All those so-called progressives who argued Harper's majority was "illegitimate" because he had less than 40% of the national vote should be saying the same thing about Trudeau. Any moment now... waaaaaait for it.... c'mon guys. Guys? huh...
As far as proportional representation goes, it is hard to argue that a party that gets 0-4% of the vote pretty much everywhere but Vancouver Island deserves more than the one seat it got.
I'm not sure anyone argued it was illegitimate, I think the point consistently made was 60% of the country didn't want Harper, something that obviously was true and that also applies now to Trudeau. And I fully expect that line to be continued to be use, just now by a different group of people.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
Too bad for Grant, seemed like a very genuine guy.
A few really close ridings in Calgary. Kind of puts to bed the idea that your vote doesn't matter. A few hundred more turnouts and there could have been some swings.
But do they?
They had a majority before they left Ontario.
I realize that you are exaggerating. The Liberals won 158 seats Ontario and east, then 26 from Manitoba to BC (just a rough count from looking at the map). They were 12 short of a majority before leaving Ontario and if they were practically shut out of the west like they were in 2011, they wouldn't have had a majority this time.
If the Liberals learned one thing over the past decade, it is that they can't rest their laurels in the east and expect to win.
I am not naïve enough to think that the Liberals winning seats in Calgary for the first time since 1968 is some kind of trend or shift. A lot of the votes came in the form of a protest against the current government and they stand a good chance of shifting back at the next election if people are not satisfied. So yeah, the federal Liberals need to use this as an opportunity to make inroads in west, especially in Canada's 4th largest city.
Also, people in the west and primarily people in Alberta, have long insisted that the federal Liberals do not represent their interests. But people have to realize that a party is comprised of MPs and an MP's first duty is to represent their constituents. It's difficult to get the perspective of the constituents into the party platform when you don't have MPs influencing the party for almost 50 years (predating the NEP for that matter). Having MPs from Calgary could have a big influence on the party and how they move forward.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
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Would be interesting to see how government like that worked, considering this is around as clear a majority as we see in Canada.
Like most other multi-party democracies in the world, it would be necessary to form coalitions after every election in order to get anything done. It couldn't function any other way.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Was very, very impressed with Matt Grant's campaign and am pretty disappointed he was defeated by a terrible conservative candidate in Confederation.
Hope it's not the last we'll see of Grant. (Probably won't be.)
I worked on Matt's campaign and had some close friends basically commit every waking minute to it since the election was called. There was a lot of long faces at the office last night. Very disappointed this morning.
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Would be interesting to see how government like that worked, considering this is around as clear a majority as we see in Canada.
Well, I also wonder how easy this is to change. It's nice to promise "electoral reform," but are there constitutional implications to upsetting the whole Westminster applecart and bringing in a whole new system?
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Well, I also wonder how easy this is to change. It's nice to promise "electoral reform," but are there constitutional implications to upsetting the whole Westminster applecart and bringing in a whole new system?
Exactly - and then do we start to see more regional parties, like the bloc, in Alberta for instance - to hold a balance of power in whichever is the leading party?
I'm not sure.
Exactly - and then do we start to see more regional parties, like the bloc, in Alberta for instance - to hold a balance of power in whichever is the leading party?
I'm not sure.
Why is more choice a bad thing for Canadians?
Arguably the party system is a big reason for voter apathy.
It's hard to imagine a system that gave seats based on popular vote percentage without completely changing the whole underlying concept of the House.
It seems the most legitimate thing that could be done is to allow voters second and third choices and pick the seats by run off. The most non-equitable times of Canadian government were when you'd have Liberal majorities while the majority wanted right of center parties (but split their votes in all the ridings between Reform and PCs), or conservatives would have majority governments while the majority would split their votes on the left leaning parties.
This is also terrible as it leads to Redford and Stelmech being Premiers.
It leads to people campaigning to be the least offensive rather than trying to lead. The goal becomes being the second choice of everyone rather than the first choice of the most.
It would lead to endless liberal dominance as every Conservative 2nd choice would be liberal before NDP and every NDP would be liberal before conservative.
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Electoral change can happen, the question is: if we switch to proportional representation, who is then in charge of representing local people? First past the post is a flawed system but at least it gives members of Parliament clearly defined constituencies to represent. Who do you speak with when you have a local problem in a proportional representation system?
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Well its the day after and for me, the nightmare scenario of Trudeau with a majority. I could have lived with it in a minority.
He's going to have to go a long ways to earn trust out here, especially with his primary adviser through all of this being a pretty virulent anti-anything oil former adviser to Dalton McQuinty running things.
I don't believe that Trudeau has changed his core beliefs from a while ago where he was fairly anti-alberta having any real say in the government of Canada let alone running it. I can't help but hope that unlike previous Liberal governments that they don't treat this province like a piggy bank to fund vote buying programs in Ontario and Quebec.
He's now going to have to clarify his incredibly vague campaign promises, and show that he's not the guy with a terrible attendance record in parliament that couldn't function during question period.
The day of being just a social media guy has to end, he's going to have to not only lead the nation, but do his home work, on the foreign policy side of things, something that he's shown he has little to no understanding of. He can no longer be vague and flowery, he has to be able to explain and sell everything that his government is going to do.
The Conservatives didn't get destroyed or devastated, but they need to now rebuild the party, and also form an effective opposition, which in a majority situation is tough to do, they're basically going to have to hold the Liberals feet to the fire starting with the next budget.
I don't know where the NDP is going from here, this is a devastating result for them, and the temptation will be for them to slip back to being the loony left.
None of the parties ran a great campaign, the thirst for change generated it, and good for Canadians' for exercising their democratic rights, lets hope that they're not let down.
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I do wonder about the motivation of some of the CPC MP's now that they're in opposition. Like running for the CPC 6 months ago probably seemed like a better gig than it does this morning. I thought that Harper would win a minority at that point, if not hang on to the majority, so surely a lot of them were of the same opinion.
Man, can't believe Matt didn't win. Len did barely anything.
It's interesting when you hear someone else's point of you. My girlfriend wanted to get involved in the campaign so she went door-knocking with Len starting about two months ago. She walked with him for 6 weekends when she was available. To my knowledge, he was consistently door knocking and canvassing.
