Month: September 2008

Candidates letter, update #1

The first status update on the letter is that almost a third of the candidates have made it difficult to get in touch. In decreasing order of difficulty, the problems are/were:

  1. As noted in the original post, Canadian Heritage Party candidates Carl Hiemstra and Lesley Bartley don’t have any contact information published yet.
  2. At the time of writing Conservative candidate Paul van Meerbergen didn’t have a website or email address listed. However, I was able to find an email address from his previous campaign for city council. (His listing on the CPC website has since been updated to add contact info.)
  3. Conservative candidate Mary Lou Ambrogio’s widely publicized general email address bounced, reporting “Unknown user”. (I was able to find an alternative address.)
  4. Email to Conservative candidate Joe Preston’s media liaison garnered a surprising auto-response, which noted that that person no longer works for his office. However, the message provided two additional contacts, neither of which had similar delivery issues.
  5. NDP candidate Steve Holmes doesn’t have an email address, just a contact form.

The ones who made it easy are:

  • Sue Barnes (Liberal)
  • Noel Burgon (Green)
  • Ryan Dolby (NDP)
  • Peter Ferguson (NDP)
  • Jacquie Gauthier (Liberal)
  • Mary Ann Hodge (Green)
  • Ed Holder (Conservative)
  • Monica Jarabek (Green)
  • Irene Mathyssen (NDP)
  • Daniel O’Neail (Green)
  • Glen Pearson (Liberal)
  • Suzanne van Bommel (Liberal)
  • Mike van Holst (independent)
  • Leonard Vanderhoeven (CHP)

Another letter to candidates

As I did in the 2005 campaign, I emailed a number of policy questions to the local candidates for federal office. There are two differences from last time: first, I emailed eighteen of the twenty candidates across the four local ridings, rather than just the four from my own riding. (The two that are missing haven’t published contact information.) The reason for that, and the second difference, is that this time they’re under the aegis of Theatre in London, and are related to the parties’ and candidates’ views on Canadian arts and culture, with a focus on London. It will be interesting to see if there’s a better response than last time.