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racing in all directions…

For those of you wondering, no, I haven’t totally tuned out of the goings-on of federal Liberal leadership race – it’s just that I’m finding it quite boring at this point.

When running through a list of declared/likely/possible candidates for the coveted Stornoway parking spot, there are only a few candidates that I would feel comfortable with as leader, namely Gerard Kennedy and perhaps Michael Ignatieff.

We’ll just have to see what happens as most of the leadership candidates will most likely be in Edmonton for the Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta convention during the weekend of April 8-10. I’m probably going to be out of town for the weekend anyway, but if I get the chance, I’d like to meet up with some of the potential candidates.

Also, the “braintrust” of the federal Liberals have laid out the rules for the race – Jason has a good analysis if you’re interested – but one of the points that stuck out for me is the rush to get a new leader.

Under the rules, the membership sales cutoff is July 1st – this leaves me with two thoughts.

1. It’s damn soon and will isolate the influence of the summer BBQ circuit to people who already have memberships.

2. With the academic year ending in less than 2 months, the timeline leaves little or no time for campus clubs to organize membership and recruitment drives.

It looks to me like it was a plan written up by a group of Toronto-centric Liberals who believe that Harper will crash and burn as the Liberals return from the indiginity of opposition by next spring – something which is most likely not going to happen.

And yes, for the sake of throwing it out there, even though I didn’t vote Liberal in the last federal election, I’m probably going to renew my lapsed Liberal membership before July 1st so I can vote against Belinda Stronach and Bob Rae. 😉

In other interesting news, I will be going to the budget announcement at the Alberta Legislature on Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps if I have time, I’ll write up a recap similar to the one I did for budget 2005. Care to place bets on how big this year’s surplus will be?

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