacity, according to Tony Hatch, an independent railroad analyst in New York. Rail cars are “a pretty hot commodity,” as a result of demand from oil producers in North Dakota, he said.

Buffett has been a big ally of President Obama. His personal secretary is even sitting with Michelle Obama tonight for the State of the Union address, according to POLITICO. Buffett and his secretary have become willing talking points for the Obama administration,

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s longtime secretary will be joining first lady Michelle Obama in her box at tonight’s State of the Union, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced on Twitter.

Debbie Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett for nearly two decades, has become a symbol in the White House’s fight over the tax code and economic fairness. Obama is expected to renew his push for the so-called “Buffett rule” that would bring investment taxation levels into line with income taxation levels — and ensure that upper income earners pay rates as high as middle-class Americans.

“Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” President Obama said in September, when he unveiled his American Jobs Act proposal. It’s a trope that Buffett himself has repeated, as he has campaigned for higher taxes on investment income.

Meanwhile, shipping oil via pipeline instead of via train costs $3 less per barrel. On one hand Obama and Buffett are hiding behind an image of reluctant capitalism, but when it comes to the energy costs of the middle-class, Buffett wins without hesitation.

Why is this significant? Jobs, the economy and the political base. Both Canada and the United States would benefit tremendously if the Keystone pipeline project were approved. Thousands of jobs would be created in the United States if the administration were to give it the go-ahead. In Canada, it goes without saying that we would share the windfall of the economic benefits.

The hitch, however, is the political base of the governments in our respective countries. For Mr. Obama, he has calculated that despite a backdrop of a fragile underemployed American economy, the environmentalist base is vocal enough that it could make things tricky for his re-election. In Canada, the opposition is more of a passive nuisance on this. TO be sure, we are facing down not only the American left on this issue for Keystone, but delays and filibustering of the process at home threatens development of the Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast.

Interestingly, the Canadian political tone has switched from one of defence (playing the shield on an issue) to one of offense (playing the sword). For Mr. Harper, a deliberate re-positioning on energy and the environment is becoming clear as Canada steers away from the Kyoto protocol and from paying lip service to action on the ‘green’ file. The government is indeed finding its confidence to push back on the environmental lobby and this is a marked change from just two years ago. Of course, this confidence comes from Parliamentary stability via a majority mandate. Mr. Obama, on the other hand is glueing together the pieces of his fractured base as he faces a tough fight this year.

Two politicians, one confident, the other fragile. Two positions on energy policy and economic development.

It is in Canada’s economic interest to drive up the political cost of delay and deferral on Keystone to help President Obama appreciate that lost jobs in the US comes at a greater price than upsetting another shard of his fractured base.

Ray Heard and I break down the 2012 Liberal biennial convention for David Akin on the Daily Brief on the Sun News Network.

Olivia Chow was at the 2012 Liberal biennial convention in Ottawa. I asked her about her impressions on the last day of the convention, what the Liberals did to renew their party. I also ask her about the NDP leadership race and the recent floor crossing MP from her party’s caucus to the Liberal party.