I would like to welcome two new cartoonists to Mapleleafweb. Political cartoons by Graeme MacKay from MacKay Cartoons, and J.J. McCullough from Filibuster Cartoons are going to be appearing in our Political Cartoons section - with new cartoons being posted daily.

Barry Kay, at the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP), has posted a new set of seat projections based at recent polling data from October:

For some reason the MySQL database that it used to run the back end of Maple Leaf Web was throwing an error during the past few days. This error didn't seem to cause any issue with displaying the website content or forums - and no website data was lost - however there was some issues with viewing the front page of Maple Leaf Web.

With the controversial Airbus Affair back in the news, and Prime Minister Stephan Harper’s recent announcement that a full public inquiry would be held, now would be a great time to read our in-depth feature on public inquiries in Canada.

Matthew Soberg Shugart, one of my favorite electoral systems specialists, and certainly my favorite electoral systems blogger (it's a small club) has written a great blog post about the referendum and MMP in Ontario.

Not surprisingly, Danny Williams and the Conservatives won a huge landslide in the Newfoundland and Labrador election tonight. It looks like the Conservatives took just under 70% of the popular vote, leaving only a four member opposition (3 Liberals and 1 NDPer) to face the government in the House of Assembly.

Nik Nanos of SES Research has posted some interesting poll numbers on attitudes towards multiculturalism. Basically, the poll finds that Canadians are far less accommodating towards religious and cultural minorities than is commonly thought.

A long list of important links have been posted to the Federal Elections section of the Voter Almanac.

You may see website errors while we migrate all the content over from the old Mapleleafweb website to the new Mapleleafweb website.

We are right in the middle of launching the new design of Maple Leaf Web. The redesign not only includes a new look for Maple Leaf Web, but also a massive rewrite of the features and spotlights.

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Liberal.ca is a well designed website with many valuable features available to the interested web surfer. The site contains extensive background information on Prime Minister Paul Martin, the candidates running for the party, and the party’s official policy platforms. The site also contains a multimedia section full of video footage, TV ads, photo galleries and slideshows.

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It would seem that the Conservatives have placed their best foot forward when it comes to the campaign website. My initial impression was that the site was a drastic improvement from the amateurish look and feel of the pre-election post-merger, conservative.ca site.