- Mark Taylor has a list of reasons at his blog (he’s a Green Party supporter).

- Dan Arnold (known better by his CalgaryGrit blog and handle) also put out a list of ridings where Guelph ranked #1 in criteria (though interestingly, Dan figured she’d rather run in the Saanich-Gulf Islands Islands riding – ranked #2 in his list – against Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn).

- One of Dan’s commentators (who has a blog here) put out an equally compelling 3rd list of reasons why Guelph would or should rank #1 on May’s list of ridings to go in.

My own thoughts on the matter would be this: Green Party candidate Mike Nagy did very well there in 2008 – well enough that there was a big worry that enough votes would be drained off by Nagy from the Liberals and Frank Valeriote that the Conservatives under Gloria Kovach would sneak up the middle (which would have been a very depressing result, as Kovach would have been one of the best parroters of Harper rhetoric in the Commons if she’d made it in, but I digress). With an established base of volunteers, a pretty environmentally conscious riding containing a university that is known to be a bit lefty in its political orientation of its students, plus the fact May has shown that she can increase Green votes and turnout substantially in ridings she runs in, Guelph looks to be a good bet for her and the Greens to choose.

Some have made the point (like Dan) about May allying herself with the Liberal Party under Dion, so why would she run against a Liberal incumbent? Her allying with the Liberal Party, however, came under Dion’s leadership, and I’ve gotten the impression May hasn’t exactly been enamored with Ignatieff. I’m basing that on the belief she didn’t like Iggy’s decision not to go forth with the coalition option last January, or more likely Iggy’s seemingly softening Liberal views towards the tarsands. Regardless, if the number 1 goal of the Greens is to now get May elected, then from her strategists point of view, it shouldn’t matter who is the incumbent in whatever riding they choose, if that riding has the most favourable criteria for her to have a shot at winning.

It won’t surprise me at all if that riding chosen is Guelph. In fact, it might surprise me if she doesn’t pick it.

UPDATE @ 5:00 pm: Impolitical opines here – not a bad assessment/argument about why May should try the Gulf-Saanich Islands rather then Guelph.

This needs to be addressed in the Elections Act. Criteria and standards for getting in need to be made into election law, so a media consortium can’t dictate who gets in and who doesn’t (and even worse, get cowed by the political parties who have a vested interest in keeping May and the Greens out of the debates, as they apparently did here).

UPDATE: Over at DemocraticSPACE at his article which was linked to above, Greg Morrow reminds us that when polled on the issue, 80% of Canadians wanted Elizabeth May in the leaders debate. Three of the parties leaders and the media consortium are indeed flaunting the will of the people here.

UPDATE 2 @ 8:03 pm: Another NDP blogger, NBCDipper, while taking a rather dim view of May and the Greens, also agrees she should be in the debate, listing some precedents why they should be.

UPDATE 3 @ 9:14 pm: Now THIS is interesting – the BQ is now claiming it never said it would boycott the debates if May and the Greens were included. Read Andrew Coyne’s blogpost for more.

- Speaking of being scared, for someone who is bragging about showing “strong leadership”, Harper sure doesn’t seem strong when he and his party are apparently making noises he won’t come to the leaders debate if Elizabeth May is allowed to join the debate. Why are you scared of the leader of the 5th party, Stephen?

- Liberal MP Dan Mcteague, who is most noted for letting people know when gas prices will be going up or coming down, is going to be doing a bit of blogging himself. Dan will be touring important swing ridings in Ontario 3 days a week to discuss energy prices and Canadians abroad. The blog will highlight his travels and raise awareness of these issues through the blog. His blog can be found here, and I understand it will be updated at least once a day.

I am honored that Scott’s DiaTribes asked me to submit a guest blog on the firing of Linda Keen. If you check the Green Party website, you will see I have written a lot on this already and had a fair go at a number of the nation’s national news shows as well. So let me summarize and throw in some new observations.

Clearly, Lunn should resign. Ministers have done so in the past for far less. Minister Lunn has interfered in a decision making process before a quasi-judicial board. I don’t know how he can have gone to law school (and a good one at that, University of Victoria, where my step-son and daughter in law were among his classmates) and have failed to learn some basics of the independence of regulators. Political interference in such boards is a large no-no. I leave open the possibility that he did know this but was ordered by his boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to forget what he knew. Harper clearly does not understand the rule of law and the role of independent officers of parliament and senior civil servants. Auditor General Sheila Fraser commented on the disquieting nature of the late-night firing of Linda Keen on CBC’s “The House.” It was a shock to the traditions of our democracy.

Minister Lunn should also resign for mismanagement of the nuclear file. As he reports on his own website:

Minister Lunn speaks frequently about the need to streamline the regulatory approval process for energy and mining projects in Canada, and has made this a personal priority as he enters the next phase of his mandate.

Clearly, he has been so busy trying to reduce regulation of industry and so keen to fast-track approval of nuclear reactors to increase tar sands production, that he missed the warnings from the Auditor General that the replacement reactors for Chalk River (Maple 1 and 2) were running eight years behind schedule and far over budget. He missed that “deferred maintenance” referenced in her report amounted to a risk that the aging NRU reactor could be expected to have trouble meeting the demand for its radio isotopes.

Nevertheless, Minister Lunn’s performance is not as critical in reviewing this mess as that of his boss. Prime Minister Harper bears the brunt of responsibility for personalizing and politicizing the handling of the NRU shut-down. From his nasty turn in Question Period when he chose to describe the entire Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as “Liberal appointees,” Mr. Harper has embraced the gutter on this issue (Admittedly, he is not known for taking the high road. He would need a map to find where the high road is).

There are layers within layers of inappropriate abuse in Harper’s attack on the CNSC. The first layer is that all government appointed bodies are appointed by some government or other. The individuals appointed to Governor in Council appointments are not to be tarnished with the politics of those who appointed them. It is not in our traditions to do so, and in this case in particular, it was nonsense.

The next layer of contempt for our institutions was in Harper’s preference for attacking the President of the Commission. Again, this reflected a complete ignorance of the nature of Commission decision-making. The decisions of the CNSC are not those of the President alone. Ms. Keen could not have been acting unilaterally. Attacking her, and now firing her, for being the chair of a commission that reached its own conclusions about how to treat a regulated industry that had chosen to ignore its licensing requirement, was, again, inappropriate and unfair.

And now I turn to an unexamined aspect of the Harper abuse: sexism. The ways he spit out the name “Linda Keen” day after day in Question Period, suggested he felt he could make hay out of the fact the President of the CNSC was a woman. If CNSC member Dr. Christopher Barnes, with both an Order of Canada and membership in the Royal Society of Canada, had been its President, I simply cannot imagine the Prime Minister rounding on Michael Ignatieff, as he did in the House, demanding if he was prepared to wait for “Dr. Christopher Barnes” with the scorn in his voice he emoted for “waiting for Ms. Keen!”. The Prime Minister has sought to attack and humiliate a career scientist and civil servant who happens to have been one of the few women to hold a senior position heading one of Canada’s quasi-judicial agencies.

So, on top of contempt for the role of quasi-judicial decision-making, bullying arms’ length regulators, a cavalier attitude towards the safety of nuclear reactors, negligence in ensuring the supply of 40% of the world’s medical radio-isotopes, and railroading the House into allowing the nuclear industry to regulate itself at the NRU reactor, we can add to the list of offenses a mean-spirited sexist streak.

Taken together, a breath-taking case for unsuitability to govern based on one incident.

Why would he do this? The fact of the matter is: Jack is looking out what’s best for him and the NDP with regards to seats and in particular increasing his total, at the expense of others. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that – all parties are trying to do that. The point is, Jack and some of his NDP supporters come irritatingly across as trying to be holier-then-thou with their political piety, as if they’re the only principled party out there, when they’re really no different then the other political parties. If Harper was to get a majority government, but the NDP got more seats, that would be fine with Jack. Jack’s goal is to try to supplant the Liberal Party as the official Opposition – a goal and wish you can see the NDP bloggers also engaging in as they often spend more time attacking the Official Opposition then they are the Conservative government.

Maybe Jack will surprise us and have a good political chit-chat with Ms. May, but seeing as he’s barely acknowledged her or the Green Party’s existence (because he perceives the Greens as a threat to the NDP and doesn’t wish to confer legitimacy on her or the Green Party), I’m not hopeful.