Canadian Politics Thread

Thought I'd try this, throw some things out there (some that I've brought up on other threads), and see if there's enough interest to keep it going.

So after racking up our worst deficit ever (despite cutting some valuable and not-terribly-expensive services - clearly not as valuable as a $16B fighter jet contract), the Tories are claiming that the budget can be balanced in five years as long as we continue to make more spending cuts. I kind of tremble to think what those cuts might entail.

In other news, [Removed Illegal Link] and Ford are closing plants in Windsor, despite having received millions of dollars from our federal and provincial governments. I'm increasingly finding myself wanting to agree with radicals like Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, although I'm not sure how realistically some of those proposals would actually work. (Nationalizing the banks does seem a bit drastic right now.)

Finally, it's old news by now but scrapping the long-form census = sheer madness, right? Even the Western Standard's readers can't all get behind this.

Still, the Liberals do not seem to be successfully hammering the Tories on any of their bizarro decisions from the last few weeks, sadly.

Here was the 'illegal' link on the GM plant: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/windsor/story/2010/07/28/wdr-gm-plant-closing.html

Also I'm maybe 120 pages into John English's recent biography of Trudeau, Just Watch Me, and am really enjoying it.

Scrapping the long form census may or may not be a reasonable thing to do, but foisting this decision on StatsCan, rather than asking them to figure out "how else can we get the information that's needed" just seems like yet another attempt to create an instant wedge issue, to define/appeal to what the conservative party feels to be their base. I'm not sure whether "hammering" the Tories on this is the right way to go, as a tactic. Is that just helping them set the playing field on grounds of their choice? I did like the response from Charlie Angus of the NDP: "I’ve never gone into a Tim Hortons in Canada and had someone rail at me about big bad government spying on them with the census, but I am hearing this from Conservative cabinet ministers. I think the public is shaking its head."

Would like to read that bio of Trudeau. Any idea if the short one by Nino Ricci (in the Eminent Canadians series) is any good?

The census thing just seems like some random issue the conservatives came up with that nobody really cared about that will take up time and space in the media and overall political discourse instead of actual important stuff with real consequences.

B-b-but the long form census is an important statistical tool! Axing it has real consequences! Having that information is essential to e.g. my family member's work at CMHA. In order to make policy recommendations on things like access to transportation or health and community services in minority communities, you need to have accurate information about those communities and their current service needs. The Canadian Medical Association Journal opposes it on similar grounds.

Dan Gardner made some good points here.

Haven't read the Ricci book, sorry.

Maybe I'm romanticizing the past but reading about that time period can make it a bit depressing to consider today's political climate and reflect on how much we are undoing the progress made at that time.

http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/home/day_says_new_prisons_needed_for_unreported_crimes/29bcad16

(Also, OK, I was romanticizing the past a little, esp now that I've read more on the RCMP's illegal investigations of the PQ and the feds' weak response. Still, great book. I actually never knew before that Trudeau offered Broadbent the chance to form a full coalition [with a majority govt!] with 5-6 cabinet seats after the 1980 election.)

yeah, Stockwell's a card, isn't he? I did read (somewhere) that one growing area of "unreported" crime is in identity theft or credit/debit card fraud. Is it the financial institutions who are not reporting it in this case? Can't think of too many other areas of unreported crime. I can't imagine someone not reporting an actual crime because "oh, it's not worth it, they'll get out in 6 months anyway, so why bother"...which is I think what Day's trying to imply here.

But, hmph...more prisons needed for that? More prisons needed to make the Party look tough on crime, blah, blah. Oh, and to ramp up fear of crime in the electorate, to push 'em towards voting for said Party.

TBH, I'm kind of amazed at how fiscally responsible the Conservatives haven't been. If nothing else, one thing I expected from a Conservative minority was fiscal restraint and a balanced budget.

Did anyone read the Maclean's article attacking the government's economic stimulus package for being poorly timed and just generally random and wasteful, without enough money going where it should? I don't entirely agree with everything in the article - and I'm generally in favour of some stimulus spending - but it does raise some worthwhile points.

It's good to see the CMA moving away from advocating two-tiered health care: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/03/cma-health-care.html

I'm a bit late to the party, but good thread. I've secretly wanted one of these for a while but didn't want to start it. What parts of Canada are you guys from?

Anyway some xposts and stuff,

"I’ve never gone into a Tim Hortons in Canada and had someone rail at me about big bad government spying on them with the census, but I am hearing this from Conservative cabinet ministers. I think the public is shaking its head."

Dude prb hasn't been to a Tim Hortons in AB, though. I worked for StatsCan during the last census and there are def people out there who get angry about it. It wasn't just long forms people hated either. Our dept received back a lot of incomplete short forms with only the most basic info (ie just first names, just birth years, or just genders). Occasionally people would write rants on the back of their forms about how much of a nuisance it was, how they thought the threat of prison was unnecessary and archaic, and how they didn't want to fill out the forms because the computer systems StatsCan used to compile/gather data was made by Lockheed Martin (!)

In Windsor since 2008. Grew up in Ottawa.

Recent poll suggests Conservative popularity is waning.

CBC on the premiers' summit. Some roads have been improved around here but I still feel like we could have seen much more in infrastructure by now. Charest raises questions about health care but not many answers seem to have been provided.

Yesterday's Globe editorial on Stockwell Day's prison plan.

You're in AB, salsa shark? Can you explain the Wild Rose Alliance? Their website didn't seem too scary but my friend in Edmonton describes them as something like a Tea Party North.

I'm in Toronto, spent many years in Ottawa. Mostly a lurker here, but hey! who among us can resist a Canadian politics thread! Perhaps someday we'll be as big as the US politics threads!

I'm just outside TO, lived in Canada since 2004 (originally from New Zealand).

I wrote to my MP about the census, the first time I've ever written to this dude. I understand people might find it a nuisance but really if that's all people have to get pissed off about then they should count themselves lucky imo. I use StatsCan in my job regularly, and that resource being compromised for no good reason will hold a lot more serious consequences for Canadians than the inconvenience of filling out a form.

Actually I don't think Wild Rose Alliance is as scary as Tea Party shit. As loathsome, flaccid, and south-of-Red Deer as Alberta Conservatives are, there is a less hysterical, less FOX News-fueled component to Albertan populism, one that doesn't resort to claiming that everything is somehow socialism, that the universities have been undermined by a Marxist Jewish conspiracy, and that their opponents were actually born in Africa or are somehow incarnations of Hitler, despite the comical irony of that. There are actually a good few places in Canada where I think it would be harder to be a brown kid in a classroom full of white faces than it would be in Alberta. Y'all read too much Toronto Star and La Presse.

I mean, sure, a lot of Wild Rosers probably think those things, but Alberta is just not that scary a place and Albertans are kind of dull, friendly people.

Alberta is also birthplace of the CCF/NDP. There is actually some deep seeded socialism in the Prairies that is often overlooked in the rush to paint all Prairie folk as red neck conservatives. Not that those don't exist.

Hm, I always thought the CCF started in SK because of the Regina Manifesto and Tommy Douglas. It does seem that you're right though. (I never thought of SK and MB as right-wing at all, actually.)

Also, just to be clear, I wasn't saying that all Westerners or Albertans are rednecks (at all!) or even that the Wild Rose Alliance are. I was just asking for more information about the Wild Rosers from someone in AB because what I'd heard about them sounded worse than what a scan of their web page suggested.

No worries, that wasn't really directed at you... more just a general observation having lived in the east and west. To be honest, I haven't lived in the Prairies for years and I'm not familiar with the Wild Rose Alliance.

i just always thought of the Wild Rose as a right wing alternative for people who didn't like the CPC.

TBH, I'm kind of amazed at how fiscally responsible the Conservatives haven't been. If nothing else, one thing I expected from a Conservative minority was fiscal restraint and a balanced budget.

i never expected them to do anything reasonable with Canadian's money. they are a party that is led by ideology, as opposed to say - pragmatism or logic or facts etc, and when it comes to ideology money is no object. Mulroney was a joke when it came to handling our finances and Jim Flaherty left Ontario with a hidden debt on his way out of office (iirc they outright fudged the numbers to make themselves look good for the election). i'm always a little amazed when i see the "conservatives are good at managing finances" old wives tale pop-up from time to time.

i saw this thing once - and cannot for the life of me find it now - where some journo surveyed provincial budgets (going back to i'm not sure when) and found that the party most prone to having it's books balanced was the NDP!

Yeah, the NDP governments in SK and MB have been known for their balanced budgets. Tommy Douglas made it a priority.

How did the deficit and debt grow so big under Mulroney? I've been wondering about this. Did taxes get lower? Was it debt financing? With Trudeau, I can at least see where the money went.

i'm not entirely sure. i know part of it was inherited - but he most certainly did not lower taxes!

He inherited a deficit and debt but after 8 years of majority governments in a relatively prosperous decade (at least compared to the 70s), you'd think an economic conservative could have made a dent in it instead of leaving us with our worst-ever pre-Harper deficit. I wonder if privatizing Crown corporations and taking the government out of resources or industry might have actually been a poor financial move. (Just speculating since I don't actually know the economics of the situations.) I also wonder how much was just lost due to things like corruption and patronage.

the crown corporation thing could be a factor. iirc Air Canada was a financial sink hole by the time it was sold tho.
i didn't think corruption was all that problematic back then, was it?

There's some discussion of the debt issue here: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index.php?showtopic=3318

The factor I should have remembered is that interest rates were jacked up in the 80s to combat inflation.

I wasn't being entirely serious about corruption but I did think about things like this: For example, he moved CF-18 servicing from Manitoba to Quebec in 1986, even though the Manitoba bid was lower and the company was better rated

Or the Airbus contract. Honestly, I doubt those sorts of things could have made a really significant impact on the debt though.

good thread!

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/08/06/the-press-gallery-making-the-liberal-party-seem-courageous-by-comparison/

That was a good link.

It was only yesterday that I realized that American federal income tax rates are actually more progressive than ours, even after Bush's cuts. Maybe you need to factor in deductions/credits as well as provincial vs state rates to get a true picture though.

I'm not sure who this guy is and some of his links don't work anymore but he looks at the deficit/debt question in a fairly detailed way.

This 2008 opinion piece from the Calgary Herald credits Mulroney for policies that ultimately lowered the deficit.

To partly defend Harper's govt, it does make some sense to run a deficit during a recession and to plan to lower it afterwards. Some of their spending/cutting choices do still seem questionable though.

Ontario govt ultimately shows no backbone on sex ed reforms.

This sounds good though.

So Omar Khadr's trial began yesterday. The government's refusal to bring him back to Canada despite his treatment at Guantanamo is truly shameful and inexcusable IMO.

The discussion on the US politics thread made me think it might be worth it to bring up Afghanistan here. I sometimes feel a bit alone in generally agreeing with Jack Layton's position on this and agreeing more strongly as the war drags on. Am I naive for wondering what anyone thinks the Canadian military can accomplish there in a combat role if the US military hasn't won the war by this point? I can see a valid role in humanitarian aid/rebuilding. Collaborating with a government (governments!) that tortures its detainees seems to undermine the whole principle of trying to establish human rights and democracy. The government's attitude towards the detainee issue has been appaling IMO.

More on the census:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/11/census-rae-liberals.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/11/census-mandatory-long-form-fight.html

oh hiii forgotten thread.

So, Ed Stelmach won't be running in the next Alberta election. Should make for a very interesting 12-18 months of politics there, with the conservative stronghold waning somewhat and the Wildrose Alliance threatening to split the right vote in the next election.

There's not actually any way that could lead to a Liberal or NDP government though, right? Are we looking at some sort of probable PC (minority?) government with Wildrose opposition?

Kind of loving the Bloc's latest stunt: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/cough-up-arena-cash-or-kiss-quebec-votes-goodbye-bloc-tells-tories/article1882526/

Ignatieff appears to be following the time-tested Liberal strategy of campaigning from the left: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/michael-ignatieff-works-liberals-into-a-lather/article1882597/

Interestingly, the recent Conservative attack ads seem to be portraying Ignatieff the same way, as a "tax and spend Liberal", which is something I never thought about him. (Tbh, the ads are actually the first things to make me warm to Ignatieff!)

Ibbitson evaluates Harper's record, making some reasonable points: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/the-five-year-shadow-of-stephen-harper/article1878067/

I really highly doubt we'll see a Lib govt, let alone an NDP one, in AB anytime soon. At least there's potential for things to be shaken up a bit... only a bit, though, I would guess. It'll probably be one of those cases where people get really excited at the potential for change but in the end the conservatives will still get in with a decent majority. I'll be surprised if they don't lose at least a few seats in the process, though. And I'm very curious to see who comes forward for the Tory leadership.

not sure how Libs poll provincially in Alb compared to the NDP - but right now the only federal seat there not held by a Con belongs to the NDP. an NDP gov't would surprise me less than Lib right now. but seriously - that province is just going to go through the same motions of picking their next empty-suit conservative dictator.

this is a valiant lil' thread.

The AB legislature contains 8 (!) Liberals and 2 NDP members going by this site: http://www.assembly.ab.ca/net/index.aspx?p=mla_home

NDP support is pretty concentrated in Edmonton, I believe.

thank you for being unlazy enough to look that up for me.

looks like the Conservative propaganda has taken a toll on youtube! lookie what i found:

http://i753.photobucket.com/albums/xx177/tupac-chopra/Picture1.png?t=1296103770

i "disliked" the video fwiw.

Apparently the next provincial election in Ontario is going to be fought over the price of beer.

http://www.b12partners.net/mt/Mckenzie_Bros.jpg

Still amazed that it's not legally possible to purchase a six-pack after 5pm on Sunday in Canada's largest city. Toronto, Toronto. Quebec and Alberta are the only good provinces.

Do you think the beer pricing issue has legs? It's a matter of 6.7 cents per beer. Anyway, it looks like the Liberals have been closing the gap (perhaps the reason Hudak is targeting this populist issue?):
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/adam-radwanski/polling-numbers-put-spring-in-ontario-liberals-step/article1892571/?service=mobile

Depending on how the NDP is feeling, we might still see a Liberal minority or accord in the next term.

What do you guys think of McGuinty's record? On the whole, I seem to be one of the few people who likes him. I think the Liberals have made major advances with the minimum wage ($10.25/h is quite impressive, compared to virtually any other jurisdiction on this landmass), community health centres (doubled in number), and green energy, as well as banning cosmetic pesticides. They've definitely made their mistakes though and their handling of G20 security was appalling. Hudak scares me tbh.

I'm a mindless, wishy-washy liberal, so McGuinty pretty much automatically has my vote. (My beer-drinking days are pretty much over, too, so they can't get my vote that way.) Shameful, but I pay far more attention to American politics than my own city, province, or country.

I agree with whoever-that-standup-comic was: Promise to bring back the stubby and win a majority!

Dragging cases of beer for blocks in the winter was pretty much a deal breaker for me ever staying in Ontario.

So... government in contempt of Parliament...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/21/pol-privilege-contempt.html#liveblog

I'll be very happy to go to vote if an election comes soon. Hopefully the NDP or Greens can field a decent candidate in my riding this time. Our MP, 4ndrew Saxt0n, doesn't have a top lip, and according to an insider I know, he wears tighty whiteys and sucks at hockey.

i wish those two parties would just fucking merge or something already.

And leave the Marijuana Party as the one you vote for instead of just spoiling your ballot?

Stalinist party all the way!

i wish those two parties would just fucking merge or something already.

NDP and Green? Why? They're not that similar ideologically and there would be little strategic advantage for the NDP in merging with a party that has never even won a seat in Parliament.

The NDP now has the reputation of the the least progressive of the main parties in sustainability/environmental issues. They could soak up most of the Green Party's support, which one presumably thinks would be more naturally predisposed to vote NDP than any other party, if they adopted some more enlightened policies around the issue. The NDP's union ties will probably ensure that will never happen though. NDP is looking more and more like a done deal every year really.

The NDP now has the reputation of the the least progressive of the main parties in sustainability/environmental issues.

?

Environmental sustainability has been a core issue throughout Layton's whole career, down to the house he lives in. He founded the Green Catalyst environmental consulting business and chaired the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. Of the seven chapters in Layton's Speaking Out, two are devoted entirely to environmental/sustainability issues. Even the NDP's whole economic platform has become focused around sustainability and green energy: http://www.ndp.ca/vision/economy . Their environmental platform has to be the most sweeping of the major parties': http://www.ndp.ca/vision/environment . The recent Climate Change Accountability Act (which died in the Senate) was an NDP initiative. Especially considering the Conservative record on the environment, this statement seems rather strange, sorry.

They differ from the Greens, however, in that the Greens have never been a labour/social democratic party. They have tended to favour raising consumption taxes and lowering personal and corporate income taxes. In fact, many of the founding Greens were old PCs. As such, I am not necessarily convinced that the Green Party's support would "be more naturally predisposed to vote NDP than any other party". (I always tended to believe the Idealistic Pragmatist on this actually: http://idealisticpragmatist.blogspot.com/2006/10/garth-going-green-makes-sense.html )

And again, I'm sure any of the major parties would want to wait for the Greens to actually win a seat (or actually manage to get more than 5% of the popular vote in an election) before they would consider merging with them.

This was the NDP stance on stimulus/bailout measures in 2008 btw: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/article708355.ece

I do not think that the Green Party are taking many votes from the Conservatives. Harper can be openly dismissive of environmental issues rather than having to pay lip service because it barely effects his support. Not so Jack Layton. Whether or not he would ever follow through on these policies is really in the realm of speculative fiction. I personally don't believe he would ever do any of these things if (LOL) he won an election. On a federal level the NDP are pretty much a fringe party. They have little or no influence or power. Provincial NDP parties in Nova Scotia, BC etc who have been placed in a position to actually push for environmental policies always flake out in the end. The way they dealt with the carbon tax here in BC pretty much finished them off as far as getting support from environmental groups. In NS this just happened: http://rabble.ca/columnists/2011/03/bad-forestry-meets-problematic-energy-policy-ns

BTW, the Greens got 6.78% of the vote in the 2008 election according to Wikipedia. The NDP got 18%. It makes as much sense to look at that from the Green perspective - why would they want to hook up with such an unpopular party? Especially one with so much negative baggage as the NDP?

The federal NDP holds the balance of power! Their pressure was likely a reason the Cons just agreed to renew eco retrofit funding.

I was arguing against a merger anyway.

(I'll read your link soon btw. I do actually generally feel that NDP provincial governments have been only as progressive as the Ontario Liberals tbh.)

i don't think you should blame jack layton for carole james' moronic decisions

No, and as I pointed out, Layton's environmental record does not only apply to the NDP platform. He was heavily involved with environmental issues as a city councillor and businessman.

why would they want to hook up with such an unpopular party?

because a large party like the liberals would swallow them whole and they would be on the fringes. a party that is *only* at 3x the Green's support level, like the NDP, would be way more inclined to adopt green policy/platform and candidates.

So... looks like we'll probably have an election, unless Flaherty actually amends the budget to an NDP budget... Am I crazy if I think the proposed budget actually sounded OK? I liked the tax credit for children who enroll in arts programmes.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/22/pol-budget-main.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/03/22/pol-budget-highlights.html

it's a classic "we know an election is coming" budget.

so i guess this leaves Harper with only a matter of days to prorogue parliament.

nah. prorogation is saved for things that would make the gov't look bad - you know, like attempts to defund all political parties besides the government, or hearings on government knowledge of canadian military involvement in torture of afghan teenagers. stuff like that.

They can't lose, anyway. They just rebranded The Government of Canada to "The Harper Government".

ya i know.
i have no idea why the opposition parties aren't making more of the Cons trend of using tax payer money to promote themselves. this "Harper Government" nonsense and having senators use the public purse to pay for Conservatives leaflets, etc etc...
like no wonder they have so much money than the other parties - they don't have to pay for their own promotion anymore!

I'd like to get excited about an election, but we all know that the Tories are getting elected again.

everything OTM about the NDP, they are a joke. Considering their complete lack of comprehension of anything remotely close to investment in science or hi-tech, then I have trouble taking seriously their platform of investing in renewable energies. I'm sure they couldn't care less about making investments in any real next-generation technology, as long as auto workers building gas-powered cars will be able to keep their jobs and build electric cars instead. Also, their foreign policy platform looks like something a first year university student might write on a napkin during coffee break.

this will make you happy, Barry.
since i've moved to Parkdale i'm now in Kennedy's riding and will be voting (ugh) Liberal this time around!

I'll be great to have you join the dark side!

I don't follow Canadian politics (at any level) as closely as I do American, so I may be way off here, but this seems like such a set-up for a PC majority. I'll vote Liberal, as I always do, but the PCs have two huge advantages: the majority of the public doesn't see the election as necessary, and, whether they deserve any credit for it or not, our economy is relatively stable compared to most countries. Canadian federal elections happen fast enough that sometimes something springs up and things get out of hand for one side, but I'd be surprised at any result except a PC majority.

Also, I think Ignatieff is our Kerry or Dukakis. I like certain things about him, chiefly that he's strong on the readin'/writin' stuff, but he doesn't seem to be an especially beloved figure here.

Harper's party is now all "C" with decidedly no "P". not even a little "p".

as for Iggy, i look forward to him getting replaced after another election of accomplishing very little. i always thought of him as a Kerry aswell!

Hasn't one of the knocks on Harper been that he's been moving to the center?

(from conservatives)

that's their knock on everything that's not Glen Beck. and thb i haven't heard that in years - not since he 1st became PM.

what i do hear still on occasion from the Cons that i do know is that Harper and his cronies are still too far right for their liking. you don't hear alot about them but there's still a bunch of old PC'ers lost in the wilderness.

Might've accidentally had the TV on Global news when I heard that. Gotta be careful.

Love the last comment. Global ("communications," not the news department) was the only place that ever fired me! This was 1989...Apparently I wasn't paying proper respect to Major Dad or something like that.

Come on, Thermo. This is from November: http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/15/politics-all-the-way-down/
And this, from January, isn't a knock but comes to a similar conclusion about the Cons: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/07/dan-gardner-conservatism-in-canada-would-be-called-socialism-in-the-u-s/

I don't know that a CPC majority is likely. The recent polls haven't suggested it. The country seems too divided. Plus, the scandals and contempt issues from the last couple of weeks will probably have a little impact over the campaign. Anything can happen during a campaign though.

Even if the election produces another CPC minority, it may still be worth it. We may see some new, and possibly better, opposition leaders. If the CPC tries to pass a similar, or more conservative, budget again, I think the Opposition should stand their ground and try to form a government if the CPC won't make further amendments.

B4rry, I agree that the NDP's foreign policy platform is not especially in-depth, although I've always much preferred their stance on Afghanistan to the Liberals' (or CPC's). The Liberals' Global Networks Strategy mostly seems reasonable, although I maintain deep reservations on the foreign policy stances Ignatieff always advocated in the US. I would also tend to trust the Liberals a little more on research (and arts/culture) funding. I still don't think it's at all fair to doubt Layton's commitment to green technology, given what he's done in his career.

I also think, however, that those things would matter more if the NDP were in a position to head a government as opposed to holding the balance of power or being a potential coalition partner.

(I always privately thought of Ignatieff as a Kerry too.:P )

xpost

also think, however, that those things would matter more if the NDP were in a position to head a government as opposed to holding the balance of power or being a potential coalition partner.

I mean, they do matter but they're not stopping me from voting NDP, given the circumstances. (I don't think Paul Dewar is terrible or anything btw. And the NDP does bring up human rights issues that might not get raised otherwise. Also support the recent private members' bill on generic drug exports.)

Ha: http://www.google.ca/search?q=national+post+fiscal+conservative+harper&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

sund4r - the Mcleans' piece is about ethics and the Post is THE NATIONAL RIGHT-WING NUTTO FUCKING POST!

I wish we could have a FAP to talk about this stuff. It'd be way more fun to talk about this stuff while drunk.

Wasn't there a time when politicians who were picking and choosing what to focus their attention on and modifying their ideology accordingly were called pragmatic rather than unethical?

I have voted in every election since reaching the age of majority and I am seriously considering spoiling my ballot for this vote.

Dear every political party in Canada, please fire your leaders and replace them with better ones. Thanks.

Thermo, you don't think this is slamming Harper for betraying small-c conservative principles?:

...
This is a remarkable feat. Stephen Harper’s Tories can run $56-billion deficits, raise spending to all-time record levels, and grease every Conservative riding with layers of pork; they can abandon Afghanistan, coddle Quebec, and adopt the NDP approach to foreign investment; and still there exists in people’s minds another Conservative party, somewhere, for whom these policies are anathema...
.

Aside from the 'pork grease' line, the rest of that is clearly about policy, not ethical issues or scandals. This is a recurring theme for Coyne:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/02/10/harper%E2%80%99s-tories-lost-the-plot-a-long-long-time-ago/
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/04/11/andrew-coyne-canada-s-left-wing-unconservative-compromise-ridden-conservatives.aspx

And the National Post is probably the dominant right-wing journalistic voice in the country. If you're looking for what right-wingers are saying, you can't really discount it! My point was simply that right-wingers do knock Harper all the time for moving to the centre.

Bryan: Yes, that's a common view among non-extremists.

Tbh, having lived in the US for the first couple years of Harper's reign, it's hard for me to not agree with Gardner about the comparison between Republicans and the CPC.

Yes, that's a common view among non-extremists.

Referring to the idea that politics is better when drunk, of course.

Gardner's piece originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, not the Post iirc.

Most things are improved with drink.

... and here we go

I don't know if this is an accurate reflection of the general mood or not, but most of CFTR's coverage in Toronto so far has to do with how uninterested in/disgusted with this election people are. (Meaning, maybe it's the media who's sick of elections, and maybe they're driving that story.) Fourth in seven years, fifth in ten, what's the point, I won't vote, etc., etc. Maybe a small turnout will gum up the results for the PCs, but in the States at least, a small turnout always hurts the left.

I don't think a small turnout hurts the left, rather, it helps the sitting government. IOW, turnout is high when people want a change and want to vote in somebody new.

I'm not so "close to the action" these days, so maybe my perspective is way off-base, I don't know, but to me it seems that the opposition parties feel that a minority govt is inherently unstable and therefore new elections are almost always a good idea. I'd counter that with Einstein's saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And I don't see this sea change of opinion in Canadian politics that's going to sweep the Tories out of power. This election will be more about the minority parties trying to grab seats from each other and consolidating (let's face it) what little power they have.

Errr... Canadians are disgusted and don't want an election! is a Conservative talking-point right now, and if you see it on the news, treat it as a signal that the station's in Harper's pocket.

the opposition parties feel that a minority govt is inherently unstable and therefore new elections are almost always a good idea. I'd counter that with Einstein's saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I'm not sure which way you mean this but, to be clear, the 2008 election was not forced by the Opposition (at all). If anything, I think the Opposition has been remarkably willing to let Harper's minority government bully them until now.

I get why this may seem like a questionable strategic move, given the polls. But there is also no reason why the Opposition needs to let a budget pass if it doesn't contain what they're looking for (even if Harper were to win another minority, for that matter). Nor any reason why they need to maintain confidence in a government that has been found in contempt of Parliament.

Some valid points imo: http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/public-opinion-turns-when-you-least-expect-it/article1955536/?service=mobile

Yes, that's the caveat I threw in earlier: "Canadian federal elections happen fast enough that sometimes something springs up and things get out of hand for one side." When Obama had to deal with the Wright story in 2008, there was still something like four or five months left till in the campaign; ditto three or four other major stumbling blocks that were defused along the way. This election will happen over 40 days: if something unexpected turns up, or something we already know catches fire for whatever reason, it could take on a life of its own, and there'd be no time for damage control. The analogy might be the economic meltdown in 2008, which happened in the last month of the campaign, at a point where McCain had no time to recover. I don't expect that to happen up here, but it sometimes does, and it could once more.

Ha, this Vote Compass tells me I'm closest to the Liberals: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/votecompass/

It also seems to rank the Greens as further to the economic left than the NDP so who knows?

Not in 2008, Sund4r, but in 2006 and 2011, yes.

But there is also no reason why the Opposition needs to let a budget pass if it doesn't contain what they're looking for

Sure there's a reason -- if they don't let the budget pass, then there'd be an election literally every year (until someone eventually wins a majority, of course). Or they can try to compromise with the government over the budget (and claim the credit for making the budget pass). That's politics. But it's one or the other. It's only when you try to do both at the same time (claim all the credit for the government's achievements and then bring it down anyway, like what the NDP did in '06) that you run into trouble.

Schacter is OTM with that commentary in the G&M, but even so, Peterson's loss was fairly unlikely. A whole bunch of stuff went wrong for him in that campaign and almost nothing went right. Harper isn't facing the same kinds of hot-button issues, and his campaign strategy is absurdly simple -- everything's OK, let's just stay the course. Iggy needs to slowly deconstruct and discredit him in order to win, while somehow not saying or doing stupid things like he's normally prone to do.

The vote compass said I'll be voting for the Liberals, surprise surprise.

The 2006 election did produce a change in government though... And it was five years ago obv... I thought with the Einstein quote, you were suggesting that the Opposition keeps trying unsuccessfully to bring down minority governments by forcing an election every couple of years. But maybe you just meant that we keep having elections that result in short-lived minority governments?

The NDP didn't have enough seats to keep the Liberals in power in 06 even if they'd wanted to, btw. The motion of no confidence passed 171-132. The NDP only held 19 seats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2006#Aftermath_of_the_first_Gomery_report

Or they can try to compromise with the government over the budget (and claim the credit for making the budget pass).

The CPC was unwilling to make any further amendments to the budget, which suggests that they were also looking to provoke an election, as e.g. the Liberals did with the 1974 budget. (The recent spate of attack ads were another clue.) A minority government that wants to maintain Parliament's confidence will make a greater effort to get one Opposition party on board. Besides, if, as the Speaker ruled, the government was not providing adequate cost forecasts for their new prisons, fighter jets, and tax cuts, it does seem reasonable for the Opposition to reject the budget. (And the govt actually fell on the contempt charges.)

i'm rarely prone to agreeing with Ignatieff - but his point that he can't vote to support a budget when a good portion may or may not be fiction is a v good one that he should stick with (anyone who remembers Flaherty from his days as the Ontario finance minister can confirm his fondness of fantasy/phantom projection & numbers).

Maybe you were right, clemenza...: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/962129--tories-on-brink-of-majority-as-election-called?bn=1

(Signed up to volunteer with Brian Masse's campaign. First time I've done this.)

Also, their foreign policy platform looks like something a first year university student might write on a napkin during coffee break.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 9:10 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

Shame it couldn't be as nuanced as Iraq hawk Ignatieff's, eh?

tho apparently my beliefs are closest to the green party's, so what the hell do I know

Yeah, despite my earlier comments, I have to admit that Ignatieff's foreign policy views are probably the #1 reason I'm not an LPC supporter.

The NDP didn't have enough seats to keep the Liberals in power in 06 even if they'd wanted to, btw. The motion of no confidence passed 171-132. The NDP only held 19 seats.

The balance of power was held by the independents in '04-'06, but it was the NDP's withdrawal of support for the Libs (over healthcare) that triggered the election.

Sure, it's reasonable to not support a budget brought forth by a governing party full of liars, but when the *only* alternative is an election, it's a bad move by the opposition unless they're sure they can win. (I'm not sure that the Libs really understand this, hence the Einstein quote)

Also, their foreign policy platform looks like something a first year university student might write on a napkin during coffee break.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 9:10 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

Shame it couldn't be as nuanced as Iraq hawk Ignatieff's, eh?

― symsymsym, Sunday, March 27, 2011 2:46 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

I was thinking more about the non-war stuff, i.e. the Libs seem to have a plan for dealing with fast growing economies such as India and China, and a way to position themselves relative to the other G20 nations. I'm not sure the NDP have really thought about this stuff beyond "we'll try to prevent our jobs going over there".

it's a bad move by the opposition unless they're sure they can win.

OK, you can never be *sure* you can win, but you should have a lot of momentum going into the election, as though things are rapidly turning in your favour. A dispute over the cost of some fighter jets is going to bring down a govt whose poll numbers have been more or less consistent for the past three years? Really??

too drunk to recall specifically but the flyers i get from the ndp mp for my riding always have this resinged 'yeah but what are you gonna do?' tone to them via bragging abt like, helping get new subway cars & shit. its sorta endearing but mostly lol

ndp humblebrag

where do u live lamp?

that sounds like the flyers from my ndp mp, too, Ms Chow. Seems like a decent sort, we see her around the area often, but she's almost more like a city councillor than an MP, whatever that means.

you typed it - what does it mean?!

lol wasn't olivia chow a toronto city councillor for a long time?

haha, fair point. :) And, yeah, she was a councillor for quite a while. Her flyers still read like that. Which is cool, she's concerned with local issues, that's a fine thing. Nice to not have just standard national politics talking points regurgitated yet again.

A friend of mine, who leans pretty conservative, I guess, said something today about "lol, Ignatieff drinks latte", as if it was some devastating zing. I'm not a fan of Ignatieff, particularly, but I'm so very sick of culture war style stuff like this. IS there anything substantial to actually talk about in this election, at least as far as policy differences between the two main parties go?

I'd be able to tolerate a minority government from any of them, but I think a majority would be a bad thing at this point.

That compass thing told me I was closest to the Bloc... o.O

the only thing the bloc is wrong on is quebec, imo

that's an exaggeration i guess

No, I completely agree!

For that matter, I disagree with the NDP's stance on Quebec ('asymmetrical federalism') as well.

Will, what's your sense of how the BQ is seen in Quebec? I've kind of been assuming/suspecting that most of their voters see them primarily as a social democratic/progressive option that looks out for Quebec's interests first rather than a separatist party per se (especially since a federal party could never call a referendum anyway). Since separatism seems to have been largely dormant for a while (and it's not like the BQ has been especially active in terms of trying to push for constitutional changes), that makes the most sense to me. But maybe that's wishful thinking?

I can't speak to it, I live in Montreal. I am reasonably confident that most BQ votes come out of francophone nationalism & an urge for sovereignty. I have heard some stories abt people visiting their families in northern Quebec and the level of racism/xenophobia makes the southern USA look like a big welcoming hug that goes all the way around the world. But I guess it comes down to the individual MPs, right? What's weird though (and I could be completely making this up in my head) is that the xenophobe vote is starting to get split w/ the Conservatives and the last two elections have had Cons elected in Quebec, which didn't happen for years?

that political compass thing told me to vote for the bloc

I think a lot of people vote Bloc in Quebec mostly by default just because they don't like what the other parties are offering. I guess a lot of people also vote for them because of the sovereignty thing, but this seems to be pretty low priority for most people I know (admittedly I mostly only know people living in and around montreal).

I think a lot of people vote Bloc in Quebec mostly by default just because they don't like what the other parties are offering. I guess a lot of people also vote for them because of the sovereignty thing, but this seems to be pretty low priority for most people I know (admittedly I mostly only know people living in and around montreal).

― peter in montreal, Monday, March 28, 2011 11:20 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

This? More or less? My boyfriend's family is from relatively rural Quebec, and the depth of Bloc support outside the urban areas in Quebec is exceptionally strong both because of the sovereignty/nationalism thing but mostly the former. In Montreal, this:

most of their voters see them primarily as a social democratic/progressive option that looks out for Quebec's interests first rather than a separatist party per se

strikes me as more true. While the xenophobia/racism thing is certainly present (significantly in a lot of Quebec) I'm not sure if there's any clear correlation with Bloc voters and xenophobic tendencies. I have fairly cosmopolitan mid-20s friends who support the Bloc and have 60 year old family members who vote Liberal but are on the xenophobic side of 'reasonable accommodation' bullshit.

I mean, on a provincial level there's a fairly clear distinction b/t the leftist/progressive Parti Quebecois and the ADQ, which is a secular Quebec nationalist right wing/market party. The prospect of an actual referendum and secession is so far removed from its 90s heyday that while the presence of the Bloc in Parliament makes achieving majorities frustratingly difficult, esp. for the Liberals, they're nice to have around for social issues. A Bloc that lined up ideologically with the Conservative gov't rather than the NDP and Liberals on the environment, gay rights, etc. would make political geography slightly more terrifying.

The prospect of an actual referendum and secession is so far removed from its 90s heyday

It'll be interesting to see how much Duceppe talks about separatism in this campaign. The BQ essentially functions as the "Quebec first" party rather than a separatist party in the current political climate, although obviously they can't risk straying too far from a separatist message without alienating a lot of voters.

Holy shit!: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Tories+begin+election+ahead+Liberals+poll/4498903/story.html

i wouldn't get too worked up over that. most polls done for the Post/Global media monstrosity enjoy over stating the Con's popularity.
you can see a bunch of recent polls here: http://www.electionalmanac.com/canada/polls.php

although in all those recent ones the Cons are still looking pretty good.

Personally I find the most surprising fact in that article to be this:

• In Alberta, the Tories stand at 54 per cent support, while the Liberals have 23 per cent, the NDP have 17 per cent and the Green party has five per cent.

• In Saskatchewan/Manitoba, the Tories are ahead at 66 per cent, while the Liberals have 18 per cent and NDP has 13 per cent.

only 54%!? whaaat? more support for Tories in SK/MB than AB?

Layton really seems to be targeting AB and the West generally. Maybe it's paying off...?

I'm guessing that the Conservatives' 'coalition' angle is actually working. I was genuinely angry watching Guy Giorno claim on Power Play that in the event of a minority Parliament that voted no confidence in the party with the plurality of seats, it would be "undemocratic" for the party with the second-most seats to govern with the support of the remaining Opposition parties. In a Westminster Parliament, we vote for local representatives, not directly for a head of government. If someone can govern with the support of the majority of elected members, that is not undemocratic. That's how Parliamentary democracy works and should work. Perhaps remedial Gr 10 history/civics classes are in order for high-ranking Conservatives?

But yeah, going by polls, SK/MB have been fucking loving the CPC for some time now. I'm not completely sure why. The gun registry? Fatigue with provincial NDPs? Resentment of Central ('Eastern') Canada?

One MLW poster makes the convincing case that convincing the public of the 'coalition threat' is a brilliant strategic move on the part of the CPC if they want to destroy the LPC from both sides: Centre-right Lib/Con swing voters vote Con in order to produce a CPC majority so as to avoid having socialists influencing the PM; Centre-left Lib/NDP swing voters vote NDP, secure that they don't need to 'strategically' vote Liberal since the NDP will have a role in a governing coalition.

MLW?
i'm not sure how "brilliant" a strategy it is since, having tried to pull a coalition stunt himself, this can blow up in Harper's face pretty easily.

Maple Leaf Web, sorry.

And, yeah, that's what Layton and Duceppe have been saying and part of what Reality Check discusses here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/realitycheck/2011/03/the-coalitions-not-the-question.html

I think the CPC is banking on a couple of things, though:

i) They're leading in the polls so people are less likely to think they'll need to try something like that again. (Plus, a coalition including the #1 party may seem less objectionable to the sort of people who think there is something objectionable about coalitions.)

ii) Their right-wing base isn't going anywhere (since they have nowhere else to go) and they can draw in more moderate voters this way, while simultaneously pushing away the left wing of the Liberal base. If anything, the idea that the CPC may be willing to work with other parties may even help them win centrist votes.

More good points: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/realitycheck/2011/03/coalition-reality-parsing-use-of-the-c-word.html

xpost - Yeah who knows, interesting to see where each party kicked off their campaigning this time around though. I'm glad Layton chose Edmonton as a starting point and it makes sense given that they are the second-place party in most Edm ridings but I'll be really surprised if NDP gain another seat (I hope they at least keep the one they have though, it'll be tight). On a side note, it seems the NDP dude for my area is really into comics which is kind of awesome

Do we have anyone from SK/MB on here who can enlighten us on this Tory business?

Having seen the UK's Tory/Lib Dem coalition in action over the last year I absolutely do not want a similar thing to happen in Canada. I really hope voters don't go in for either of those points you mention and that the other parties aren't tempted to form a coalition with the Conservatives.

WTF did the Lib Dems even gain from that coalition?

ii) Their right-wing base isn't going anywhere (since they have nowhere else to go) and they can draw in more moderate voters this way, while simultaneously pushing away the left wing of the Liberal base.

This is exactly how they get to 40% and a majority, and specifically, they focus on Southern Ontario because there are plenty of centrist Liberal voters who can be convinced to switch their votes. The early poll numbers show exactly this trend ... compared to the last election the Libs have lost several points to the Tories and the support for the other parties has stayed more or less the same.

it's a long while since i (a yank) knew anything about much about canadian politics but:

a. so jealous of the six-week campaign cycle
b. no morbz

so i have read that the tories are still expected to win a plurality (and can hope for a majority) -- why then was the no-confidence vote brought?

Because they couldn't in good conscience support a budget based on substantially fictional projections. And because they misjudged how little people care about lack of transparency, use of gov't letterheads and funds for targeted fundraising appeals, etc. Etc. Etc.

that sounds like the flyers from my ndp mp, too, Ms Chow. Seems like a decent sort, we see her around the area often, but she's almost more like a city councillor than an MP, whatever that means.

yeah olivia chow is my mp as well - she seems p dece although i dont know anything abt anything. i was just loling @ the flyer that touted her helping get some dude a falafel cart license or w/e

i am p excited about this election in a silly outsider-y way, although i dont think theres much i can do to help get harper out of office

WTF did the Lib Dems even gain from that coalition?

Permalink
― EveningStar (Sund4r)

i am p excited about this election in a silly outsider-y way, although i dont think theres much i can do to help get harper out of office

so they showed a clip on the Colbert report last night from some US news (CNN maybe) where they said "Stephen Harper's coalition government" had fallen.
i chuckled.

How does ILX feel about strategic/defensive voting? I've been, err, lucky enough to never have to because either I've lived in swing ridings where my guy is part of the swing, OR i have lived in places where a win is a foregone conclusion for one person, so i can just vote however i please.

i've done it before - but usually i go with how i feel.

I generally don't like strategic voting, which sort of goes hand in hand with my dislike of elections with proportional representation (if that makes sense). I think we had some lengthy discussions about this on other threads (possibly on one of the US election threads).

with first-past-the-post you kind of have to use strategy since the system is such crap

In my family people always put emphasis on "vote for the local candidate" vs "vote for the party", and 90% of the time they stuck with the party. That's not really strategic voting though.

xpost

xpost Not necessarily. If you want to let the party know that they have supporters in your riding, then you owe it to them to give them your vote. Then they'll know where they have pockets of support, and they'll be more likely to put more effort into campaigning and building up more support in that area leading up to the next election.

You've always been a Liberal voter in Toronto-area ridings though, right? Would you have opposed e.g. the 2008 Liberals for [NDP MP] Linda [Duncan] campaign in Edmonton-Strathcona, given that the alternative would have been a(nother) CPC MP and a fairly lousy one, just on the grounds that the Liberal Party would know they had that extra vote in an AB riding? Or would you oppose a US Green Party supporter voting for a Democratic Presidential or Gubernatorial candidate in order to block a Republican win?

When there is a concerted campaign behind one candidate in a close riding, I think strategic voting can make sense. However, that only applies to a very specific number of ridings.

Btw, while I've moved a little towards your views on proportional representation (I think I'd actually prefer non-partisan democracy best), many NDP supporters would tell you that they strategically vote Liberal (or perhaps BQ) because we don't have PR.

Those are both "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenarios, so it would depend on whether (to use your first example) I hated the Tories more than I liked the Liberals. In this case, I'd have to hate them a LOT more.

I also wouldn't vote for a party that I didn't like, no matter who their opponents were, for instance, I wouldn't vote for the federal NDP. Maybe if I happened to really like the NDP candidate in my riding and the Tories were running a genetically engineered neo-Stalin, but otherwise no.

To expand on that a bit more, I could imagine a situation where I would vote for the BQ if I lived in Quebec even though I'm not a separatist. I know I'm not the only one on this board who admires the BQ for being socially progressive, and I happen to like Duceppe as a leader.

And of course, I'm talking about the current state of these parties ... I'm not saying I would never ever vote for the NDP, if they elected a non-douchebag leader and stopped pandering to unions and polysci dropouts, then they might be a real option.

i know. it's a shame about the whole splitting up Canada thing. sometimes i wonder how much Deceppe even believes in it these days.

xpost

I'm sure he still *wants* it, but knows it won't happen under his leadership (or even in his lifetime).

In a way, the decline of separatism is a good thing for the Bloc because they can retain a broader spectrum of voter support -- both the hardcore separatists and the federalists who like having strong voices advocating for Quebec in parliament.

for them it's good. sort of a lose/lose for the dominion tho.

Anyone care to defend this?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/963389--layton-vows-to-cap-credit-card-interest-rates?bn=1

I'm still working my way through a 1st-year macroeconomics textbook but why is that a bad idea? I don't have a strong opinion on it yet myself.

I could imagine a situation where I would vote for the BQ if I lived in Quebec even though I'm not a separatist.

This is exactly the sort of thing I meant btw. Likewise, I'd probably vote PQ or QS provincially if I lived in QC.

Don't expect the NDP to stop 'pandering to unions' any time too soon btw.:P They're probably as distant from the unions as they've ever been right now but they were pretty much founded as a labour party.

Admittedly, the Liberals' recent embrace of many of the economic policies the NDP has been advocating for a while has made them start looking pretty good to me. If my NDP MP weren't so strong or if I were in a swing riding, I'd probably strongly consider a Liberal vote this time.

I don't really have a strong opinion on it either. I guess as someone without credit card debt it's not really relevant to me personally. I'd be way more in favour of a price cap on stuff like the ridiculous cell phone and internet rates. I don't know, maybe working on bringing down the prices of bills and day to day living so people don't have to rely on credit cards so much to begin with would be a more productive course of action. But I never made it through my first year economics textbook at all so that might be wishy-washy idealist nonsense.

When I first started caring about politics I remember being disappointed to find out the BQ didn't run candidates outside of Quebec. I dig Duceppe. Looking forward to watching him in action in the debates.

The lower tier credit cards generally have a ~19% interest rate and a requirement to make a ~3% minimum payment on the balance every month. This encourages people who use their cards as a primary means of borrowing to hold a long-term balance on the card, making small payments and drowning in interest. The banks see this as a measure of risk assessment; e.g. they justify charging that rate because 1 in 10 don't pay any returns on their lending. Capping the rates will make the banks seek revenue elsewhere, for sure.

I think as an alternative to capping interest rates, lenders should be held to a more rigorous standard when making credit checks, approving loan access, etc. It's incredibly easy to get access to usurious credit, and the average person doesn't have alot of personal finance education (another topic; if you've been university you probably remember all the card companies hawking to the first-year students in the quad).
This helps cut down on predatory lending if the banks essentially can't approve anyone and everyone.
With deeper investigation you could approve lower rate constructive loans to people using credit for education, career advancement, etc, as well...
Also, if you raise the minimum monthly payments on credit cards, it would encourage people to reduce their borrowing and improve their long term financial health. I doubt this would be a popular decision, though.

People with higher incomes and better credit already have access to superior loan rates - the average line of credit in Canada is around prime plus two or so right now, and you can pretty easily borrow against your equity if you own property or similar capital assets. So they're not as exposed to the issue as people whose credit cards are their only means of borrowing. I don't have a good solution to that, personally :/

what's the status of the whole payday loans interest rate discussion? I recall the NDP pushing this a while back...one of the things I liked them for.

They're probably as distant from the unions as they've ever been right now

Actually, they were probably much more estranged in the aftermath of Rae's 'social contract'. Still, since then, they haven't been nearly as close as they used to be afaik.

Salsa shark, do you mean wage and price controls?

Thanks, Matt D.

Agh I don't know, it's just something I threw out there in response to the credit card cap thing, haven't really given it much thought beyond that!

As is this:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/liberals-promise-1-billion-a-year-in-student-aid--118834939.html

I'm still working my way through a 1st-year macroeconomics textbook but why is that a bad idea?

The other parties are rolling out plans for education and helping small businesses today (i.e. major issues that real parties talk about during election campaigns) and the NDP's response is ... credit card interest rates? It makes them look so small and insignificant next to the serious politicians. What are they announcing tomorrow? Discounts on bus passes?

It's very much in character for Layton, seeing how he's got a boner for taking on EVOL corporations such as banks. Yeah, everyone knows that banks make a lot of money. But as we've learned in the last couple of years, our banks are run exceptionally well compared with all the other major world economies. Was there a serious problem that was in need of fixing? Or does Layton get cheap thrills from taking on The Man? Rather than listening to what their constituents want, they're inventing new problems out of thin air and then offering "solutions" for them, essentially dictating to the voters what they *should* want. This is the exact opposite of what politicians should be doing.

And like Matt said, the banks will make up for the lost revenue in other ways and/or deny or reduce credit to their lower income clients that the NDP thinks they'll be helping.

i don't really care about that one either way.

I've been living around the Vancouver riding boundary line for the last few years and am never totally sure which riding I'm in. But now I am in the riding of Canada's best MP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Libby_Davies.jpg

http://www.ndp.qc.ca/commissions/lgbtt/libby.jpg

cuet!

Possible ground for the Opposition to work (although who knows what will sway the public?): http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/29/cv-f35-costs.html

Hey symsymsym, we are neighbours.

For one thing, the Bloc don't get as embroiled as the Parti Québécois in some of the more odiously anti-anglophone components of the language debate on the island. A week doesn't go by without some Parti Québécois-connected nutjob talking about how the English eat French babies or whatever. PQ-funded think tank reports that Chinese dépanneur owners are selling cigarettes made of out shredded ENGLISH newspapers. Overall the PQ seem more committed to keeping Québec white and stupid than anything else. I could never, ever, ever vote for a party like that.

The Bloc however is more of an actual political party with an eye for a multi-cultural, progressive, and resolutely French-speaking future for Québec as a province, or country, or whatever. I get Duceppe leaflets every once in a while and I like what he has to say. If it wasn't for the weird fragility and blunted aspirations of the English community on the island I'd vote Bloc. Ah fuck, maybe I will. The problems of other anglos are not really my problems and Duceppe probably has a bit to do with why this is the only neighbourhood in the entire country worth living in. Better to be awesome than English, I guess.

Ha, I forgot about that aspect of the PQ. I guess I was mainly still thinking of Levesque-style socialism. QS is probably more what I'm looking for.

This seems like it could be a potentially winning/salvaging strategy for the Opposition but it would require a near-total reversal of what the Liberals have been doing so far and seems unlikely: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index.php?showtopic=18437&pid=647006&st=0&#entry647006

(referring to the OP)

QS is a party made up of all the remnants of Québec's various Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist-Leninist, Workers Parties, blah blah blah etc. etc. They field exactly one compelling candidate, a man whose father still holds weird pseudo-revolutionary training camps/supper clubs on a farm in the Eastern Townships. Membership seems comprised of some D&D guys, a couple of crust punks, and some of the softer elements of the militant French language defence groups.

QS could not get elected anywhere other than the Plateau. The fact that it's even a party is testament to how odd a place the Plateau is. In the only provincial electoral district in Canada where Live Action Role Playing is more visible than baseball as a public sporting event, fantasy certainly plays a role.

I may have screwed up my boundaries here. Can't remember the eastern border of Amir Khadir's Plateaustan (as the media are fond of calling it).

wait west.

hello everything! we vancouver ilxors are few but proud

Yo. It's nice to be in a riding where it's possible to vote for the candidate and think less about the party politics. I'm not a huge NDP fan but I'll vote for her for sure. She's proved herself to me on a personal level. I work on the frontlines in social housing and she actually sought me out to get some off the record/ground level feedback that was not filtered through the sector organisations/BC Housing information machines. I'm not a party member or anything - she just found me via my job description and invited me to meet her, asked intelligent questions and listened to what I had to say. I really respect her for that.

Ha, fields, OK, it's been 10 years since I lived in Montreal (for a year) so I'm kind of talking out of my ass wrt QC provincial politics. I guess I'm just really disappointed with Charest, though I really tried to like him for a while.

that's awesome. her office helped a friend of mine receive a scholarship from ubc that he deserved and they were trying to deny him. her level of constituent outreach is pretty amazing.

xp

I need to move downtown (live in N Van now).

East Van, Bryan. Downtown has Hedy Fry. Did anyone see that article in one of the papers last week talking about Trevor Linden possibly running as a Tory against her?

Here it is

Ha, I wish Canadians were as obsessed with politics as with hockey!

What a tool: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/30/cv-election-harper.html

It's like he keeps trying to spin the election as some sort of Presidential-style race.

Just looked at a boundary map. Showing my ignorance of Vancouver, I would consider the western boundary of Vancouver East as downtown (especially the northern portion), even though it's probably not. Anyway, doesn't matter. I should move there.

xpost,
13,929,093 votes cast in 2008 federal election
16,600,000+ viewers of Canada-U.S. Olympic men's final hockey game last year

;_;

those #s are closer than i would have guessed!

16.6M could include a lot of people unable to vote, but the point's taken.

Just read this: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/canada-watches-its-democracy-erode/story-e6frg6ux-1226030310248 Is it overly cynical to think that Canadians would assume that the same things would happen anyway if another government was in place? We've gotten so used to this shit that we would believe and just shrug at anything?

well that article is making me feel bad about being so indifferent to the outcome of this election.

but yeah, I think one of the big reasons so many people don't care about this is that they think the liberals are just as bad about these kinds of things, and who can blame them really. I mean this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal is still pretty fresh in the minds of lots of people (at least here in quebec) and is often cited as one of the reasons people refuse to vote liberal.

What Peter said + I'm guessing those sorts of issues matter less to most people than the country's economic performance during the recession (regardless of who deserves credit for that) or their lower tax bills. (Many people are probably glad that their money isn't going to a group like Kairos anymore and are relatively unconcerned about the Parliamentary niceties.) The sponsorship scandal probably had such an impact (everywhere in the country) because of the huge sum of taxpayer money that involved. Also, it had quite a bit of time to percolate before it really hurt the Liberals: They still won the 2004 election, remember! Tasha Kheiriddin made the point that if the Opposition gave e.g. the in-and-out campaign financing issue some time and maybe waited for a Supreme Court ruling, it could make more of a difference.

Also, while Ignatieff is growing on me, he hasn't really inspired much passion in most people. I'm able to forgive McGuinty's government a number of things because the alternative is so much scarier to me.

This said, I live in one of the safest NDP ridings in the country so I might not have the best sense of what the average CPC voter in the general public thinks.

"... taxpayer money that was involved."

I was one of the few people who didn't care about the sponsorship scandal because a) all the alternatives to a Liberal-led government were far worse than having the Liberals stay on, and b) I'm kind of Morbs-ian in that I think most governments are intrinsically corrupt and that's just something you have to deal with.

Look at it this way: the G20 meeting cost taxpayers TEN TIMES as much as the sponsorship scandal did.

Overall the PQ seem more committed to keeping Québec white and stupid than anything else.

a comment like that confirms me it was a mistake to click on this thread :-)

To be fair, we got something for the cost of the G8/G20 summits. We can question how wisely it was spent but, as far as we know, it wasn't simply being funnelled back into the CPC.

We also got something for the sponsorship money -- some of it went toward its intended purpose. Anyway, a lot more money got blown on G8/G20, but if the Tories lose the election, it won't have anything to do with how they handled the G20 summit.

... unfortunately.

um. what did we get, exactly, for the g20 btw?

what i got was no work because so many agencies had to shut down or slow production while downtown toronto was on red alert for an entire week.

yeah the g8/g20 thing is actually way worse than the sponsorship scandal now that I think about it

Seriously? I can't tell anymore.

I wasn't at all crazy about how a lot of things were handled wrt the G8/G20 summits, as my posts on this board should have shown. But, for better or worse, as far as anyone knows, the money was actually used to host major events of international significance. The costs did seem a little high but there were two summits and the accounting was done differently than at other summits. (This seems to suggest that our G8 costs were normal. The G20 costs were higher than at other summits but there are arguments that it might be due to how numbers were reported.) So far there haven't been any official findings that money was pissed away on corrupt partisanship or grossly and inappropriately misspent. There are suspicions and defences, arguments on both sides. Not the case with the sponsorship scandal, where we have actual convictions, a major commission, and an Auditor General's report showing, according to the Wiki link, that up to $100M "was awarded to Liberal-friendly advertising firms and Crown corporations for little or no work."

So far, I think the violations of protesters' rights was the most indefensible thing that we know about for sure but there is little to show that the federal govt or the CPC was directly responsible for those.

I can't tell anymore.

(whether people are being serious about the G8/G20 summits being worse than the sponsorship scandal.)

So far there haven't been any official findings that money was pissed away on corrupt partisanship or grossly and inappropriately misspent.

i'd like to introduce you to Tony Clement.

"grossly inappropriate" pretty much sums up how i feel about that stunt.

Overall the PQ seem more committed to keeping Québec white and stupid than anything else.

a comment like that confirms me it was a mistake to click on this thread :-)

Permalink
― Sébastien

well this thread just took a distinctly Canadian turn - but you forgot to apologise!

sorry

(whether people are being serious about the G8/G20 summits being worse than the sponsorship scandal.)

I'm being serious. If the issue is the amount of taxpayers' money that was spent, and spent inappropriately (with returns not justifying the cost) then there's no comparison. If the issue is corruption, then Thermo's article about Tony Clement's riding pretty much sums it up. I'm sure his wasn't an isolated case.

Plus, the Liberals who were involved in the scandal aren't the same people that are running now (which was for the most part true in '04 and '06 as well), which can't be said about the Tories who are running in this election. So anyone who's holding a ten-year grudge against the Libs and wants to keep punishing them by voting for another party out of sponsorship scandal spite is an idiot.

I was thinking about the Tony Clement thing this week when I was talking about the election with my mom ... she asked "which party should I vote for if I want the roads to get fixed? The roads in Toronto are horrible" and I said "you should move to northern Ontario if you want to drive on nicer roads because that's where the Tory ridings are and that's where they're spending all our money!". Thermo posted that story on fb a few months ago and I was pretty disgusted by it (despite my stated indifference to most political corruption of that kind).

What Clement did is run-of-the-mill pork-barrel politicking and it's contemptible. Still, though, the money that was designated for bridges or an airport runway actually went to bridges or a runway, you know? The issue is just favouritism and unfairness in terms of where this infrastructure investment was targeted. This is not on par with awarding millions of dollars in contracts to firms that did no or very little work at all and instead donated some of the money back to the governing party or else rewarded party members in other ways. That is outright theft of taxpayer money. The in-and-out financing issue could potentially be more comparable to this, albeit on a significantly smaller scale.

Plus, the Liberals who were involved in the scandal aren't the same people that are running now So anyone who's holding a ten-year grudge against the Libs and wants to keep punishing them by voting for another party out of sponsorship scandal spite is an idiot.

I definitely agree with you here.

Anyhow, as much as I hate to say it, the Liberal deserve this. They've been running an impeccable campaign so far.

I'm a little frustrated that the NDP seems to have actually removed its platform from its website for this campaign. Even the Greens have something really thorough online. That said, I do think Layton has been presenting some interesting and substantial ideas, although it's got to hurt to have the Liberals poach many of his strongest policy proposals.

Yeah just went on NDP site to see if they'd updated their platform section and it's the same as it was when this all kicked off. Their main page seem to be updated pretty often though.

Not trying to shift discussion, but any thoughts on May being excluded from this year's debates? My initial reaction is that it's a pretty unfair move considering she was allowed in last time; I know the argument is usually 'no seat no debate' BUT I think the Greens have made enough gains to move beyond 'fringe' party status at this point. Okay so 6.8% of the national vote isn't huge but neither is the Bloc's 10% and they're allowed in...

I think that a requirement of having to have one elected member of parliament in order to participate in the debate is pretty reasonable.

and I say this as a person who has voted Green several times in the past

i honestly don't care if she's in or not.

I can't stand these debates anyway. The rules and protocol are apparently set up to make the whole tone as bland as possible. I much prefer a live one-on-one grilling from a tough TV interviewer that isn't afraid to ask difficult questions and is intelligent and confident enough to call them on their bullshit answers. I'm thinking of Paxman in the UK. I'm not sure Canada has someone like that.

Michael Moriarty?

They need to have some kind of objective and fair criterion to determine who gets to participate in the debate. Going by whether a party holds any seats in the Commons seems like a perfectly reasonable one to me. The Greens held one seat in 2008 so May got to participate then.

Yeah just went on NDP site to see if they'd updated their platform section and it's the same as it was when this all kicked off.

There actually used to be a lot more there before the campaign began. (My links upthread don't work any longer.)

How do you think this will affect the NDP's chances in AB, where they kicked off the campaign?

So here's something: In 2008, this riding was a sea of orange lawn signs and almost nothing but. This time around, I'm seeing as many blue signs, possibly more... The municipal election suggested that the electorate might be moving in a somewhat anti-labour/left direction...

This time around, I'm seeing as many blue signs, possibly more...

(To appreciate the significance of this, consider the last four election results: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_West#Federal_election_results )

Multiple polls showing the CPC around 40% now... I'm half ready to take back anything I've said about Ignatieff.

too bad old ppl are allowed to vote: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-parliament-would-look-if-only-youth-voted/article1747999/

"Provincial NDP parties in Nova Scotia, BC etc who have been placed in a position to actually push for environmental policies always flake out in the end. The way they dealt with the carbon tax here in BC pretty much finished them off as far as getting support from environmental groups."

I went to the bc ndp debate today, and the candidates were unanimous in supporting the carbon tax, with farnworth even saying that their carbon tax stance was one of the main reasons why they lost the last election.

The Bloc Québécois would form the Official Opposition with 60 seats, won with 13.5 per cent support nationally and 39.2 per cent support in Quebec.

These numbers are fishy ... about 1/4 of Canada's population is in Quebec, so how do they end up with 13.5 percent support from just 39 percent support in Quebec? Even if the numbers are reliable, why would the BQ's support from younger voters be higher than the national average? (serious question, btw)

They also don't have nearly enough data to conclude anything about the regional breakdown of votes (and therefore the number of seats that each party would get).

sym - I used to be in your riding too, for about a year when I was working in Van. Before that, I was in Layton's riding. Now I'm living in Iggy's.

Last time around I held my nose and voted for Iggy because I really didn't want the Cons to come up the middle, since they seemed to be running strong in the riding. Now I'm not sure where to throw my vote - thinking there's not as much chance of Iggy losing the riding this time out, and I traditionally skew more towards the NDP. Vote compass is telling me I'm more a Green voter, but I'm not sure I buy it. More research required, I guess.

Some days I wish I could still vote for the Rhino party.

Seconded

i always liked brian salmi's proposal to set up a skytrain line between main and hastings and shaughnessy

i was asked to volunteer in vancouver south for the ndp against incumbent ujjal dosangh, but he only beat the conservative challenger by 20 votes last time, and i'm thinking i don't want to help the vote get split. also, lazy

first fed election since i moved to the west coast. richmond has been pc (for decades) -> liberal -> alliance -> liberal -> conservative since the 70s.

hopeless ndp candidate, Career Background: One of the founders and past executive director of British Columbia's largest anti-tobacco activist and lobby group, Airspace Action on Smoking and Health. goddamnit.

North Vancouver MP 4ndrew Saxt0n just wished me a happy Monday as I was about to board the Seabus. If there was any doubt that I wouldn't be voting for him it vanished then. Ok, back to the serious discourse.

why would the BQ's support from younger voters be higher than the national average? (serious question, btw)

This is believable to me. The youth vote does tend to lean further to the left and to be more socially liberal (which the BQ certainly are). Plus, the BQ are major advocates for post-secondary education funding and students' issues as well as culture. (If I wanted to be a jerk, I could mention that there seems to be a contradiction in demanding massive increases in federal funding for education and culture while also calling for Quebec sovereignty. But then I would be a jerk.)

You're completely right that the poll numbers don't add up though.

I've always liked Ujjal Dosanjh... It won't happen because he doesn't speak French but I've thought I might become a Liberal if he were leader.

2008 results by specific polling station!: http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/elections-federales/resultats-des-elections-federales-2008/

How do you think this will affect the NDP's chances in AB, where they kicked off the campaign?

The comments posted to the Edmonton Sun's 'editorial' about this were pretty funny though.

Great link, btw. Really surprised to see this one speck of bright orange for Edm-St Albert:

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l442/acrobins/neighbourmap.jpg

so what do we think about Harper banning facebook unsavories from his rallies (or whatever it was)?
incredibly, incredibly stupid on the conservative's part imho.

article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ejections-at-campaign-rallies-a-staff-issue-harper-says/article1971383/

two girls for having friended Ignatieff on FB - and a veteran volunteer for... um - giving a shit about vetrans i guess.

Seems pretty hard to defend and it was done pretty clumsily. From what people are telling me, though, it's pretty normal for parties to micro-manage who gets to attend campaign rallies. They're generally meant to be photo ops for party faithful, I guess?

This is amusingly weak though: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2011/04/conservatives-try-to-explain-student-ejections-from-rallies.html

That is sooo weak ...

On one hand, I don't really care who they exclude from their rallies. They're not town hall meetings so they can let in whoever they want. OTOH, they're screening people's fb pages??? What the hell??

I don't know if the other parties do that sort of thing, but no matter how big a fan I was of some politician, if the vetting process involved someone examining my fb page before I'd be allowed to attend a rally, I'd just as soon stay home.

OTOH, they're screening people's fb pages??? What the hell??

I reacted in basically the same way on a different message board and got these responses:

As opposed to what? That sounds like a better guide of whether someone from the opposing camp is crashing your party than "That guy looks like a Liberal!"

The whole practice lends itself to abuses. Picking on whether they should be using Facebook or not seems almost besides the point....

...
You kinda entering Shades of gray here. It is ok [for the Liberals] to kick me out because they have seen me door knock for the NDP it isn't ok to kick someone else out because they only saw them supporting the other party on facebook?

It should be all or none.

Those actually seem like fair points to me. Facebook profiles are public, for better or worse.

From what I hear, it's common in some fields for employers to check out the Facebook profiles of job applicants.

Sure, if you're applying for a job then it's reasonable. But to attend a one hour political rally, one time? Seems excessive, not to mention a waste of time and resources for the campaign staff.

Oh, yeah, totally.

Not certain, but I don't think it'll make much difference. Tory supporters will obv be against it and leftists will prb support it. I guess the only questionable group here are the Liberals Layton hopes to pull over to his side, but unless they don't think Iggy's plan for more regulation goes far enough I don't think they'll swap sides over Layton's proposal.

I basically agree, which is why it seemed like a curious move for Layton if he hopes, as he claimed, to "paint [Edmonton] orange". When "Tory supporters" = the whole province except one riding, you need to reach out to them a little if you want them to switch to your side.

to the FB thing - there's two things:

1 - it's just incredibly dumb politics. if you want to get more people to vote for you - those people have most likely supported other parties in the past. how are you going to win these people over if you're booting them from your events?! i can understand all parties wanting to keep partisan trouble makers out from private events, but this is taking things so far that it defeats the purpose!

2 - this is in keeping with a trend the conservatives have had going for a while now. there have been complaints from researchers, teachers - anyone who has publicly criticized conservative policy - that all of the sudden conservative staffers are snooping through their past, trying to dig up any dirt to discredit these people. as far as i'm aware this is unprecedented in Canadian politics.

oh, and a third point:

these people dedicating their energies to all this snooping for the cons, had better be getting paid by the conservatives! they have a habit of getting the tax payer to pick up the tab for their mud-slinging when and wherever possible and i see no reason why this would be any different.

http://warrenkinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-05-at-3.16.12-PM1.png

Is it just me, or is the Toronto Star going overboard with their Liberal Party asslicking (even more so than usual)?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/970557--ignatieff-s-appeal-improving-but-harper-still-leads-poll-says

This was their lead story earlier in the day. The headline says that Iggy is catching up to Harper and the lead paragraph claims that he's "winning hearts and minds". The bad news is that his disapproval ratings are huge (even bigger than Harper's). And his leadership rating is abysmal -- only 14 per cent think that he'd make the best prime minister out the major party leaders. Of course, you have to read the fine print because those numbers are buried further down in the story.

The story also claims that many people who claim to be NDP supporters are really closet Liberal supporters, according to unspecified "pollsters".

these people dedicating their energies to all this snooping for the cons, had better be getting paid by the conservatives!

OK, so this indicates that those RCMP officers doing security for CPC events were in fact involved with restricting non-registered attendees, which is not part of the RCMP's mandate. Also that the CPC seems to be unique in requiring attendees to pre-register.

B4rry, I think they mean that many NDP supporters may actually strategically vote Liberal as opposed to being closet LPC supporters. At least that's how I read it.

same here.

xxxpost. I've noticed that the papers here in Vancouver have also been really critical of Harper and positive about the Liberals and the NDP. I'm fine with it. Harper doesn't deserve such a lead. Anyway, that story from the Star shows the Conservatives leading the Liberals by 11%. That's a hell of a lot better than the 20% or whatever it was from a couple of weeks ago.

and i've noticed that no matter what is happening in the world - the Sun, without fail, has some kind of full page 'OMG IGGY IZ ELETIST AMERICUN" style cover.

since the election was called that is.

oh - except one about the leafs. their lone priority above smearing liberals.

lololol

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/06/cv-election-flash-vote-mobs.html

"I'm not sure what a flash mob is but it sounds a bit disconcerting … I don't know about 'flash' or 'mobs' but I don't like the context of either word."

"... or 'student' either."

I've noticed that the papers here in Vancouver have also been really critical of Harper and positive about the Liberals and the NDP.

CPC campaign strategy, at least for the first portion of the campaign, seemed to revolve around saying the word "coalition" as many times as possible per sentence. Even the right-wingers I know started to find it embarrassing. By way of contrast, while I once swore I'd never support a party led by Michael Ignatieff, I'm thinking of actually donating something based on the LPC campaign so far.

Exactly, Canada. It's time.

Hmm,
Ex-pat Canadians baffled by voting rules

I sent off for my special ballot last week. I didn't find the rules baffling really, just kind of irritating--like why a 5-year rule? Is that the point at which I'm no longer considered to be interested or invested enough in my home country to vote in its elections? grumble grumble.

5 years is approx the amount of time foreign commie indoctrination takes to set in.

Elections Canada is waaaaaaay more organized now than they were in '08. Last time, you had to contact them after the election had been called to be put on the voter list (and by the time they got their shit together and sent my ballot, it was too late to vote). But they've since compiled a list of overseas voters and the ballots were ready as soon as the election was called.

The confusion stems from the fact that Janhunen goes home to visit for about a month once a year. Does that qualify as residency or not? She said she wasn’t able to get a straight answer

I don't know, to me the rules are perfectly clear. For taxation purposes, the definition of residency is clear cut. And what possible definition of "residency" would include "visiting home for about a month once a year"?

Well yeah, that's what I thought too. I visit for a month over xmas but that doesn't make me a resident, obv! But not being able to vote in a year or two under this 5-year rule makes me a sad panda, so boourns to that.

Do you mean 'residency' being is tied to whether or not a person pays taxes in Canada? Seems like an awkward way to determine voting eligibility if so, there are people living in Canada don't pay taxes but they still get to vote, and there are taxpayers who aren't citizens who don't get to vote...

Yeah, you don't need to pay taxes if you want to vote, so they're not linked in that sense. Residency is defined (maybe that's too strong a word) partly for tax purposes, but that's just one possible requirement to be eligible to vote.

It wouldn't be worth it to maintain Canadian residency if it meant that your salary could be taxed. That's not true for everyone, especially if they own a business or do business in Canada, but it's definitely not worth it to maintain residency status just for voting purposes. The five year rule isn't related to taxation either, the rationale is that someone living abroad wouldn't be properly informed about the election or something. This might have made sense pre-internet/pre-24 hour news cycle. Hopefully they'll change the law sometime.

Pretty good little debate on corporate taxes: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Politics/1244504890/ID=1872560664

even better: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/corporate-tax-rates-effect-on-business-investment/article1972513/?from=1972599

Am I a bad citizen if I find things like the American budget debate infinitely more interesting than our own election? Even though the outcome affects me directly, I just can't get interested in this crew. Trudeau interested me, ditto a couple of those Mulroney/Turner elections--nothing since that I can remember. I think the nature of my job--regardless of ruling party, public-school teachers are probably as close to a secure pension and a secure job as it gets, plus any salary movement's going to happen within a relatively narrow spectrum--has something to do with it.

normally i'm revolted by US politics and would prefer to ignore it as best as possible.

that post turned out way more Morbs-ian than i intended!

Yeah...the same stuff that revolts you is what draws me in. I do, unfortunately, approach politics for the spectacle.

The 2004 election was more "important" than we realized it was at the time: a referendum on Liberals' ability to govern despite all the scandals, a referendum on Paul Martin as leader, the rise of the re-unified Canadian right, the balance of federal politics shifting even further west. Quebec was at a crossroads where separatism could have gained huge momentum depending on how Quebecers voted.

I prefer having a government that isn't in a perpetual state of clusterfuck like they have in the US. It might be entertaining to watch from afar but good government isn't supposed to be entertaining!

i just think it's so corrupt down there. it makes me sick.

"I prefer having a government that isn't in a perpetual state of clusterfuck like they have in the US." - I just realized that this can be read in two ways, so just to clarify: US = clusterfuck. Canada = less of a clusterfuck and I prefer it that way.

I think in the last election there was a poll taken that found something like 15% of Canadians would trade their vote in Canada to be able to vote in the US (specifically, I think it may have been to trade their vote in the Can 2008 election so they could vote in the US 2008 presidential election). Not sure how much that number would change if re-polled now but it's still a bit :/ I think I'm like the others posting here. US politics are too frustrating, too sickening. Also, I would never want to live there (and thus will never be able to vote there) so I personally don't see much point in paying much attention to what goes on in the US.

It's worth paying attention to what goes on there (leaders of the free world, etc.) but I don't envy the way they do politics.

The Star can barely hide their excitement today (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/972241--ndp-fortunes-falling-fast-in-latest-poll?bn=1)

According to Nanos, support for the New Democrats in Ontario has declined for seven days in succession.

Nationally, Conservatives sit at 40.5 per cent, Liberals 31.7 per cent, NDP, 13.2 per cent, Bloc Quebecois, 9.2 per cent and Greens, 4.0 per cent.

The Nanos survey of 1,011 decided Canadians was conducted April 6-8, and is considered plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

A Layton spokesperson argued that the average of all the polls so far is 17.5 per cent for the NDP. (my emphasis)

LOL seriously, NDP?? Here's a crazy thought: if you can't pass fourth grade math, then you can't figure out how to balance the budget by 2014.

not even sure why the Star would be so excited - with the Cons still polling better than they did in '08 i don't see much to celebrate.

Still plenty of time for those numbers to change, especially if stuff like this keeps coming out: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/972725--tories-come-under-attack-over-ag-s-shocking-g8-spending-report?bn=1

Just noticing for the first time here how much Sarkozy looks like Kids In the Hall's Kevin McDonald.

ha ha.

i was just coming to post that article. fuck tony clement. i hope he goes to prison.

A Layton spokesperson argued that the average of all the polls so far is 17.5 per cent for the NDP. (my emphasis)

LOL seriously, NDP?? Here's a crazy thought: if you can't pass fourth grade math, then you can't figure out how to balance the budget by 2014.

I mean, it depends which polls you look at but that's not completely insane, although it's as optimistic as every political party's self-evaluation is. Looking at Election Almanac, there have been several polls that showed the NDP above that number, as well as below. (A few in the 20-21 range.) Admittedly, I didn't bother doing an average myself.

(And yeah, something like the release of an Auditor-General's report is what I was referring to upthread:

So far there haven't been any official findings that money was pissed away on corrupt partisanship or grossly and inappropriately misspent.)

Btw, I'm no military expert but the NDP's defence plan is actually sounding pretty good to me: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/layton-pans-tory-defence-plan-unveils-made-in-canada-alternative/article1976679/?from=sec368

This seems like a long time coming btw: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lysiane-gagnon/in-quebec-the-ndp-is-no-2/article1977700/

I believe this is the complete leaked report fwiw: http://www.torontosun.com/news/decision2011/2011/04/11/17953806.html

not nearly as stinging as i was hoping.

Not devastating but does seem to show: a lack of transparency verging on manipulation of Parliament, unusually high expenses, and inadequate documentation.

man. i decided to read the Post's site this morning. what a joke. no mention of the G8 scandal anywhere near the top. the first thing i click was about how the money for the action plan was spread around, where the article goes on to say that the Cons had "so far avoided any spending scandals"! then i scroll to the bottom to read 1,000 posts bitching about the liberal commie media bias. fuck these morons.

Not sure what to make of yesterday's story. It was leading CFTR all day, but (what you'd expect, of course) a PC guy shrugged it off. It might be an opening, though--again, short time frame, stories take on a life of their own.

i have a feeling this report and the "misquote" are going to be the debate's theme song tonight.

I mean, it depends which polls you look at but that's not completely insane, although it's as optimistic as every political party's self-evaluation is.

But when the polls show a clear trend downward, then taking an average and claiming it to be representative of something is almost meaningless.

Btw, I'm no military expert but the NDP's defence plan is actually sounding pretty good to me:

IMO, it's completely retarded, like most NDP "plans".

It's a defence plan that is more of a job-creation plan.

Judging from that article, Layton's concept of defense-related jobs means more unionized manual labour building ships, not as if that should surprise anyone. If they just want to create jobs then there are any number of other ways to go about it, and none of those ways would cost $21B.

Canada is a world leader in aerospace -- our aerospace industry is the 4th largest in the world. It's a high-yield sector that brings billions of $ in sales into the country, keeps us at the forefront of military and civilian technological developments, and keeps tens of thousands of high paying jobs in the country (and the intellectual capital that goes with it). Buying jets can at least be partly justified along those lines. Anyone proposing a $21B defense budget had better be putting big chunks of money into the kind of R&D and engineering sectors that will not only create jobs right now, but invest in the long term future of the country. Oh, and the Grits also want to support more peacekeeping efforts, so this is nothing new.

Mr. Layton said it is time to go back to “square one” on the F-35s and none of the aircraft should be purchased without first assessing the defence priorities of Canadians.

This is a meaningless statement. Defense isn't like a health care system, it's not something that everybody uses or needs to have access to every day. Layton is so out of touch it's not even funny.

you sure hate the ndp huh

The NDP are all right, but when they're wrong they're spectacularly wrong and their leader is a gigantic douche.

he has a p cool moustache tho

this may sound cliched - but at least he's sticking up for our vets. i'm glad he's coming out swinging on that one. when our current gov't's policy is to treat our returning troops like yesterday's garbage until it's time to trot them out for a photo-op... if we're going to start calling people "gigantic douches" - we should think about who our PM is and what's he's done to limit the help our troops have access to.

if anything really pisses me off about Harper and his goons (aside from completely lying about transparency and ethics) - it's the totally disrespectful way they've treated our troops. it really, honestly, bothers me alot.

Defense isn't like a health care system, it's not something that everybody uses or needs to have access to every day.

It is still possible to (re)assess what our defence priorities should be, B4rry, e.g. questioning whether we should even get involved in active combats in internal matters such as the current Libyan situation. National Post writers with no NDP sympathies whatsoever have said as much (that we can question our defence priorities):
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/04/05/kelly-mcparland-liberals-hide-their-agenda-on-canadas-military/
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/04/01/peter-worthington-canada-doesnt-need-the-worlds-best-attack-aircraft/

Anywho, I read the Conservative, Liberal, and NDP platforms last night. I like the Liberal platform the best, particularly the ideas of promoting strategic knowledge-intensive sectors, the emphasis on investing in scholarly non-commercial research, the Learning Passport, and the relatively detailed ideas about arts funding. I do think their approach to international trade and co-operation is good. I don't really know how much to trust Ignatieff, honestly. (The LPC mostly seemed to go along with the CPC in the last Parliament and Chretien's Liberal governments were quite neoliberal so this new progressive agenda seems a bit surprising.) Also, my NDP incumbent seems much stronger than the Liberal candidate + the Conservative came in #2 last time so I may vote NDP again. Seems like I won't volunteer with anyone's campaign though.

I wasn't expecting to like the Conservative platform anyway but it's kind of amazing in terms of how little information they provide as to how they will balance the budget, especially given how much detail they want to give in other areas. They plan to slash taxes, increase military and law enforcement spending, and say they'll maintain health and education transfers to the provinces... Something's going to get gutted...

I just signed up to be a DRO. I'm not completely sure what to expect.

(And I'm sorry to be a pedant, clemenza, but there hasn't been a federal PC party for a decade.:P They're Conservatives or Tories or the CPC. Joe Clark wouldn't recognize this bunch.)

"...in active combat when it comes to internal matters..."

(I realize that the NDP doesn't actually seem to be questioning that particular issue, btw.)

what is DRO?

Deputy returning officer. Guy who manages a polling station.

(And I'm sorry to be a pedant, clemenza, but there hasn't been a federal PC party for a decade.:P They're Conservatives or Tories or the CPC. Joe Clark wouldn't recognize this bunch.)

No problem, you're right--shows how little attention I've paid the past 20 years. I was in grade 9 the year Clark took over the leadership, and I wrote a paper on him (or the convention, can't remember) for history class. He seemed like a very decent guy who, politically, was no match for Trudeau.

Harper is handling himself depressingly well...

...and Layton is currently rocking Iggy back on his heels here. For a lecturer and intellectual, Iggy's being stunningly repetitive and occasionally incoherent. Though I generally lean NDP, this is NOT pleasing me.

OTM

layton sounds like a fucking asshole

Think so? He's a bit morally superior but imho he looks good here. He's trying to hit two targets. I don't think Iggy expected to be attacked by Layton.

Really? I thought he was doing exceptionally well, articulately making strong points.

xpost

Sounding like an asshole is better than sounding like a confused grandpa IIRC.

Worth noting I'm listening to this on the radio so if there's a visual element that's making Iggy look better, it's not coming across for me obviously.

There isn't.

I mean, I can't be too hard on him. Public speaking is really hard for me too.:P And he has to think on his feet.

Ugh. Harper is just a fucking sleazebag. He is so repulsive.

layton looking better now

Sund4r -- Kelly McParland's article is OTM. I think all the parties agree that no matter what the military's responsibilities are going to be, they should be well-equipped. But Layton is playing a cheap brand of politics, he's basically saying "which do you prefer, should we spend $20B on stuff that won't directly affect you personally, or should we spend $20B on job creation (= do you want us to put money in your pocket)?" Not only is that a false binary, it's a totally misleading way to think about defense spending. I know there's a link between defense and job creation (I wrote about it upthread) but I wouldn't sell my defense budget as just another job creation plan.

I'm not saying that the Liberals have it all figured out though ... and I'm not saying that I agree with the F-35 purchases either.

BE hard on him. He's a goddamn LECTURER.

And yeah, Harper is lying his fegging ass off here and saying it in a soothing condescending tone which is, sadly, going to work a whole lot better than the arm flailing of his supposed main competition here.

WTF is Ignatieff on now? "Let some flowers bloom"??

xpost
BE hard on him. He's a goddamn LECTURER.

So am I.:P

ya. sadly otm

xpost

The way Duceppe looks at Harper is actually quite terrifying.

Harper is handling himself depressingly well...

He always does ... he let's the other leaders get riled up over stuff, while he chills out and tries to sound "leader-like".

WTF is Ignatieff on now? "Let some flowers bloom"??

I LOLed

...though admittedly Ig seems to have found his feet a bit better since the beginning of this thing!
(xpost)

The big diff Sund4r is you're not running for PM. :)

sweet. now what we've been arguing about is the official subject.

haha is "let xxx flourish" and "shut down everything you can't control" Iggy's answer to EVERYTHING??

Yeah I take back my comment about his feet. Maybe they're walking down the street looking for a wine bar or something. >:(

i do hate the way harper is talking

"i'm stephen harper and this is my indoor voice."

Just thought I'd say stunningly repetitive again.

xpost. LOL @ indoor voice. It is incredibly obnoxious. If he's trying to be presidential he's way off the mark.

everyone else sounds hysterical by comparison tho

xpost

lol at "stiffed"!

Point for Iggy there!

you STIFFED parliament ...

xpost!

he needs to sound more like that less like a recorded talking point

Iggy's made a few good zingers. He comes across as a real guy. Harper's just on a script.

"WE MET IN A HOTEL ROOM"

ding!

ding! ding! ding!

Can I vote for Duceppe somehow, please?

This is a brilliant debate!

making iggy look so good
right now

he just needs to stfu and watch

he talked :(

The stream paused when Layton said to Ignatieff "Why have you been Mr Harper's b..." I know he probably said "best friend" but in my heart and mind, he said "bitch".

Harper making my skin crawl now with blatant lies about how our system of government works.

Harper fixed: "I simply don't accept the truth."

I'm kind of misquoting but "I simply do not accept the truth..." should be Stephen Harper's personal motto.

xpost!

Ow, Iggy sounded pissy there in response to a good point from Layton, and that wasn't a good sound for him.

Self-righteous, that is.

he didn't respond, really.

Man, I used to really like Duceppe.

no. he got him.
xpost

Layton's has came prepared with a bigger arsenal than Iggy who keeps returning to the "respect for democracy" stuff. Which is all well and good, but when Layton brings up voting reform or Iggy's voting record, it sounds refreshing. People do give a shit about those things.

I don't think Iggy's hit Layton with anything substantial.

OK, Duceppe's winning me back a little.

Ugh. This "Bill 101" bit kind of physically hurts.

THIS IS NOT THE FRENCH DEBATE.

Yeah, good work raising a lower-profile issue like cuts to Immigration Settlement Services, Jack.

well, it sort of on subject for once.

(Wasn't being sarcastic btw)

i realize Harper has a "lying voice"

xpost

ha ha - sorry!

so is Harper's claim about "tripling" those funds just out-and-out BS? No one called him on it so far and it openly contradicted everyone else.

That was the first time tonight Harper said something I agreed with. xpost

i was just assuming it was bs because he used that voice.

xpost

(that multiculturalism can coexist with the preservation of the French language)

Oh, this is the first time I've been impressed by Ignatieff.

(tonight)

yes Iggy, the gun registry is definitely what you want to bring up.

"soft on crime in his own office"

ya - i didn't think he was that good there.

xpost - that was good!

Duceppe's doing great right now imo.

oh david chenpaws

Layton totally just said "bling".

And "hashtag fail" - oh man, that was bad.

i know.

ugh Layton don't ever do that

Harper's getting rocked on this question ... he's not really trying to refute what the others are saying though, so I guess he feels he already has strong support on this issue?

If someone says "roffle" I am SO turning this thing off.

more or less. the people that would agree with him already do.
xpost ha ha!

I think so, B4rry.
xpost

HA HAHAHA

I can't tell if Layton's "crooks in the senate" comment just got a laugh from the audience or a gasp.

i was laughing too hard to tell

sounded like a laugh to me, but it was pretty muffled

Whatever it was, it was the first time I've heard any substantial response from the audience! So well done!

I think Ignatieff has given up on the Prairie/Northern/rural vote and is aiming for the cities and Central Canada by stressing the gun registry...?

maybe!

Layton is being remarkably and wisely quiet throughout this discussion though!

holy shit - it's been 90 minutes already!

i think i'm drunk

holy shit - it's been 90 minutes already!

I know!

"alternative service delivery"

"We need a low-tax system where we can continue to fund health care..."

Iggy losing his temper is not a good look for him

Ha, excellent final question!

Iggy has been largely appalling here, to my great dismay.

"mr harper is offing you"

I'm actually pretty offended by Duceppe's constant references to "Quebec and Canada".

You know what that debate was missing? A female perspective. Shame there isn't a female party leader who could have been, y'know, included.

whatever. she can get a seat in the house first.

OTM

Well, that was fun. Iggy looked overwhelmed and not completely up to the challenge, but the others were more or less true to form.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/realitycheck/2011/04/fact-checking-the-leaders-debate.html

It's kind of depressing the way this supposedly ended up as a Harper victory (because he "survived") while at the same time moving the media on from the G8 cash scandal. I mean, Harper essentially stood there saying "it's simply not true" for two hours in the calmest voice money can buy, and somehow ends up "winning"?

His main competitor failed to either articulately nail him on the truth and importance of those charges - to create a "You had an option, sir" moment - or to articulately sell his own (impressive) platform. Spending more time explaining what the Learning Passport is and why it would be good for Canadians would have helped more than going on about KAIROS's funding or about the gun registry.

I was going to say that political debates work very differently from academic discussions and so it may have been hard for Ignatieff to adjust. But, actually, if Ignatieff had chosen to stick to a scholarly approach and had actually presented and explained well-researched, clearly cited evidence of Harper's errors, that would have worked much better than what he did.

I mean, Harper tried to do back himself up that way by e.g. citing Jack Mintz on corporate tax cuts. Ignatieff (or Layton) could have easily jumped in with a contrary citation from Jim Stanford or another left-leaning economist. At the very least, it would have made Harper's position seem less authoritative.

"tried to back himself up"

i don't think they even would have needed a "left leaning" economist. just an economist would do.

latest EKOS poll (done yesterday) has Cons and Libs within 5% points!

When your opponents all gang up on you and you manage to hang in there without letting anyone hit a knockout blow, then I think it's fair to call that a "win". I'm assuming that Harper had some backup arguments to make in case he felt they were hitting him hard, but besides Iggy's "that's not bickering, that's how democracy works" zing, Harper was never in serious trouble.

Iggy's biggest problem wasn't offense, it was defense. He went in there with his prepared points but as soon as anything went off script (like when others attacked him) he couldn't improvise and struck out on a couple of softballs, like Layton's criticism of his attendance record and the corporate tax cuts thing with Harper.

It's really too bad the corporate tax discussion went nowhere.

anyone watching the fr?

I might try to catch it later online. Let me know how it is.

oh - i'll be watching hockey!

Was going to listen on the radio but apparently the Ceeb had other ideas tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQm0t1v2wOM&feature=channel_video_title

The link doesn't work for me.

i will vote for whoever local hipster icons tell me to vote for

http://www.stephenharperisatotallynormalguy.com/

Uh, I don't think that actually helps.

sort of gives normal people a bad name, you're right.

The debate is weird in French. Layton's way of talking is different than in English but I can't really explain how. It just is. His 'French voice' is more appealing.

Also some silly questions from a poll reported on Global:

Forgetting about their policies for a moment, who do you find to be the most likeable. That is, the person you would most like to go out for a beer or coffee with?
Stephen Harper 25%
Michael Ignatieff 10%
Jack Layton 53%
Gilles Duceppe 6%
Don’t know 6%

Which party leader do you think is the most visually attractive?
Stephen Harper 31%
Michael Ignatieff 9%
Jack Layton 38%
Gilles Duceppe 10%
Don’t know 12%

Sorry but wtf these percentages, Iggy may not have been a master debater but he is by far the best looking of this lot.

Layton is always really well groomed and looks very healthy and happy. Ignatieff's a bit of a slouch.

i would have to go with harper. he could stand to hit a treadmill maybe, but i think i would have gone with him!

xpost

A younger Ignatieff

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Srbr7Wvfnes/SYTGaZHOlbI/AAAAAAAAGYo/0B6eq5k6p_g/s320/ignatieff_book.jpg

vs student Duceppe?

http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes2004/images/prof_duceppe_univ.jpg

omg @ duceppe!

Compared with:

http://www.njnnetwork.com/njn/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/harper.jpg

vs http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zje-LJX3TPY/TY1y8bXmvII/AAAAAAAAAVg/1zJyg4pQsbI/s200/66222472-michael-ignatieff.jpg

gis pics of young Harper i found this, btw:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/daveberta2/StephenHarper.jpg

this was the only young pic of him i could find (without that i would have had to assume he was born at the age of 42).
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7g7vq7oz8bE/TDH6elA093I/AAAAAAAADY8/IqOVy98T0Uk/s1600/007_harper_plaid.jpg

Guess who??

http://fawny.org/blog/images/ThatsJackLayton.jpg

Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfmzvwrub_8

The Harper photo just above: 1) I'll give him one thing--he had a great sleepy-eyed '70s look about him; 2) It's been driving me insane trying to figure out who he looks exactly like in that photo...I've gone back to it at least 10 times, and it's just not coming to me. I think it's a secondary character in some movie. When it finally clicks in, I'll try to post the two side-by-side.

Getting the exact same vibe from that Harper photo. Have definitely seen that face in a movie or old TV series.

Travolta resemblance? Is that it?

70s teenage homer simpson?

there's definitely a bit of a resemblance

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7g7vq7oz8bE/TDH6elA093I/AAAAAAAADY8/IqOVy98T0Uk/s1600/007_harper_plaid.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bngNvVpYNjI/SxNK7lz3HpI/AAAAAAAAAt4/3v0u-fyw71Y/s1600/HomerSimpson8.gif

Post-debate polls seem to show the CPC slipping slightly (greatly if you believe EKOS), LPC holding steady, and NDP fully recovering their losses. If this continues, a majority seems unlikely. There's a chance we'll see some NDP influence in the next government, regardless of who leads it.

I got a call for that poll last night. I lied and said I was 100% positively voting Liberal. In truth I am in Mulclair's riding, and I'll likely vote for him. But I figured the Liberals would benefit the most from an upswing in the polls.

The Homer thing is funny, but no, it's very specific. I'm starting to wonder if he looks like someone I went to high school with. It's still driving me up the wall. I will figure it out eventually. (No, not Travolta either.)

Anyone have any bets on whether the NDP will take any more seats in Quebec? They seem to be gaining at the BQ's expense. Duceppe's English-language debate performance seemed designed to appeal to hard separatists, which may push away the progressive-not-separatist portion of the BQ base. I assume he behaved the same way in the French debate. I don't know if the NDP's support is concentrated enough in any key ridings though.

the NDP are only even slightly close in 1 other riding (forget which) in Quebec. so - they could gain 1 - not likely - but i would be shocked if it was more. shocked!

yeah the NDP support is very spread out in Quebec, whereas the liberal and conservative support is concentrated in certain areas. They'll probably come in second in a lot of ridings but I doubt they are gonna take more than the Outremont riding.

Yeah someone was saying they might have a shot in Aylmer but otherwise it's pretty much Bloc or Conservatives for most regions outside Montreal.

Our debates don't seem to get this intense anymore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyYjRmM7RDY

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"--that sounds about right. It'll be of great interest in Myanmar, so hopefully the uploader has made it available there.

Anyway, if it's the "You did have an option, sir" clip, yes, most dramatic. I was rooting for Turner, and would have voted for him, but I got caught up in the moment anyway. Plus, Mulroney hadn't quite worn out his welcome at that point.

I guess it's not that clip, which had to do with patronage--this one's supposed to concern free trade.

Regarding the NDP support in Quebec, and in general, this article gives some food for thought. Especially since the NDP are apparently polling in first place in BC and doing a lot better than anyone expects in PQ right now.

with the option of Jack Layton as prime minister, 44 per cent of Quebec would vote NDP, 10 per cent more than for the Bloc. That poll is from a year ago, but there's probably a good reason that Gilles Duceppe's campaign involves stressing to voters that Layton will never become prime minister.

This is the crazy thing, the difference between Layton and Broadbent: people loved Broadbent, but they weren't willing to make him prime minister if it meant voting for his party. Today, people love Layton and they aren't afraid of an NDP-led government: if there is an option for an NDP-Liberal coalition, people prefer Layton and his party to lead more than two to one. The problem is, they just don't think it's going to happen.

When Egyptians succeeded in deposing Hosni Mubarak in February, what was revealed to them and to the world was that what had seemed impossible had been entirely possible. Their situation was much as that facing Canadians now: it was precisely their continued belief in the impossibility of achieving what they wanted which perpetuated its impossibility.

So the question to Canadians is: why not vote NDP, leave the Liberals in the wilderness, strike a blow against Quebec separatism and get the government you want? All that's stopping you is the belief that it can't happen.

not what i expected when i clicked your link!

LOL. Ooops. Here it is:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/douglas-bell/and-now-a-word-from-our-ndp-conscience/article1982035/

Ha.

Clemenza, are you in the US? I'm in Canada (obv) and can access the clip. I was actually originally searching for video of the "You had an option, sir" exchange but couldn't find it.

xpost

Nah, I'm sitting in a Brampton schoolroom right now. Maybe it's some kind of firewall my board has set up, but we can access YouTube otherwise.

Oh, here it is!:
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/federal_politics/topics/1181-6516/

For all that I loathe Mulroney, what a powerful speaker.

The clips are region-locked outside of Canada, or at least, I can't view either of the ones posted recently. Anything hosted on CBC's own site will work for me though. I've never run into region-locking there!

[but sund4r your link seems to be a lost page, can you re-post?]

Opened up the Turner-Mulroney clip at home--great! Turner on substance ("cancellable on six months' notice"--regardless of whether you were for or against NAFTA, that's a big "yeah, sure"), Mulroney on style. Turner comes across as feckless.

1984 and 1988

Can you imagine a Canadian politician arguing today that free trade with the US was a sellout of our entire history that turned us into a colony? Maybe the Marxist-Leninists?

Fuck Harper and the Conservatives. Vote for anyone but him. Even the fucking Bloq.

Newest EKOS seat projection projects 6 NDP seats in Quebec and 14 in BC! (Don't know how realistic it is but it's interesting).

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/seat_projection_april_15_2011.pdf

The downside of that projection, if it's accurate, is that Linda Duncan will lose her seat and Alberta will become true blue again.

Yeah, it also projects that the NDP will lose 7 seats in ON.

Although, that still accounts for a net loss for the CPC and net gain for the LPC in ON.

Basically, that projection predicts that the LPC + NDP will together have as many seats as the CPC. It could still be reasonably feasible for the CPC government to fall on a Throne Speech or budget and have Ignatieff take over with NDP support - but less likely than if the LPC and CPC totals were closer. I expect the CPC and LPC will both be courting the NDP after the election.

this map of political contributions is pretty cool

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/elections-federales/carte-des-contributions-aux-partis-politiques/?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_B2_carte-interactive_1474045_section_POS1

that reminds me - time to donate to the Libs and NDP!

EKOS always come down on the liberal side of things for some reason and like i said about quebec earlier - the NDP support is so (relatively) even throughout the province that i can only really see it turning into maybe an extra seat in the montreal area.

honestly - all i want to see is the Cons seat count drop - i don't care about the rest. i think if Harper looses a good few seats this time around the conservatives might have to consider the fact that this could be as far as Harper can take them.

Ignatieff apparently decided that his campaign had been too reasonable so far: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/16/cv-election-house-ignatieff.html

if he were a real canadian, he would have been inspired by the tragically hip, instead of by an AMERICAN singer

Be thankful it wasn't the Canadian "Rise Up."

In other news, friends from my old hometown pointed out this gem of a campaign video, which seems like it came straight outta 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qlSrvgugA

Ack, guess you can't post a YouTube link on the same line as the rest of your text:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qlSrvgugA

OK I give up.

The clip works fine for me, Sean.

worked for me too. you've got my vote, Wally!

is this a good place to bitch about the totally unelectable adrian dix becoming the leader of the bc ndp?

"I see well-clothed children"

!

Tell me more about Adrian Dix.

Unelectable Glen Clark-affiliated union thug if the comments section of the Globe and Mail is to be believed.

One of the local politicians out this way once proved his commitment to the environment by handing out reusable shopping bags with his name on them. I hope, for ILX's sake, that Adrian does the same.

hahaha

So Angus Reid may not have been a total fluke as to the NDP numbers but the Conservatives' stubborn lead is depressing: http://www.environics.ca/news-and-insights?news_id=61

I hate to say it but if the Liberal and NDP numbers remain that even, that might make a CPC majority actually feasible.

Depends on how they break down regionally. Haven't heard many examples of ridings where the lib/NDP split is letting the Tories ride in.

I think you're right, actually. I bet Ignatieff regrets ruling out a coalition now.

has there been a categorical rule-out? think layton could ask for a referendum on proportional representation as the price of forming govt?

Wouldn't that kind of constitutional change require more than a referendum?

Ignatieff ruled out a coalition in March: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/26/cv-kickoff-libs.html

but seems to have tried to take a more nuanced position today.

Well if it works like in the UK, which I imagine it would/could, they could do a PR referendum that is binding no matter the outcome (I think--anyone feel free to correct me on this).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12485084

Constitutional amendments definitely require more than that in Canada and have since 1982: (Part V here: http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1982.html ). Summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982#Amending_the_Constitution

And our system for electing the House of Commons seems to be spelled out clearly enough in the 1867 Constitution (BNA) Act. See "House of Commons": http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1867.html

Changing our electoral system would seem to fall under this category (someone correct me if I'm wrong):

42. (1) An amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the following matters may be made only in accordance with subsection 38(1):

(a) the principle of proportionate representation of the provinces in the House of Commons prescribed by the Constitution of Canada;

That would require

38. (1) An amendment to the Constitution of Canada may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada where so authorized by

(a) resolutions of the Senate and the House of Commons; and

(b) resolutions of the legislative assemblies of at least two-thirds of the provinces that have, in the aggregate, according to the then latest general census, at least fifty per cent of the population of the provinces.

aw, of course it couldn't be so simple.

However, what I said really applies to party list-based proportional rep systems. Something like Alternative Vote/instant runoff voting would seem to be completely constitutional under the existing constitution, since it is still based on a system where each MP represents one riding. Frankly, that might also be a better idea than a PR system that actually institutionalizes political parties in the constitution.

ooohh dunno about that, have you taken a peek at ILX's thread for UK's upcoming AV vote yet? I think I'd rather have some form of PR, but I'll also admit that it's been a while since I've read up much on the various voting systems, so I'm not in much position to debate this one!

it's like they were reading ile! (last week)

http://photogallery.thestar.com/977662

deadeyed motherfucker

Young Duceppe, haha. He looks like a nerd from a John Hughes or similar film.

There's also this, with the more flattering picture of even younger hipster Duceppe:
http://www.vintagevoter.ca/

Holy fucking shit: Crop poll in Que: NDP @ 36, BQ 31, Con 17. Libs 13

23 minutes ago: http://twitter.com/#!/RobertFife

Very (very) rough estimate with those CROP numbers: 31 NDP, 30 BQ, 10 CPC, 4 LPC seats. Hard to believe.

15 min ago at http://twitter.com/#!/308dotcom

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7g7vq7oz8bE/TDH6elA093I/AAAAAAAADY8/IqOVy98T0Uk/s1600/007_harper_plaid.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ngrAPtzKcj0/TQqJB3BeLxI/AAAAAAAAB7k/5JEyfSuIlEA/s1600/Gael%2BGarcia%2BBernal.jpg

maybe?

nooooooooooooooo

http://www.vintagevoter.ca/storage/jack_glasses3.jpg
no
fucking
way
!

that's not...

Lol at caption:

A young Jack Layton at the height of his modelling stint with Prada and Gucci.

Subsequent "moustache experiment" brings model career to sudden, inglorious end.

The madness continues: http://www.thehilltimes.ca/dailyupdate/view/jack_finds_his_groove_ndp_in_reach_of_official_opposition_says_new_forum_research_poll_04-21-2011

is that not Jack Layton? I really hope it is.

this makes me feel a bit sick. I always thought our Tories weren't as detestable as Republicans or UK Tories but guess I was wrong:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/20/cv-election-planned-parenthood.html

that story could be a bit sensationalised/overblown, though? there aren't a lot of details around it.

ya, i think the NDP could def pick up seats the way things are going. but there's no way they will do as well as that article implies they might.

I thought salsa shark was referring to the Planned Parenthood story, which, as of now, seems to reflect the comments of a backbencher MP and not Harper's government per se?

I was basically linking the Hill Times for the Forum poll, which does show the NDP ahead of the Liberals. So official opposition is not inconceivable to me. (Fantasy scenario that seems a little less out-there than it used to: CPC minority, NDP Official Opposition; Ignatieff resigns and is replaced by Rae or someone else who hasn't themselves ruled out a coalition; CPC falls on the Throne Speech or budget and is replaced by an NDP-Liberal coalition. There's a very real possibility that the LPC would actually back the CPC instead though.)

i don't think there is any feasible way the NDP could form the opposition. they would need to literally double their seat total from 2008 - which was 5 or 6 away from their highest total ever. and they would also need to take about half of those seats from the Libs in the process.

A breakthrough in Quebec would be the way to do that. It's still a bit of a longshot but it's not unimaginable to me.

Yeah sorry, I was referring to my own post. Largely cos yeah, the Planned Parenthood thing does come only from one party member's comments. It's an easy thing to make a big story out of, esp during election time.

I hope the NDP pick up some more seats but I don't think they'll do as well as implied in that article either. Kind of reminds me of last year's UK election with all the post-debate 'Cleggmania' that didn't translate into a vast gain in seats for the Lib Dems.

a breakthrough in Quebec would be the way to start it. they have a base in Ontario and most urban centers - but not what they would need to reach the 70 or so seats they'd need this time around. who knows what may happen between May 2nd and the next, inevitable election. but right now the NDP ceiling would be to beat their high water mark from the 80's (in and about 43 seats iirc).
i could even see them getting close to 50. holding onto that would be another matter too.

i would find it sort of ironic. given that Harper's stated goal in life is to destroy the liberal party - if he was successful enough at smearing, attacking and undermining them that he actually gave rise to a strong enough NDP movement to knock him out of power!
next-to-impossible - but how great would that be: way to vanquish the liberals and empower the socialists!

Ekos Regionals fwiw:

EKOS Regionals

BC

C - 36.5%
N - 26.9%
L - 20.8%
G - 12.5%

AB

C - 53.3%
N - 18.9%
L - 14.2%
G - 12.5%

SK/MA

C - 37.5%
N - 34.7%
L - 17.9%

ON

C - 38.1%
L - 34%
N - 19.5%

QC

N - 31.4%
B - 27.2%
C - 18.4%
L - 15.5%

AT

C - 33.5%
L - 32.8%
N - 26.3%

EKOS always seems to favour the Libs for some reason. all the other pollsters have the Cons doing much better in ON.

... but wow - Libs last in Quebec!!!

xposts Yeah, I thought the NDP numbers out West were interesting though.

MB, not MA, sorry. Copied that from somewhere else. The whole EKOS Report is interesting though: http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2011/04/ndp-breakout-continues-as-everyone-else-spins-wheels-april-21-2011/

Tbh, I think Conservatives would love to have Canadian politics polarized between one right-wing or centre-right party and one left/labour/socialist party, as UK politics used to be. It would make the CPC one of the big two parties instead of the most right-wing party out of four parties. They'd probably win elections half the time. The Liberals were able to dominate 20th century Canada since they were the centrist party in a multi-party system.

They'd probably win elections half the time.

At least half. Seems like a business party might have financial advantages over a labour party.

and today's scandal je jour is Haper's top aid influence peddlin' and appointment meddlin' in Montreal. i think the Conservatives are going to be in trouble in Quebec along with the Bloc.

I've heard more than one right-winger advocate for a two-party system in Canada, actually, just as lefties love to advocate for PR.

that's so retarded i don't know where to begin. they should just move to the states if that's what they want.
so fucking stupid.

Not sure what to make of the NDP rise in Quebec. I'm assuming that the BQ's rural base is safe and that Liberal voters in and around Mtl are switching to the NDP. So the net change will be a few Liberal seats going to the NDP but not much more.

Not to mention that mid-campaign Canadian polling is notoriously unreliable in general.

true. but all the same polls showing the NDP moving up are saying the BLOC are the ones haemorrhaging support right now.

Oh, that's right. But the Star's article about the poll seems to agree with what I said:

The NDP is faring well also among francophones. Among this group, the NDP is receiving 34 per cent support compared to the Bloc's 38. In Montreal, the NDP is dominating at 40 per cent, the Bloc is at 28, the Liberals, 17, and the Tories, 12.

Previously, pollsters had the party possibly taking another one or two ridings in the Gatineau region, besides the single riding it currently holds: Montreal's Outremont.

Now, Rivest said the NDP could grab other ridings in Montreal, including Jeanne-Le Ber, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Westmount-Ville-Marie.

The survey of 1,000 Quebecers online took place between April 13 and 20. Due to its non-random character, there is no margin of error.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/978205--ndp-jumps-ahead-of-bloc-in-quebec-poll

Those numbers are inconclusive (and what is a "non-random" poll with no margin of error? Sounds fishy) but it might be that they're gaining Bloc votes in a lot of ridings that were already safely held by the Bloc.

Layton's also using these poll results as an excuse to talk about proportional representation again, which just goes to show that he still doesn't get it and has the math skills of a six year old. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed that the BQ has been holding 1/6 of the seats in parliament despite having 40% of the popular vote in a single province.

Tbh, I think Conservatives would love to have Canadian politics polarized between one right-wing or centre-right party and one left/labour/socialist party, as UK politics used to be. It would make the CPC one of the big two parties instead of the most right-wing party out of four parties. They'd probably win elections half the time. The Liberals were able to dominate 20th century Canada since they were the centrist party in a multi-party system.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, April 21, 2011 4:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so if the left-of-center parties didn't split voters between them, they would end up with less representation? i do not follow.

perhaps he hadn't noticed that the BQ has been holding 1/6 of the seats in parliament despite having 40% of the popular vote in a single province.

isn't that an argument *for* proportional representation?

in ridiculous canadian election laws news, elections canada warns that it is illegal to tweet about newfoundland election results before polls close in B.C.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/21/keep-election-results-off-twitter-facebook-warns-elections-canada

Jeanne-le-Ber and Gatineau are BQ ridings fwiw.

And I'm also puzzled by what you mean about the BQ's national representation, B4rry. If we went to the extreme of total PR with the election results we've had so far, they would have had about 9% of the seats in Parliament.

so if the left-of-center parties didn't split voters between them, they would end up with less representation? i do not follow.

I think it's a fallacy to identify the Liberals, NDP, and BQ all as "left-of-centre" parties and assume that all of their voters would then always vote for a single 'left' party in a two-party system. That would lead to endless 'left-wing' victories and an effective one-party state, which seems pretty unlikely. If we only had two options, it seems more likely that the country would divide itself more evenly between them and we'd switch back and forth. As it is, I'd never vote Conservative, unless they changed pretty profoundly and became more like the old Red Tories. But that's not a problem for me since I can still choose between the Liberals and NDP and might even consider a really good BQ candidate if I were in Quebec. If we only had two major parties and I got sick of the left-wing party, I would be much more likely to switch to the Conservative party, just as Thatcher and Reagan (both of whom were much more extreme than Mulroney) were able to win over Labour or Democrat voters. The Conservative Party's positions would not even seem as extreme anymore to people. Now their positions on most issues are the most right-wing out of three or four distinct parties' positions. (When Power and Politics holds a discussion panel, for example, they always have three panelists, where the Conservative position is the most right-wing.) In a two-party system, their positions would just be one of the two available options. (US Republicans can pretty much come up with any batshit stance they want and get 'equal time' for it in the media.)

In 20th century Canada, at least from the 30s on, the Liberals were able to become dominant because: i) They could posit themselves as the moderate centre party to most voters and ii) They could form alliances with the parties on either side, especially the left party.

The Globe suggests that the NDP's gains in QC could come at the BQ's expense: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ndp-on-track-to-win-60-seats-poll-projects/article1994856/

xpost The current system rewards parties who have strong support in fewer areas, as opposed to moderate support in a larger number of areas. This might be the NDP's current situation, if you want to believe the polls, so they might fare worse under proportional representation. Of course this is entirely speculative since it's hard to predict the exact riding by riding breakdown of votes and/or believe the polls.

If I were Layton, I'd shut my mouth about election reform and be all "Quebecers have chosen" and "Oui are hope and change" a la Obama from now until May 2 -- basically anything to distract people from the fact that his actual policies are dumb.

The federal NDP's popular vote is usually (always?) proportionally larger than its seat count. Why do you think they love PR so much? In 2008, they won 37 seats (about 12%) with 18% of the vote. In 2006, they won 29 seats (9.4%) with 17% of the vote.

I do agree that if the NDP gets any influence in the next government, they should stay as far away from constitutional reforms as possible.

xpost exactly, when you're the third or fourth place party, you complain that people aren't getting the government they deserve (if you're the NDP), but when you're the first place party, you forget about PR completely. Somehow Layton doesn't understand this.

Oh, I get what you're saying now!

I mean, he could still forget about PR after the election.:P

Also, of course, there are many Liberal or BQ voters who would vote Conservative before they'd vote NDP. (Also, especially out West, Conservatives who'd vote NDP before Liberal and vice versa, for that matter.)

I think it's a fallacy to identify the Liberals, NDP, and BQ all as "left-of-centre" parties and assume that all of their voters would then always vote for a single 'left' party in a two-party system. That would lead to endless 'left-wing' victories and an effective one-party state, which seems pretty unlikely. If we only had two options, it seems more likely that the country would divide itself more evenly between them and we'd switch back and forth. As it is, I'd never vote Conservative, unless they changed pretty profoundly and became more like the old Red Tories. But that's not a problem for me since I can still choose between the Liberals and NDP and might even consider a really good BQ candidate if I were in Quebec. If we only had two major parties and I got sick of the left-wing party, I would be much more likely to switch to the Conservative party, just as Thatcher and Reagan (both of whom were much more extreme than Mulroney) were able to win over Labour or Democrat voters. The Conservative Party's positions would not even seem as extreme anymore to people. Now their positions on most issues are the most right-wing out of three or four distinct parties' positions. (When Power and Politics holds a discussion panel, for example, they always have three panelists, where the Conservative position is the most right-wing.) In a two-party system, their positions would just be one of the two available options. (US Republicans can pretty much come up with any batshit stance they want and get 'equal time' for it in the media.)

In 20th century Canada, at least from the 30s on, the Liberals were able to become dominant because: i) They could posit themselves as the moderate centre party to most voters and ii) They could form alliances with the parties on either side, especially the left party.

I think it's a fallacy to identify the Liberals, NDP, and BQ all as "left-of-centre" parties and assume that all of their voters would then always vote for a single 'left' party in a two-party system. That would lead to endless 'left-wing' victories and an effective one-party state, which seems pretty unlikely.

It would be politically apt for the conservative party to move closer to the center in that case.

I mean, they're getting close to 40% of the vote right now in a four-party system. In the imaginary scenario we described, where the Liberal party collapsed and the NDP became the other main party in a two-party system, it's safe to assume that a significant number of the old Liberal voters would happily move over to the CPC without the party need to moderate its policies any further.

Afaict, the US Republican strategy for the last little while has been to shift the centre by taking increasingly extreme positions so that the other side will try to meet them halfway.:P Seems like that approach could potentially work as well...

(Between 35%-40% anyway... I dunno, I'm just musing.)

my big fear about an idiotic two party system is all reasonable policy consideration would be out the window. it would be two large, entrenched camps battling it out for the middle 10% or simply appealing to their own base to turn out en mass. it's already been turning into that over the last 10 years - where it's nothing but partisan bickering over inflamitory side-issues - where nuanced discussion about the difficult decisions gov't must make from time to time get ignored in favour of jingolistic soundbites and petty mud slinging.

xposts

it's still a little over 20% nationally, sund4r.

sund4r

^ when did that happen?!

(i assume you mean the NDP?)

I meant the CPC.

oh. ok yes.

obviously. sorry.

Totally agree with this btw:

my big fear about an idiotic two party system is all reasonable policy consideration would be out the window. it would be two large, entrenched camps battling it out for the middle 10% or simply appealing to their own base to turn out en mass. it's already been turning into that over the last 10 years - where it's nothing but partisan bickering over inflamitory side-issues - where nuanced discussion about the difficult decisions gov't must make from time to time get ignored in favour of jingolistic soundbites and petty mud slinging.

It's good to have a centrist party.

To defend the US system a little though, there's a broad range of opinion within each of the two parties, compared to what we typically find within our parties. Individual Congressmen are not whipped to vote the party line on issues.

think it's a fallacy to identify the Liberals, NDP, and BQ all as "left-of-centre" parties and assume that all of their voters would then always vote for a single 'left' party in a two-party system.

At the risk of repeating myself and just to sort out my thoughts, I guess I think this is a fallacy because of two assumptions that seem to be behind it:

i) The Liberals are in fact a left-of-centre party who have more in common with the NDP than with the Conservatives.
ii) People's voting decisions are based on the left-right spectrum.

Whether or not a party is left of centre depends of course on where you think the centre is. I've always thought of the Liberals, at least since the 80s, as a 'middle' party, borrowing ideas from either side as they see fit. The Liberal Party of the 90s was relatively socially liberal but, one could argue, the most fiscally conservative government we've had in decades. (And yes, this was a trend throughout the Western world at the time.) The Fraser Institute, who are as economically right-wing as you can get, recommends their 1995 budget as a model because Harper isn't cutting enough: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=17270 Tom Flanagan, an intellectual pioneer of the Reform/CPC movement, accused the Liberals of stealing Reform economic policies. The corporate taxes we're discussing now were first introduced under the Liberals and, as the CPC never fails to point out, Ignatieff's Liberals voted for them.

The Liberals are currently running on a platform that is much closer in spirit to the NDP (or perhaps the 60s/70s LPC?) than to the CPC but their record in the Commons during the last Parliament showed plenty of support for CPC measures. As Mansbridge pointed out when he interviewed Ignatieff, Ignatieff had voted for the fighter jets and jails he is now running against.

From any polls I've seen and in my experience, there are many Liberal voters who would pick the CPC over the NDP as their second choice.

While the BQ is a genuinely social democratic party, Quebec voters’ choices can be determined by a range of factors beyond a left-right spectrum. Often they will vote for a leader who offers more self-determination to Quebec or, frankly, who offers more money. Mulroney swept Quebec. The BQ’s founder came from Mulroney’s cabinet. They currently seem to be parking with the NDP but there is no reason why a right-wing party – who would probably favour decentralization anyway – could not do well some of the time in Quebec if we had a two-party system.

Likewise, there are e.g. many Prairie or working-class ridings that switched from the NDP to Reform in the 90s. People vote according to a range of factors. Political parties come up with strategies to attract them. If you’re one of two big parties in a two-party system, it seems more likely that, by doing this, you could win half the time than if you’re at one extreme of a three- or four-party system.

at least since the 80s

Maybe as much or more so in the Mackenzie King era, actually!

This is close--but not as close as I wanted, so I've concluded that the Harper picture must look exactly like someone I went to high school with.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IG7nagJCvAU/R-ZUelEcDDI/AAAAAAAAASo/Sx41eZuWiWQ/s400/michael%25252Bsarrazin.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7g7vq7oz8bE/TDH6elA093I/AAAAAAAADY8/IqOVy98T0Uk/s1600/007_harper

I voted today! But I did not get a sticker attesting to that fact : (

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/features/votecompass/map/

This is sort of interesting. Most of the spreads of responses to the various questions are pretty predictable, but #6 surprised me. Why are Quebeckers more strongly in favour of closer economic ties to the US than other parts of the country? Is there something obvious I'm missing here?

I found it interesting (but tbh unsurprising) how Quebec ridings were the furthest left on (most) economic issues and foreign policy but also the most conservative on accommodating religious minorities or on admitting immigrants who don't speak English or French. I don't know the answer to your question though, salsa shark...

Not sure if it was the same QC ridings actually though...

Nanos regionals suggest CPC majority: http://www.nanosresearch.com/election2011/20110424-BallotE.pdf
but...
EKOS shows less than 6 points between the CPC and NDP!: http://ipolitics.ca/2011/04/25/ndp-leapfrogs-liberals-to-landin-second-spot-in-astonishing-campaign-twist/

suggest CPC majority

this is terrifying!

It is but I don't know what to make of those polls. One implies a CPC majority. The other makes an NDP-led government actually plausible, despite a CPC plurality.

Ekos report: http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_april_25_2011.pdf

With the current splits, these levels of support would produce 131 Conservative seats but the NDP would have 100 seats while the Liberals would hold 62. Together, the NDP and Liberal Party would have a majority and 31 more seats than the Conservatives, as well as nearly 20 more points in popular vote. It is hard to imagine how these totals would not produce the once unimaginable outcome of a Jack Layton led coalition government deposing Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Unless of course, Stephen Harper could convince Michael Ignatieff that the Conservatives were more appropriate political bedfellows for the Liberals.

sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit

this would be the funniest thing that ever happened

If Smilin' Jack actually sailed up the middle to take opposition (and consequently, potentially, the government), I would laugh my goddamn ass off, the way both Harper and Iggy have been carrying on.

Why do I imagine the actual results will be considerably less exciting?

dare to dream with us, mr. shit

Even if I believed those poll numbers (which I don't), I still don't see how they translate into NDP seats. What does it matter if Tory support in the Prairies drops from 60% to 50%? They'll still win nearly every seat there.

The national numbers are skewed by the numbers from Quebec, and everywhere else in the country the Tories are the clear plurality choice. Is Quebec really having a Bob Rae 1990 moment, where they're sick of elections, sick of voting for the usual parties and want to vote for the New Guys (which btw is the dumbest possible reason for changing one's vote and is exactly how we ended up with the Tories defeating the Liberals in the first place five years ago)?

everywhere else in the country the Tories are the clear plurality choice

The EKOS regionals show the CPC in third place in Atlantic Canada. Otherwise, you're right, though. I have no idea where that seat projection comes from. Quebec, BC, and blue-collar Ontario, I guess? 100 seats sounds like fantasy, however.

EKOS has been an outlier throughout this campaign, always showing the CPC lower and the NDP and Liberals higher than other pollsters.

Nanos may well be more realistic.

On the Nanos poll they are way ahead in Atlantic Canada, so yeah, I have no idea what to make of such a big difference between the two. EKOS shows that the NDP basically tripled its support in Atlantic Canada in the past ten days, which seems far outside the realm of believability IMO.

i don't think it's fair to say that the Conservatives were voted into power simply because Canadians wanted "the new guy". i could literally say that about any change in vote or gov't if you're going to apply it there.

and EKOS always seems to have the Cons behind what other polls peg them at. no idea why.
right now for seat projections i'm looking at threehundredeight.

wooo - they just updated their projections and have dropped the cons from 151 to 146!

xpost I disagree, a lot of people voted against the Liberals, not *for* the other parties, in 2004 and 2006. It's one thing to vote Conservative because you think they have the best platform for running the country, and other thing to not vote for the Liberals because they should be punished for doing such and such when they were in power.

I didn't know about threehundredeight ... interesting that for all the talk about the NDP "leading" in Quebec, they're projected to take only six seats.

And their current seat projection shows that the new parliament will look ... almost exactly the same as the previous one! Shocking, I know.

so you're saying in the recent "orange surge" people aren't voting *for* the NDP, they're voting against the Conservatives (or the bloc in Quebec)?

I'm saying they're bored of elections and bored of hearing the same rhetoric over and over again from the same parties, so they're like "screw it, let's try something new and vote for the NDP instead".

ah ya. i see your point.

Chantal Hebert made a valid point, I thought. The war in Afghanistan is most unpopular in Quebec: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/979022--hebert-why-quebec-is-loving-jack-leaving-gilles

Duceppe behaving like a raving lunatic might also have something to do with it.

i'm pretty sure these polls are 99% fairy dust, but i do wonder how well canadian polls measure likely voter turnout. turnout was so low, especially among young people, that even a relatively small increase could make a big difference and screw with these projection models. and it does seems like (based mostly on fb), people are much more engaged in this election than they were in 2008.

otoh, i was out of the country for the 2008 election. does it seem like people care more this time around?

the polls showing a minority PM Layton, that is

Reality Check made some really good points about the unreliability of polling in this day and age: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/realitycheck/2011/04/polling-and-the-ndp-surge.html

I'm not sure if more people care or not, dblake... I'm much more involved this time so I feel like they might but that probably just reflects my own experience.

The fact that there is some sort of NDP surge, regardless of which poll you look at, does suggest that people are taking an interest, right?

that quebec article is really interesting

Ugh: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/26/cv-election-constitution-042611.html

"We have a quarter of our population who have never signed the Constitution."

A blatantly false statement.

Does anyone still need more proof that Layton is a dumbass??

he could be a drooling, hockey-helmet-clad kindergarten dropout for all i care. of the three big federal leaders he's the only one who didn't want us going into Iraq.

Holy shit, breaking Angus Reid numbers: Cons at 35, NDP 30 and 22 for Libs

9 minutes ago: http://twitter.com/#!/RobertFife

And I guess this means people do care more this time?: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/26/cv-election-advance-polls.html

I'm looking forward to the outcome in Calgary Centre-North, one of my former ridings. Prentice left this year, leaving it open to a newbie Conservative candidate, who's been criticised for not showing up at 2 of 3 recent public forums. The Liberal candidate is a good guy (he was one of my uni profs) and seems to be getting some positive responses (the area has a lot of students, the rest is a weird patchwork of high-income communities, low-income communities, and hip/yuppie/regenerative communities)... Tories will probably still take the seat but hopefully they at least lose a chunk of their votes. Prentice seemed pretty popular with constituents and I doubt M1chelle R3mpel can match it.

Ha, love that the signs behind Jack are all "We Can Do This" - a bit more Thomas the Tank Engine than Obama, maybe?

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2011/04/27/hi-jack-layton-ndp-852-cp-00577146-4col.jpg

Whoops, "The Little Engine that Could", not Thomas, obviously. But the point still stands...on the level of inspirational slogans it's a bit watery.

"we promise to see what we can do"

OK, this shocked me:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/982823--two-bloc-members-endorse-ndp?bn=1

Woah.

I'm not sure if I've ever not voted Liberal in 30 years. I may have voted NDP once or twice, many years ago--I really can't remember. I'm somewhat on the fence heading into Monday. Part of me feels like I'd be jumping on a bandwagon, but Ignatieff has not been impressive. Strategically, it might be a bad move to jump on that bandwagon. I don't know.

cosign on that 'woah', Simon.

xpost I'm not sure we should read too much into that letter (I haven't even read the whole thing, just the newspaper report) but it's so full of weird logic holes and contradictions that I have no idea what to make of it

Clemenza - it's not a presidential election. I don't think there's ever been a provincial OR federal party leader that I really liked.

I've liked a few: Trudeau a bunch, Ed Broadbent seemed like an affable enough guy, and I even kind of liked Clark. Chretien was a little more rah-rah than what I generally gravitate towards, but otherwise I liked him too. Provincially, I don't remember anyone in particular.

Anyway, you're assuming I'm saying that Ignatieff has not been impressive for reasons of personal appeal. He hasn't been impressive in any regard--and his attacks on Layton the past week have seemed panicky and shrill. (And yes: that's politics.)