Ottawa

And you can dance to it! Liveblogging the launch of a Harper-majority-stopping campaign with a song!

10:55:58 AM
Well, these people don’t mess around — the press conference hasn’t yet begun, but there are already two posters adorning the stage; one proclaiming him “THE WORST LEADER IN THE WORLD” – albeit with a question mark; the other characterizes Canada’s position on climate change as “We’re taking our ball and going home.” The ball is, of course, the earth, and the website is avaaz.ca, which is one of those random series of letters that always seems to get mixed up in my head.

11:06:53 AM
Well, great. My berry crashed right as I posted that update, so I’ve missed the first five minutes of the press conference, and am now listening to the co-founder of Avaaz rail against the craven environmental irresponsibility of the Conservative government – in Bali, and on climate change in general – after brief introductory remarks from the Canadian representative of what is, we’re told, one of the largest online activism groups in the world, and which is dedicated to bringing “people-powered politics” to our election.

“This is a strictly tri-partisan campaign,” says Ricken Partel – the aforementioned founder – who says that all three parties will benefit from “smart voting”. Wait, does that include the Bloc Quebecois? I guess not.

11:10:46 AM
Finally, the song! It’s called “You have a choice” and is the “anthem” of this campaign – and includes famous Canadians like that guy from the Barenaked Ladies who wasn’t busted for drugs, and someone from Broken Social Scene. According to Patel, it’s getting “a lot of buzz” and may even be on the radio.

11:12:05 AM
Since last night, they’ve racked up over 8,000 pledges – all in close races – which is very exciting.

And … That’s it. Yeah, it turns out I’m the only reporter here, and I was too busy typing maniacally to ask a question.

11:13:13 AM
Oh wait, he’s back – with one more thing: an ad campaign that will be running in “key districts” that will target Conservatives who have been implicated in this “horrible” climae change plan – that would be Turning the Corner, I guess – including John Baird, Peter MacKay and — Randy Kamp? I wonder what he did to merit such treatment.

11:14:52 AM
Thanks to that brief encore I did get to ask a question – the one I was musing over earlier, about the Bloc Quebecois. Turns out this is the national campaign, which means just the three federal parties – but there will *also* be a Quebec-centric campaign, run by their “Quebec partners”.

So – yeah. Check out avaaz.ca, and this post will be entirely redundant, except for me grumbling about my traitrous berry.

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