Author: Stephen Taylor

Slept in. (See previous post about hospitality suites before and… hey, I’m an observer and I don’t need to attend delegate votes at 8am).

Lunch time: cab it into the congress centre.

Pop into a policy debate concerning economic development and prosperity. Belinda Stonach spoke about stopping the export of water before it can be fully reviewed. Then the real debate gets started… on agriculture. Apparently supply management is a contentious issue between it protecting against explicit subsidies for farmers and a viable economic model.

(Caution: shameless self-promotion ahead)

A handful of people approached me to tell me that they’re fans of this site and of bloggingtories! I was happy to meet Luc from Hacks and Wonks and Aaron Lee Wudrick. Then I see the de facto blogging tory, Monte Solberg walking by. I entend my hand to introduce myself as he passes and I introduce myself. “Hi Monte, I’m Stephen Taylor, with Blogging Tories”. He replies enthusiastically “HEY! I read your blog all the time!” His voice changes from cheerful to concern, “Stephen, I do have one complaint… your site is great but you don’t update it enough”. I’m humbled and somewhat embarrassed. I give him the meager exuse about having a MSc. thesis in biochemistry to work on but then concede that Monte’s probably quite busy too with his day job. We continue to have a great conversation about the blogging experience and I extend a personal invition to blogging tories. We chat some more about Monte’s adventures in blogging and, in particular, the PMO and National Post reaction to his recent blogging controversy.

My conversation with Monte Solberg brings up a particular point that perhaps political bloggers should consider. We do not, by any means, represent ‘traditional’ media, in any form as bloggers. In my experience with the traditional media, and in particular with interviews and conversations, it becomes somewhat clear when one is ‘on the record’ and ‘off the record’. Bloggers are becoming ubiquitous; they could be your neighbour, your brother, sister, or your dentist. Since a blogger does not represent the traditional media and is generally untrained in media relations, the on and off the record courtesy becomes somewhat lost as bloggers are sometimes too eager to publish the minutia of their experiences without regard for what was perhaps intended to be a private conversation between two people.

Given, Solberg knows who I am as a blogger. However, nobody’s life is an open book, even that of politicians. Private conversations are just that and thus I should only report the conversation as it related to the blogging of politics. However, I will say that Monte’s is a veritable class act and, because of his blog, he is now the undisputed king of Canadian political geek chic.

The agriculture debate was much too interesting for me and I needed a breath of fresh air, so I left the room and met some other national candidates. Of course, this would include Mr. Whatittakestowin Vi(c)tor Marciano. Vitor’s an animated guy and very intent on becoming one of the national councillors from Alberta. The policy debate on agriculture wraps up and supply management was accepted as part of the party’s policy.

Stephen Harper’s speech is next.

I arrived in Montreal yesterday for the convention registration and immediately bumped into a few people I knew from the leadership race and people with whom I went to school.

First impressions?

You can’t turn around without bumping into an MP or somebody running for national council. In fact, you couldn’t get away from any the campaign teams for the national council candidates.

One of the first people that I met yesterday was BC lower mainland MP James Moore, to whom I introduced myself. “Oh, hi Stephen. I read your website”.

Wow. Great start to a great day.

There was some sort of protest outside the hall with people dressed up with pigs but it looked small and somewhat silly. I would find out later that night that it led the CPC policy convention story on CTV news with Lloyd Robertson. Talk about taking things out of scope!

The opening ceremonies were similar to a pep rally and included great speeches from Rona Ambrose, Peter Mackay, and Rahim Jaffer, John Baird, and Nina Grewal. The most memorable line from the event came from Mackay: “We must never again let another party define who we are or what we stand for”.

Then the hospitality suites…

So, there are these people running for national council and they want the delegates to vote for them, so they rent out hospitality suites and bribe us all with alcohol. Life is good. Best suites of the night go to the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy group (free booze and great Kosher food) and Susan McCarther (free booze and more free booze). Least popular suite of the night: Lois Brown (cash bar).

It was a great night filled with meeting a lot of interesting people.

Convention sidenote: everybody here is connected through cellphones. People who are actually connected use Blackberrys.

Why are there so many conservative writers in the blogosphere? I’ve been asked this a couple of times over the time that I have been blogging. Are we better writers? Is the left full of luddites? Are we just merely better motivated?

Political motivation is rooted in the need to change the status quo; the desire to shake up politics as usual. Therefore, while an extreme moderate may sound like a contradiction, a person so driven to maintain the message as handed down from on high is generally rare in the collection of us that populate the blogosphere. Non-conservatives represent the political status quo in Canada.

Blogs provide a medium in which we express our message, unregulated by the CRTC, the FCC, or the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Many of us who blog with a conservative angle do so because our voices aren’t heard in the mainstream media and, as of late, bloggers have held this very institution to account for delivering the wrong message or even falsities. While bias is presented constantly by the media, it is validated by the very fact that it is labeled “mainstream”.

Yet there are members of the mainstream media who blog. These bloggers are generally conservative-minded and Andrew Coyne and Adam Daifallah are two examples. Why would these columnists blog to hundreds while their columns are read by a hundred thousand? Freedom without an editor, freedom from the filter and freedom to experiment outside of the mainstream draws these journalists as they put away the press credentials and practice citizen journalism (known popularly as blogging). Would Peter Mansbridge ever write a blog? He wouldn’t need to. The Brits have the Queen’s English. As Canadians, we have Mansbridge’s Message; Peter Mansbridge is probably the reference by which “mainstream” Canadian opinion is measured. For Mark Steyn, an internet blog provides a no-holds-barred soapbox. For Peter Mansbridge, a blog would provide an audience of those who just happened to have missed the National that night. (I use Mansbridge merely as an embodiment of “mainstream” opinion as he generally doesn’t opine on the news — his copy is crafted by the CBC bosses)

The CBC is worried about the advent of competitive opinion in the form of cable news. While news organizations operate top-down to deliver or offer opinion, the blog media — as it stands — offers its opinion bottom-up, from the grassroots. Competitive opinion offered by citizen journalists? The CBC now can only complain of the inconvenience.

A political party that controls the state broadcaster through appointment of fervent supporters will have a competitive advantage in the definition of the range of Canadian versus “Un-Canadian” opinion. The Liberal party, in essence, defines the range of Canadian “mainstream” opinion and wields this dynamic to their electoral advantage.

The blogosphere presents the decentralization of news and opinion. The speed of news dissemination by bloggers is beaten by no other group. One can tell the difference between a blog reader and a person who exclusively watches broadcast news: the blog reader generally has a couple days lead-time on certain developing news events. As blogs increasingly become more of an “estate” in their prevalence and audience as news outlets, traditional news organizations will take notice and either compete in the actual rather than the implied range of public opinion or they will become irrelevant and veritably outside of the newly defined mainstream.

Blogs have and will continue to change the way that we receive news. In the future, news will be presented and commented upon by these citizen journalists who rise to their own blog fame through respect based in merit and accurate reflection of the audience to which they write and of which they (and we) are all members.