Stephen Taylor, Author at Stephen Taylor

Podcast – Ezra Levant, Marni Soupcoff, Michael Taube, Karen Selick

This past weekend I attended Peter Jaworski’s Liberty Summer Seminar and had the opportunity to listen to and be a part of talks given by the leading conservative/libertarian thinkers in Canada. Peter recorded eight podcasts from the seminar and I’ll be releasing them over the next couple of weeks. While this particular seminar was attended by less than 100 people, the power of the internet will allow the talk to reach thousands (my Monte Solberg/Andrew Scheer podcasts had a considerable reach).

This podcast was of a favourite seminar: the media panel. This topic is of particular interest because Conservative/Libertarian media is in the process of being born and shaped in this country, and sites such as Blogging Tories will be integral to the new media (while not replacing the MSM, it will redefine it through centralized and propagative efforts).

The panel consisted of:
Ezra Levant – Publisher, Western Standard newsmagazine
Marni Soupcoff – Columnist, American Enterprise Online, and editor of the National Post
Michael Taube – Freelance Columnist, Toronto Sun
Karen Selick – Columnist, Western Standard and Canadian Lawyer Magazine

Remember, you DON’T need an iPod to listen (your computer’s media player will work just fine). To get set up with Blogging Tories podcasts go here for instructions.

Or… if you just want to listen to the audio file (without having to worry about other technical details), click here for the media panel seminar at the LSS.

UPDATE: Odeo doesn’t seem to like the podcast, so please use a standard podcast aggregator insteadsuch as the Blogging Tories iPodder, which can be downloaded here

New Blogging Tories Podcasts!

I’ve got a number of podcasts coming up for Blogging Tories visitors.

I’ve snagged a number of interviews from CFRA concerning the Governor General designate, Michaelle Jean.

The first podcast however focusses on gas prices as Pierre Poilievre answers callers and discusses the CPC transit plan.

Onto the GG, Pierre Poilievre raises questions about Michaelle Jean’s alleged ties to the terrorist FLQ in the second podcast.

The third podcast is an interview with Stephen Harper concerning Ms. Jean’s alleged ties to separatism.

Finally, a fourth podcast with John Aimers of the Monarchist League discussing the latest information on our Governor General designate.

You can tune into the podcasts by subscribing to the Blogging Tories podcast feed (instructions here).

Or, you can listen to the podcasts on our channel on Odeo.

Riding Distribution – Guess who wins?

Consider the following facts:

The smallest ridings in Canada (by eligible voters) are:
Nunavut – 17,041
Labrador – 19,909
Yukon – 20,345
Malpeque – 26,010
Cardigan – 27,656
Egmont – 27,545
Charlottetown – 27,829
Western Arctic – 28,619

These seats are all held by Liberals.

Now, consider a large riding, such as the one won by Rob Nicholson of the Conservative Party:
Niagara Falls – 90,655

There are a few facts that we can derive from this data.

1) The northern ridings of Nunavut, Western Arctic, Yukon and Labrador (total voters: 85914 is still smaller than the riding of Niagara Falls. These four Liberal seats represent less of the population than the one Conservative MP. Perhaps the north should be one seat?

2) The other ridings above (from Prince Edward Island) total 109,040 people and thus total too large a population for a single riding. While splitting the province into two ridings would create two ridings totaling 54,520 people each. However this number is still below the average riding size of 72,944 people. The three smallest PEI ridings could amalgamate to form a riding of 81,211 people.

3) These 8 small ridings (my arbitrary cutoff was 30,000 people) represent a total population of 194,954 people or 2.67x the average riding population (ie. just shy of 3 “real” seats). Meanwhile these tiny ridings represent 8 Liberal votes.