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CANADIAN POLITICS
(http://www.earlofmarch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/vote-politics.jpg)
Hey. HEY! I thought we should have a topic about this. I think politics are important guys and gals. Lets talk about em. Yes even when they're up here in cold, cold Canada.

I kind of write all of this as if I was addressing people who know nothing about Canadian politics, so bear with me. Even though its unlikely anyone from outside of Canada (or anyone, really) will be interested to read any of it.

I thought that could be an interesting way to start a discussion, so people have something to respond to instead of just blurting out who they vote for and how much they hate Harper/love Jack Layton. Keep in mind that this is my own understanding of things, and so naturally it is biased! Feel free to tell me if you think I am misrepresenting something or being particularly unfair.

I am also kind of writing this for me. Writing down all of this is a good way to make the point on where the country is at in politics and where you stand with them. So basically this is kind of like me talking out loud in the shower as some sort of conversation with myself to hear whether what I think sounds stupid or not. (yes, I actually do that. Very often. Surely I am not the only one?!)

And hopefully if I got the wrong idea, people will tell me and we can all learn together! How wonderful this Internet is!

Also a friend of mine, C-man read it and suggested I add some things, which I did. I added some lines I called C-man says.
---

We got a peculiar position in Canada with politics, here is my rough understanding of them, for non-canadian people who might be interested or canadians who just dont know what the hell. I also took some bits from wikipedia, especially about the precise official policies.

(http://winteryknight.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/canadian_poll.jpg?w=400&h=398)

A problem we got right now, is that we got a bunch of political parties, and they are all pretty popular, so whoever wins will win by a relatively small portion of votes. This is sort of the opposite problem to the two-party system of the united states.

Roughly 35% of voters go for the right-wing, Conservative party, and the rest of the votes are spread among the Liberal party, the Bloc Quebecois, the new democratic party and the green party, four very left-wing parties which, compared to the conservative party, share very similar agendas, just with slightly different focuses and levels of extremism.
They all lose to the 35% conservatives, since none of the four parties are popular enough over the others to reach the right wings' 35%. So we end up with a government that 65% of the population hates! This created a strange movement called "Strategic voting" where people are urged to vote in a strategic way so that wherever they are, anyone except the conservatives win. Peculiar!

Here is my understanding of the political parties running:

The conservative party
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3b/Conservative_Party_of_Canada.svg/150px-Conservative_Party_of_Canada.svg.png)
led by Stephen Harper
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Stephen_Harper_by_Remy_Steinegger.jpg/225px-Stephen_Harper_by_Remy_Steinegger.jpg)
The conservative party is the one currently in power.
They're more or less like the republicans in the USA, but a bit more lefty in general. They're generally for lower taxes, smaller government, decentralized government power, and tougher laws and prison sentences.
Stephen Harper says he is for capital punishment (abolished in Canada) but does not plan to try and make any law about it. He is against abortion (which is currently legal and unrestricted in Canada), opposes same-sex marriage (which is currently legal in Canada).
He's been criticized for cutting foreign aid to Africa by $700 million. When he came to power, the previous, liberal government had eliminated a 42 billion dollar deficit in four years and now had a budget surplus. Since the conservative party was in power, the federal deficit went back up, and beyond, raising it to the largest deficit in Canada's history. Though to be fair, there was a recession along the way.
The conservatives were also criticized for being the first party in Canada to use really slimy smear campaigns during elections, broadcasting dirty ads with very dubious claims, something that did not happen much before (now all political parties do it which I think is pretty sad). They are also notorious for being really really horrible at handling environmental issues and for making Canada an international joke with this issue. Stephen Harpers' blunders with this and his foreign policies in general are considered the main reasons we could not get a seat at the united nations last year.
Their current policies are to lower taxes to big companies to create jobs; eliminating their deficit by 2014 by cutting on spending; creating new laws to make the streets safer and protect the children and elderly; and give more funding to the Canadian Armed Forces.

C-man says: Stephen Harper did solve several small issues the liberals had been blocking due to legacy politics, possibly to spite them, things regarding relations with Québec; things regarding relations with natives and that story with Maher Arar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar), a Canadian citizen who was considered a terrorist by the US government and was deported to his native Syria where he was detained and tortured. Harper fought to have him taken off the terrorist list. Despite being portrayed as a drone of the USA, someone who mechanically agreed with whatever Bush said, he fought surprisingly hard on this issue. He had very little to gain over it and it chafed US relations for a while.
I have to add that, Harper's Conservative party was NEVER in a solid majority that would have allowed him to run wild. A lot of people feel this has kept a lot of his more radical policies in check, so thats something to consider.
Something else, they should have been ousted from power when the opposition decided to form a coalition against them. Harper reacted through really slimy smear tactics, painting Michael Ignatieff as a sore loser going for a desperate, unlawful power grab. For the first time in history, the governor general did not approve of the coalition and so it never happened. As a result, the entire government was pretty much frozen in inaction for a long while.

My own opinion on these guys: Theyre okay. Maybe obvious in my biased description of them, I don't like em much. But I think they are sometimes comically demonized. I didn't pull my hair last time they won, really. Their vision of a government and of Canada is quite different from mine, but not so much that I want to pull my hair out. Heres an example of the kind of stuff floating around Twitter and Facebook recently: Shit Harper did (http://shitharperdid.ca.nyud.net/) Honestly, a lot of stuff like that feels like awkward hyperbole and out of context, disingenuous bullshit. This one is particularly bad though.



The Liberal party
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c4/Liberal_Party_of_Canada_Logo.svg/327px-Liberal_Party_of_Canada_Logo.svg.png)
Led by Michael Ignatieff
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H52abWTdLvc/S96GQFnwlyI/AAAAAAAAABc/1xIZ2csM318/s320/michael-ignatieff-45623.jpg)
The liberal party is center-left. They were in power uninterrupted for a very long time, but had some pretty nasty stories of corruption a few years ago which is arguably what cost them the power to the conservatives, who stayed in power ever since.
The liberal party led by Paul Martin eliminated the federal deficit completely when it was in power until 2006. They also legalized same-sex marriage and the use of Cannabis for medical purposes, and proposed complete decriminalization of possession of small amounts of Cannabis.
Their current platform is based on more investment in education, reducing the deficit back to 0, quadruple renewable energy production, and supporting Canadian Farmers.

C-man says:They had started out as the most leftist party in Canada, but shifted to being pretty solidly centrist over the years.

My own opinion on these guys: They're pretty okay! They did some nice things and I like their policies, and I think our money is in better hands with em. They're also the most likely to beat the conservatives out of the four lefty parties. They had been in power for a terrifyingly long time before the conservatives kicked them out, which I believe is inherently problematic and is almost certain to lead to more corruption.



The new democratic party
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LjerXAeHNc0/TZH2dfkwXoI/AAAAAAAAAD0/JuQDcY11acc/s1600/logo_NDP_canada.gif)
Led by Jack Layton
(http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT6xY8DIMRAx00JQquQpKvcRdkdSHhmvQDVWTIIRMu8FVJ3e6OXww)
The New Democratic party is like a more socialist liberal party.
Their platform, they say, is based on gender equality and equal rights for LGBT residents, improving environmental protection through regulation, increasing taxes to corporations, aggressive human rights protection, expanding public health care, aboriginal peoples' treaty land and constitutional rights, a foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy, peacekeeping and humanitarian aid instead of offensive military action, renegotiating the north american free trade agreement, and ending the Canadian war on drugs, possibly legalizing recreational drug usage.
They were never the federal government though, so we don't really know how they'll do if they're ever in total federal power. They did enjoy some influence over the government in the past few years during minority governments.

C-man says: They are criticized for hopping all over the parliament striking out deals, as they are often the "balance of power", tipping the votes that are otherwise split between conservatives and liberals. It helped Jack Layton to get a lot of his own policies approved, but some people have criticized that he is ultimately compromising too much on things he would flat out disagree with just for the political favors he gets in return (though these favors are admittedly about his party's agenda, not about receiving a ton of money and whores)

My own opinion on these guys: They're pretty okay too. I feel their brand of socialism and their platform in general is closer to my own political ideas, but they were never in power, so there's always the risk that it turns out they're dumbasses who don't know what they're doing and will lead our country into oblivion.



The Bloc Québecois
(http://images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org/08/1/0/4/4572192548247545.png)
Led by Gilles Duceppe
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Gilles_Duceppe.jpg/225px-Gilles_Duceppe.jpg)
This is kind of a strange party. It basically exists not in the hopes of becoming the new federal government party, but to protect Québec's interests within the house of commons, and to promote Québec's separatist agenda.
See, many people from Québec want to split off of Canada and have Québec become a country. The movement reached its biggest point in 1995 where a referendum was held to decide whether to separate or not. The results: 50.58% No, 49.42% Yes, 1.82% rejected ballots. The participation rate was of 93.52% of all citizens. From there... the movement kind of lost its fervor and dwindled away as years went by.
The bloc's political agenda is mainly stuff related to how Québec should have more political freedom, how Québec's culture should have more recognition, how the French language should be protected further. Apart from that, its more or less the same as the NPD and Liberal party: lefty, socialist, liberal.

C-man says: Gilles Duceppe the current leader is probably the most moderate leader the Bloc ever had, and isn't actively trying to screw over Canada despite his "Quebec first" policy. He seems to feel as strongly about Quebec's claimed values of leftism and socialized government services as he does about independence. His campaign right now almost avoids the issue of separatism entirely until someone asks him about it, at which point he froths at the mouth, hops on the table, screams VIVE LE QUÉBEC LIBRE and recites Gilles Vigneault songs until shot with a tranquilizer dart.

My own opinion on these guys:I am a Québecois and my primary language is French, I love the french language, I love living in Québec, and I love everything about our culture, but I always thought this movement was nothing but stupid tribalism. I think the idea of protecting a language is ridiculous. Language is created and modified by people, and lives through people using it, not through government decrees and laws. I have no problem with the French being "assimilated" into the English-speaking majority. It would not retroactively delete Molière and Rabelais from history, it would not invalidate how awesome Harmonium was or how great Malajube is. Fuck this cowardly tribalism, if people stop speaking French, so be it.
Other than that, their political agenda is pretty similar to the other lefties, so they're pretty much okay in my book.



The green party
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/47/Green_Party_logo.svg/250px-Green_Party_logo.svg.png)
Led by Elizabeth May
(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ-Kv5TZ_d6iHA1zl-gcyohUwL1LOIasIZnzDBM-AcQcpUTCCyn)
Their basic principles: Ecological wisdom, non-violence, social justice, sustainability, participatory democracy and respect for diversity.
Their current policies:
Reduced payroll on polluters, increased taxes on polluters, income splitting for families, a national childcare plan, support for family farms, government transparency, proportional representation, legalization of Marijuana.
My opinion on these guys: They're okay, but kind of nutty and idealist and you just know they cant possibly get elected. I don't like when a lot of your party`s vague, hip basic principles all make me want to scream, "WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!". Respect for diversity? You mean, you're not racist? Gee wellickers, thats great! Also, Ecological wisdom?! What!?

Elizabeth was not invited to the leaders' debates this year which is really lame. That probably hurt their credibility. I like that this party exists and especially I like that they actually get quite a bit of votes. I think its good to have some idealists rocking the boat and affecting the debates. I don't think I would vote for them as they are right now however.
EDIT: apparently they support and want to fund "alternative medicine" like homeopathy and stuff. Whoops theyre dumbasses who dont know what the fuck theyre doing




So yeah. My basic conclusion thus far, I feel everyone is basically okay. Some are just a bit more okay than others. As it currently stands, I will probably vote for the NDP.

Cmon Canadians, who do you vote for?! Do you know something I don't, did I totally misrepresent a party or two? I didnt put much dirt on the liberals, if anyone cares to bring to light some terrible things theyve done, go ahead! LET US ALL GORGE OURSELVES ON OUR COLLECTIVE INFORMATION AND BE MERRY

I think it's fascinating that NDP is pulling and polling ahead of Libruls. It would be startling if the NDP actually won, only Conservatives & Libs have ever been in power. The NDP isn't new, it's 50 years old.

Also, the Green party wants to finance homeopathy. So that makes them a joke in my eyes. Worse, a joke that hurts people because homeopathy doesn't work when people need help.

I think it's sad that the Rhino party is no more. I want to vote for a skateboard in every garage, damnit.

I'm voting NDP. I hate Harper and Ignatieff seems just as bad in my opinion. Never cared for the Bloc, and Green seems a bit, as you said, nutty.
Also, Jack Layton is the only one with a mustache, and as we all know... :gentleman:

EDIT: I should add that my vote will change if any of the parties decide to actually step up to internet metering issue. So far, they've only talked about it pre-election.

Layton and Ignatieff need to get their shit together and either form a coalition or merge parties. Harper is going to run the country into the ground if he gets re-elected.

I'm probably voting liberal because my riding tends to vote liberal and it has the best chance of beating the conservatives.

I did not know that! That's pretty bad.
Yeah, they just sorta lost a whole bunch of credibility from me there. I should have guessed though, with their awful new age vibe.

Anyone but the Conservatives. None of the Shit Harper Did is hyperbole. They've done far, far worse. Nepotism, control of media, censorship, bribery, contempt of goddamn parliament. The only reason why no one paid attention until the election is because no one pays attention until an election. And they're going to raise taxes and lie about it, just like the last three times. (Lower sales tax, increase all other taxes by huge amounts, cut education and healthcare again, the usual)

I'd like to see the NDP do well enough to have a moderating influence in government - they make a good Opposition/sub-opposition with swing power.

I don't know what to make of the Bloc. Separatism is laughable bullshit with no forethought, but otherwise they seem generally reasonable.

I don't have feelings either way for Ignatieff but the main reason why he's not doing as well is because people don't really know him yet. He needs to make more noise.

Well I don't know, I remember reading lots of stuff that was obviously disingenuous.

Like, one phrase on  "Shit harper did" that I got which said he doesn't know the difference between people of India and Indigenous people of America. What?!

It obviously just means he once referred to them as "Indians". Which is a very common term, though it is indeed erroneous and ambiguous. Wikipedia says that a 1995 census with Indigenous people found "most of the respondents" had "an expressed preference refer to themselves as American Indians or Indians.", so that at least shows how widely spread this term is. GOTCHA shit like that makes the site lose credibility to me, and makes me want to cast doubt on more or less all of their claims.

EDIT: a friend of mine, the C-Man, suggested some things to add to my first post, I updated it with a few lines there and there which arnt always exactly his words but should be close enough. Marked his additions with C-man says

I live in a riding with one candidate: he's NDP.  So guess who I'm voting for?

In all honesty though, this is how it boils down:

Harper+Conservatives isn't actually too bad.  They have a lot of stupid shit they like to do, but we can keep them on a short leash.  The nicest thing about Harper is that he's a *terrible* salesman.  So I never have to worry about Canadians swallowing his bullshit and sure enough we've put down the dumber bills over the last five years.

Layton+NDP seem pretty earnest.  I'm not convinced they'd do well to lead the country, but they make for excellent opposition with all their pesky facts and media alarmism.

The Green party is a stupid waste of space.  Anybody thinking to compare them to the Green party from Europe would be sorely mistaken.

The Bloc Quebecois has a dangerous tribalist attitude and seem to "say the right things", but I'm not convinced they'd ever do anything genuinely good for the country as a whole.

Ignatieff has weird eyebrows and that makes him look like an evil muppet.  So there's that.  Also, maybe it's his body language but the guy seriously skeeves me out.  Considering the Liberal track-record, I'm not sure I like them.  They can talk progressives into doing stupid things (like cutting corporate tax rates last decade), but whatever.

Personally I like having a minority government and I hope the NDP keeps pace with the rest of them.  Oh sure they love to bicker and can't get along, which is pretty lame.  However, the idea that all parties have to compromise to move forward seems agreeable to me.  It forces them to seek the will of the people for support and I like that.

tldr; opinion -
Harper is a cheat, but eh we don't care.
Layton seems cool, but better as opposition.
Ignatieff is a muppet.
The other two are batshit crazy.

hahaha

Québecer humorist Francois Pérusse said Stephen Harper looks like the example photo you get when you buy a picture frame at the dollar store.

This, 100%. I totally support the idea of Quebec having laws to protect culture and all that, but separating would just fracture the country and be terrible economically I think.

And yeah, Ignatieff hasn't done shit all so far. If he wants respect he has to take it.

Oh, and you forgot about all the completely unnecessary military spending the conversatives do and will continue to do if they get re-elected.

Well isn't it Canada's destiny to invade USA? It will happen

which one represents mapl syrup

@eva: I guess...bloc quebecois would be the closest?  That or the Christian Heritage Party (omg)

I'm not entirely sure why we're buying those F35s.  We're pulling out of Afghanistan, we don't really have a whole lot to do, and we tend to do mostly humanitarian efforts with the UN.  So what's up with this $16 billion proposal?  Seems a bit...strange.

the way you posted those logos and figureheads reminds me of picking a faction for an rts.

Someone should definatley make a Canadian Election RTS. Also this thread should be a poll. I'm Canadian but unfourunatly I'm not old enough to vote so... yeah kinda sucks.

Oh fuck, you're right, I forgot to check my calendar. I hope Mexico shows up when they said would

Also, I just realized I called them the Conversatives.



Fund it.

Similar case to this

I'm old enough but I'm stupid and dont follow politics and choose not to vote cuz i'll be making some retarded and random picks.

Hey someone on facebook linked to this:

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

Its interesting! You answer questions on political issues and it tells you which party would seem to be closest to your own opinions. More interestingly, then you can go over the details of each question and where each party stands on them individually. I tried it and its pretty nice. If you dont want to read my gigantor post and want some quick reference, check it out! Of course they dont cover all the story. Like... they don't ask you if you believe in bullshit alternative medicine like the green party does... but still

according to that, i agree with liberal most

is this good? i cant tell.. ):

liberals are fine, only green is ridiculous (which is sad, a green party is a good idea, just not this one apparently... homeopathy, really?)

conservatives kind of suck but like most people said, they dont suck as much as other government rights and they're very obvious

vote liberal if you like their agenda and stuff, its important to vote
for whoever! but make your choice and vote!

I think the conservaties should be renamed to the Regressives, and the NDP and Liberal should merge and be called the Progressives. Then we would actually accurate names.

I really don't like the conservative way of thinking. They are like libertarians economically, a political position I find defensible though I tend to err on the opposite end of the spectrum, but jarringly become intrusive when it comes to social liberty issues, usually from the pretense of working for "family values" or likely because of religious dogma. Its kind of sad that libertarians have pretty much no one to represent them. I guess they have to choose which is the most important to them, economical freedom or social freedom? Sorry bucko cant have both...

My riding doesn't have a Liberal candidate.

I don't think the Libs are taking this election seriously. More and more, I'm starting to see this election as Cons v. NDP

A challenger appears! The challenger is:
The internet????? (http://votenet.ca/)

yes apparently us canadians can vote for THE INTERNET now, because we have possibibly the worst service globally

note that this is not ACTUALLY a candidate, but it's a means of convincing major parties to adopt better internet laws.

Yes I'm canadian, and yes we pay $10/gig.
...even though that pricing scheme doesn't make the remotest amount of sense.  :concerned:

It would be better if it was brought up to them before the election so we could base our votes accordingly. Voting for the internet seems like the worst solution to that problem.

how does anyone afford that? i mean, a day of watching youtube would be like $100.

Pretty disappointed right now! But it's nice to see the NDP blossomed into a legitimate party, even if it means all the "left" votes will be diffused between the two, and apparently Canadians are fucktarded when it comes to politics so there's not much of a chance of a coalition government in the near future.

:beer:

Well this is pretty rough.

It's going to be a very difficult four years.. I just don't understand how Canadians could possibly have voted in a man who literally broke every possible rule in the book. :(

Aw, geez. I honestly don't understand people. :(

well did any of you actually vote

This is how I feel right now. I'm surprised Harper got back in, and with a majority to boot, but at least the NDP really grew leaps and bounds.

I did. Strategically, no less.

Neoliberal/neoconservative rhetoric (which dominates the media) has, for the past 30 years, promised people that extreme right-wing fiscal policies might seem painful, but will ultimately help the economy and eventually lead to job creation. This almost never plays out in practice, but Harper controlled the message this election: only my party can save the economy. People's fear blinds them to anything else.

This is where my vote goes: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/True+blue+Calgary+reinforces+Harper+majority/4714163/story.html

So no.

yeah alberta you super-conservatived everyone. great job cow. its all your fault.

i voted ndp and to everyone's surprise it won in my riding (it was usually a very strong bloc riding!)

I'm drinking away the pain of this election.

/ My riding didn't change, incumbent NDP MP stayed in.

Guess what? 45% of Canadians didn't vote. That means, thanks to your sense of hopelessness, and those like you, roughly 20% (40% of 55%) of Canadians elected the Tories to a majority government.

Post redacted I was tired and drunk sorry.

W- what? You... You can choose from more than TWO PARTIES??  :crazy:

What do you people have against conservatives, anyway?

Because their leader is a scumsucking vampire.

(http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/pmphoto1.jpg)
"Why yes, I did just make our laws worse than America's."

I will NEVER EVER vote for a bastard who supports sending young soldiers to an unnecessary war. There are plenty of reasons to dislike the conservatives, but even if their policies lined up with mine, I'll never forgive Harper for wanting to go into Iraq. War is the GREATEST CRIME against humanity and the earth and I will never forget that, and never let a politician sell me one.

Tell me what you mean by "conservatives", I'll tell you what about them I don't like.

What don't I like about the big-C Canadian Conservative Party, specifically?This (http://whynotharper.ca/) link does a pretty good job.

So exactly like I said.
And here I was saying that without knowing all these other things.

If the other 45% of your province got off their ass and voted, it might not have been a Tory sweep.
In fact, it probably would have been close to 0 Tory ridings - Tory voters are typically older voters who feel it's their national pride and duty to vote and don't care about bullshit discouragement or laziness, so it's not a stretch to say all who would've voted Tory did vote, and any other vote would've been for something other than Tory.
Voter apathy hits the younger, more idealistic politics first.

I'm just angry because I fear they might pull some stupid shit now like reconsider capital punishment, abortion, and homosexual marriage. These Tories are whackadoodle America-worshippers who shit over our governmental system and retcon documents. I don't trust them an inch.

I got rid of my post because I agree with you mostly. It was just a knee-jerk reaction. Though, I don't think your profile of the typical conservative voter is necessarily correct, the attitudes they reflect are pretty common (even among youth) in rural Alberta. The large pockets of people who would vote for anything other than them are probably the universities, and even they aren't big enough to sway the outcome in the cities that they're in.


 :(

Another thing I think is a problem that I brought up in my earlier post is the fact that there are 3 main parties: 1 "Right" (which makes them relatively left by American standards (see: elderly care and education election promises), but heading more right as time goes on) and 2 "Left". It comes across as completely imbalanced to me, almost ensuring the Conservatives power by splitting the left votes depending on how socialist one feels that day. In an ideal system there would be more parties of course, but we probably won't ever get there without changing our electoral system, which probably won't ever happen. So yeah.

I totally think you should not have redacted that post. I don't think anyone was sober in Canada last night except straightlaced Tory voters. And maybe that poor bastard, Duceppe. He's gonna get soused tonight, though, I'll bet you.

Blah, posted while I was posting.
I dunno. The split between the PC and Reform was a good one, but remember they teamed up to form a bloc against Chretien's massively popular Grit government, because he was getting an insane number of seats. I don't think they'll hold together forever, this Wildrose Alliance provincial stuff is the first crack in the glass.
With the Grits getting so thoroughly destroyed this time around, I think they're gonna revitalize and go rightward to skim off some of the CPC votes as well.

you did the right thing canada. soon you will be almost as conservative as us and maybe god will smite your enemies too :)

:-X

:nono:

yeah i was just kidding you guys are already more conservative than us

Very true. In fact I'm actually pretty excited about the prospect of a slightly-more-right liberals personally, and the Wildrose Alliance business is nice (I like extremes to be represented too) even if it only just shakes up the Albertan votes a bit. At least I'm a little more optimistic now. :beer:

Yeah, the biggest mistake this election was how the NDP and Liberal party refused to either merge or split further apart. It skewed the election results at two levels towards the conservatives. Splitting the individual votes for the ridings themselves (this being particularly bad as many, many ridings were close calls), and splitting the seats distribution at the end.

If the two parties had merged before the elections, we would have got the EXACT OPPOSITE, a majoritary NPD/Liberal government, which would probably have got much more experienced political candidates coming from the liberal party instead of the inexperienced kids and grannies who won all over Québec, who were running without expecting to win and were little more than political placeholders. As I understand it people here massively voted for the party and Jack Layton, not for the individual candidates. We got kids who just came out of college in there, people who have absolutely no experience in anything.

Now we are stuck with a COMPLETELY UNRESTRAINED Harper government who won a MAJORITY government despite getting only 39.5% of the votes in a ~60% voter turnout. And now, public funding for elections will be taken out by sleazebag Harper, and political parties will have to rely on making deals with big corporations to get any funding at all, a pretty useful situation for Harper whose platform is all about cutting taxes to big corp.

I expect our finances to go even further down the shitter after they already took em down from no deficit to the biggest debt in Canadian history, I expect abortion and gay marriage to be attacked, I expect increased spending on war and the Canadian Forces, I expect a renewed war on drugs, I expect Canada to keep its standing as one of the worst offenders in environmental issues, I expect Harper to continuously avoid talking to the media and keep us all in the dark, I expect sleazy political tactics to undermine democracy, and I expect the NDP will not be able to have much of an impact if any at all in decisions taken in the parliament.

Doesn't Harper want to scrap the gun registry too? I haven't heard much of that since the debate, but it sounds incredibly stupid to me.

EDIT: Not to say that's the most important issue, but I'm going to be disappointed if this happens. I don't want to see Canada get as gun crazy as the USA. No offense to the guys in the US, I know most of you are sane but you get a pretty bad rep for this sort of thing.

It's also times like this where I wish the senate was elected in...

I don't live in Canada and my opinion doesn't matter at all in this, but I'd choose NDP.  Also, why not make this topic a poll?

Because that would be salt in the wound at this point.

Definetly not the result i wanted to wake up to.  :-X
Wish i could've voted...

Oh wow, I didn't even realize they already took place. :facepalm:

we'd have different results if every vote counted apparently (http://www.fairvote.ca/en/Canadians-cheated-again-by-voting-system)

There's going to be two results from this: A) Voting reform or B) It will turn into a two party system aka American style aka garbage and corrupt.

All of the right-wing parties in Canada merged a decade ago.

STV seems too complex for some people to fully trust.

I propose we use Approval Voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

It's a system most of us have experience with from kindergarten, is extremely simple and eliminates the issues with a first pass the post system (vote splitting).

Damn it, Canada! Now where will I immigrate to if America elects Donald Trump?

@Soulliard: Britain a go-go baby!

I don't think so. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron)

The conservatives' end game is having a wide divide between the rich and the poor. They are just regressives. They want the rich (them) to be richer and everyone else to be poorer.

This "Fair Vote" stuff is based on an overwhelming assumption: That Canadians are voting for their party or their party's leader, not their local MP.

Inasmuch as I'm unhappy with the total results of this election, I have always supported the person in my riding who I thought could do the best for it. And despite my innate discord with the nationwide Tory platform, I've supported a Tory candidate before, because I believed in him - not because I believed in his party.

I am sorry to say, but in the current context in Canada, it is quite a fair assumption.

As I mentioned before, many of the NPD candidates who were elected were never meant to be elected. A lot of them did not do any campaigning whatsoever. One elected candidate was in Las Vegas during the elections. Some candidates are students fresh out of college. The candidate who beat GILLES DUCEPPE (leader of the Bloc Québecois party) in his OWN CITY is a granny with obviously no political experience who herself said she never expected to win, that she saw it as an unreachable dream goal.

Also, on the conservative end, it is even more striking. The conservative party is notorious for having a very strong party cohesion, representatives of it very rarely vote against their party's overall direction. I personally give them more credit than that, but I heard people call the conservative MPs opinion-less puppets of Harper, which is very bad news in a majority government. It means that as long as they keep that party cohesion there is NOTHING the opposition can do, being outvoted by default on every issue. The opposition can only voice their dissent and let frustration pile up as every single law and decision passes unhindered, as their own propositions always fail, the same 166 hands going up and down mechanically in unison. Voting in this case becomes just a formality, and democracy drops down a few more notches. You can surely understand why that, in this case, the "fair vote" stuff becomes quite important.

What is sad about this, is that the only way to combat party cohesion is for the opposition to have the same amount of cohesion. And in this case, the opposition being made up of inexperienced kids, its going to be even more striking. We would end up with two groups of people raising their hands angrily at one another, and one of the two wins every time...

But again its more complicated than that, sometimes its neither the local MP or the party leader that people vote for, it can also be a more ideological vote based on the perception of what the parties (should) stand for, it could have been a populist vote in protest of today's politics in general...

But who knows, the conservative MPs might surprise us there.

Opposition party leader moves no-confidence motion and his party's vote collapses so badly at the resulting election that they get forced into 3rd place by the commies. Is he neurologically impaired or was it a spectacularly inept campaign a la Australian Labor Party in 2010?

I wouldn't say so. I think it was moreso how effective the Conservatives' smear campaigns were coupled with the BQ/Quebec silliness. I for one really like Michael Ignatieff (thoug he doesn't have Layton's dad-appeal) but he can't even win his own riding and I think he comes across as too coldly intellectual to most people...

I didn't care for Ignatieff.  He seemed so...disingenuous.  Also, I never really got a clear sense of the Grits' political platform.  They had a lot of words, but little in the way of policy.

I watch CBC/CTV News every day, so it's not a matter of ignorance on my part.  They just had an unclear strategy with an unappealing leader.  Really, I'm not surprised they lost (whether they deserved such a thrashing or not.  34 seats, yikes!)

I'm a bit pissed we have a majority government, but I am heartened by the low popularity of the conservative party and the strong opposition the NDP bring to the table.  I think they'll make for a good opposing party in this climate.

Think about it:  the media/public will be scrutinizing every move made by Harper (possibly more so than usual) and since we can't force Harper to answer tough questions, the NDP can do that for us.  Don't forget, Harper's backed off on controversial issues before because of public pressure (although now he's got carte blanche.)  Sure he's a conservative, but hopefully he remembers his place:  he runs the government, but the people run the country.  We're his boss. 

That's a perspective that's dangerously lacking in some neighbours I could mention.  I hope Harper doesn't lose it or he's in for a rough run.

Layton.
DILF.

That's the smear campaign. :shrug2:

Well, since you seemed to like him, let me ask you this:  why exactly did you like him?  I honestly couldn't see anything redeeming about him in his body language, behaviour, or rhetoric.  He was a pretty hokey act whenever I saw him on TV.  If there was a smear campaign, he was its prime engineer.

His campaign was 1000x more personable than Harper's. Harper read a teleprompter to the crowd then bee-lined for the door and capped questions at 3. Rick mercer even wrote an article titled "Is Stephen Harper a hologram?" (http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/28/is-stephen-harper-a-hologram/)

Ignatieff did speeches sans teleprompter (which Rick Mercer, in that same article, described as some of the best a canadian has ever delivered) and took questions until the crowd had none at every stop.

People are getting their perception of him solely from the smear campaign and the CBC interview that he screwed up pretty bad.

I didn't vote Liberal, but Ignatieff is not even close to as bad as people seem to think he is. He's a professor, so naturally he's going to be way better in a townhall situation than a TV interview one (where Harper the born politician thrives). He really shines when he's talking directly to canadian people - like the reason he missed those 50%+ of votes in the house was because he was constantly travelling the country doing townhalls.

What Matt said. He's also extremely intelligent and has already done and achieved more than any party leader in recent memory (but I'm young so that doesn't stretch back very far).

Well, you both sound like you know a lot more than me on this so I'm willing to concede.  I admit, my opinion of him is from just watching his speeches each day of the campaign.    I definitely agree he's more personable than Harper (which is saying really nothing, Harper is less so than mayonnaise), but he still kinda struck me as.. I dunno, lame?  I got really bad vibes from him in general.

The fact he did his speeches without a teleprompter and was willing to answer so many questions actually kinda surprises me.  You think that energy would come through in his performances, but he always seemed very stilted and closed to me.  I don't really know anything about his political record, mainly due to the fact I only started really paying attention to Canadian politics in the last few months.

Well it doesn't really matter now.  I'm not sure how long it will take liberals to bounce back from this current state of affairs.

I wouldn't argue with this, but I only took away two messages from the Ignatieff and the Liberal campaign this election.
Message #1: "Vote for us, the Conservatives don't respect Canadian democracy and they don't have the right to rule. We do."
Message #2: "We have an education passport for people going to school. We think that's pretty neat."
Message #1 grated on me like you wouldn't believe. Message #2 didn't matter to me. It might've if it was retroactive.

It could be that if I saw him in person, I would've liked his ideas a lot. But regardless of that, my riding didn't even start showcasing the Lib candidate until a day before the advance voting started(Or the Green). I even checked the elections site to see who was running, after the nominations closed, and both Grit and Green were "TBA". The Con and NDP were out first, and the NDP did a mailout and went door to door. No other party did anything except make some noise in the paper. I definitely got the impression that the Liberals don't care about my riding.

I read a really long and in-depth article about Ignatieff a long time ago that went back into his childhood and stuff.

And I can agree with the disingenuous comment. I don't know if it's just the article but that's exactly how it painted him.

England is practically a future alternate universe of what happened in Canada. Voting reform is happening right now! http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=19374.0

Spread the word. The world is watching. Lets get this done!

Actually, I think that's what killed Ignatieff in the end.  The truth of it was simple:  we didn't even have a liberal candidate in our riding.  That's pretty pathetic when you think about it.  I wonder just how many ridings liberals lost because they simply didn't have their people *out* there to take up the vote?

A lot of people claim that we vote federally and ignore our local constituent.  I'm guessing that's probably true (it would explain Quebec's latest moves), but perhaps not the whole truth.  If you don't even run at all, how can you be expected to win? :P