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Canadian politics- "to work! We have a government to defeat!"


maarsen

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The horrible election for the Liberals was the last one. This time around they will probably double their seats.

 

Probably. I suppose the question whether that is a blip on an inexorable decline or carries no long term implications at all. No one can really say. The last election was the worst result for the Liberals since Confederation; the main effect going forward will be to ensure that history professors never get chosen as party leaders ever again. 

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The horrible election for the Liberals was the last one. This time around they will probably double their seats.

 

No doubt. Except that the election that ultimately doomed the British Liberals was that of 1923. The Liberals gained 96 seats and increased their share of the vote by 10%. The reason it doomed them? It was the election that led to Britain's First Labour Government. Labour, rather than the Liberals, were now the party to vote for against the Conservatives.

 

If you end up with a NDP minority, it might be that history repeats.

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No doubt. Except that the election that ultimately doomed the British Liberals was that of 1923. The Liberals gained 96 seats and increased their share of the vote by 10%. The reason it doomed them? It was the election that led to Britain's First Labour Government. Labour, rather than the Liberals, were now the party to vote for against the Conservatives.

 

If you end up with a NDP minority, it might be that history repeats.

I agree.  The Liberals are toast, and if their ultimate demise occurs later rather than sooner, we'll have another four years of Harper.  I find it very unsettling that after the numerous scandals, the dismantling of the labour movement, the rampant exploitation of the environment, Bill C-51, etc., Harper still has at least 29% of the voting population supporting him and his party.  It's madness that he still has as much support as he does.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Why would anyone assume that the demise of the liberal party would result in a majority of former liberals going to the NDP?

Because the most feasible alternative for the left is the NDP.  There is the Green Party, but they have less than 10% of likely voters.  Of course, they could go ahead and vote Conservative, but given the amount of bridges Harper and his minions have burnt over the years in power, I find this to be a highly unlikely prospect.

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Because the most feasible alternative for the left is the NDP.  There is the Green Party, but they have less than 10% of likely voters.  Of course, they could go ahead and vote Conservative, but given the amount of bridges Harper and his minions have burnt over the years in power, I find this to be a highly unlikely prospect.

 

We'll see. The Conservatives have made it this far convincing exactly the people in question here that the Cons and still just the PCs and not that bad and certainly better then those crazy wackos in the NDP. I'm still not sure if that illusion has faded.

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Isnt the liberal party supposed to be the party of the centre. Is that not why they were "the Natural Governing Party of Canada". It may be because they have gone so far left of centre that the don't represent anyone anymore. The NDP already represent the left and have matured into a decent official opposition. I think they have truly lost their way.
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Isnt the liberal party supposed to be the party of the centre. Is that not why they were "the Natural Governing Party of Canada". It may be because they have gone so far left of centre that the don't represent anyone anymore. The NDP already represent the left and have matured into a decent official opposition. I think they have truly lost their way.

 

No. That's ... just what?

 

The Liberals were brought down by various scandals and just the general kind of bullshit that sets in when you've been in power for ages. Usually this would have meant a switch to the PCs but the PCs were gone since the Reform basically ate their lunch from the far right inward. The NDP was more or less a non-factor as they are seen as too left.

 

So Harper got in. Based on extremely tight message control, selling the party as the PCs rather then being Reform-by-another-name. And with the way ridings are given out, he won. The Liberal voters in the centre and centre-right went Con, the ones on the left went NDP.

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No doubt. Except that the election that ultimately doomed the British Liberals was that of 1923. The Liberals gained 96 seats and increased their share of the vote by 10%. The reason it doomed them? It was the election that led to Britain's First Labour Government. Labour, rather than the Liberals, were now the party to vote for against the Conservatives.
 
If you end up with a NDP minority, it might be that history repeats.


Crucially, the Liberals still lost seats to Labour in that election. All their gains came from a Conservative Party they increasingly resembled. Their performance in the 1923/24 Parliament was shambolic, and they paid the price.
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Prior to 1984, the Liberals won elections by winning lots of seats in Ontario and Atlantic Canada and essentially dominating Quebec, winning 74 of 75 seats. Apart from a brief recovery in 1993, they've been mostly dead in the water west of Manitoba since the 1970s at least. Mulroney's election in 1984 essentially put an end to the Liberals' ability to rely on Quebec, and they haven't won a plurality of seats in the province in any election since (they did win the popular vote in 2000, though). In the 1990s they won majorities by winning almost every seat in Ontario, thanks not only to a divided right but also to an NDP that had lost much of its protest vote to Reform/Alliance and to unpopular governments in Ontario as well as BC. 

 

When the PCs and Canadian Alliance merged in 2003, it caused something of a realignment for the other parties as well. In 2004, the new Conservative Party actually lost about 8 percentage points compared to its predecessors, but still improved its total seat count over them thanks to the end of vote-splitting. At the same time, the NDP recovered significantly, if not in seat count than in popular support (especially in BC and Ontario). Since then there has been steady erosion in Liberal support, Conservative pluralities, and finally a Conservative majority in 2011 that coincided with the NDP's Quebec breakthrough.

 

The problem for the pending election for the Liberals is that they start in a distant third, and more importantly without a significant concentration of support in any region in the country. Winning Quebec requires winning francophones, something they haven't done in 35 years. Their "ground game" is weak in the West. They will win a number of seats in Atlantic Canada, but that can't translate into gains of more than just a handful. Ontario is still a promising province for them, but with a three-way race shaping up it's very unpredictable. The most recent [url=http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=6925]poll[/url] has them in third in Ontario, however, at only 28% to 37% for the Cons and 32% for the NDP. It's hard to know how much the regional numbers should be trusted, but it's not exactly good news. 

 

Everything can change in a campaign, of course, so it's very hard to know where things will go. It used to be the case that Liberals would suggest that "progressives" should vote "strategically" for them to prevent a Conservative victory. That path won't work in this environment, though, and the main danger for the Liberals is that seat projections and polling results will lead to further erosion in support under that same logic. 

 

(Note that this does NOT mean that the Liberals are about to disappear. But their former status as "natural governing party" is probably done for good. That didn't happen overnight, though, and has been "in process" since the early 80s if not before.)

 

As it stands, I don't know what the main issues will be in this campaign (which may officially begin next week!). The Cons released an anti-NDP attack ad yesterday focusing on the [url=http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/ndp-mps-sue-house-of-commons-committee-over-2-7-million-bill-for-satellite-offices]"satellite offices"[/url] issue, but I can't see it having much traction because (1) it's hard to understand in a single line and (2) it's about as classic an example of "pot calling kettle black" that you can think of. 

 

The only prediction I'll make is that the Conservative majority is going down, and that will take Harper with it, one way or the other. 

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With regard to the topic of this thread, I bring you the obituary of Mary Catherine Finn, of Peterborough, Ontario who died on July 19th:

A connoisseur of words, she would want you to know that she always believed Margaret Atwood was vastly overrated and Margaret Laurence equally underrated. In lieu of donations, Catherine would want you to do everything you can to drive Stephen Harper from office, right out of the country, and into the deep blue sea if possible. Also, she would like you to fix the CBC.


My kind of lady!

Read the whole obituary: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/07/29/mary-catherine-finn-obituary-harper-cbc_n_7897858.html?
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The only prediction I'll make is that the Conservative majority is going down, and that will take Harper with it, one way or the other. 

 

From your keyboard to voters' ears.

 

Fragile Bird, I was a little shocked to see the obituary here, because that's the mother of a friend of mine.  One of the best written obits ever!

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I just heard the reason the Conservatives may be calling the election on Sunday, which would make it the longest campaign in history, straight out of the mouth of the man running their campaign - it's so that we can have more democracy.
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Whoa baby!

I was very shocked to see that if we sign the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement, might require that Crown corporations, including organizations like the CBC and Canada Post, be run as for-profit companies only.
 

The briefing, which was obtained and released by Wikileaks, states that a “majority of TPP countries” have agreed that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will have to “act on the basis of commercial considerations.”

The document — which makes clear that final decisions on these issues hadn’t been made at that time — also indicates that state-owned companies may be subject to all the rules of the TPP.

If that were to be the case, governments would not be able to fund Crown corporations with taxpayers’ money if that funding has “adverse effects” on another TPP country, says Jane Kelsey, a professor of law at the University of Auckland, in an analysis of the document she prepared for Wikileaks.

“It looks like SOEs are not allowed to get government support or noncommercial assistance. … That kind of support is often essential for SOEs that provide public functions that are not profitable or are even loss-making.”

Kelsey says the U.S. is pushing to have state-owned businesses covered under the TPP’s investor-state dispute mechanism. This would mean that foreign entities could sue the government of Canada for subsidizing a Crown corporation if that foreign entity can prove it’s at a competitive disadvantage because of those subsidies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/07/30/tpp-canada-cbc_n_7905046.html


And even worse, Elizabeth May just told us in an interview on Power and Politics that one of the bally-hooed trade deals that the Conservatives signed, and are bragging about, without any parliamentary review or discussion basically can't be exited. Under the Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, you could exit on a year's notice, iirc. As is the case with virtually every international agreement we enter into, which is how Harper took Canada out of the Kyoto Agreement.

But under the Canada - China trade deal, there is no one year exit.

We have to be in it for 31 years! wtf?

And if we exit, Chinese corporations can sue us for leaving the agreement.

Remember Joe Oliver's comment about the damage being done by some of the Conservative moves, that Harper's grand-daughter can deal with it?

Also, I want to throw up every time I hear a Conservative brag about the fact they have made trade deals with 39 countries, the most of any Canadian government in history. I keep wondering what 39 trade deals are these? Turns out they are counting each individual country in the EU, 28 countries, as individual trade deals, instead of 1 deal with the EU.


(edited because I thought May was talking about the TPP, but she moved to the Chinese deal)
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Aaargh! Remember when I said I wondered if the NDP would join in with the Conservatives in using tactics against the Liberals, and you guys poo-poo'd the idea? The politicos on Power and Politics just mentioned that NDPer Brad Levine and Conservative Kory Teneyke, campaign managers/strategists, are close friends whose children play together. Apparently in an autobiography of Brad Levine he discusses coordinating actions with the Conservatives.
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Aaargh! Remember when I said I wondered if the NDP would join in with the Conservatives in using tactics against the Liberals, and you guys poo-poo'd the idea? The politicos on Power and Politics just mentioned that NDPer Brad Levine and Conservative Kory Teneyke, campaign managers/strategists, are close friends whose children play together. Apparently in an autobiography of Brad Levine he discusses coordinating actions with the Conservatives.

Do the Conservatives still act like rabid dogs just because of the Trudeau name? You would think they would go after the front running NDP.

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Do the Conservatives still act like rabid dogs just because of the Trudeau name? You would think they would go after the front running NDP.


They mentioned some (Conservative or NDP) book or paper, I missed what it was, that mentioned Pierre Trudeau 20 or 30 times and not Justin at all.
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