Steve Ladurantaye

When Frank Graves considered recent polling results generated by EKOS Research, he felt the sweat bead on his forehead as he tried to reconcile a report that was guaranteed to change the tone of the election.

The results were very different from what other pollsters had been reporting, and showed the NDP had moved past the Liberals into second place and could take as many as 100 seats nationally.

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“I didn’t sleep the night before we brought out that bombshell of a poll,” he said. “I’d be in bed thinking about how my method works, worrying about whether the results are repeatable.”

The poll, which was made public Monday, highlighted the growing divide among the handful of pollsters who have been trying to make sense of this election. It’s not just that they’re seeing different levels of support for different parties – that’s normal. Finding that the NDP is unexpectedly rushing toward what could be its best showing in history is another matter, especially if you’re the first out of the gate.

“If you get this wrong then people are going to say that you’ve just really maliciously and stupidly entered into an election debate and provided everyone with crappy advice,” Mr. Graves said. “That’s kind of a career destroyer.”

Because the pollsters all use different methodologies, their results have appeared to conflict at times and have confused voters unsure how to interpret the results.

EKOS uses a method of polling in which an automated system calls random numbers, and relies on whomever answers the phone to punch in their answers on a keypad. Ipsos-Reid’s most recent release was put together by asking questions of an online panel, and the company has also used the telephone. Nanos Research does a nightly poll of 400 people via phone.

While the pollsters generally agree on key trends – the NDP is eating into the Bloc Québécois base, the Liberals have been falling back – the biggest inconsistency is how the Conservatives have been faring. The pollsters are also on different timelines, so even when they agree it can take a few days for the data to catch up.

Nanos Research president Nik Nanos said he’s reconciling the differences by focusing on trends rather than hard numbers. That’s especially true, he said, when you get to regional breakdowns, which can be volatile. “We should be looking more at the direction and trend because it’s more important than the actual number,” he said.

Ipsos president Darrell Bricker said this is the first election he can think of that has seen pollsters use such a wide range of methods. “I’ve stopped looking at the other polls,” he said. “All we can do is be open and transparent, and constantly questioning … and invalidating our own work. If we don’t do that, the election results will humble us all.”

While the NDP surge is undoubtedly real, it’s impossible to say how that will translate into votes. And if the party’s strong showing doesn’t translate into an increased number of seats in the House of Commons, an industry that is already self-conscious about its track record will find it has some explaining to do.

Critics charge that small sample sizes, low response rates and the use of technology render the results all but useless, something the pollsters deny. They are able to target youth by randomly calling cellphone exchanges, for example.

“I hear people say that polling is completely invalid these days,” said Mr. Bricker. “That’s absolute crap – there are more ways to contact people than ever, so many avenues of evidence to pull together.”

The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, which represents market research companies in Canada, released a report called “There’s No Margin of Error on the Truth” in an effort to debunk claims that the polling industry “is having a crisis of confidence.”

The report shows that the final-week polling results came very close to actual results in both 2006 and 2008, and suggests that having so many polls through a campaign leads to a better system in which politicians find it harder to spin their messages.

For Mr. Graves, the only thing that matters now is how the seats break down on Monday. “Hopefully on election night I’ll stay in with a glass of wine and a few friends,” he said, “and chuckle about how right I got it once again.”

 

Perennial election loser John Turmel may be sitting this campaign out, but a Superior Court of Ontario judge handed him a different sort of setback this month when he tossed out his complaint about the way he was treated on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.

Mr. Turmel has run and lost in 73 Canadian elections – including runs at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. His woeful record earned him mention in the 1997 Guinness Book of World Records.

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He taped a segment for the CBC program in 2009, trying to get the so-called Dragons to invest in a barter system in Brantford, Ont. He wanted them to buy $100,000 worth of chips, which they could use to spend $110,000 in community stores.

They weren’t impressed, even as he tried to explain that his chips wouldn’t be subject to inflation.

“Here’s what happened,” he says in a three-part Internet video he posted afterward to complain about his treatment. “I guess I didn’t make them too happy when I walked up and said, ‘Hey, if engineering winners is being a Dragon, meet the King of the Dragons.’”

The show aired in January, 2010, and he filed a lawsuit alleging slander and libel before the month was out. It wasn’t so much that the judges were mean – he was upset that his appearance had been edited down to 57 seconds.

“He has taken offence to the way the program was edited, aired and his treatment by the ‘Dragons,’” a ruling from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice states.

The original lawsuit was dismissed in August. But that wasn’t the end of the trouble for CBC – the network aired a repeat of the episode and posted an online video later that year, and found itself back in court to defend itself all over again.

It all came to an end last week, when Judge Harrison Arrell dismissed the case and pointed out in his ruling that the CBC had the right to air the episode whenever it wanted, and pointed out Mr. Turmel signed forms that said he may be “portrayed in a disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing or of an otherwise unfavourable nature which may expose [him] to public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation.”

He also pointed out that the show’s stars are under no obligation to actually understand everything that is presented to them: “The conclusion of the Dragons that the pitch they heard made no sense to them is not libel or slander.”

Anyone looking to buy a house in Canada this spring can now use a BlackBerry to search the Canadian Real Estate Association’s popular listings service – and to connect directly to a real estate agent anxious to close the sale.

The trade association, which represents the country’s 100,000 agents and maintains the Multiple Listing Service, said Tuesday that the BlackBerry application allows users to take advantage of the smartphone’s ability to determine a user’s geographic location. It’s another way in which the association is trying to differentiate itself from a host of for-sale-by-owner companies that have aggressively entered the market this spring.

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Using the built-in GPS, the app can point users to nearby homes that are for sale, show new listings in a neighbourhood and direct users to nearby open houses. An iPhone version of the app was rolled out earlier this year, and has been downloaded 117,608 times.

The app comes a few weeks after the association launched its annual spring ad campaign, which was geared toward consumers who may be considering selling their homes. In it, “The Old Lady Who Lives In A Shoe” explains how a licenced real estate agent helped her find the perfect home for her and all of her children.

The ads and the apps come as the industry enters its critical spring market, a time when the majority of homes in Canada are usually bought and sold. This spring, however, the country’s professional agents face new threats because of a deal with the federal Competition Bureau that has made it easier for homeowners to conduct their own sales.

Previously, sellers needed to hire an agent to handle the whole sale process if they wanted a listing on the Multiple Listing Service, which is owned by CREA and is the main source of home sales in Canada.

After the October settlement with the bureau, a seller can now have her house listed by an agent for a fee and then handle the rest of the sale herself. For-sale-by-owner companies have sprung up to offer assistance to home sellers who want to save money on fees.

Sellers paid billions of dollars in commissions to agents last year. There were 447,010 sales on the MLS system in 2010, at an average price of $339,030. Commission rates tend to hover around 5 per cent, which implies nearly $9-billion in real estate commissions paid last year, though each agent is able to charge whatever she can command, and many consumers try to negotiate a lower rate.

The most recent sales data from CREA was released on April 15, with home prices up 8.9 per cent from a year ago. However, most of that growth came from the hot Vancouver market. Without Vancouver, prices gained 4.3 per cent.

Inventory could be a problem through the spring. Seasonally adjusted unsold inventory on the market stood at 5.6 months at the end of March on a national basis. That was unchanged from the previous month. About half of all local markets saw inventory shrink compared with the previous month.

 

When John Bolan’s family sat down to write his obituary last week, they decided to give him one last chance to convince undecided voters to pledge their support to the Liberals in the upcoming federal election.

The lifelong Ontario civil servant died unexpectedly after surgery in Toronto on Thursday at the age of 78, and had spent most of his life as an ardent Liberal supporter. What better time to give him a platform than when all of his friends were engaged readers?

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“In lieu of flowers, please vote LIBERAL,” his death notice in The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star read.

His wife, Bernice, said that since the notice appeared Saturday, she has heard from dozens of friends who are delighted with the political pronouncement. She said her husband kept his political leanings quiet at work – he spent his career at Ontario’s Ministry of Trade and Industry – but anyone who knew him understood where he stood politically.

“We didn’t know how to capture that in his obit,” she said. “Not only was he a Liberal, he just believed so strongly in the values of our country and of the political party. We were trying to think of some way to capture that, and we knew he disliked flowers. So what could we say in lieu of flowers? He would have absolutely loved this; it was the best thing we could have done.”

Mr. Bolan’s riding of St. Paul’s is currently held by Liberal Carolyn Bennett. William Molls is running for the NDP and Maureen Harquail is running for the Conservatives. Ms. Bolan said she hopes that her husband’s message will resonate with voters, and maybe win the Liberals a few extra votes.

“We always said if we could help Michael Ignatieff we would,” said Ms. Bolan, who was married to Mr. Bolan for 49 years. “And I can’t tell you the number of people who have enjoyed the notice. So many people have told me that they are Conservatives, but that they will vote Liberal just this once. He had a wonderful sense of humour – I’m sure he’d enjoy every minute of this.”

Mr. Bolan’s service was Sunday, and he was buried Monday morning. In addition to voting Liberal, the family welcomes donations to the cardiac centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

A long-awaited $200-million development to revitalize a Brantford, Ont. industrial site is in jeopardy following the unexpected bankruptcy of a company the city was counting on to clean up the property.

The city planned to partner with Toronto-based Terrasan Corp. to clean the soil beneath a 20-hectare site that once housed factories for farm-equipment companies such as Massey-Harris, Massey Ferguson and Adams Wagons.

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However, Terrasan’s cleanup division – Terrasan Environmental Solutions – filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. City officials had been negotiating with Terrasan for several months on a final agreement, when it received notice of the subsidiary’s bankruptcy last week.

City officials will meet with Terrasan management Tuesday to determine whether the project – which would see a mix of housing, commercial space and parks rise on the site – can proceed.

The project has been under consideration since 2002, and is Mayor Chris Friel sees it as critical component of his city’s post-industrial development. He said smaller cities across Ontario are trying to deal with vacant factory sites, and Brampton’s project is among the most ambitious.

“[Terrasan management] will come down and hopefully explain their position and the position they have put us in,” said Mr. Friel. “Then we’ll have to decide how to proceed – do we do it in smaller bites? Maybe we do smaller projects.”

Terrasan Environmental Solutions met with its creditors for the first time on Thursday after filing for bankruptcy on April 4, telling them it owed $9.5-million and only had $27 of assets to draw on. Terrasan Metal Fabricators also filed for bankruptcy, stating it owed $5.5-million and declaring $12 in assets.

In its preliminary bankruptcy report, the company blamed delayed payments from contractors, a failed expansion into the United States and “a lack of confidence in the industry that has created difficulties in collecting outstanding accounts receivables for its troubles.”

Collectively, the two divisions employed 72 employees.

Company president Luigi Santaguida could not be reached for comment. On the company’s website, Mr. Santaguida refers to the environmental division as the company’s “core business”.

“There’s not much to say at this time,” bankruptcy trustee Alan Spergel said. “Right now we’re working things out with the secured creditors and Canada Revenue Agency.”

The environmental company, which was founded in 2002, has worked on several high-profile clean-up projects across the province, including the waterfront revitalization in Toronto that allowed for the construction of a $130-million home for Corus Entertainment.

The company’s banners were also prominent at the site of the former Regal Constellation Hotel near Toronto’s airport. Terrasan tore down half of the 800-room facility, but stopped work when the hotel’s new owners declared bankruptcy. Terrasan was owed almost $350,000 when work stopped.

“Our projects have included railings, staircases, entrances, fences, and custom ornaments, requiring not only a solid understanding of the materials we are working with, but also an artisan’s touch,” the company states on its website.