Election 2011

[Redeye]

It only seems reasonable if you are a liberal or you work for CBC, for most others its seems very biased.

Er, no.  I'm neither.  I guess it might look that way if you were desperate to assume there was a bias and couln't be bothered to consider the methodology.  It's just the way things lay out in terms of the actual orientation of the various political parties.  All parties but the Conservatives are in the upper left quandrant (economic left, socially liberal). 

It's just reasonable from a methodology point of view.  All parties but the Conservatives are in the upper left quandrant (economic left, socially liberal).  The Conservatives appear in the lower right (social conservative, economic right).  The thing works by assigning some numerical value along  the X-axis and/or Y-axis depending on one's positions as they answer.  If someone chooses as an answer that they "neither agree nor disagree" then there's no reason to believe that there's any numerical value.  That is, answering with no opinions would put someone at the 0,0 position.  Since the that's closest to where the Liberal Party is positioned on the spectrum, (and that's a reasonable location given its orientation).  So, as the Herald op ed put it, there's no conspiracy.

The compass puts me in the lower right quadrant, but just barely.  The lower part got me because I'm not really a social conservative, but I suppose on the questions related to languages and immigration I am a little more conservative, or at least less liberal than the parties.  Economically put puts me slightly right.  I'm still closest to the Liberals, which I'd consider reasonable both from a consideration of the Conservatives' social position, but that's balanced by the economic consideration which is why I've never voted Liberal (wither the Red Tory PCs, that was my party).

 

[Kirkhill]

Redeye -  I disagree that just because there is an absence of evidence therefore there is no evidence of absence.

The problem comes with the positioning of the Liberal label on the chart.  It might have been fairer to plot the current Liberal party conjointly with the NDP.  The party 6 months ago would have been conjoint with the Tories on the economy and defence (before the F35 brouhaha) and with the NDP on social issues.  Therefore they would have had to have two labels on the chart.  That would have allowed others to infer that they were divided or two-faced.

Putting a single label in the middle might reflect the party's position as expressed by the Count (derived from the law of averages as applied to a man with one foot in boiling water and the other in ice water - on balance he is comforable) but it would not fairly represent a consistent positioning of the party at any fixed point on the spectrum.

They can't take all positions, profess no position then claim a particular position.  And for any outside observer to declare they have a position at all is misleading.

As to the "evidence of conspiracy"  - ask "who benefits". 

 

[The Bread Guy]

On the Greens in the debate?  They're not - full stop.  Even if the CBC Ombudsman is all for having her participate.

CBC Ombudsman Kirk LaPointe has added his voice to the Elizabeth May uproar. Although LaPointe has decided not to conduct a review into the Canadian broadcast consortium's decision to exclude the Green Party from the televised leaders' debate, despite what he called "hundreds of complaints", he does have a few choice words for the consortium (which includes the big five: CBC, Radio-Canada,CTV, Global and TVA).

"There is increased relevance mathematically, politically and journalistically to include in pivotal events any party voters have supported significantly and nationally," LaPointe writes in a blog entry posted to the Office of the Ombudsman website. "It is difficult to discern how the public interest is best served by exclusion ... There might be no better time for the media to demonstrate their commitment to democracy than in an election."

While LaPointe agreed with the consortium that the Green Party can't claim official recognition because it doesn't have a sitting MP in the House of Commons, he doesn't believe the political reasoning should be a journalistic excuse.

"That logic nestles journalistic practice in behind political custom, perhaps a shelter in a storm but hardly the best long-term mooring for the craft," he writes. "These debates are journalistic creations and ought to be governed only by their best practices."

The (lack of) a Green Party MP has become a sticking point in the discussion. Although May was similarly banned from the debate in 2008, the decision was later reversed. At the time, the Green Party had one MP in the House; now it does not.

And while LaPointe may not agree, this is one of the reasons the consortium won't reverse its decision this time around, chairman Troy Reeb told The Globe and Mail's Steve Ladurantaye.

"That [the 2008 reversal] has complicated the PR issue. But the difference, of course, was last time she had a sitting MP," says Reeb. He continues:

"It is an editorial decision. The process for coming to a decision on format and participation is no different from what happens around the newsroom table of a newspaper. There’s always a vigorous discussion, oftentimes a really good argument. There was a really vigorous discussion this time as well, but on the Green Party question we very quickly came to unanimity."

And in case anybody was still holding out hope, Reeb goes on to close (slam, really) the proverbial door: "Our decision is final and the decision is unanimous. It will not be reconsidered."

 

[Fishbone Jones]

"no better time for the media to demonstrate their commitment to democracy"

Ombudsman, or not, that's really rich coming from the CBC :

 

[Edward Campbell]

Redeye -  I disagree that just because there is an absence of evidence therefore there is no evidence of absence.

The problem comes with the positioning of the Liberal label on the chart.  It might have been fairer to plot the current Liberal party conjointly with the NDP.  The party 6 months ago would have been conjoint with the Tories on the economy and defence (before the F35 brouhaha) and with the NDP on social issues.  Therefore they would have had to have two labels on the chart.  That would have allowed others to infer that they were divided or two-faced.

Putting a single label in the middle might reflect the party's position as expressed by the Count (derived from the law of averages as applied to a man with one foot in boiling water and the other in ice water - on balance he is comforable) but it would not fairly represent a consistent positioning of the party at any fixed point on the spectrum.

They can't take all positions, profess no position then claim a particular position.  And for any outside observer to declare they have a position at all is misleading.

As to the "evidence of conspiracy"  - ask "who benefits".

I agree; giving the Liberals the centre when they are campaigning on the left leads the gullible (most Canadians) to think that their centrist views are paralleled by the Liberal Party of Toronto; they are not. The Liberal Party is an almost exact mirror image of the NDP. Most Liberals and most Liberal voters are centrists but the Party, per se has moved quite far left.

Equally, the Conservatives - on the evidence of five years in power and on their campaign - do not deserve to be labelled as social conservatives. Harper, who controls the party, deserves to be about where I ended up, far "higher" up the "social" ladder, nearer to but still below the middle line. He has not, yet, earned a respectable place with me, father to the economic "right."

There is a socially conservative faction in the Conservative Party but it is less powerful than the economically "right wing" faction in the Liberals but, right now, for Election 2011, the CBC "tool" is a fake that reflects the authors wishes not the political reality.

 

[PuckChaser]

Dear Mr. Ignatieff,

Please stop wearing a Support the Troops ribbon during all your photo-ops. We all know what your party is willing to do to the CF to buy votes. You wearing the ribbon is a slap in the face of people that actually care for the CF and its members.

Signed,

Me

Edit: Fixed the last line after an excellent point via PM.

 

[Gimpy]

Dear Mr. Ignatieff,

Please stop wearing a Support the Troops ribbon during all your photo-ops. We all know what your party is willing to do to the CF to buy votes. You wearing the ribbon is a slap in the face of people that actually care for the CF and its members.

Signed,

A proud CF member

Since when do Support the Troops ribbons strictly mean supporting only budgetary concerns? Is it not possible to support the well-being of troops in Afghanistan and at home without necessarily being in support of the current financial status of the CF? Is Mr. Ignatieff not allowed to support the well-being of troops in Afghanistan and at home simply because of proposed cuts to the CF?

I'll add that I do not agree with the proposed cuts, but I think your statement is unfair because the ribbon is not a political statement (At least in normal circumstances). It is a show of respect and compassion.

 

[Jed]

Since when do Support the Troops ribbons strictly mean supporting only budgetary concerns? Is it not possible to support the well-being of troops in Afghanistan and at home without necessarily being in support of the current financial status of the CF? Is Mr. Ignatieff not allowed to support the well-being of troops in Afghanistan and at home simply because of proposed cuts to the CF?

I'll add that I do not agree with the proposed cuts, but I think your statement is unfair because the ribbon is not a political statement (At least in normal circumstances). It is a show of respect and compassion.

Gimpy, yes you are correct. This is Canada, all politians and the average Joes have the right to wear a pin or button of their choosing. Iggy could wear a PETA button or a Peace sign or a happy face or a pink ribbon if he wanted to express himself and show his support for whatever strikes his fancy.

In my opinion, when I see Iggy wear a support the troops ribbon, and I see him and his party being very hypocritical in their actions, in the past and in their current policy announcements, I have to restrain my urge to rip it off his chest.

I suppose this is the same urge the RSM has when he sees a troop pin some non standard badge on his uniform.  ;D

 

[Gimpy]

Gimpy, yes you are correct. This is Canada, all politians and the average Joes have the right to wear a pin or button of their choosing. Iggy could wear a PETA button or a Peace sign or a happy face or a pink ribbon if he wanted to express himself and show his support for whatever strikes his fancy.

In my opinion, when I see Iggy wear a support the troops ribbon, and I see him and his party being very hypocritical in their actions, in the past and in their current policy announcements, I have to restrain my urge to rip it off his chest.

I suppose this is the same urge the RSM has when he sees a troop pin some non standard badge on his uniform.  ;D

All I am trying to say is that the ribbon cannot be equated only to budgetary care for troops. It is possible to not support a higher budget for the CF, but to support the safety and well-being of the troops. I definitely understand that wearing the ribbon is a political calculation for Mr. Ignatieff, but it is unfair to characterize it as a slap in the face to "people that actually care for the CF and its members".

 

[PuckChaser]

I don't think that its possible at all to support a limited CF budget, but still profess to support the troops. A limited budget means we head into a warzone with the Iltis when we needed armored patrol vehicles. I'm not saying we need new trucks every 5 years, but once every 30-40 years is pushing it. Heck, look at the Navy. We've needed new ships for 15-20 years, and its only from the hardwork of the ships' crew that we haven't had more serious safety incidents. No new ships is a direct result of the Liberal decade of darkness.

 

[a_majoor]

This was posted on CBC bias thread, but since the controversy has spread to here:

http://hatrockscave.blogspot.com/2011/03/cbc-political-compass-is-bs.html

CBC Vote Compass is BS

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have been using CBC's Vote Compass to determine which party closely aligns with their views and opinions.

This blogger was very closely aligned with, you guessed it, the Conservative Party.  I was actually a bit perturbed though, seeing where the Conservative Party is on the political grid, thinking they would actually be closer to the centre than they were placed.  But I was to the right and south of them slightly.

Then, on advice of a friend, I decided to take the test again, but this time, choosing 'Neither agree nor disagree' and 'No Opinion' on all the questions.  And guess where I ended up?  Smack dab in the middle obviously, and closest with the Liberals.

What a joke. So if I'm completely a-political, I'm really a Liberal?  So who created this Vote Compass thingy?  Well, it was a bunch of University of Toronto students.  Go figure.

The problem with this compass thingy is that it ALLOWS you to have no opinion.  Not only that, but most of the questions are only relevant to today and not on general ideology.  Therefore, it is amateurish and non-applicable to the past or future.

A true compass thingy wouldn't allow it, which is why I recommend www.politicalcompass.org out of Britain. I've been using it for years to track my ideological views.  It is much more extensive and forces you to pick an actual answer.

Where am I on it?  +5 libertarian, +1 economic right.  Well, if you took where I am on it and transposed it to CBC's Compass, guess what?  I'm a Liberal!  Oh, the humanity!

No wonder the CBC is promoting the hell out of it and saying "Wow! Hundreds of thousands of people are using it!"  Why? Because they KNOW the default answer is LIBERAL!

Told ya those Liberals were sneaky.  Look for more sneakiness to come.  It's the only way they'll win. But they won't.

And watch it done on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNU3sL8T8RI&feature=player_embedded

Actually watching the blogger testing various premutations on screen and coming up Liberal each time is pretty convincing. How this will affect the outcome is not very certain, but if the CPC does pull off a majority I won't be surprised to see the knives come out for the CBC at long last.

WRT the military budget; I recall a time when the fiscal year end was marked by the annual "fire fest" on the ranges rather than the year end purchasefest from the Staples catalogue. How many new desks and ergonomic office chairs do you really need? (To put this in perspective, as a young private my platoon commanders and 2I/C's had oak desks and wooden "kitchen chairs", while the OC's desk was marked by an extra set of drawers and a wooden swivel chair. Needless to say, they were rarely in their office during the day).

As part of the Brigade G6 staff, I was always stymied by the bryzantine rules and regulations concerning purchases. Even though I was capable of spending vast sums of money to digitize the Brigade, bring extra comms on line and train everyone in sight, getting the funds out to do so was often like digging for gold with a tea spoon...

 

[Edward Campbell]

Regardless of the approvals, the ability to say, year end, "Oops, here's a billion dollars we did not need" suggests failure of DND's internal systems to optimize use of the resources.  TB, PMO, PWGSC and others are all known quantities; delays are know, timelines are known to work through all of those agencies.  It's not rocket science at all.  If DND year after year finds itself with 20%+ of the capital budget unspent then, once again, the problem lies not outside but within the department.

There were, when I served, two problems:

1. DND was, in my day, poorly organized to procure the "stuff" the sailors, soldiers and air force personnel needed. For (just one) example: There was never a clean "hand off' between the requirements folks, who specified (or were supposed to specify) in operational performance terms (and the admirals and generals for whom they worked), and the engineers who translated operational performance goals into hard, suitable for contract terms. There were, in short, too many fingers in the pie and, in my experience, some of them actually tried to scupper project X in the (almost always mistaken) belief that it might help project Y; and

2. The entire government of Canada process was flawed. It introduced too many competing "players," most without any financial incentive to keep them honest. It also allowed too many other government departments to feather their own nests at the expense of the money the people of Canada thought (hoped) was being spent on national defence.

Both problems are soluble: one by the DM of DND, the other by the Clerk of the Privy Council.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This was posted on CBC bias thread, but since the controversy has spread to here:

http://hatrockscave.blogspot.com/2011/03/cbc-political-compass-is-bs.html

And watch it done on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNU3sL8T8RI&feature=player_embedded

Actually watching the blogger testing various premutations on screen and coming up Liberal each time is pretty convincing. How this will affect the outcome is not very certain, but if the CPC does pull off a majority I won't be surprised to see the knives come out for the CBC at long last.

WRT the military budget; I recall a time when the fiscal year end was marked by the annual "fire fest" on the ranges rather than the year end purchasefest from the Staples catalogue. How many new desks and ergonomic office chairs do you really need? (To put this in perspective, as a young private my platoon commanders and 2I/C's had oak desks and wooden "kitchen chairs", while the OC's desk was marked by an extra set of drawers and a wooden swivel chair. Needless to say, they were rarely in their office during the day).

As part of the Brigade G6 staff, I was always stymied by the bryzantine rules and regulations concerning purchases. Even though I was capable of spending vast sums of money to digitize the Brigade, bring extra comms on line and train everyone in sight, getting the funds out to do so was often like digging for gold with a tea spoon...

The You Tube video proves only that Kirkhill (see above a bit) is right: The Liberal "marker" is in the wrong place; see also my comment, just above re: the Conservative marker, too.

See my most recent comments about procurement: the solutions, ALL the solutions, lie within the bureaucracy. It is possible to design a system that allows for a modest level of political direction and interference - which will, and maybe even should occur in a democracy - but is, still, efficient and effective.

 

[Gimpy]

This was posted on CBC bias thread, but since the controversy has spread to here:

http://hatrockscave.blogspot.com/2011/03/cbc-political-compass-is-bs.html

And watch it done on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNU3sL8T8RI&feature=player_embedded

Actually watching the blogger testing various premutations on screen and coming up Liberal each time is pretty convincing. How this will affect the outcome is not very certain, but if the CPC does pull off a majority I won't be surprised to see the knives come out for the CBC at long last.

No, actually watching the bloggers "test" is extremely unconvincing. Since when is picking the same answer every time a convincing research method? Others have used the tool by trying to emulate true party values as close as possible and have succeeded as Redeye posted on the last page. The person who made the quiz (who I actually know, which I just found out after reading an article with his name) specifically stated that " the questions are equally split between the left and right side of the political spectrum". Therefore, one will always end up in the center when answering the exact same throughout.

Furthermore, this blogger didn't fully complete the quiz wherein you can rank issues on importance, thereby possibly moving the Conservatives closer to where you landed, and the Liberals further away and vice versa.

And do you not see the irony in using a biased blog as evidence towards bias in the CBC?

 

[Infanteer]

Why are we still talking about that stupid compass?  Is this about the election, or about stupid CBC gimics and bloggers with too much spare time?

What I liked today was Harper brought back the notion of getting rid of those subsidies - score another point for getting the fiscal house in order.  I am waiting to see if this gets traction, as it started the whole coalition thing a couple years back.

I can't help but imagine that Harper should have went through with his plan to scrap them and let the coalition form.  Judging by the enmity that arose, Harper could have fallen on his sword for about a week and rode the tide of discontent for about a week before the coalition formed to protect its subsidies was ridden from Parliament by the masses.  He'd probably be sitting in a huge majority government right now.

 

[armyvern]

The person who made the quiz (who I actually know, which I just found out after reading an article with his name) specifically stated that " the questions are equally split between the left and right side of the political spectrum". Therefore, one will always end up in the center when answering the exact same throughout.

I'm centrist, but if you think the Liberal party is "central" these days I've got some prime waterfront to sell you in Arizona. That's the problem with this ... anything in the "middle" reverts to Liberal ... and they are FAR from "central" --- nice assumption for this program to run in it's 011011100101 though.

:facepalm:

I won't be voting for them --- no matter what this damn program keeps telling me.

 

[Nemo888]

I would be much more interested in a list of major campaign contributors and a test for levels of corruption. Political ideologies are  smoke screens for career politicians. Face the facts, their only job is getting elected. They have no ideals. Every one of them is a used car salesman.

 

[Kirkhill]

Nemo, I seldom find myself anyplace close to your positions but in this case i make an exception.

Cynics of the world unite!

 

[Edward Campbell]

Fun with numbers - in keeping with yesterday's festivities I assumed that:

1. The general election was held on April Fool's Day;

2. ThreeHindredEight.com's projections (see below) stood up; and

3. We had adopted the simplest possible form of proportional representation (% of popular vote (above 5%) = % of seats in commons).

Here are ThreeHundredEight.com's figues for 1 Apr 11:

Source: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/
Based on regional data the Conservatives, with just under 40% of the popular vote, get just under 50%
of the seats; the Greens, with almost 7% of the popular vote get none of the seats.

Here are my PR results:

            BQ CON GRN LIB NDP TOTAL
BC           0   15     4     9     8     36
AB           0   18     2     5     3     28
Prairies   0   15     1     6     6     28
ON         0   46     7   36   17   106
QC       30   15     4   15   11     75
Atlantic   0   12     2   12     6     32
North     0     1     0     1     1       3
TOTAL 30 122 20   84   52   308

I had to round up a (very) few times, always in favour of the top or, in one case, top two parties in a province or region.

As expected and as advertised by its proponents PR rewards the minor parties and, I suspect would guarantee eternal minority governments and equally eternal Liberal/Green/NDP coaliitons, even after major seat additions to favour suburban BC, AB and ON, which might, in the not too distant future, make majorities easier in the current, first past the post, system (by reducing the relative weight of QC's 75 seats).

 

[ModlrMike]

Funny how we never heard any chatter about Proportional Representation when the Liberals were in government. In any event, if the threehundredeight.com projections hold, and the Conservatives are 4 seats short of an absolute majority, it will make things interesting for the opposition. Will they consider it a repudiation of their "legitimacy"? I highly doubt it.