Canadian Politics Thread

(yes, I know it sounds like a reach)

well there are ridings here in toronto where ndp-liberal vote splitting seems to have allowed the cons to snag the seat although i dont really think the cpc had much to do w/ that

also i really do wonder how much the polls showing a strong ndp showing had to do w/ the liberal ridings in north toronto and the 905 going conservative. although i was watching 'the agenda' a couple of weeks ago & one of the panelists was saying that conservatives had really reached out to immigrant communities offering to recognize foreign credentials and other stuff - feel like that wouldve done a lot to push those ridings blue...

ya. i still think the massage parlour smear came from the cons. the NDP nabbed seats from them all over the map.

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I'm far too influenced by some of the stories my cousin, who serves as an aide to P3t3r M4cKay has told me about the strategies they've employed. Some analysis of the leanings of the Conservatives who lost their seats tonight would be helpful. Some pruning to make the tree stronger? We'll see.

You guys have been observing the same Liberal campaign I have, right? They didn't need any opposing party to help them collapse. There are some Liberal voters who would swing NDP before they'd think of voting Conservative but there are also some who'd swing to the Conservatives before they'd consider the NDP. I suspect the latter are more common in the suburban GTA (and yes, the Cons' 'ethnic strategy' has been well-publicized...) That said, I'm mostly going by impressions and not hard data or anything.

I thought the ADQ had way more seats than they did

And yeah, my fear is basically that the NDP will go the way of the ADQ in QC.

Polarization will hurt the left more than it helps, at least in the short term. As long as the CPC can play centre-right to 905 and Ontario in general, they'll have both national papers, Global and CTV on their side. Bay Street and elite class Central Canada are going to hesitate for a long time before putting the NDP in charge of the country. I think that's one of the big stories tonight, Lib->PC swing voters (in the suburbs mostly?) gave Harper his majority.

The good news is that that consolidation of the Conservatives' power will come at the expense of some of the nativist western evangelical ideals the Reform Party / Alliance was built on. It's a long way from Western alienation and secession to building a majority on the votes of the 905.

wau

The NDP vote in Quebec isn't an endorsement of federalism, just a desire for change. With a Conservative majority government for the foreseeable future and the PQ the likely winner of the next Quebec provincial election, I wouldn't e surprised to see much stronger nationalism in the province and a successful referendum by 2020.

You mean "successful" as in "over 50% vote 'Oui' and Quebec becomes an independent country"? Or just that the PQ will be successful in being able to hold another referendum?

Plasmon OTM. Harper wanted to convince fiscal conservatives to vote for him and give him a majority, and he did it. The CPC won seats in every province, they won in cities, they're more of a national party than they've ever been. The media underestimated him and focused all their energies on Layton, who actually didn't do anything except pick up the pieces when the other parties fell apart.

A successful QC referendum is my biggest fear.

Mulroney's recipe was the West + Quebec -- both of them "want in", both played against Toronto.

Harper instead is trying to replicate the Republicans urban/rural divide -- the Real Canadians against the outsiders -- but with the suburbs and professional class identifying with a centre-right mainstream. If that happens, Quebec can and should vote to secede, and Harper will have every political interest to let them go. In Canada minus Quebec tonight the Conservatives win nearly 160 of 220 ridings with nearly 50% of the vote.

In that Canada the CPC is the natural governing party, and we're in for a dynasty.

i dunno about that. what made the bloc fall apart? i think Jack and the NDP deserves some credit there; although i'm not 100% sure the answer to my question.

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The media underestimated him and focused all their energies on Layton, who actually didn't do anything except pick up the pieces when the other parties fell apart.

Harper's long-term strategy has been a matter of record for ages and it was fairly clear that he was pursuing it through the last few years. Many people were forecasting a CPC majority at various points in the campaign. Layton took his party to something like 2.5 times their highest previous seat count and it all seemed to happen within the last couple of weeks, with no one expecting.

I still think that if the NDP can build strong ties with Quebec's unions, they might be able to maintain some strength. I think they could perhaps try to gain some traction (again) on the Prairies too.

with the suburbs and professional class identifying with a centre-right mainstream.

Mulroney did this too, actually. He did great in the more comfy parts of Southern Ontario iinm. And, frankly, Chretien in his first two terms was quite possibly more fiscally conservative than Mulroney or maybe even Harper. (If the Globe endorsements are an indication of anything, they heartily endorsed all three.)

Polarization will hurt the left more than it helps, at least in the short term. As long as the CPC can play centre-right to 905 and Ontario in general, they'll have both national papers, Global and CTV on their side. Bay Street and elite class Central Canada are going to hesitate for a long time before putting the NDP in charge of the country.

And yeah, this is part of why I said Conservatives would love a polarized two-party system upthread.

I meant secession. The Liberal party's old majorities relied on Quebec and Quebecois knew it. It guaranteed that Quebec's interests were taken into account. The Conservatives hold seats in QC but don't rely on it. So...what reason is there to stay from their perspective?

I think the Bloq's collapse was mostly an effect of the looming Harper majority.

IANAQ, but AFAIK the Bloq was Conservative in origin and aimed mostly to provide a unified front in opposition to the Chretien Liberals.

Harper would have won a majority tonight no matter how Quebec voted (barely 15% voted for the Conservatives). Culturally and politically, the CPC has never been in serious contention in Quebec (the CPC are more or less antithetical to mainstream Quebecois culture, as far as I can tell). Faced with marginalization, Quebec needed to ally with a sympathetic opposition force.

As others have pointed out, the NDP is a good fit for Quebec's politics: union-based, culturally liberal, francophone-friendly (at least Layton). And as of tonight, the NDP is in some important sense Quebecois.

it has been a weird west-to-east migration for them.

Mulroney swept Ontario in the wave election in 1984. But 1988 showed his natural coalition: only 38% of the vote and 46 seats in Ontario. The second majority was built almost entirely on Quebec and Alberta -- along with a narrow lead in MB those were the only provinces Mulroney carried in 1988 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_1988_Federal_Election.svg )

Tonight Harper's won 46% and 72 seats in Ontario and is winning/leading the (first past the post) popular vote in every province except Newfoundland and Quebec.

He's got 46% in Ontario and 16% in Quebec. Probably the biggest-ever split in Central Canada.

I wonder what Preston Manning is thinking right now?

i dunno about that. what made the bloc fall apart? i think Jack and the NDP deserves some credit there; although i'm not 100% sure the answer to my question.

Not sure, but Quebec provincial and federal politics have been through some wild fluctuations lately. The NDP is just the latest hat that they've decided to try on, and I don't have any confidence that it'll stick. And the BQ's support hadn't been growing at all, not for a long time.

If that happens, Quebec can and should vote to secede, and Harper will have every political interest to let them go. In Canada minus Quebec tonight the Conservatives win nearly 160 of 220 ridings with nearly 50% of the vote

By that logic, he'd be better off leading his own separation movement and being PM of the new country of Prairieland where he'd have 65% of the vote and would be even more entrenched in power.

I think Quebec's schizophrenia is rooted in the fact that Canadian politics used to always be rooted in Quebec vs Ontario (duh, given the history of the country but hear me out) and now that it's not, they're throwing electoral tantrums tyring to get themselves noticed. This is probably a natural consequence of the failure of separatism over the past 15 years, because now they have to find themselves a new identity as in a post-separatist world where they're just another province rather than THE province. Whereas Ontario I think is more comfortable with defining itself as more of a political mosaic.

well that was about the worst thing I could possibly wake up to.

Man, Quebec's schizophrenia? Electoral tantrums? It's hard to hear you out when you're taking a bunch of people and basically portraying them all as angry 3-year olds-- particularly when the voter turnout among angry 3-year olds has been at 0% province-wide since 1867. This wasn't about separatism, or histrionics, this was about a movement that looked attractive to Quebeckers. There's nothing "schizophrenic" of a lot of people voting for an exciting candidate that shares their beliefs. The Liberals and the Bloc failed to capture Quebec votes. Maybe Quebec is less of a "political mosaic" than Ontario, but so what? Alberta's less politically diverse than Quebec. "Throwing electoral tantrums tyring to get themselves noticed" -- really? God.

Also, this "the province" stuff -- what does that even mean? Don't all of the separatism attempts mean that they think they're "the other province," if anything? Which they kind of still are, considering Quebec's the second biggest province and is bigger than the 3rd and 4th biggest provinces combined?

Gotta say though on the QC NDP thing... as much as I get it, party-wise (I've been voting NDP since I was voting age), and I get it, leader-wise (Layton's an exciting candidate) and I get electing people who've never run before, I really don't get some of the riding's dominant wins for really questionable candidates -- particularly Borg in Terrebonne and Dube in Chambly and Brosseau in whichever riding that was. Two of them are like... the co-presidents of McGill's NDP club, and they ran in these outlying areas from Montreal, and probably don't even have cars to drive themselves to their ridings. The Terrebonne local newspaper couldn't even get in touch w/ the 20-year-old Borg to ask her stuff and she had a landslide victory (NDP sez it's because she doesn't have a cell phone. Really? A 20-year-old McGill undergrad without a cell phone?). I wonder if they've ever even been to their ridings? I mean, fine, it's not really their fault, they had no reason to expect that these candidates would actually have a chance in their ridings when the election was called... but that is some fucked up voting. As much as I'm pretty much the stereotypical NDP voter, if I lived in any of those ridings you wouldn't catch me voting for my party this election. They'll probably be backbenchers I'm sure but still. It's too weird.

I guess if anything this highlights the issue of voters not even really voting for their local candidate so much as for the leader of the party. If that's how we're gonna roll why don't we just switch to having a president or whatever?

This wasn't about separatism, or histrionics, this was about a movement that looked attractive to Quebeckers.

You don't go from 2% to 40% in five weeks by leading an "attractive" movement, this isn't your run of the mill political victory. Why do Quebecers suddenly love the NDP now when the party couldn't even get the time of day in Quebec before two weeks ago? Maybe they like Layton, but Layton's been the NDP leader for nine years, why didn't that translate into votes until now? You don't think this has anything to do with reactionary voting, where the bottom falls out of the other parties and the NDP fills the vacuum?

Forget about the seat count, the NDP looked a lot more dangerous in the last election, when they seemed poised to become the party of choice among urban voters. Now it's the CPC that made the biggest inroads in cities (in Toronto at least) and most of the NDP gains (102 - 68 seats in Quebec = 34 seats, which is what they had in the last election) is a mirage that will fade once they're no longer the flavour of the month in Quebec. And like you were saying, the "my MP can't even speak French" backlash is going to be hilarious.

Americans who sulk over election results always threaten to move to Canada. Where are we supposed to go?

Cuba?

I said Wasilla on Facebook last night, but I like baseball better than hunting, so Cuba it is.

Wasilla is funnier, though, points for that.

OK, after a night's sleep, the sheer horribleness of this is finally registering. A Conservative majority and a highly polarized two-party system where Quebec is on the wrong side of the polarization (and represented by dubious candidates in some cases) could be truly disastrous, yes.

I don't know...I still think we're far less likely to slide into that red-state/blue-state mentality, although I'm sure Harper (and people like Ford) will work hard to change that. For one thing, we don't have anything comparable to the whole Fox/Limbaugh/Palin axis-of-idiocy machinery in place. (Do we? Maybe it's there waiting in the wings and I'm oblivious to it.) I'll leave Quebec out of it, because that place is a complete mystery to me, but I think the rest of the country will more or less proceed as before: everybody's okay with everybody else, except Toronto, of course, which is hated by everybody. And we're okay with that.

We're nowhere close to a red/blue state two party fight to the death mentality. The NDP doesn't have a power base anywhere in the country (unless you somehow believe that Quebecers are NDP 4 life), which means they're vulnerable. Ontario voters can be swayed from election to election. So it would be really dumb for the Liberals to give up the centre when pretty much all of Quebec and Ontario will be up for grabs in the next election.

One other thing: we don't eat our own here with quite the voraciousness of the far-right/far-left
in the States. I encounter this on the American political thread regularly, where Obama is routinely vilified in terms that make no sense to me. I've got a friend who's very left--G-20 protester, attends Chomsky and Naomi Klein lectures, etc.--but she seemed fine with Layton and even Ignatieff as alternatives going into the election.

No big surprise here: CBC saying that Iggy's in the process of stepping down right this second.

Taking bets now as to whether Bob Rae takes it over or says "fuck it" and rejoins the NDP.

there's a far left in the states?

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There you go:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/justin-trudeau-skirts-questions-possible-liberal-leadership-bid-065238411.html

If he fulfills a need, I don't think his qualifications will matter. (I wouldn't, but someone else might say the same of Obama.) The second Justin Trudeau entered politics, the logical endpoint was that he'd one day become Prime Minister and rekindle whatever it was that his father shared with the country. (At both ends of the spectrum--I'm sure he'd also be as hated as his father was by some percentage of the electorate.)

Maybe not far left, as in Marxist/Leninist, but progressive or whatever. The Morbius claque on the American thread.

as soon as Tredeau come close to the liberal leadership the Conservative-quasi-taxpayer-funded smear machine will kick into high gear and he'll be untouchable after 4 (assuming they follow their fixed election law this time around) years. i can already see the ads.

Oh, they'd be all over him, all right, but...not sure how old you are, Thinwall, but for someone my age (49), Trudeau sentiments are strong.

ya, may dad is the same (strong sentiments). he gets spitting mad whenever he sees old man Trudeau on tv. it will take the Cons/Sun "news" north about 3 days to convince the rest of Canada people like my dad are the norm and Trudeau was the worst baby eating commie to ever take a dump in the PMO.

to what Barry said about Quebec: they certainly can be schizophrenic at the polls from time to time. but i don't see alot wrong with this. i'd rather have a schizo electorate than one so firmly entrenched in party lines that change becomes impossible. think about Alberta: Conservative, Conservative, Conservative, etc, etc. they have their reasons for voting for them en masse and they have some hard working MPs but they also have some epic clunkers strolling into the halls of power. they don't even change their voting habits enough to rid themselves of the incompetent/useless ones; it's just mindlessly voting Conservative, Conservative, Conservative over and over again. it's not healthy.

I also wonder how much of this orange wave is not so much reactive (ie. doing it to kick the bums out) so much as suddenly realizing that people COULD elect NDP candidates, and didn't have to park their vote with a so-called safer choice that according to traditional wisdom has "a better chance of getting elected"?

I think the scale of the change in Quebec is more the former, but in other parts of the country it may be more the latter: look at Davenport, where Ianno had been there for a while, and Andrew Cash (who almost no one thought would win) nearly DOUBLED Ianno's vote this time out. And Parkdale-High Park, which probably had a whole pile swing Liberal last time out because it seemed safer? And then Peggy Nash trounced Kennedy, who was actually in consideration for the Liberal leadership.

Er, Mario Silva, not Ianno of course.

We're nowhere close to a red/blue state two party fight to the death mentality. The NDP doesn't have a power base anywhere in the country (unless you somehow believe that Quebecers are NDP 4 life), which means they're vulnerable. Ontario voters can be swayed from election to election. So it would be really dumb for the Liberals to give up the centre when pretty much all of Quebec and Ontario will be up for grabs in the next election.

This makes some sense.

This is OTM and unbelievably honest, coming from a Liberal member:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/silver-powers/the-liberal-party-what-went-wrong-and-where-to-next/article2008011/

It also features: a good explanation of why the Liberals deserved what they got, confirmation of why I was right not to vote for them ("You can't fake sincerity), and, coming straight from a prominent Liberal, a clear statement of why what I see as the premise for 'vote-splitting' arguments are so flawed:

The Liberal Party of Canada is not a “left-wing party”. Not when we are at our best. The Liberals and NDP have radically different cultures and visions for the country

Btw, if Justin Trudeau becomes leader because of his last name, that will thoroughly confirm what people hate about today's LPC. (And I have plenty of admiration for his Dad.) Bob Rae is likely a poor choice as well, considering that neither Liberals nor New Democrats want to associate themselves with his former premiership.

"is so flawed"

I'm not saying that Justin Trudeau would be a rational choice. I do believe that with many people my age it would be an irrationally powerful one. I just don't know enough about him to say much more. But if a reasonable amount of his father's charisma and intelligence found its way to him, I think he could navigate his way through a lot. If he's George W. Bush (which is not to equate H.W. and Pierre), then yes, people would recoil.

i ate breakfast at the table next to him once. that's all i can report.

(Btw, fwiw, even outside QC, the NDP won 44 seats, which is still one more than their previous national record under 44. I agree that they're still a ways away from holding a strong power base in any given region.)

"...record under Broadbent."

When I was talking about the election with my grade 6 class this morning, the girl who's probably my brightest asked if this meant that "everything would be privatized now." Sounds precocious, I know--she'd brought the word up last week, and actually she's not like that at all (annoyingly precocious, I mean). Anyway, true to my obligation not to wade into things like politics or religion, I said that there would probably be an effort to move in that direction, but hopefully the rest of the country would push back. There was no knock on the door, so I carried on and tried to explain how 40% of the votes = 55% of the seats, using a very simple analogy (you win this riding by 100 votes, this one by 100, and you lose that one by 800). That didn't take at all:

"Okay, how many seats did you win?"
"20?"
"No--out of these three seats, how many did you win?"
"All of them?"
"No..."

This went on for another 90 seconds.