Canadian Politics Thread

but no hard evidence no.

and i will end all this (sorry for not backing all this up with links, but it's 1:30 in the morning here) with a quote:

At worst, he personally ordered it done and chose the people who executed the plan. At the very least, he fostered an attitude within the party ..., chose the managers of the people who committed these crimes and completely and utterly failed to exercise any oversight, supervision or leadership.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter where (his) actions or lack of them fall on that scale. He is the leader and a leader is responsible for the actions of the people he leads.

Yeah, the Irwin Cotler calls were disgusting.

I'm not saying this doesn't looks bad for the CPC, just that so far there doesn't seem to be open-and-shut hard evidence yet. I'm still waiting for results from Elections Canada's investigation.

Also WTF @: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/26/pol-f35s-fighter-jets.html

I had actually been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe the Liberals were just playing partisan games by insisting on more documentation about the F-35 purchase before the last election.

2xpost Wait, did call centre workers actually admit they were deliberately misleading people? I might have missed that one. Tbh, there was so much coming out about this that I started skipping over much of it, assuming it would all come out in digestible form after the investigation.

OK, 3xpost: Who's that quote from?

that is stephen harper's thoughts on Chretien and the sponsorship scandal.

xpost

ya - i think it was in Thunder bay (the call center). the story they're going with is that OOOPS there were mistakes in the script. our msm seemed to move on pretty quickly from that one for some reason.

as an aside - i find mlw intolerable.

yeah the robocalls are horrifying and illegal. harper has been suspiciously lackadaisical about finding the real killers, too.

I hadn't heard about the Cotler calls. Disgusting.

Mulcair seems all right, but predicting how fickle QC voters will vote in three years is like predicting the weather in three years.

the guys running things with just over 1/3 of the popular vote.

Seriously, can we get off this already? If you want to play that game, the NDP are the official opposition because they won 80% of the seats in QC with just 40% of the vote. This is how the system works, the alternatives aren't necessarily better, so let's stop with the fuzzy logic and move on.

Re MLW: there's a lot of shit to wade through. The 'ignore' function definitely comes in handy. However, there are also some highly informed and intelligent people on there too, of all persuasions (though there is a slight rightward slant). I don't learn when I'm just talking to people who I already agree with.

fair enough. but last time i checked out that dumping ground the amount of deranged homophobic shit i had to wade through to get to anything remotely intelligent was not worth the damage being done to my soul.

like, they got you repeating the conbot "no hard evidence" talking point pretty well!

Even the right-wing posters on MLW tend not to be that hard right on social issues, especially gay rights. (I can think of a couple exceptions, who are usually attacked even by other Conservatives.) Are you sure you're not thinking of Free Dominion or something??

nope. it's been a while tho - maybe they've toned it down. after Harper got elected they were pretty ott with the "now the homos and immigrants are in for it" routine.

As I see it, the problem with the electoral system is this: we elect a local representative. This is the only person who is directly elected by the public and thus, he or she should have significant decision-making authority as a function of his or her democratic legitimacy. However, because of the level of party discipline that has developed in our system, these MPs generally function as placeholders for their party, whose policies are determined either by the leader or party membership. So either we should just retain the FPTP system and simply give MPs greater autonomy (as they have even in the UK) or else move towards proportional representation so that people can directly vote for parties instead of individuals. I much prefer the former.

xpost

Seriously, can we get off this already? If you want to play that game, the NDP are the official opposition because they won 80% of the seats in QC with just 40% of the vote. This is how the system works, the alternatives aren't necessarily better, so let's stop with the fuzzy logic and move on.

i wasn't making a point about prop rep here. just that the conservative grip on majority status is weak and a small amount of cooperation in some key ridings can easily tip things away from a conservative gov't.

xpost!

I much prefer the former.

(because I don't think political parties should have any more power than they already do; I like being able to vote for a person who is ideally accountable to constituents. And MMP just seems like an awkward mishmash: would MPs who were chosen from a party list have the same powers as MPs who were elected by their constituents when it comes to sitting on committees, sponsoring private members' bills, etc?)

xpost

Some alternative non-list based electoral system might work though. Some people advocate for instant runoff/preferential ballot systems, which I might be open to.

Well, some election results are starting to be formally challenged as a result of the robocall issue:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/27/pol-robocalls-legal-challenge.html

And more on the govt 'muzzling' scientists:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/03/23/f-federal-scientists.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/09/29/federal-scientists-media-government.html

i really only like pro-rep bcz i think it would lead to the eternal centre-left govt that canada so sorely deserves. but you can understand why mps need to follow the party line, it's just in the parties' interests. harper definitely won't be the one giving his mps permission to vote their conscience, either.

As I understand it, compared to other countries, Canada is pretty exceptional in terms of the level of party discipline we have.

Bit of a left turn, but I just finished watching Donald Brittain's The Champions, about Trudeau and Levesque.

http://www.videocanada.ca/catalogg/images/products/CHAMPIONS_2D_WEBTHUMB.jpg

An amazing story that, even though I did follow the referendum at the time, I don't think I fully appreciated--I was just starting university, so punk rock and getting drunk were more important than Québécois politics. I didn't realize that the relationship between Trudeau and Levesque went so far back. Compared to what we've got today, they're such towering, vivid figures.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1978/1101780213_400.jpg

Daniel Poliquin's book on Levesque, in the Penguin "Extraordinary Canadians" series was really interesting...I didn't know much at all about his story, for about the same reasons you mention...

I'll keep an eye open for a used copy of that. Levesque seemed like such a humble, honorable guy--he had this way of shrugging his shoulders when overwhelmed (whether he'd just won an election or lost the referendum) that was very atypical for a politician.

Bit of a left turn, but I just finished watching Donald Brittain's The Champions, about Trudeau and Levesque.

This film is great! You can watch it for free on the NFB's site. At least you could about a year ago.

It's still up there:

Part 1 -- http://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_1
Part 2 -- http://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_2
Part 3 -- http://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_3

I lucked into a new DVD copy for $13 at a flea market last weekend.

Interview with Mulcair:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=2215926722

RIP

http://images.moneyville.ca/images/af/37/1fd7a96b4be883637e2dd4ebaa0f.jpeg

That's one part of the budget I can actually get behind! 10% cut to the CBC over three years will probably hurt, though I'll be interested to see what results. Is anyone surprised that they're scrapping the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy? The cuts to Elections Canada's budget actually made me laugh. I'm cynical about gearing NRC grants towards 'business-oriented' projects but maybe there will actually be some good money for research. On-reserve education funding is probably good. I actually think it's good that they're raising the retirement age for public servants, not sold on raising the age to collect OAS, although it's good that they're automatically enrolling people. Anyway, pain is going to be felt in suburban Ottawa, all of which went blue last may.

New Forum poll shows the Mulcair-led NDP basking in a honeymoon, tied with the CPC nationally and leading in BC and SK/MB (!), solidly ahead of the Liberals in ON (!): http://blunt-objects.blogspot.ca/2012/03/forum-poll-post-mulcair-35-con-35-ndp.html

"last May"

Alberta's PC party has its new leader: Alison Redford, apparently a 'lifelong' conservative, though her platform reads so centrist it could be interchangeable with a lot of Liberal ones. A lot of people are surprised by this and it's caused quite a stir. From comments I've seen, some on the far right aren't happy (some of them sound like they're scared of how 'socialist' she is!). There are some mumblings that her centrist-y position leaves the far right open for Wildrose to take, which should make for an interesting election. I'm sure the tories will win anyway, but recent leadership shake-ups for PC and Lib parties plus the 'rise' of Wildrose could make things more exciting in Alberta's next election than usual.

― salsa shark, Sunday, October 2, 2011 12:50 PM (6 months ago)

I TAKE IT ALL BACK. Wildrose isn't making things exciting/interesting, they are making things scary: they're actually projected to be within the range needed to get a majority government. ;_;

huh. cutting the election Canada budget. wonder why they might want to do that...

Yeah, it's so brazen: whether or not they're guilty, the optics of that move are obviously poor. They don't even seem to care about that!

(Especially when EC already won against them in court re the in-and-out business.)

Some excellent question-dodging from Chris Alexander on Power and Politics today.

(re F-35 shenanigans)

about the elections canada biz, or hiding information about the jets (which are apparently just bobsleds with wings taped on the sides)?

xpost ah!

E-petition about the CBC cuts, for whatever it's worth:

http://act.friends.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=33&ea.campaign.id=14415

I know I tried to say these guys aren't actually all that evil but, man, commercials on Radio 2 seems like things are getting pretty dire.

Thanks for posting this. Signed.

Latest news does not look good for the CPC:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Robocalls+probe+extends+Tory+headquarters/6470348/story.html#ixzz1sMb8uzjW

here's hoping...so, is this racist? http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17/ron-leech-wildrose/

WTF?

It's just an ignorant comment I think - totally out of touch with how that might look to most Canadians. I have a suspicion that the Wildrose Party is going to flop quite marvelously next week. Easy come, easy go.

....though that might be wishful thinking, I admit.

I've heard one person predict that NDP and Liberal supporters will strategically vote PC, which says something if it's remotely plausible.

I don't buy that one. More likely this kind of crap will cause a dip popularity a bit and that will signal a significant turn in the polls. A "better the devil you know" scenario. Again, wishful thinking possibly. I don't know much about AB politics but surging new political parties often have their support surge in the opposite direction as polling day nears. And these guys don't seem to smart.

i'm curious about what the context of the interview was...i don't know why a candidate would just start spitballing about the advantages of whiteness. are his opponents in the riding not caucasian? pretty remarkable stupidity in any case.

Some brief googling has revealed that this guy is a frickin maniac. Practically unelectable I would have thought.
"http://www.faithandmedia.org/articles/show/233";

yeesh

They're not. The PC incumbent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manmeet_Bhullar
The Liberal candidate: http://www.electawan.com/

2xpost