Angry in the Great White North

From the blog Ramblings of a Northern Ontario Liberal by Justin Tretrault, quite an insight into the workings of the Liberal campaign in Outremont:

1. The campaign claims to have 26,000 Liberals identified. When calling through the lists of ID'd Liberals, there were very few, if any, people who identified themselves as voting Liberal in the by-election.
2. The campaign office is located inside a strip mall and not visible from the outside.
3. The Liberals are getting decimated in the sign war, even in areas close to the campaign office. You can literally look down most streets in Outremont and see 2 Liberal signs, 20 NDP signs, 5 conservative signs and 4 Bloc signs.
4. While I like the signs that we have, they are mainly green and seem to blend into the scenery and don't stand out.
5. The campaign claimed to have sent literature to each house in the riding by mail, however news reports have stated that people are complaining that they hadn't seen anything and going door-to-door myself people had not seen the literature that I had with me.
6. The first weekend that I travelled to Outremont with other people from Ontario, we showed up a day early. They wanted to send us home until the next day we said we were actually going to come in.
7. When we were given material to drop in the riding, there were no poll kits made up. They also gave polls close to the office to those with cars and gave polls far from the office to those without cars.
8. The campaign declared that they were done phoning voters on Saturday despite the election being on Monday.
9. The Liberal Party sent a stack of literature to the Outremont office for that riding. Mysteriously someone in the campaign sent part of the literature to the other 2 ridings where there are by-elections where we have no chance.
10. There were no Liberal buttons at all for door-knockers or lit-droppers. I had to provide my own.

Meanwhile, Jocelyn Coulon, the Liberal Party candidate in Outremont, hand-picked by Stephane Dion, says the Liberal campaign has been working very hard in Outremont and that is why the Liberals will beat Thomas Mulcair and the NDP:

Coulon, meanwhile, said he recognizes how important the riding is to the party and said he is confident of victory.

"I think it is an important election for the Liberal Party, for the leader and for me also," he told CTV Montreal on Monday.

"This is why we are very confident that we'll win, because we have worked tirelessly. I mean every day I was in the field knocking on doors, meeting electors and voters, and the reaction was very positive."

I wonder if Coulon was talking about tireless party workers or tireless volunteers. It seems like there was some friction there:

I have never been on a campaign where workers were so openly hostile to volunteers. Their actions went beyond incompetence and often left us scratching our heads. We were there to help and it seemed like the campaign did not want us there.

Justin won't blame Michael Ignatieff, but he wonders what exactly is going on. In his view, the Liberals are trying to lose in Outremont:

While I'm not willing to blame Ignatieff, because I don't think that this goes all the way up to him, it definitely seems like the people running the Coulon campaign are making decisions that go beyond gross incompetance.

It should be noted that Justin worked on the Michael Ignatieff campaign. He prominently mentions that in his post. As far as he knows, this isn't an Ignatieff operation designed to turf Stephane Dion. Certainly he wasn't in on the secret.

But he thinks something very weird has been going on in Outremont.

Check out other entries from the Outremont category
Results will open in a new window.