17 01 06	N.D.
With respect to J.D., I must have been in a parallel universe if Bob Callow was "EVERYWHERE" in this riding last summer. Having said that, this might be a riding worth calling TCTC right now. Neither the Liberal incumbent or the CPC candidate have any individual draw power, so this will come down to the national campaign. With the Tories starting to out-poll the Libs in the 905 region, this could be one that might swing to the CPC. Unlike it's southern neighbour (Markham-Unionville), this riding definitely has the constituency that will vote Tory. (it is Tory provincially). ps - For what it's worth, the word within Tory circles is that they believe they will win this seat.
	11 01 06	initials
This is one riding where the Conservatives will profit from the disappearing act of the Liberals. The 2004 election of Liberal Lui was almost entirely due to the ethnic vote in the newly build suburban belt north of the old town of Markham. However, witness a recent CBC program featuring ethnic leaders, this is exactly the same group of people who are now taking Paul Martin to task about squandering their money away. Immigrants, and especially east Asians, are a lot more frugal than long time multi-generation Canadians. They remember the bad days back home, when they had no money and a privileged class of unelected politicians had it all. (I can say that, I’m Dutch by background, a very frugal lot). The new Markham vote will this year unite with the more rural Conservative vote in the North end of the riding and give Callow a narrow margin of victory over Lui T.
	04 01 06	M. Lunn
This riding will stay Liberal. Last time around the Conservatives narrowly won Whitchurch-Stouffville and came close in King. However, the Liberals clobbered them in Richmond Hill and Markham which are more urban and despite the better campaign, they still cannot stand Stephen Harper. Bob Callow might win next time if he runs again since this area is centre-right so someone like Peter MacKay or Bernard Lord as leader would be more acceptable.
	02 01 06	J.M.
The Bob Callow running in this riding was EVERYWHERE this summer. In fact, those that support him were astounded to see him sprint back and forth across the riding, sometimes attending 3 seperate events in a day. Contrast that to Temelkovski who had a staffer attend on his part even for big events like the Oak Ridges Fair Day. There is a growing momentum in this riding towards a conservative win, and don't underestimate that a lot of old Lui supporters plan to quitely squash him over his broken same-sex marriage promise.
	15 10 05	A.S.
Perhaps the most bizarrely composed seat in Ontario, Oak Ridges-Markham resembles a San Andreas faultline bisecting York Region along its NW-SE axis, spanning a lot of rural and boomburbian (and anti-boomburbian, given the Oak Ridges connection) interstice, plus--almost incidentally--the old centre of Markham, now being overwhelmed by New Urbanist instant utopias far and wide. If anything, it should have been a more "natural" Tory seat than Belinda Stronach's Newmarket-Aurora--trouble is, it didn't have Belinda. In fact, it's those Old Tory boomburbs a la Markham which account for the solid 50%+ Liberal win hereabouts, with a 50%+ advantage over CPC--an autopilot-overdrive result that must have surprised even the Grits, with their no-name Lui standard-bearer. (The advance polls, meanwhile, showed Grit + Tory in a dead heat.) Still, don't expect the Conservatives to play dead in OR-M--they may feel robbed, or mugged, but not dead. Especially here. Though re-running ex-Alliancer Callow doesn't help their cause; nor does the fact that through population growth, the electoral momentum favours the Grits. In the end, perhaps the electorate's just satisfied with going with whatever Liberal flow there is, at least until this momentarily-mutant seat is subdivided away next redistribution time...
	30 09 05	david gates
The biggest drag on the CPC here is that yet again they are running the embalmed stiff Bob Callow. No door knocking. No visits to the numerous summer festivals in the region since he was nominated yet again last spring. No campaign organization. Of course Bob is such a classy guy. He strutted around Frank Klees campaign launch last summer acting as if he running for the Ontaro PC leadership. Yet he walked right past people who had helped him in 2004. A true ares, this guy makes the incumbeent Lui T llok like a star. And Lui has some clangers to answer for including his assertion that he had to spit in the face of his own Orthodox Church's view on Same Sex Marriage begause the Sikhs at one time were not allowed to wear Turbans in the RCMP. A living CPC candidate could have trounced this Liberal dunce. But no. We have a battle of the brain dead against the brain dead. What a pity.
	20 07 05	M. Lunn
This riding does include some conservative sections like Whitchurch-Stouffville, but the more urban parts are fiscally conservative which is why they go Conservative provincially, but cannot stand Stephen Harper's hard core American style Conservatism so they will vote liberal until the Conservatives can come up with someone better.
	09 05 05	M. Lunn
This riding is not as conservative as Newmarket-Aurora or York-Simcoe, but since it is somewhat rural, it is more conservative than ridings further South. The Conservatives can expect to do well in the Northern parts such as Whitchurch-Stouffville, but since the liberals piled up huge majorities in Markham, that makes a conservative win next to impossible. The party's social views are unappealing in urban ridings so they need to moderate their social views before they can take this one. Markham is fiscally conservative, but socially liberal so it is winneable if they chose a better leader. Mike Harris did well in this area, since despite his staunch conservatism, he stuck solely to economic matters and was generally liberal on social issues, whereas Stephen Harper isn't. No surprise that he endorsed Belinda Stronach over Stephen Harper in the last Conservative leadership race.