2011 Canadian Election Thread

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

which would have eliminated the liberals in 2008.

Fine. If you seriously consider yourself a national party one should run in every available riding.

As a follow up to the Quebec question, this poll was released yesterday and the Liberals are looking like they will get annihalated in that province.

Best Prime Minister among national party leaders: Jack Layton 22% -- Stephen Harper 17% -- Michael Ignatieff 5%

Voting intentions in Quebec, all respondents: Bloc Quebecois 38% -- Conservatives 23% -- NDP 20% -- Liberals 11%

Among Francophone voters: Bloc Quebecois 44% -- NDP 21% -- Conservatives 21% -- Liberals 7%

Quebec City area: Bloc Quebecois 36% -- Conservatives 33% -- NDP 22% -- Liberals 8%

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/...iberals-quebec

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by transplant99

I think the criteria should be that anyone to debate on a national level should have a candidate in every riding. Not sure if Green does that or not, but if they do so be it and invite her.

Duceppe should be no where near such a debate though as he doesnt debate Canadian politics he debates Quebec politics.

I don't think that's a good criterion - all it would take was someone to give the Rhinoceros party enough money to file nomination fees in every riding and you could have a joke candidate in the national debate, even if the party gets absolutely no votes. Meanwhile it's possible the big parties may not have a candidate in every riding, in some cases not by choice (e.g. their candidate has to withdraw or is booted from the party for criminal behaviour).

[peter12]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Fine. If you seriously consider yourself a national party one should run in every available riding.

As a follow up to the Quebec question, this poll was released yesterday and the Liberals are looking like they will get annihalated in that province.

Best Prime Minister among national party leaders: Jack Layton 22% -- Stephen Harper 17% -- Michael Ignatieff 5%

Voting intentions in Quebec, all respondents: Bloc Quebecois 38% -- Conservatives 23% -- NDP 20% -- Liberals 11%

Among Francophone voters: Bloc Quebecois 44% -- NDP 21% -- Conservatives 21% -- Liberals 7%

Quebec City area: Bloc Quebecois 36% -- Conservatives 33% -- NDP 22% -- Liberals 8%

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/...iberals-quebec

That poll just blew my mind. Holy moses, 7% among Francophone voters!??

[Frequitude]

transplant, I think every riding is a little extreme. Every province/territory is more reasonable and equally "federal".

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Voting intentions in Quebec, all respondents: Bloc Quebecois 38% -- Conservatives 23% -- NDP 20% -- Liberals 11%

Just to show how striking this is, the results from the 2008 election:

Bloc: 38.1 (49 seats)
Liberal: 23.7 (14 seats)
Conservative: 21.7 (10 seats)
New Democrat: 12.2 (1 seat)
Green: 3.6 (0 seats)
Independent: 0.6 (1 seat)

I wonder what has caused the Liberal nosedive there? Looks like the NDP just stripped all of their support.

[Parallex]

Nanos has them at 22.8% in Quebec as of yesterday. Although, neither poll is really important in the grand scheme of things.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Hesla

Plus there is no cap on what income groups qualify... so upper class guys would qualify for this too.. which really is a waste of money.

Nope, but there is an extra $2000 / 4 years for low-income groups.

Originally Posted by Hesla

What is important to me is solid economic plans and paying down the deficit... to me the best chance at that is a Conservative Majority. All the Coalition/leader talk is just a big game.

You must have missed the part where the Conservatives increased spending 15% in the first 3 years after taking over from the Liberals (i.e. BEFORE stimulus spending), combined with an economically inefficient tax cut (GST). Thus moving Canada towards a structural deficit.

=============

Originally Posted by flambers

The liberals will lose seats this time around and Iggy will be gone as the party leader.

Ignatielf >> Dion

That alone could be enough to boost Liberal numbers.

=============

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Personally, I think the Liberals standing goes up over the next couple years, or at least not down. Use the media to chip away at the negative things Harper's doing, demonstrate your ability to function as a strong capable opposition, rebuild your war chest, and find a new leader to galvanize Canadians for what they'll view as a legit necessary election after 5 years of Harper. Ignatief is not leading the Liberals anywhere. You know it, I know it, and the Liberal party knows it. It really just makes no sense for them to be heading to the polls now.

A few things:

- If the Liberals allow a government in comptempt of parliament to continue to govern with impunity, doesn't that make them less of "a strong capable opposition"?

- If you're going to attack Harper for the negative things he's doing, isn't the best timing for that when those negative things are recent?

- Replacing Ignatief now with some mystery leader in order to hold an election in two years doesn't make any sense to me. If you replace Ignatief with "a prospect", Harper likely calls or engineers an election to go up against said "prospect" and dominates. Either that, or the Liberals hands are tied for the next two years as they groom their new leader, making for inneffective opposition and undermining the whole thing. Ignatief would be the Liberal leader for the next election whether it's going to be May 2, 2011 or May 2, 2013. The guy hasn't even been the party leader for an election yet, so it's a bit early to be pulling the plug on him, at least until a credible alternative emerges.

============

Originally Posted by octothorp

Umm, not at all what happened. The Conservatives formed the government well before there was any talk of coalition. Six weeks into the new government, the conservatives assumed that even though they only had a minority government, they would be able to ram through major changes to election financing rules (and other controversial economic policies, but the election financing was the big one), on the assumption that the opposition wouldn't dare trigger another election so soon.

The opposition parties realized that they had two choices: force another election, or threaten to form a coalition. So the Liberals and the NDP announced the intent to form a coalition with the support of the Bloc, and Harper prorogued parliament. During the break, the Conservatives revised the economic plans, including abandoning the election financing changes, and the Liberals, now under Ignatieff's leadership, voted along with the Conservatives once parliament resumed, distancing themselves from the coalition.

I'm not sure where you get the whole idea that the opposition tried to form a parliament without allowing the Conservatives to first do so. The entire coalition plan came about as a direct result of opposition to legislation that the Conservative government put forward.

You could argue that nobody should try to bring down a government only six weeks in; but if you believe that a minority government should get a grace period, then it also makes sense that no minority government should use that grace period to pass legislation aimed purely at undermining the funding of the other parties to gain political advantage.

I agree with almost all of this, but "the coalition was all about election financing" is the Conservative narrative. The complete lack of stimulus based on Flaherty's projections that Canada would avoid a recession was also a huge motivator for the opposition parties.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Ashartus

I don't think that's a good criterion -all it would take was someone to give the Rhinoceros party enough money to file nomination fees in every riding and you could have a joke candidate in the national debate, even if the party gets absolutely no votes. Meanwhile it's possible the big parties may not have a candidate in every riding, in some cases not by choice (e.g. their candidate has to withdraw or is booted from the party for criminal behaviour).

Well the Greens are already doing it, so why not the Rhinos?

But there has to be some sort of control on who gets into the thing, and IMO anyone to be included HAS to have at least national interests as their platform regardless of if one agrees with it or not.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by SebC

A few things:

- If the Liberals allow a government in comptempt of parliament to continue to govern with impunity, doesn't that make them less of "a strong capable opposition"?

I guess that boils down to my thoughts that contempt charges are a massive load of crap (relatively speaking), but to each their own. Good behaviour, no, but sure as hell not worthy of the contempt hammer for the first time in history.

Originally Posted by SebC

- If you're going to attack Harper for the negative things he's doing, isn't the best timing for that when those negative things are recent?

Again, this comes back to, IMO, contempt and an election being massively overkill for these negative things. There's no guarantees of a conservative minority, but it sure looks like we'll just end up back where we were, so what the hell is the point?

Originally Posted by SebC

- Replacing Ignatief now with some mystery leader in order to hold an election in two years doesn't make any sense to me. If you replace Ignatief with "a prospect", Harper likely calls or engineers an election to go up against said "prospect" and dominates. Either that, or the Liberals hands are tied for the next two years as they groom their new leader, making for inneffective opposition and undermining the whole thing. Ignatief would be the Liberal leader for the next election whether it's going to be May 2, 2011 or May 2, 2013. The guy hasn't even been the party leader for an election yet, so it's a bit early to be pulling the plug on him, at least until a credible alternative emerges.

The party is going no where with him at the helm and the back room powers that be know this. He'll be turfed in very short order if he doesn't win.



I just can't get my head around what the hell the point of all this is...

[burn_this_city]

http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Mi...422/story.html

Tamils are complaining that these ads are Xenophobic. Sorry but its the truth, those people should be punted for using smugglers to get here.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

I guess that boils down to my thoughts that contempt charges are a massive load of crap (relatively speaking).

How so? It's not like the government didn't deliberately mislead parliamentarians, didn't fail to produce documents upon parliamentary order, didn't order witnesses called upon by committee to not to appear before committee... AFAIK all of those are valid reasons for a citation of contempt. Legally speaking I mean, maybe it doesn't fit your definition of contempt (although really it should, the implication being otherwise that you believe that the executive should not bound by the orders, laws, and directives of the people as represented by the Legislature) but it fits the legal definition of contempt.

Just in case folk don't know though... technically the motion upon which the government fell wasn't a parliamentary contempt finding.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Parallex

How so? It's not like the government didn't deliberately mislead parliamentarians, didn't fail to produce documents upon parliamentary order, didn't order witnesses called upon by committee to not to appear before committee... AFAIK all of those are valid reasons for a citation of contempt. Legally speaking I mean, maybe it doesn't fit your definition of contempt (although really it should, the implication being otherwise that you believe that the executive should not bound by the orders, laws, and directives of the people as represented by the Legislature) but it fits the legal definition of contempt.

I'm more about the historical definition of contempt than the legal definition.

Do you really think this is the most contemptible thing that a government has ever done?

[old-fart]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

I'm more about the historical definition of contempt than the legal definition.

Do you really think this is the most contemptible thing that a government has ever done?

Considering the Cretien Liberals, this is not even on the radar of most contemptible things done by a government in the last 20 years...

[MarchHare]

Being in "contempt of Parliament" is not the same as being "contemptible" in the general sense.

[jolinar of malkshor]

Originally Posted by Parallex

How so? It's not like the government didn't deliberately mislead parliamentarians, didn't fail to produce documents upon parliamentary order, didn't order witnesses called upon by committee to not to appear before committee... AFAIK all of those are valid reasons for a citation of contempt. Legally speaking I mean, maybe it doesn't fit your definition of contempt (although really it should, the implication being otherwise that you believe that the executive should not bound by the orders, laws, and directives of the people as represented by the Legislature) but it fits the legal definition of contempt.

Just in case folk don't know though... technically the motion upon which the government fell wasn't a parliamentary contempt finding.

I will give you the Bev Oda ordeal, she should have just admitted how that decision was made and that she approved the "Not" on the document, I don't like how she handled it.

As for the documents, for the 50th time, they provided everything they could to the opposition. I am talking boxes and boxes of documents. That wasn't good enough for them, they wanted all kinds of estimates about 10, 15, 20 costs which cannot be provided. No matter what the government gave to them they would not have been happy.

As for the committee's, if you only knew how much of a joke all those committee's ended up being for the last 2 years you would understand why they didn't send people to them. I am talking about every committee having a majority of opposition over the ruling government. Almost every committee was nothing more than a witch hunt. The opposition would do everything in their power to gum up the works of government.

I use to think that minorities were not bad for running the government. The problem is you don't get responsible adults into these committee positions and MP positions. You get a bunch of people (from all parties) who do nothing but grand stand and try to one up each other to make themselves look good instead of conducting business in the best interests of the country.

I would rather have majority governments with a set term of 3 years instead of this crap that we are dealing with now. Much more would get done and if the public didn't like how the government was going, throw them out after three years and try someone new.

[MarchHare]

The opposition would do everything in their power to gum up the works of government.

Obstruction of government committees, you say? That sounds like a page right out of Harper's playbook. Oh wait, it is! In 2007 the CPC literally wrote a handbook to explain to their MPs how to obstruct committees and prevent the government from functioning.

Last year, the governing Conservatives prepared a secret handbook on how to disrupt parliamentary committees and create chaos. No mere pamphlet, the book ran to 200 pages.

It instructed committee chairmen to select blatantly biased witnesses and tutor them in advance. It gave the chairmen pointers on how to obstruct parliamentary business, to storm out of meetings if necessary.

Team Harper never expected its opus to be made public. But the media got hold and the headlines poured forth – “Tories blasted for handbook on paralyzing Parliament” and the like.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...icle704164.ece

[evman150]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Do you really think this is the most contemptible thing that a government has ever done?

You are falling prey to the fallacy of equivocation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by evman150

You are falling prey to the fallacy of equivocation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

You're falling prey to arguing semantics when its pretty obvious what my point is.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

You're falling prey to arguing semantics when its pretty obvious what my point is.

Not really... you're arguing that because what the Conservatives did isn't the worst thing a government's ever done, it's not contempt.

Swearing at a judge might not be the most contemptible thing a lawyer's ever done, but it's still contempt of court (I think).

[evman150]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

You're falling prey to arguing semantics when its pretty obvious what my point is.

Campaigning for reasoned arguments is never "arguing semantics" in the pejorative sense.