More Guessing Games About Guelph and the Election

If you feel like you're being inundated with polls and surveys regarding your thoughts on the upcoming Federal Election, you're not alone. I wrote about a call we received at my house last month that offered numerous choices for the Liberal and NDP fields, as well as a singular potential Conservative candidate. I'm not sure what informs these surveys, how they come up with some of the names they offer, but a couple of new ones have floated to the surface courtesy of a new poll I answered last night. 

The poll came from McAllister Opinion Research, who I had never heard of before, but they must be real because they have a website. Aside from the usual questions about feelings on party leaders, and whether my intention was to vote this year, the poll-taker then asked my opinion on three people and phrased them as potential Member of Parliament candidates.

The first was Tom King, noted author and professor who ran for the NDP Guelph in 2008. Might he be considering a second run? The following name was Lloyd Longfield, who's already thrown his hat into the ring to be named the Liberal nominee and is currently the presumptive frontrunner for the duty. 

The third name was one that might be unfamiliar, Gord Miller. Miller has been the Environmental Commissioner for Ontario for 15 years, and is reaching the end of his third five-year term. Perhaps he's considering a lateral move from the civil service to elected government. There was some controversy when then-Premier Mike Harris appointed Miller in 1999 considering that Miller was once a federal and provincial Tory candidate, and at the time was the president of the federal Conservative riding association in Nipissing,  Harris' home riding. That raises an interesting question though, if Miller is running, who would he run for? 

You see, as Environmental Commissioner, Miller has been lending his support to the Liberal government's green energy strategy and the development of wind turbines, which, to a certain segment of the population, has made him a co-conspirator in what's supposedly one of the biggest ongoing boondoggles of the Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne governments. It seems unlikely that with those bonafides he'd get nominated to represent the Conservative Party of Canada. Could the Green Party be an option? 

As for Miller's Guelph connection, it turns out that he did both his undergraduate and graduate work here at the University of Guelph. So might this be a homecoming for Miller, or is this another lark on the part of bored pollsters and strategists? Time will tell.