Open for Business: Canadian Politics 2019

+ an electoral reform that has the approval of 4 of the 5 major parties and 60% of the population is bound to be better and fairer than one proposed by one party.

+ there would be no doubt it would be Singh’s victory, Liberals will have a hard time claiming anything considering what they did in the first term.

i think electoral reform is dead

― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, October 22, 2019 2:00 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Camp counsellor voice**

Well it is with his attitude

well the liberals are not going to go for it and they're in charge for 4 years. singh doesn't have that much leverage

It's probably apples to oranges, and I really don't know enough about Canadian politics to make the comparison make sense, but at the last election in Denmark, the two parties I'd call 'progressive' got 7,7% for the Socialist People's Party and 6,9% for the Red-Green Alliance. So 15% for a pseudo-progressive party and 6,5% for the Greens on top of that doesn't seem that bad to me?

There's not really a 'progressive' vote to chase anywhere, but in the end we punch above our weight because we happen to be right.

the Greens are the pseudo-progressive ones

ndp are social fascists comrade

shhhh

(actually the ppl I run with have arcane formal ties to the NDP)

well the liberals are not going to go for it and they're in charge for 4 years. singh doesn't have that much leverage

― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, October 22, 2019 2:04 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm just saying that now that he has larger leverage than in the last parliament, he can use that newfound leverage to turn many liberals voters who care about electoral reform to his advantage.

Also the liberals are in charge as long as parliament allow them to, and I doubt it will last 4 years.

the average for minority gvmnts is something like 1.5 years, right?

Fred B.

I consider neo-Keynesian economics to be progressive in this miserable age of world neoliberalism and 55% of voters voted for parties who are very much neo-Keynesian. When it comes to sociological stuff like women's rights, lgbtq's rights, FNIM's rights, my count is pretty similar.

when the minority government falls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRnwK01n904

lol

oh yeah there was nothing as good in the debates this time as this from last time round

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZdwOEu87I

xp: I consider all 'progressives' to be social fascists, comrade.

fred b otm

So back to Doug Ford?

The BQ benefit more than anyone from FPTP. They are not going to support electoral reform. I think the Liberals might go for at least seriously exploring it if the NDP make it a condition of support. They did campaign on it last time and even began tentative steps. The issue would be what electoral system we actually want to move towards. People who want ranked ballots won't necessarily ally with people who want MMP.

More than most policies electoral reform was always going to be a big compromise between diverging ideas.

Also Bloc thrived by staying within the CAQ ideological spectrum and we are heading towards electoral reform in Quebec thanks to Legault. Also I don’t think they care about fptp since they don’t ever plan on passing the post.

Not sure what you mean but the BQ's proportion of the seat count vastly exceeds its share of the national popular vote (which is just over half of the NDP's iirc) due to its regional concentration, and generally has for most of its history, I think, so idk how they would benefit from electoral reform on a national level. Obv they also benefit from vote splitting as the only separatist option so idk that preferential ballots would help them either.

It’s a fallacy to think voters would vote the same way and politicians campaign the same way under different electoral rules so these translations are to take with a grain of salt. I have good reasons to think that the number of seats Quebec would be allowed would have a similar proportions of Bloc. If anything Bloc is to closest thing to PR since they don’t have votes outside Quebec, ie the 5% in 4th place in Northern Manitoba that the Green are losing out on.

OK, fair enough. I agree about the fallacy.

fun read: https://www.tvo.org/article/election-post-mortem-part-1-a-conservative-insider-explains-how-his-party-got-it-so-wrong

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mydemocracy-survey-results-electoral-reform-1.3950671

I was one of the people who participated in this survey back in 2017 and pretty sure my answers amounted to not giving high priority to reform. I’m still not sure I’m for it. PPC would have actual seats right now if we did, and having a fairly intimate knowledge of conservative leanings from exposure to extended family members, I can confidently say that there is a growing element of cons whose true alignment is with PPC. It’s only the wanting the win that keeps them in check. Be careful what you ask for.

The danger with the current system is a more extreme leader hijacking the whole party (as Ford did, and Bernier nearly did) and the moderates going along for the win instead. I do find it interesting that the post Morton there doesn’t even touch on the idea that some of their lost support might have stayed home because Scheer was actually too moderate. Unfortunately my gut tells me it’s a thing.

Mortem. Autocorrect.

aside from last time around (when Trudeau supposedly energized everyone) it was the highest turnout this century, which surprised me. Most people I know were just generally disgusted with it all.

I think more people voted because many expected it to be close so individual ridings become more important. I don't think it's because people were particularly enthusiastic.

that survey sucked so much...prop rep could set a threshold (in BC the referendum set it at 5%) that would have kept the PPC out, but it's true that it's possible they could have received more votes in a new system. personally i think the trade off of representing progressive and leftist voters fairly would be worth it

The questions were pretty vague for sure. I’m not surprised the results were contradictory.

Maybe you’re right about that trade off. However perhaps Canada’s success to date has a lot to do with the way our system and “happy medium” culture tempers extremism. I’m worried changing that will change the best parts of what we are. Once the need to include everyone under the big tents goes away, I can’t see how our current culture continues. Having such diversity might cease to be a strength if people are freed to stick to specialized agendas.

They would need to work together to govern anyway. But I just don't think the current system delivers results that fairly represent the vote in a multi-party system so that is the bottom line for me, regardless of whether the right parties get represented. (And it's not like the current system stopped the Bloc or the Alliance, nor is fptp an obstacle for extreme Republicans to our south. I don't think there is any real evidence that New Zealand or Sweden have more extremist Parliaments - and PR wouldn't even be my 1st choice.)

That said, empowering MPs would be a much higher priority for me.

Curiously, the new Parliament actually does seem fairly representative so idk.

id kill for mmp.

of course while i thought the grits weaseled out of electoral reform it actually isn't really something that people care about afaict (referendum in bc about it had super low votes and was defeated by the status quo)

Curiously, the new Parliament actually does seem fairly representative so idk.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Thursday, October 24, 2019 11:33 AM (thirty-three minutes ago)

ndp have half the percentage of seats in the house of commons than they have percentage of the popular vote tho

Not sure NZ or Sweden are truly comparable though. It seems that as nations they are fairly natural entities, that can stand the fragmentation, as opposed to us - a relatively fragile and disparate golem of a country that is pretty much held together by magic. Some level of strong-armed compromise seems part of what it is to be Canadian. If we start being completely “fair” we might find ourselves inadvertently disintegrated into piles on the floor.

Ha, I was going to say something about how incredible it is to listen to 'alienated' Western Canadians complain about being dominated and controlled by Quebec at the same time that Quebec nationalists complain about being stifled by English Canada. Even Ujjal Dosanjh, of all people, weighed in on the former side.

xp. no nation is natural. fptp approaches letting the leaders of the major parties play rock paper scissors for power at times, which doesn't really sit well with me. although of course foucaldian analysis of power would show me that more representative systems are still dictatorial!

of course while i thought the grits weaseled out of electoral reform it actually isn't really something that people care about afaict (referendum in bc about it had super low votes and was defeated by the status quo)

There was a similar referendum, on MMP specifically, in ON in 07, with a similar result.

Interestingly, the criticism I often hear of ranked choice voting, which would be how I lean, is if anything that it favours moderates and centrists. Ireland's leading parties tend that way iirc?

ireland's two main parties are tories whose grandads fought on different sides in the civil war

The results of proportional systems do seem more fun, admittedly.

in scotland our mpp system was specifically designed so that there wouldn't be majorities and the administrations would be coalitions. the nationalists managed to get a majority (they've lost it since). kind of like super winning an election

Lol: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/10/wexit-movement-inspired-by-how-smoothly-brexit-is-going/

controversial opinion: the best thing for the left is not electoral reform but to accept duvergers law and merge ndp + libs/dissolve ndp and green. it’s dumb for 2-3 parties to split the centre-left vote and constantly risk giving conservatives wins. fptp creates the incentive for ndp to converge to the centre; they could probably be more left as the left-wing of a more powerful liberal party in a 2-party system. just accept it and try to turn the libs left from within like bernie liz aoc & co are doing w the dems

And the NDP Socialist Caucus just take a good hard look in the mirror

try to turn the libs left from within like bernie liz aoc & co are doing w the dems

the jury is still very much out on whether or not this will ever be at all effective

anyway I'd rather not dissolve the one party with historical ties to unions and socialist orgs thanks

I really can't imagine looking at the two-party system and thinking "we should be more like that"

it’s dumb for 2-3 parties to split the centre-left vote and constantly risk giving conservatives wins.

I might agree in a universe where the Liberal Party had a hard time winning elections in Canada?

I basically agree with Simon on this, although I'm up for hearing the argument as to why merging every left party is better than electoral reform:

I really can't imagine looking at the two-party system and thinking "we should be more like that"

And NB that the US at least has a lot of checks and balances here: competitive primaries, a higher level of autonomy for individual Congressmen, separation between the executive and legislative branches. I don't see this as good for democracy at all in a Parliamentary system.