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Canadian Politics: Revenge of the small minds


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Just now, aromaticanalysis said:

Probably Lib+NDP government, or maybe even Lib+NDP+Green. Best case scenario so I'm satisfied. Also, Justin should send a bouquet of flowers to Dougie lmao. 

Some commentators were arguing that the Cons would have done better without hiding Ford in the basement!

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I'm happy with this. Best possible result (how it's trending, anyway) and if the Liberals only need the NDP it should be a relatively stable minority.

Fuck YOU, Scheer, you chinless fucking goof. And bye bye, Raitt and Maxime. 

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Ontario held firm in the end. One of the only provinces where Justin didn’t lose double digit support in percentage terms.

Good that the PP didn’t win a thing. 

Greens winning a few seats is pretty novel!

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16 hours ago, Paxter said:

 

@Ser Reptitious: I wasn't trying to diminish the importance of climate change (I'm a greens voter myself in my country of origin). Just trying to make the point that "deeply divided" might be an overreach if the policy divide is primarily in one area. 

No worries, I get where you are coming from. :)  On the "deeply divided" thing, it's not that I actually see it that way, I was simply predicting what hard-core Conservative-types would end up saying. ;)

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So, pretty strong liberal minority. Both the Bloc and NDP hold enough seats so that neither hold the balance of power. And neither is, I think, in a position where they'd want another election. So I don't think we have to worry about another election soon. Cons gained seats, but really considering how this election played out it's embarrassing for them they didn't get more. I'd imagine there are knives being sharpened for Scheers back. The PCP got nothing, and Bernier is gone. Lisa Raitt is out, good job Adam van Koeverden. Jane Phillpott is out. So overall, it was a good night.

About the only negatives is Ralph Goodale lost his seat, there's going to be some major whining from Alberta and Saskatchewan, and Jody Wilson-Raybould won her seat. Looked like she wasn't going to last night, but guess she surged while I was asleep.

I give this election a B, good job Canada ya didn't fuck it up.

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I can see now why JT scrapped electoral reform. 33% of the vote translates to a sizable 46% of seats for the Liberals, while the Cons managed 34% of the popular vote for 36% of seats. The poor old NDP get just 7% of seats despite 16% of the vote. 

I guess the Cons are always hamstrung by the fact that they are mopping up a lot of easy votes out west that don't translate into seats. Reminds me of how the Dems' big wins in states like CA never matter. 

ETA: Is it normal for the Cons to do so badly in Quebec? 

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3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

So, pretty strong liberal minority. Both the Bloc and NDP hold enough seats so that neither hold the balance of power. And neither is, I think, in a position where they'd want another election. So I don't think we have to worry about another election soon. Cons gained seats, but really considering how this election played out it's embarrassing for them they didn't get more. I'd imagine there are knives being sharpened for Scheers back. The PCP got nothing, and Bernier is gone. Lisa Raitt is out, good job Adam van Koeverden. Jane Phillpott is out. So overall, it was a good night.

Either the Bloc or the NDP could hold the "balance of power" since individually they could give the Libs a majority (coalition or informal). Not sure what you mean here. This election isn't all that unlike 2004, aka the last time the Liberals led a minority government. The math was a lot more precarious at that time, however, as the Liberals + NDP = Conservatives + Bloc (minus speaker). So arguably this should be a more stable Parliament provided people cooperate some.

1 hour ago, Paxter said:

ETA: Is it normal for the Cons to do so badly in Quebec? 

Yes. They've never done better than ~10 seats since 1988 (essentially since the Bloc burst onto the scene in 1990). 

I admit I'm a bit disappointed in the NDP results (it seems that this may be largely about Scheer's dramatic under-performance in the GTA), but I think Singh pulled this around from being a disaster quite effectively. The result was similar to Layton's first election in 2004, except that the "balance of power" math adds up much more easily this time. There were also some nice bright spots with Jack Harris' return in St John's East and 25-year-old Mumilaaq Qaqqaq in Nunavut. 

As for the others, I don't know that this will teach the Liberals much humility - though they did actually lose the popular vote to the Conservatives! Scheer himself should consider his days numbered. He's not much more than a milquetoast Harper and his Ontario results are dreadful. I'm not a fan of Peter Mackay but someone like him would be a better face for the party. The Conservatives also should try to be about something other than Alberta/Sask oil interests. 

The Bloc evidently will continue to be a spoiler, though whether this represent a high water mark for them is unclear. And I'd say the Greens under-performed some of the wilder expectations, with status quo results on Vancouver Island, a seat in Fredericton, but a much more modest increase in popular vote. Not sure they'll do as well next time when Greta Thunberg won't be contemporaneously touring the country. Elizabeth May would do well to make room for new people. 

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2 hours ago, Aemon Stark said:

Either the Bloc or the NDP could hold the "balance of power" since individually they could give the Libs a majority (coalition or informal). Not sure what you mean here. This election isn't all that unlike 2004, aka the last time the Liberals led a minority government. The math was a lot more precarious at that time, however, as the Liberals + NDP = Conservatives + Bloc (minus speaker). So arguably this should be a more stable Parliament provided people cooperate some. 

I mean what you're saying here, ultimately this is a stable minority, because neither the Bloc nor NDP can, or want to, fuck things up. The Liberals can easily go to either the NDP or Bloc to get what they want done, so the NDP and Bloc have a lot less power to dictate terms in exchange for support. If it was just the NDP or Bloc that had the seats to give the Libs a majority they would hold all the power, since both the Bloc and NDP have enough seats they both have much less power. Hell, if the conservatives weren't bullshiting about their desire to institute a free vote, or if that wasn't just a cover for anti-abortion votes, the Liberals may even be able to get some of the sane conservatives onside occasionally.

Side note, when did talking about the "popular vote" in Canada become a thing? Or did I just miss that the last couple of elections? It's just bizarre to me, so many people talking about the cons winning the "popular vote" When 2/3rds of people didn't vote for them. Talking about a popular vote in a multiparty system, especially when the majority of parties lean one way, seems silly to me. This just seems like a continuing attempt to Americanize Canadian politics to me.

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12 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Side note, when did talking about the "popular vote" in Canada become a thing? Or did I just miss that the last couple of elections? It's just bizarre to me, so many people talking about the cons winning the "popular vote" When 2/3rds of people didn't vote for them. Talking about a popular vote in a multiparty system, especially when the majority of parties lean one way, seems silly to me. This just seems like a continuing attempt to Americanize Canadian politics to me.

A couple of points I'd make:

  • Totally agree that "winning" the popular vote is a lot less meaningful from a moral/democratic standpoint than in a two-party system. You could argue, for example, that left-leaning parties (rather than the Cons) actually "won" the popular vote with a majority of about 2/3 and therefore have a much better mandate to form government. 
  • CBC analysts were saying last night that the popular vote is a factor that has always been looked at to some extent in Canadian politics (e.g. no party has ever won a majority without at least 38% of the popular vote.) So when the Libs were coming up only in the mid-30s early on in the count, we knew or at least suspected it was going to be a minority. It's a useful number from that perspective. 

 

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I don’t think Trudeau lost the popular vote so much as Alberta and Saskatchewan dumped every party except the Conservatives. They have 44 seats between them and all but one went Conservative. Cons got 60% of the votes, but only ended up with 34.4% overall, a mere 1.5% more than the Liberals even with 60% of the vote in two provinces! When the final numbers come out I’ll post them.

Those two provinces are in deep, deep denial about climate change and about how brutally dirty oil sands oil is. They are also in deep denial over the price of oil - I saw this morning that the price difference between conventional oil and oil sands oil is a startling $17 a barrel, a new record I think. Do they blame the Americans for paying peanuts for their oil? Nope, they blame Trudeau and all Liberals. Do they blame the fact that parts of Canada don’t want pipelines because of the terrible environmental cost of oil spills? No, they blame Trudeau and the Liberals. Do they cling to their hatred of PET and all people named Trudeau, and totally forget their decision to ship all product south and the ‘let the eastern bastards freeze’ sneer, and demand that they can keep the former opinion and Canadians should forget the latter? Yup, and accuse the rest of Canada as being un-Canadian.

I listened to a bit of Cross Country Check-up on CBC on Sunday when I was out driving, and they did a split show with an audience in Leduc who were pro-oil, including indigenous leaders, and an audience in BC with an anti-pipeline crowd, including very fierce Salish leaders. The Albertans were saying things like ‘why is Alberta bearing the entire brunt of meeting climate change goals, if we shut down all the airports and banned driving in the rest of the country we’d meet goals, why don’t you do that, huh, huh?’ Nothing about shutting down coal powered generating plants in Alberta and Saskatchewan of course. And Alberta callers actually phoned in and said ‘why are we doing things when there is no proof climate change is caused by humans!’ Really.

Albertans always forget commodities go through long cycles, and assume oil can only go up.

As for Peter MacKay, like Bob Rae, I think he has too much baggage to ever take over the Conservative party. He will forever be The Traitor MacKay to a lot of people.

My riding ended up staying Liberal. Julie Dzerowicz beat back Andrew Cash, the only non-Liberal to win in 50 years, back in 2011. I think she won by about 1,500 votes in 2015, and by 2,200 this time. I’m sorry the blue tide swamped Ralph Goodale. He was MP for 26 years, since he was 24. I didn’t realize Ralph was that young (15 years on me!) because he’s been around so long. He served his riding well, that must have been incredibly disappointing for him.

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47 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Those two provinces are in deep, deep denial about climate change and about how brutally dirty oil sands oil is. They are also in deep denial over the price of oil - I saw this morning that the price difference between conventional oil and oil sands oil is a startling $17 a barrel, a new record I think. Do they blame the Americans for paying peanuts for their oil? Nope, they blame Trudeau and all Liberals. Do they blame the fact that parts of Canada don’t want pipelines because of the terrible environmental cost of oil spills? No, they blame Trudeau and the Liberals. Do they cling to their hatred of PET and all people named Trudeau, and totally forget their decision to ship all product south and the ‘let the eastern bastards freeze’ sneer, and demand that they can keep the former opinion and Canadians should forget the latter? Yup, and accuse the rest of Canada as being un-Canadian.

The differential between the WTI benchmark to WCS varies significantly for a variety of reasons. 17.00 isn't beyond the pale, I mean hell, Nov/Dec 2018 saw the difference balloon to around 40.00 per barrel. The real problem, that Conservative politicians won't acknowledge, is the over all decline in the market. The global oil landscape, after years of gains, crashed in late 2014 early 2015. That's what it looks like anyways -with a certain bias- but really it was more of a return to historically normative levels.

I've lived in Alberta for going on 15 years now, and growth is intrinsically tied to the price of barrel oil. 40+ years of Conservative rule, no PST, a squandered heritage fund, and lack of diversified economy has effectively gimped our economic fortune. Notley was on the right track, imo, but the general populace is so blinkered that a federalist stooge like Kenney was able to weaponize the oil crash into an ideologically specific fault, Notley got ousted, and here we are-- in no better position than we were before. Worse, actually.

Albertans, in general, are myopic and gullible. I live here, and I have 0.01 fucks to give to their whines. Really looking forward to starting my build on Vancouver Island 1.5 years from now.       

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The unwillingness to levy even a modest provincial VAT is possibly the most unjustifiable thing ever. Every single time we are treated to how Alberta isn’t “respected” or how it “transfers” billions to Quebec we should answer by highlighting that they pay only 5% GST. They basically feel entitled to the oil based “Alberta Advantage” to pay no PST and use oil revenues to finance consumption. Except when said revenues dry up because, say, the oil prices crash, it’s always Quebec’s fault. And probably those Maritimers and Newfoundlanders who were graciously offered jobs by generous selfless Calgary oil executives. 
 

It’s also no surprise that the oil sands have taken the biggest hit from decline in world prices. True enough that there are transportation bottlenecks, but TMX, lest we forget, is about expanding an existing pipeline. More capacity, yes, but the issue is that Alberta’s conventional oil is drying up and bitumen is more expensive, dirtier, and resource-intensive. In the meantime, there’s several billion in new exploration plans for the offshore in NL*. That oil won’t need a pipeline for export either. 
 

*Of course NL (which is to say the previous PC government and Danny Williams) has screwed itself over with a hydro mega project but at least we won’t have any emissions from hydro generation. 

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I'm interested in how things have played out post-election. When we last had a minority government in Australia (2010), the PM signed a formal agreement with minor parties/cross-benchers on confidence and supply (no Cabinet positions were granted as it was not a formal coalition).

It seems that Trudeau is not even going down the path of an agreement? It will just be a straight-up minority relying on other parties to pass legislation on a case-by-case basis (and tacitly guaranteeing confidence)? It seems a pretty bold move to me, but I guess he has the NDP and BQ over a barrel as neither would want another election. I guess the other factor is he wants to avoid any demands around electoral reform, but I understand that the minor parties have de-prioritized this for now. 

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Yeah pretty much, with the NDP without much in the way of finances, and the Bloc with nothing to gain and everything to lose the Liberals don't need a formal coalition to keep power. And it's not all that bold by Canadian standards, coalitions are pretty rare, formal or informal.

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