Only half the polling places have reported, but the CBC is calling Parkdale-High Park for Peggy Nash:



Thinking back over this campaign, I think it's impossible to overstate how much Bulte shot herself in the foot. At any point, she could have met the criticisms of her fundraising and ties to the entertainment industry with response that didn't alienate people. Thank people for their concern and offer assurances. Point to this being a common practice. Act like you empathize with your critics and are taking their positions seriously. But instead, she grouped critics in her riding as "zealots" and ran through a series of platitudes about artists. Even for people who don't think about copyright very much - meaning the vast majority of people in her riding - those responses sounded shrill and empty. This amplified the relatively specialized issue of copyright into a generalized issue of, "Do we want someone who sounds like that to represent us? Again?!" We hear a lot about the "optics" of politics, and Bulte's were way out of focus.