Canadian Politics Thread

What Clement did is run-of-the-mill pork-barrel politicking and it's contemptible. Still, though, the money that was designated for bridges or an airport runway actually went to bridges or a runway, you know? The issue is just favouritism and unfairness in terms of where this infrastructure investment was targeted. This is not on par with awarding millions of dollars in contracts to firms that did no or very little work at all and instead donated some of the money back to the governing party or else rewarded party members in other ways. That is outright theft of taxpayer money. The in-and-out financing issue could potentially be more comparable to this, albeit on a significantly smaller scale.

Plus, the Liberals who were involved in the scandal aren't the same people that are running now So anyone who's holding a ten-year grudge against the Libs and wants to keep punishing them by voting for another party out of sponsorship scandal spite is an idiot.

I definitely agree with you here.

Anyhow, as much as I hate to say it, the Liberal deserve this. They've been running an impeccable campaign so far.

I'm a little frustrated that the NDP seems to have actually removed its platform from its website for this campaign. Even the Greens have something really thorough online. That said, I do think Layton has been presenting some interesting and substantial ideas, although it's got to hurt to have the Liberals poach many of his strongest policy proposals.

Yeah just went on NDP site to see if they'd updated their platform section and it's the same as it was when this all kicked off. Their main page seem to be updated pretty often though.

Not trying to shift discussion, but any thoughts on May being excluded from this year's debates? My initial reaction is that it's a pretty unfair move considering she was allowed in last time; I know the argument is usually 'no seat no debate' BUT I think the Greens have made enough gains to move beyond 'fringe' party status at this point. Okay so 6.8% of the national vote isn't huge but neither is the Bloc's 10% and they're allowed in...

I think that a requirement of having to have one elected member of parliament in order to participate in the debate is pretty reasonable.

and I say this as a person who has voted Green several times in the past

i honestly don't care if she's in or not.

I can't stand these debates anyway. The rules and protocol are apparently set up to make the whole tone as bland as possible. I much prefer a live one-on-one grilling from a tough TV interviewer that isn't afraid to ask difficult questions and is intelligent and confident enough to call them on their bullshit answers. I'm thinking of Paxman in the UK. I'm not sure Canada has someone like that.

Michael Moriarty?

They need to have some kind of objective and fair criterion to determine who gets to participate in the debate. Going by whether a party holds any seats in the Commons seems like a perfectly reasonable one to me. The Greens held one seat in 2008 so May got to participate then.

Yeah just went on NDP site to see if they'd updated their platform section and it's the same as it was when this all kicked off.

There actually used to be a lot more there before the campaign began. (My links upthread don't work any longer.)

How do you think this will affect the NDP's chances in AB, where they kicked off the campaign?

So here's something: In 2008, this riding was a sea of orange lawn signs and almost nothing but. This time around, I'm seeing as many blue signs, possibly more... The municipal election suggested that the electorate might be moving in a somewhat anti-labour/left direction...

This time around, I'm seeing as many blue signs, possibly more...

(To appreciate the significance of this, consider the last four election results: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_West#Federal_election_results )

Multiple polls showing the CPC around 40% now... I'm half ready to take back anything I've said about Ignatieff.

too bad old ppl are allowed to vote: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-parliament-would-look-if-only-youth-voted/article1747999/

"Provincial NDP parties in Nova Scotia, BC etc who have been placed in a position to actually push for environmental policies always flake out in the end. The way they dealt with the carbon tax here in BC pretty much finished them off as far as getting support from environmental groups."

I went to the bc ndp debate today, and the candidates were unanimous in supporting the carbon tax, with farnworth even saying that their carbon tax stance was one of the main reasons why they lost the last election.

The Bloc Québécois would form the Official Opposition with 60 seats, won with 13.5 per cent support nationally and 39.2 per cent support in Quebec.

These numbers are fishy ... about 1/4 of Canada's population is in Quebec, so how do they end up with 13.5 percent support from just 39 percent support in Quebec? Even if the numbers are reliable, why would the BQ's support from younger voters be higher than the national average? (serious question, btw)

They also don't have nearly enough data to conclude anything about the regional breakdown of votes (and therefore the number of seats that each party would get).

sym - I used to be in your riding too, for about a year when I was working in Van. Before that, I was in Layton's riding. Now I'm living in Iggy's.

Last time around I held my nose and voted for Iggy because I really didn't want the Cons to come up the middle, since they seemed to be running strong in the riding. Now I'm not sure where to throw my vote - thinking there's not as much chance of Iggy losing the riding this time out, and I traditionally skew more towards the NDP. Vote compass is telling me I'm more a Green voter, but I'm not sure I buy it. More research required, I guess.

Some days I wish I could still vote for the Rhino party.

Seconded

i always liked brian salmi's proposal to set up a skytrain line between main and hastings and shaughnessy

i was asked to volunteer in vancouver south for the ndp against incumbent ujjal dosangh, but he only beat the conservative challenger by 20 votes last time, and i'm thinking i don't want to help the vote get split. also, lazy

first fed election since i moved to the west coast. richmond has been pc (for decades) -> liberal -> alliance -> liberal -> conservative since the 70s.

hopeless ndp candidate, Career Background: One of the founders and past executive director of British Columbia's largest anti-tobacco activist and lobby group, Airspace Action on Smoking and Health. goddamnit.

North Vancouver MP 4ndrew Saxt0n just wished me a happy Monday as I was about to board the Seabus. If there was any doubt that I wouldn't be voting for him it vanished then. Ok, back to the serious discourse.

why would the BQ's support from younger voters be higher than the national average? (serious question, btw)

This is believable to me. The youth vote does tend to lean further to the left and to be more socially liberal (which the BQ certainly are). Plus, the BQ are major advocates for post-secondary education funding and students' issues as well as culture. (If I wanted to be a jerk, I could mention that there seems to be a contradiction in demanding massive increases in federal funding for education and culture while also calling for Quebec sovereignty. But then I would be a jerk.)

You're completely right that the poll numbers don't add up though.

I've always liked Ujjal Dosanjh... It won't happen because he doesn't speak French but I've thought I might become a Liberal if he were leader.

2008 results by specific polling station!: http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/elections-federales/resultats-des-elections-federales-2008/

How do you think this will affect the NDP's chances in AB, where they kicked off the campaign?

The comments posted to the Edmonton Sun's 'editorial' about this were pretty funny though.

Great link, btw. Really surprised to see this one speck of bright orange for Edm-St Albert:

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l442/acrobins/neighbourmap.jpg

so what do we think about Harper banning facebook unsavories from his rallies (or whatever it was)?
incredibly, incredibly stupid on the conservative's part imho.

article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ejections-at-campaign-rallies-a-staff-issue-harper-says/article1971383/

two girls for having friended Ignatieff on FB - and a veteran volunteer for... um - giving a shit about vetrans i guess.

Seems pretty hard to defend and it was done pretty clumsily. From what people are telling me, though, it's pretty normal for parties to micro-manage who gets to attend campaign rallies. They're generally meant to be photo ops for party faithful, I guess?

This is amusingly weak though: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2011/04/conservatives-try-to-explain-student-ejections-from-rallies.html

That is sooo weak ...

On one hand, I don't really care who they exclude from their rallies. They're not town hall meetings so they can let in whoever they want. OTOH, they're screening people's fb pages??? What the hell??

I don't know if the other parties do that sort of thing, but no matter how big a fan I was of some politician, if the vetting process involved someone examining my fb page before I'd be allowed to attend a rally, I'd just as soon stay home.

OTOH, they're screening people's fb pages??? What the hell??

I reacted in basically the same way on a different message board and got these responses:

As opposed to what? That sounds like a better guide of whether someone from the opposing camp is crashing your party than "That guy looks like a Liberal!"

The whole practice lends itself to abuses. Picking on whether they should be using Facebook or not seems almost besides the point....

...
You kinda entering Shades of gray here. It is ok [for the Liberals] to kick me out because they have seen me door knock for the NDP it isn't ok to kick someone else out because they only saw them supporting the other party on facebook?

It should be all or none.

Those actually seem like fair points to me. Facebook profiles are public, for better or worse.

From what I hear, it's common in some fields for employers to check out the Facebook profiles of job applicants.

Sure, if you're applying for a job then it's reasonable. But to attend a one hour political rally, one time? Seems excessive, not to mention a waste of time and resources for the campaign staff.

Oh, yeah, totally.

Not certain, but I don't think it'll make much difference. Tory supporters will obv be against it and leftists will prb support it. I guess the only questionable group here are the Liberals Layton hopes to pull over to his side, but unless they don't think Iggy's plan for more regulation goes far enough I don't think they'll swap sides over Layton's proposal.

I basically agree, which is why it seemed like a curious move for Layton if he hopes, as he claimed, to "paint [Edmonton] orange". When "Tory supporters" = the whole province except one riding, you need to reach out to them a little if you want them to switch to your side.

to the FB thing - there's two things:

1 - it's just incredibly dumb politics. if you want to get more people to vote for you - those people have most likely supported other parties in the past. how are you going to win these people over if you're booting them from your events?! i can understand all parties wanting to keep partisan trouble makers out from private events, but this is taking things so far that it defeats the purpose!

2 - this is in keeping with a trend the conservatives have had going for a while now. there have been complaints from researchers, teachers - anyone who has publicly criticized conservative policy - that all of the sudden conservative staffers are snooping through their past, trying to dig up any dirt to discredit these people. as far as i'm aware this is unprecedented in Canadian politics.

oh, and a third point:

these people dedicating their energies to all this snooping for the cons, had better be getting paid by the conservatives! they have a habit of getting the tax payer to pick up the tab for their mud-slinging when and wherever possible and i see no reason why this would be any different.

http://warrenkinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-05-at-3.16.12-PM1.png

Is it just me, or is the Toronto Star going overboard with their Liberal Party asslicking (even more so than usual)?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/970557--ignatieff-s-appeal-improving-but-harper-still-leads-poll-says

This was their lead story earlier in the day. The headline says that Iggy is catching up to Harper and the lead paragraph claims that he's "winning hearts and minds". The bad news is that his disapproval ratings are huge (even bigger than Harper's). And his leadership rating is abysmal -- only 14 per cent think that he'd make the best prime minister out the major party leaders. Of course, you have to read the fine print because those numbers are buried further down in the story.

The story also claims that many people who claim to be NDP supporters are really closet Liberal supporters, according to unspecified "pollsters".

these people dedicating their energies to all this snooping for the cons, had better be getting paid by the conservatives!

OK, so this indicates that those RCMP officers doing security for CPC events were in fact involved with restricting non-registered attendees, which is not part of the RCMP's mandate. Also that the CPC seems to be unique in requiring attendees to pre-register.

B4rry, I think they mean that many NDP supporters may actually strategically vote Liberal as opposed to being closet LPC supporters. At least that's how I read it.

same here.

xxxpost. I've noticed that the papers here in Vancouver have also been really critical of Harper and positive about the Liberals and the NDP. I'm fine with it. Harper doesn't deserve such a lead. Anyway, that story from the Star shows the Conservatives leading the Liberals by 11%. That's a hell of a lot better than the 20% or whatever it was from a couple of weeks ago.

and i've noticed that no matter what is happening in the world - the Sun, without fail, has some kind of full page 'OMG IGGY IZ ELETIST AMERICUN" style cover.

since the election was called that is.

oh - except one about the leafs. their lone priority above smearing liberals.

lololol

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/06/cv-election-flash-vote-mobs.html

"I'm not sure what a flash mob is but it sounds a bit disconcerting … I don't know about 'flash' or 'mobs' but I don't like the context of either word."

"... or 'student' either."

I've noticed that the papers here in Vancouver have also been really critical of Harper and positive about the Liberals and the NDP.

CPC campaign strategy, at least for the first portion of the campaign, seemed to revolve around saying the word "coalition" as many times as possible per sentence. Even the right-wingers I know started to find it embarrassing. By way of contrast, while I once swore I'd never support a party led by Michael Ignatieff, I'm thinking of actually donating something based on the LPC campaign so far.