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Source: (consider it) Thread: A Canadian Election
Stetson
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Would you like me to post quotes for that assertion, Og? I have lots. It is quite clear what he did.

I definitely agree that Trudeau pimped out his father's name and image in order to win votes. Here is just one example.

I don't know how much this contributed to his eventual victory, however. I mean, Canadians as a whole were pretty sick of Pierre Trudeau by the time he left office(hence the Liberals' 1984 electoral massacre), and a good chunk of the electorate is too young to remember him anyway.

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orfeo

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quote:
Originally posted by Uncle Pete:
I was surprised at the depth of the NDP collapse for a brief moment, but then I recalled the feast and famine roller-coater of the Dippers and its morally staunch predecessor, the CCF.

I think first past the post voting contributes a fair bit to feast and famine. That, and also the fact that Canada isn't a simple 2-party system and that different areas of Canada have quite different characteristics.

Canada does remind me quite a bit of the UK when it comes to the electoral system, only it's perhaps even more complicated. Instead of Scotland you've got Quebec. I won't attempt to precisely line up the Atlantic Provinces or the Prairies with other bits of the old country...

But yeah, in general I continue to find non-preferential voting systems to be alien and mystifying things that produce feasts and famines.

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Og: Thread Killer
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Would you like me to post quotes for that assertion, Og? I have lots. It is quite clear what he did.

You can twist stuff however you want.

But, like the CPC's attempt to link Trudeau to fears over Wynne, that dog don't hunt.

The NDP's issues are internal and the sooner they see them, the better.

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Uncle Pete

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Orfeo: The Atlantic provinces would probably closely align with Scotland and Ireland (the Island). On the Prairies, most align with their ancestors, the Ukraines. Fiercely independent people, those ancestors. Alberta aligns with the US oil interests Which is why the CON party does so well there. It was a great shock to their hegemony when the province went NDP earlier this year. But that was probably a reaction to increasingly pitiful CON government there. And the NDP have the task of clearing up the mess so there will probably be another correction by the next election.

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Even more so than I was before

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Stetson
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quote:
Originally posted by Uncle Pete:
Orfeo: The Atlantic provinces would probably closely align with Scotland and Ireland (the Island). On the Prairies, most align with their ancestors, the Ukraines. Fiercely independent people, those ancestors. Alberta aligns with the US oil interests Which is why the CON party does so well there. It was a great shock to their hegemony when the province went NDP earlier this year. But that was probably a reaction to increasingly pitiful CON government there. And the NDP have the task of clearing up the mess so there will probably be another correction by the next election.

Your analysis of Alberta political history is more or less accurate, though it should be read into the record that when the Conservative Lougheed took over in 1971, one of the first things he did was increase oil royalties. The oil companies ranted and raved of course(and apparently chucked Lougheed out of the Petroleum Club), but this did not lead to a revival of the Socreds, or any other more pro-oil party.

As well, prior to Lougheed's takeover of the PCs in the mid-60s, the party regarded as the most viable replacement to the Socreds was the Liberals, who had even managed to form the largest opposition to date in the 1955 election. So, I don't think that having an "oil"-based political culture neccessarily meant the acension of officially conservative parties. (Granted, the Liberals at that time were probably more geared toward pro-business policies, a la St. Laurent).

I think it's correct that the recent NDP victory had a lot to do with the Tories being seen as decrepit fossils, and Wildrose being derailed by Preston Manning's bizarre merger scheme, thus precluding a major rally by conservative voters around either of the major right-wing parties. Plus, the Liberals(who were again seen as the next-in-line in the 90s) had collapsed into oblivion.

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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!

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orfeo

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I feel I studied all this in the museum in Gatineau, June 2013...

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Stetson
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Picking up from where we left off on the niqab...

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Augustine wrote:

quote:
I would caricature it differently; the Liberals are full of these ethnic people but we had thought that the NDP were like us and would agree with us.

Hmm. All I can say to that is, if people in Quebec thought that the federal NDP would be on board with ban-the-niqab, well, they really are out of touch with English Canadian politics.

It's true that "multiculturalism" was always more of a Liberal thing, me-tooed by the NDP. But, even without an officilly articulated mulcultural policy, the underlying spirit was always very much in sync with what post-1960s anglosphere social democracy is supposed to be about.

One of the underreported aspects of this election has been that the Tories more than doubled their seat-count in Quebec, and the Bloc(who admittedly had nowhere to go but up) quintupled theirs.

So, contrary to any Liberal spin about everyone uniting under Justin in some sort of multicultural love-in, there may have been some not insubstantial movement in Quebec toward anti-"accomadationist" parties.

[ 21. October 2015, 14:04: Message edited by: Stetson ]

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sharkshooter

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Some interesting articles, now that the voting is over, it is time to see what the next 4 years bring ...

Who does our new PM need to pay off, I mean reward, for their support?

For those who would have preferred proportional voting ...

Proportional voting results

Basically, it would have been Liberal 135, Conservative 108, NDP 68, Bloc 17, and Green 10.

So the winners would have been the NDP, who would have had controlling power in a Liberal minority. The Bloc who would have achieved official party status, and the funding that comes with it. And, the Greens, who would have, for the first time ever, elected more than one MP.

The losers would have been the Liberals, who would not have achieved a majority.

The difference for the Conservatives really means nothing; official opposition either way.

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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]

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Augustine the Aleut
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Stetson writes:
quote:
One of the underreported aspects of this election has been that the Tories more than doubled their seat-count in Quebec, and the Bloc(who admittedly had nowhere to go but up) quintupled theirs.

So, contrary to any Liberal spin about everyone uniting under Justin in some sort of multicultural love-in, there may have been some not insubstantial movement in Quebec toward anti-"accomadationist" parties.

The seat count might be a bit misleading here-- with the very small percentages involved in many of these victories, I am not sure that we can talk about an insubstantial movement. By my quick count, 17 Québec seats were won with a third or fewer (in several cases, 29%) of the votes cast-- 7 of these went to the Bloc. I would account these as (to use a boxing term) technical knock-outs rather than resounding moral victories. I have always wondered why we cannot use ranked ballots or a run-off vote for situations when margins are so low.
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stonespring
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How likely is it now that the Grits have a majority, that they will go through in passing the electoral reform they said they would which would allow voters to list candidates in order of preference (some form of instant-runoff voting). Note that this is not proportional representation, but at least means that whoever wins a seat is more likely to have some degree of support from a majority of voters. Were the Liberals just offering this to draw votes from NDP supporters? Will they actually pass it?

And is it just a matter of passing a law at the federal level or is it more complicated?

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Stetson
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Stetson writes:
quote:
One of the underreported aspects of this election has been that the Tories more than doubled their seat-count in Quebec, and the Bloc(who admittedly had nowhere to go but up) quintupled theirs.

So, contrary to any Liberal spin about everyone uniting under Justin in some sort of multicultural love-in, there may have been some not insubstantial movement in Quebec toward anti-"accomadationist" parties.

The seat count might be a bit misleading here-- with the very small percentages involved in many of these victories, I am not sure that we can talk about an insubstantial movement. By my quick count, 17 Québec seats were won with a third or fewer (in several cases, 29%) of the votes cast-- 7 of these went to the Bloc. I would account these as (to use a boxing term) technical knock-outs rather than resounding moral victories. I have always wondered why we cannot use ranked ballots or a run-off vote for situations when margins are so low.
Point taken. I'd be interested to see a poplar vote tabulation, for the province of Quebec alone.

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Augustine the Aleut
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quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
How likely is it now that the Grits have a majority, that they will go through in passing the electoral reform they said they would which would allow voters to list candidates in order of preference (some form of instant-runoff voting). Note that this is not proportional representation, but at least means that whoever wins a seat is more likely to have some degree of support from a majority of voters. Were the Liberals just offering this to draw votes from NDP supporters? Will they actually pass it?

And is it just a matter of passing a law at the federal level or is it more complicated?

An amendment to the Elections Act is all that's needed. The only constitutional provision is that no province may have fewer MPs than it has senators.

The sooner anything happens, the more likely it is that it will happen. If it is put off, then its likelihood diminishes. If it's looked at in the context of a bunch of election changes and reforms, who knows?

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Stetson
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
How likely is it now that the Grits have a majority, that they will go through in passing the electoral reform they said they would which would allow voters to list candidates in order of preference (some form of instant-runoff voting). Note that this is not proportional representation, but at least means that whoever wins a seat is more likely to have some degree of support from a majority of voters. Were the Liberals just offering this to draw votes from NDP supporters? Will they actually pass it?

And is it just a matter of passing a law at the federal level or is it more complicated?

An amendment to the Elections Act is all that's needed. The only constitutional provision is that no province may have fewer MPs than it has senators.

The sooner anything happens, the more likely it is that it will happen. If it is put off, then its likelihood diminishes. If it's looked at in the context of a bunch of election changes and reforms, who knows?

The thing is, once a party comes to power, especially with a majority, any incentive to initiate electoral reform goes out the window. Because there's no reason for them to want any other system besides the one that elected them.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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quote:
Originally posted by Uncle Pete:
On the Prairies, most align with their ancestors, the Ukraines. Fiercely independent people, those ancestors.

Not quite accurate. About 13% of the people in Saskatchewan would fit your Ukrainian definition, with Ukrainian also being the usual shorthand and inclusive of Polish, Romanian and other peoples in territories controlled by Russia and Austria-Hungary pre-WW1 (the former term was Galacian). Almost 30% of the population are ethnic German, usually Roman Catholic and originally low German dialect speakers (Plott Dietsch) which can be heard in accented English today even if the people don't speak any German at all, and about the same percent are Scottish/English. So the Germans and UK descendants each are twice the proportion of the Ukes. The Ukrainians are the separate culture of the 20th century, which the Moslem culture seems to be in this one. They even dress as women similarly. I look from babushka to hijab and have trouble telling the difference. The ethnic food from the current immigration is better than the bland Ukrainian fare, which, when combined with boiled and fried trad Scottish things keeps cardiac specialists in business.

The way we understand the settling of the prairies is that the British wanted to ensure that the Americans would be kept from seizing territory, such that there was active recruitment of immigrants from eastern Europe when they had the UK people and other "acceptable Europeans". They wanted "sturdy farm people" who wouldn't mind the bracing and character-building climate. These people were forced to to live in isolated homesteads (i.e. the home quarter) and specifically not in villages where they might form communistic collectives, cooperatives and other anti-authority socialistic things. They didn't want a third bout repeat of Riel Rebellion. The curious thing about it is that the origins of socially conservative but cooperative, but not government, was the foundations of the CCF/NDP in our mythology. The NDP lost the prairies when it went for vote rich Ontario and aligned itself with unions versus independent but cooperative small business, with small business meaning farmers in the first instance. It is seen as betrayal by many. The foundations included not being exploited by the Ontario/Quebec cabal, and now the NDP has made a deal with that very devil. The Conservative party appeals to the same people due to the self-reliant ideology I think.

In the conservative/Conservative west, the largest grocery/general retailer is still Federated Cooperatives (a consortium of independent co-op stores, mostly groceries, fuel and hardward/construction materials), and small business in Sask is the largest employer by far. Credit Unions are a major financier of mortgages and loans, also local. The NDP has historically been successful provincially in Sask specifically by not being aligned with the federal version, and being politically pragmatic in the local context, which is nearly a quote of Roy Romanow.

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Stetson
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No Prophet wrote:

quote:
The curious thing about it is that the origins of socially conservative but cooperative, but not government, was the foundations of the CCF/NDP in our mythology.
In Alberta, the United Farmers movement, with significant support from American immmigrants, preached a co-operative economic gospel, albeit one that eschewed several central socialist tenets.

The UFA formed government in 1921, and ruled until 1935, when, in typical Alberta-style, they were wiped out by the original, economically radical version of Social Credit. The United Farmers are generally considered to be a precursor to the CCF.

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stonespring
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Why didn't a social democratic party supplant other parties as the main party of the center-left in Canada in the early twentieth century as it did in many countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand?

In the US, people often answer this question by saying that divisions between families who had been in the US for several or more generations and recent immigrants, coupled with racism against African-Americans, helped prevent the American working class from coalescing into a movement that could succeed at the polls without the support of large parts of the middle class. When socialism was gaining popularity in Europe, the US middle class, and even portions of the US working class, could be scared off any association with it by opponents who used rhetoric that connected Socialism with Eastern European and Southern European Immigrants and African Americans.

I know Canada has a history of regionalism and a linguistic divide, but is that the full explanation of why a social democratic party didn't become the standard-bearer for the center-left long ago when similar parties were doing so elsewhere and even now (which, thanks to the shrinking of the industrial middle class, the weakening of unions, and the rise of neoliberalism, things are much more difficult for social democrats politically) has an uphill battle to do so, despite the success of 2011?

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Stetson
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Stonespring wrote:

quote:
Why didn't a social democratic party supplant other parties as the main party of the center-left in Canada in the early twentieth century as it did in many countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand?

In the US, people often answer this question by saying that divisions between families who had been in the US for several or more generations and recent immigrants, coupled with racism against African-Americans, helped prevent the American working class from coalescing into a movement that could succeed at the polls without the support of large parts of the middle class. When socialism was gaining popularity in Europe, the US middle class, and even portions of the US working class, could be scared off any association with it by opponents who used rhetoric that connected Socialism with Eastern European and Southern European Immigrants and African Americans.

I don't think the failure of socialism in the US and Canada can simply be put down to the creation of ethnic bogeymans, since you'd have to explain why ruling-classes in other countries weren't able to use bogeymen(albeit of a possibly different nature) to frighten their electorates. Why didn't British Tories, for example, just scream "Fenian socialists!!" to stop the Labour Party in its tracks?

I do think that immigration played a role in hobbling North American socialism, though a more directly economic one. In a nutshell, if you're someone who is willing to pick up and emigrate to another country on the promise of an astronomically higher living standard, your first inclination upon arrival is not going to be to risk deportation by joining a firebrand labour movement and agitating for even higher wages. The fact that you're already making a far better wage than what you made in the old country is gonna be enough of an incentive to keep your head down and not make waves.

Thus, you ended up with weaker labour movements in North America, and hence weaker socialist parties.

And yes, there are certain ethnic groups, eg. Jews in the US and the British in Canada, who came from a labour-tradition in the old country, and brought that with them to the new one, distinguishing themselves as union organizers. But they're the generally the exception, not the rule, among immigrant groups.

My understanding is that it was orginally labour unions who lobbied for the "White Australia" policy. Presumbaly, they concurred with the thesis that a larger influx of immigrants from poorer countries would weaken the labour movement.

[ 23. October 2015, 16:49: Message edited by: Stetson ]

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Stetson
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One more thing...

quote:
When socialism was gaining popularity in Europe, the US middle class, and even portions of the US working class, could be scared off any association with it by opponents who used rhetoric that connected Socialism with Eastern European and Southern European Immigrants and African Americans.

In Canada, for the most part, Eastern European immigrants, especially Ukrainians, tended to be hostile to Communism, which often went hand in glove with hostility to socialism.

There were a few enclaves of slavic radicalism in places like Winnipeg, but where I grew up in Alberta, the Ukrainian community was pretty heavily anti-Communist, and highly amenable to Cold War rhetoric.

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stonespring
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You're right that union participation and wages were kept low because immigrants both added to the ranks of unskilled workers and were often hesitant to participate in protests until they had been here for a generation or two. In the US, labor unions were part of the push to get legislation passed in the 20s that kept immigration relatively low until the 60s - and the latter part of that period was when union participation was highest and income inequality was at its lowest.

In an unrelated question, what exactly happened in 2011 in terms of relative levels of NDP and Liberal support (and seat outcomes) that seems so different from what happened in elections before and after? I know the Liberals had had some corruption scandals and not-so-charismatic leaders but those things had happened before without the catastrophe of 2011. And what made 2011 so successful for the NDP? Was it mostly mass defections in Quebec from the Bloc?

It seems that in Ontario and BC a large part of the rise in Liberal support in 2015 came from first time voters but in Quebec the rise in Liberal support was much more from people switching their support from other parties they had supported in the past. Does this correspond with provincial trends in previous elections?

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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quote:
Why didn't a social democratic party supplant other parties as the main party of the center-left in Canada in the early twentieth century as it did in many countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand?

(a) Party divisions in Canada were mainly tribal based on language and religion, policy rarely came into it until the 1960's. The Tories' hard-right turn is very recent indeed, dating only from 1985 or so.

(b) Federal and provincial politics have little to do with one another, so reading in support at one level to another level is just wrong. Witness Alberta.

(c) The Liberals survived partly as a party of brokerage, and partly because of WWII. Specifically C.D. Howe filled the wartime government with "Dollar-a-year" men who were business executives. It meant that the crème of Canadian business was Liberal until the 1970's, when by rights they should have supported the Tories.

The Mackenzie-King Government also brought in PC1003 in 1944, which legitimized and formally recognized labour unions under a Wagner Act structure. That bought off Labour for the next 20 years and laid the foundation for the "Big Tent" politics of both the Tories and the Liberals for the next 30 years.

(c) The NDP and its predecessor the CCF are quite unlike the Labour Parties of the UK and Australia in that the CCF was founded and propelled to power in Saskatchewan by owner-operator farmers, not farm or factory labourers. The CCF had a weaker link to unions because of this, though it was very labour-friendly. However, the CCF did not and the NDP presently still does not have a formal "union link" that counts every union member as a party member.

Unions only get representation at NDP conventions for the NDP members in their ranks who have signed party cards and paid the membership fee themselves. The CCF/NDP has always been dominated by individual members, not unions. The Canadian Labour Congress gets to appoint a VP to the NDP's Executive, but that's it.

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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.

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Augustine the Aleut
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SPK writes:
quote:
(c) The Liberals survived partly as a party of brokerage, and partly because of WWII. Specifically C.D. Howe filled the wartime government with "Dollar-a-year" men who were business executives. It meant that the crème of Canadian business was Liberal until the 1970's, when by rights they should have supported the Tories.
As important as this was the role of religion and tribe, which extended to the most plutocratic of all. In Ontario, most notably, the Conservatives were exclusively Protestant (this does not mean that all Protestants, Anglican included, were Tory) and most RCs, particularly franco-ontarian and Irish, were Liberal.

This situation only began to break down in the mid-1980s, due to a combination of things (Mulroney as the RC leader of the federal Conservatives, and the extension of public funding to Ontario RC schools post grade-X under Conservative premier Bill Davis, and pro-life RCs drifting away from the Liberals, who were seen to be mad abortionists).

In speaking with both US and Chinese scholars (which I had to do IMFRL), I have found that the most difficult aspect of describing our politics was the non-ideological aspect. A second toughie was, as SPK has described, is the rural roots of Canadian socialism.

As a minor tangent, I have seen some polling information from two years ago which had just over half of Muslims leaning Conservative--- I suspect that this percentage is much lower now.

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Sober Preacher's Kid

Presbymethegationalist
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Well, I only had so much space. [Biased]

The big, but silent story of 2011 was that rural, Catholic Quebec decided to give the NDP a try. The CCF and NDP had been irrelevant in Quebec for decades not because of the socialist ideology, which did grate the Quebec Catholic hierarchy the wrong way, but because both stank of Protestantism and the Social Gospel.

Which, in truth, was a fair assessment, but it did make us a non-starter. The NDP still does a fair traffic in what I call Orange Tories, those who would join the Orange Lodge as much as they would a union.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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The NDP stories miss the "eastern bastards" part of the story. One of the points of the NDP in the Sask context was the exploitation by Ontario so they could become rich and pay off Quebec so Quebec wouldn't make trouble. The NDP support of the unions who conspired to rip off western industries and farmers really meant something. Grain handler strikes in Thunder Bay. The demise of the Crow Rate.

The only holdover from those days is Medicare, which is really Doctor Payment Scheme and kinda sucks outside of seeing a GP or hospital care. The NDP will form provincial governments but probably not federal if Sask, Alta and Man has their way.

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Knopwood
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:

The big, but silent story of 2011 was that rural, Catholic Quebec decided to give the NDP a try. The CCF and NDP had been irrelevant in Quebec for decades not because of the socialist ideology, which did grate the Quebec Catholic hierarchy the wrong way, but because both stank of Protestantism and the Social Gospel.

Gregory Baum in Catholics and Canadian Socialism argues basically that the reaction of the Canadian hierarchy to the CCF divided along linguistic lines. The anglo prelates were prepared to treat it as the Canadian equivalent of Labour, and to accept it as a conscientious option for Catholic voters provided they didn't mean to endorse materialism or violent revolution. The Francophone bishops were much more suspicious, and so progressive politics in French Canada were channelled through organs influenced more by cooperativism and Catholic social teaching, like the Bloc populaire and the ill-fated Action libérale nationale that was ironically eaten by the Conservatives to form the Union Nationale.

[ 24. October 2015, 04:01: Message edited by: Knopwood ]

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Stetson
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SPK wrote:

quote:
(b) Federal and provincial politics have little to do with one another, so reading in support at one level to another level is just wrong. Witness Alberta.
Very true, although Alberta in 2015 might not be the best example to use for Canadian political behaviour. Because things were pretty seriously whacked out on a provincial level in Alberta this last time around. Unlike in any other province, you had TWO viable right-wing parties, both of which had done sufficient damage to their own brand so as to prevent either from commanding a majority or even a plurality.

The situation is actually kinda the mirror-image of Ontario in the Harris/Chretien years, when right-wingers ruled in Toronto, but the province sent nearly unaniomus Liberal contingents as MPs to Ottawa, due to(so I've been told) conservative vote-splitting at the federal level.

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Augustine the Aleut
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There is a long tradition in several provinces, although mainly east of the prairies, to ensure that the federal and provincial representations are from separate parties. Part of this is to avoid putting one's eggs in the same basket but I wonder if part of it is not the orneriness of the elector in trying to keep parties in their place.

I will have to pick up Gregory Baum's book (one of the few ecclesiologists whose work can be read without intravenous amphetamines) as I have only had anecdotal testimony about the francophone hierarchs' political confusion (or perhaps incoherence is a better word) in the post-quiet-revolution period (although there is Tom Clark's interesting monograph about the 1980s in the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops). Pro-life issues moved some the affilitions of some hierarchs (as well as many congregants) toward the Conservatives in recent years, but the 2015 election may be a tipping point where RC believers moved leftward on account of social gospel concerns, especially on the First Peoples and refugee fronts.

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Og: Thread Killer
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quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
How likely is it now that the Grits have a majority, that they will go through in passing the electoral reform they said they would which would allow voters to list candidates in order of preference (some form of instant-runoff voting). Note that this is not proportional representation, but at least means that whoever wins a seat is more likely to have some degree of support from a majority of voters. Were the Liberals just offering this to draw votes from NDP supporters? Will they actually pass it?

And is it just a matter of passing a law at the federal level or is it more complicated?

It was mentionned by Trudeau in his press conference. And both they and the NDP would love to see this implemented.

Proportional representation rewards extremes.

Preferential representation rewards consensus.


Its happening.

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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Pigs will fly before it is implemented. No party will implement a system that would deprive them of their majority.

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Og: Thread Killer
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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Pigs will fly before it is implemented. No party will implement a system that would deprive them of their majority.

I think ur wrong but we will see.

I would say preferential is likely to provide a 20 year battle between the NDP and the Libs for a majority at the expense of the Conservatives (assuming the Conservative's grassroots do not adjust from their penchant for red meat until there is generational change)

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Palimpsest
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So now that this campaign has concluded in definitive fashion; when does the next campaign start?

In the United States it can be said that the next Presidential campaign starts the day after the mid term elections. And the mid term elections probably got going a year after the election.

Given the lack of a definitive schedule, will Canada maintain a limited campaign that starts with the announcement of the election or will it start to creep ever earlier as it has in the U.S.?

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Augustine the Aleut
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Theoretically, under the mendaciously-named Regular Elections Act, there will be an election in October 2019, but there can be a dissolution at any time before then.
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Sober Preacher's Kid

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The next campaign starts in six months, in a low-key fashion, when the Tories start their leadership campaign and the NDP decides whether to replace Mulcair or not. That will happen at the next Federal Convention, which takes place next spring.

Then all parties will need time to accumulate funds, so the serious pre-campaign won't start until the last year of the mandate.

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Uncle Pete

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The new cabinet is 31 members. Excluding the PM, gender parity was achieved for now. The new minister of Veteran's Affairs and the Associate Minister of National Defense (a not uncommon pairing of the two posts) is a crip ( [Yipee] ) albeit a former TAB. And a Liberal from Alberta, until recently a rara avis. The number of aboriginals in the cabinet is stunning. Justice Minister and Attorney General for Canada comes to mind.

And Bill Blair didn't get in - nor did Andrew Leslie, which was a surprise, indeed. A Shik is the new Min. Defence. Albeit only a Lieutenant- Colonel, he has combat and command experience. Guess Leslie was too much a WASP, even if both his grandfathers had headed Defence.

Exciting times ahead, I hope. I will not say "Sunny days" but I think a few clouds have lifted. We shall see.

PS - for the edification of Americans and others, Leslie is a former Lieutenant- General. His Grandfathers were Andrew McNaugton and Brook Claxton. (His father changed his name to Leslie to receive a benefit.That explains McNaughton, who was a WWII general and non-elected minister of Defence.)

[ 04. November 2015, 18:11: Message edited by: Uncle Pete ]

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Augustine the Aleut
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General Leslie suffered for being from Ottawa, which already had a minister (Catherine McKenna, my local MP, who went to Environment) as well as a minor controversy over his retirement moving expenses-- remember that this is a country were an expensed glass of orange juice got a minister turfed out.

Colonel Sajjan got spontaneous cheers from the crowd outside Rideau Hall, as did Stéphane Dion (Foreign Affairs), Carolyn Bennett (Indigenous Affairs), Wilson-Raybold (the BC Kwakwaka'wakw lawyer to Justice), Hehr of Calgary (whom PeteC mentions), and Afghan refugee Maryam Monsef (Democratic Institution).

There were a few nice elements introduced into the ceremony, but one of my cynical friends said that the giggles from the 11-year old throat singers were enough to kill a diabetic at 20 paces.

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Soror Magna
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I'm absolutely over the moon about Jody Wilson-Raybould in Justice. I now have acquaintances in high places. [Razz]

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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Oh my! Recommend calmness. Politics is never anything to get over the moon about, better to hope that they remain honest and mostly the people they were. So many compromises have to be made, and one's person can become something changed.

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Og: Thread Killer
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quote:
Cause its 2015
Lets hope the Conservatives get that. There are rumblings of a need to renew and get with the times. We'll see if the base is not what the older guys running that party think it is.

God knows the Toronto Sun types never will. Much of the Conservative pysche was forged during the 70's - 60+ white dudes who never got over their rage at Trudeau because they never had the satisfaction of voting that bum out. (1979 doesn't really count). The Toronto Sun was specifically created to counteract Trudeaumania and has never really changed.

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Knopwood
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Colonel Sajjan got spontaneous cheers from the crowd outside Rideau Hall, as did Stéphane Dion (Foreign Affairs), Carolyn Bennett (Indigenous Affairs), Wilson-Raybold (the BC Kwakwaka'wakw lawyer to Justice), Hehr of Calgary (whom PeteC mentions), and Afghan refugee Maryam Monsef (Democratic Institution).

Dr Bennett was my MP until I went to uni, and her first campaign was the first one I participated in (1997, so I was 9). I thought she was underused by Martin as a mere Minister of State (Public Health - why not Minister of Health?) I've been impressed by her appearances on APTN (the only TV news I watch) so I think it's a good portfolio for her.
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Augustine the Aleut
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I also know Dr Bennett from Saint Paul's (an interesting name for one of the most Jewish ridings in Canada) and she has been working on aboriginal issues for years. While I see many good ministers I fear that we are loading too many unrealistic expectations on them, but it can't hurt to have higher expectations than lower ones.

Apparently Canada now has twice as many Sikh cabinet members than India.

I do not know how many ministers are churchgoers, but the PM is a mass-goer, as is Finance Minister Bill Morneau (Holy Rosary, St Clair Ave) and House Leader Dominique LeBlanc; and I have been told that Maryam Monsef of Peterborough attends mosque (but did volunteer work at Casa Maria, run by the RCs). Half of ministers taking their oaths affirmed and declared, rather than swore. I believe one minister had sage in her shoes and carried a medicine bundle (an aboriginal practice) for the oath-taking, but I cannot recall if it was the Justice Minister or Dr Bennett.

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Soror Magna
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I'm impressed by the - I have no idea what word I want ... sideways? three-dimensional - thinking that has put indigenous persons in charge of Justice and Fisheries and Oceans, both of which have huge importance in the lives of indigenous Canadians. And I think that choosing Stephane Dion for Foreign Relations sends the message that the most critical international issue facing humanity is not war, or trade, but climate change.

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
I have been told that Maryam Monsef of Peterborough attends mosque (but did volunteer work at Casa Maria, run by the RCs).

We only have one mosque in the city too; it's out on Parkhill Road West, just west of Jackson Park.

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HenryT

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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Anti Immigration? ... So that's a self-inflicted wound waiting to happen....

(From September) There's some evidence this was a prescient remark. Just around the time of the election, I read one of the newspaper pundits saying something about their Sikh taxi driver musing that if it's niqabs that are targets this election, it'll be turbans next time. And it wasn't that long ago that a couple of great fusses were made about turbans in Canada.

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Uncle Pete

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quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
I have been told that Maryam Monsef of Peterborough attends mosque (but did volunteer work at Casa Maria, run by the RCs).

We only have one mosque in the city too; it's out on Parkhill Road West, just west of Jackson Park.
Resurrecting this comment to report that apparently there was a fire at the mosque last night and the arson is suspected.

Some people are twits. (I hope that comment passes the Purgatory hosts)

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stonespring
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Sorry to bump this thread, but they just had the new government's throne speech, and it looks like the only plan for Senate reform is to have "merit based" appointment of "non-partisan" Senators, rather than an elected Senate or Senate abolition, both of which would require a constitutional amendment. What provincial parliaments would be opposed to an elected Senate? Why is a constitutional amendment not worth trying?
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Sober Preacher's Kid

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1) Pretty much every provincial legislature and government is opposed to Senate reform, for one reason or another. Ontario, BC and Alberta are underrepresented and don't want to cede more influence to smaller provinces. As the size difference between Ontario and PEI is twice that of New South Wales and Tasmania (to give a comparison), balancing the Senate has always been nearly impossible. The smaller provinces do not want to lose influence nor remove the floor that the Senate puts under their House of Commons representation (which this, PEI would only have 1 MP instead of 4).

2) Quebec would not consider it unless it gets other substantial concessions on the powers of the provinces vs. the federal government, which the other provinces will not consider, nor would the federal government entertain. Nobody outside Quebec wants to talk about Quebec's concerns, because we did that to death in the 1980's and 1990's and we're not going down that road again.

3) The Constitution requires unanimous consent of All Ten Provinces for Senate reform, which gives Quebec or PEI outsized bargaining leverage. All Ten Provinces haven't agreed on anything since the 1940's.

4) Confederation evolved in a freakish and unintended direction. Given the institutional weakness of the Senate and the provincialist rulings of the Privy Council from the 1880's to the 1930's, provincial emerged as the main institutional opposition to the Federal Government. Any innovative federal policy change usually touches off a Division-of-Powers appeal to the Supreme Court or in former days to the Privy Council.

An elected Senate which legitimately represents the view of a province's population is a direct challenge to provincial political legitimacy, which the premiers have never wanted.

5) What, you expected that Justin Trudeau was actually going to keep his promises on Senate reform and proportional representation? [Killing me]

And in other news, the Peterborough Mosque has found a new temporary home at the Peterborough Synagogue (I know their president personally, he is a very good man).

The Mosque received enough money in donations to cover the costs of their repairs, which thankfully were mostly smoke damage. In fact, the Imam had to ask people to stop donating.

The Mosque building itself will be back in service in a few weeks after the renovations are done.

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Stetson
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SPK wrote:

quote:
3) The Constitution requires unanimous consent of All Ten Provinces for Senate reform, which gives Quebec or PEI outsized bargaining leverage. All Ten Provinces haven't agreed on anything since the 1940's.

Well, actually, all 10 PREMIERS agreed on Meech Lake in 1987, until Clyde Wells came along and reversed Newfoundland's support, and Elijah Harper blocked assent in the Manitoba legislature.

And I'm pretty sure they all agreed on Charlottetown, didn't they? Unfortunately, their people, in droves, did not.

[ 07. December 2015, 15:56: Message edited by: Stetson ]

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Stetson
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SPK wrote:

quote:
1) Pretty much every provincial legislature and government is opposed to Senate reform, for one reason or another. Ontario, BC and Alberta are underrepresented and don't want to cede more influence to smaller provinces.
Alberta under the Tories was still supporting Senate reform, and engaging in goofy self-declared "senate elections", as recently as 2012. That'll probably change with the NDP, who have little interest in the right-wing, corporate-backed populism that propelled the old "Triple E" movement.

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Augustine the Aleut
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Voters in Alberta and BC both rejected the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, along with five other provinces-- that measure proposed that each province get six senators, either elected by the people or by the provincial assembly at the province's choice. That was the chance for an elected Senate. Tinkering is all that's possible, so I am interested in watching how the tinkering works out-- I should prepare an application for a Senate seat.
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Sober Preacher's Kid

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But the Senate is like the Vice-Presidency of the United States.... we don't like to bury people before they're actually dead.

This was probably the root of Patrick Brazeau's problems.

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