Election 2015

[Edward Campbell]

Rex Murphy's take on the real political battle leading up to the 2015 election, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/07/rex-murphy-this-is-mulcairs-moment/

This is Mulcair’s moment

Rex Murphy

Apr 7, 2012

Those vastly premature and gluttonously unnecessary TV ads the always aggressive Tories have run against Bob Rae were wrong in so many different ways that they deserve some kind of inverted prize. They are petty and mean, and they hit out against a dubious target. It is not the Liberals and their temporary king, Mr. Rae, who threaten Mr. Harper and his increasingly sloppy team. It’s the NDP, with their new and encouragingly battle-ready leader, Thomas Mulcair.

The anti-Rae TV barrage did nothing but remind voters that the Harper Conservatives are always on the edge of being angry about something, hardly ever cheerful and never at ease, even now when they have a majority.

The Harperites should be enjoying political nirvana at present. They are kings of the Hill and have decimated their life-long enemies, the Liberals. You’d never guess, looking at the grim faces and drooping heads of the Cabinet this week as they hopelessly tried to unsnarl the F-35 mess.

Mr. Rae, however, has no confusion. He knows that Canadian politics is different now. And he knows it’s the NDP, and particularly its leader, that are the new and challenging factor. The holiday that the NDP race gave the Liberals is over. The Liberals and their (it is to be presumed) interim leader will have to struggle for every morsel of publicity and airtime they can get.

The one exception is Justin Trudeau, who inhabits a singular world all his own — that of Canada’s number one celebrity-politician, who can summon the cameras and laptops anytime he wishes to take a shave or clobber a Senator.

Just how parlous Mr. Rae’s circumstance has suddenly become can be divined from the language he directed toward Thomas Mulcair. He reached for the heaviest, hardest rhetorical stone: He called Mr. Mulcair — brace yourselves — a “mini Harper.” Apart from sprinkling Mr. Mulcair with Holy Water, identifying him as Beezelbub, and summoning the Saints for aid in exorcising him from the Commons, Mr. Rae could not have hit any harder: In Liberal circles, “Harper” is a synonym for every mean and nasty thing under the sun, and a few that the sun has lacked the courage to look at.

He went even further, when he tried to turn the legacy words of Jack Layton, about hope and optimism, into a parody insult against Mulcair. That was harsh and meant to wound. Said Mr. Rae, of the NDP under Mulcair: “We’ve now moved to a world where anger apparently is better than love, arrogance is now better than humility and petulance is much stronger than respect.

What all this tells us is that at least one leader in the House of Commons has sized up the new reality. Thomas Mulcair is the real and serious challenge. And he is not in the mold of the opposition panda bears with whom Stephen Harper was blessed in previous outings. This is neither Dion nor Ignatieff.

Mulcair, in fact, has very much of Mr. Harper’s own style. He is not unequipped with self-esteem, has a bristling, prickly way with opponents, and would rather hit hard than not hit at all. If the Tories launch ad drones against Mulcair, they will find themselves equally under fire.

There is another element to Thomas Mulcair we have not really seen in a while. He actually wants, deep in his heart, to replace Stephen Harper. Really. In the days of Dion and Ignatieff, the wish to beat Harper was there, but it was somehow a timid thing, half-way between a whim and “it’d be nice.”

There’s no equivocation now. There’s nothing lukewarm about Mulcair’s determination. He knows the job he wants. The Harperites have a dedicated and intense opposition on their case and a leader who really understands that the only purpose of an opposition is to turn it into a government — an insight not really on display in the last five years or so.

All this should really worry the Harper administration, for they have coasted with weak opposition for a long while, and not paid a heavy price for having so unimpressive a front bench. The period of laziness without cost, and mediocrity making do are over. With this new opposition under a new leader, the Liberals will have to fight for their political lives, and the Conservatives will have to give up their useless games and conduct politics as adults for a change.

National Post

I agree with Rex Murphy, a too easy opposition has made the Conservatives complacent and lazy. Prime Minister Harper had better get his act (and his cabinet's act) together.

 

[Edward Campbell]

It doesn't happen often, but I agree with Lawrence Martin's assessment, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, of the NDP's ongoing drift towards the centre:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/the-eternal-leavening-of-the-canadian-left/article2396431/

The eternal leavening of the Canadian left

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Apr. 10, 2012

In the wake of the NDP leadership convention, party unity problems were anticipated. There would be a gulf between party traditionalists, those echoing Ed Broadbent’s sentiments, and those supporting the perceived move to the centre of Thomas Mulcair.

Thus far, it’s quiet. Good poll numbers tend to soften frictions and New Democrats are now tied with the governing Conservatives, who are embroiled in allegations of electoral fraud as well as other controversies.

To be considered also is that Mr. Mulcair isn’t offering anything that should embitter large numbers of New Democrats. He is only following the historic trend line of the Canadian left. From its early days a century ago, when it favoured the overthrow of the capitalist system, the movement has made steps in a moderate direction. Leaders like Mr. Broadbent, who initially supported the party’s radical Waffle wing, were no exceptions. Nor was Jack Layton.

One of the reasons Mr. Layton did well in the 2011 election was his positioning of the party near the centre. Writing in The Canadian Election of 2011, Saskatchewan academic David McGrane notes that that “Under Layton’s leadership, more traditional social democratic positions, such as increased taxation of wealthy individuals (i.e. an inheritance tax), the acceptance of deficit spending, the rapid creation of new universal social programs, and references to expanding public ownership were gradually eliminated from the party’s discourse.”

Mr. McGrane notes that in the campaign, the differences between the NDP and the Liberals were slight on such issues as cap-and-trade, health care, budget-balancing, child care, education, criminal justice, limiting prime ministerial power and a range of other platform proposals.

While the NDP convention of 1999 rejected the middle way or “Third Way,” as it was called, of Tony Blair’s British Labour Party, Mr. McGrane’s study concludes that Mr. Layton moved the party slowly in that direction. For example, his campaign included promises not normally associated with the NDP, such as aid to small business, increased military spending for shipbuilding and fighting crime with more police officers.

It’s a party that has come a long, mushy way. Early political formations like the Socialist Party of Canada would have scoffed at today’s so-called social democrats. Ian McKay’s book Rebels, Reds, Radicals, reminds us of the prominent role the Communist Party of Canada played in the building of industrial unions and of the left generally through the period 1917 to 1937. While the majority on the left did not embrace Leninism, CPC leader Tim Buck had such a following that, upon release from prison, Maple Leaf Gardens overflowed with supporters in a rally to greet him.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation became the leading left-side force in the 1930s. Some of its ambitions, as contained in the Regina Manifesto, would have NDPers running for cover today. So would, with its advocacy of comprehensive and systematic state planning, the 1940s bible of the left – David Lewis and F.R. Scott’s Make This Your Canada.

As NDP leader, David Lewis scaled down the rhetoric and the ambitions, as did Mr. Broadbent. The Waffle Movement of the 1960s tried to rekindle the spirit of old in advocating an independent socialist Canada but was turned back. Mr. Broadbent helped organize the Waffle and favoured its overall agenda, but its rhetoric was too hot and he dropped it. “We disagreed on style, not on substance,” he told biographer Judy Steed.

In Mr. McKay’s analysis, the NDP, unlike earlier left-side parties, gradually became deeply implicated in the liberal order. Its radicals have been left to bark on the sidelines. Political pragmatism has taken over and, given the enhanced potential for power that such pragmatism brings, New Democrats don’t seem to mind.

This is the direction Stephen Harper is reputed to want Canadian politics to follow and, if he's right, it spells the eventual doom of either the Liberals or the NDP.

 

[a_majoor]

The NDP are hammering the nails to the Liberal coffin. The only thing missing from this analysis is the "what comes next?" part. Having Quebec is all well and good, but the Conservatives have the West and much of Ontario, enough to have a majority government even without Quebec. Will the NDP be able to make enough inroads into Ontario to change the political calculus by 2019? 2023?

For that matter will the move towards the "Third way" keep enough people in the NDP or will the true believers jump ship? (There will actually be a lot of shuffling around; Blue Liberals going to the CPC, Orange Liberals going NDP, True believers possibly splitting into a new left wing rump party, possible shift of Green voters and a possible resurgent Quebec Nationalist party)

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1159803--hebert-liberals-looking-for-a-saviour-and-a-miracle

Hébert: Liberals looking for a saviour and a miracle
Published On Wed Apr 11 2012Email Print Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on diggShare on Thomas

Mulcair is well placed to establish the NDP as the default federalist party in Quebec, writes Chantal Hébert.

FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS
 
By Chantal Hébert
National Columnist

MONTREAL—A steady string of post-NDP convention polls has confirmed what most suspected: Thomas Mulcair’s leadership victory was — by far — the worst possible outcome for the struggling Liberals.

A Léger Marketing poll published over the weekend showed the NDP and the Conservatives in a statistical tie nationally, with the Liberals bottoming out to their all-time low election score of 19 per cent.

The Quebec numbers were even more brutal. The poll pegged the Liberals at 10 per cent, on par with the unpopular Conservatives and 37 points behind the NDP. (The Bloc Québécois came second with 29.)

From the angle of Liberal survival requirements, the Quebec numbers actually matter most because without a substantial improvement in their fortunes in that province, they have little realistic hope of a return to the major leagues of federal politics.

The party is abysmally weak west of Ontario. Even if it tripled its seat count in the four western provinces, it would still only hold a dozen seats between the Ontario border and the Pacific.

But Quebec also happens to be the one landscape where Mulcair’s popularity is likely to endure longer than the average post-leadership honeymoon.

He is well placed to establish the NDP as the default federalist party in Quebec — and, by the same token, to reduce its dependency on the nationalist vote at the expense of the Liberals.

As of the convention, Mulcair has become the top Quebec federalist on the federal scene, coming second for pre-eminence in the province’s federalist line-up to premier Jean Charest.

He already has his former boss beat hands-down in the popularity sweepstakes.

If Charest goes down in the next provincial election — a strong possibility as public opinion stands now — Mulcair could find himself leading the largest contingent of Quebecers elected under a federalist flag within the year.

He is already the only federal leader whose party bridges the Quebec language divide.

Harper’s handful of Quebec MPs all hail from fairly homogeneous francophone ridings. The opposite is true of the small group of Liberals who survived the last election.

Mulcair’s federalist credentials are important to his national standing. They will matter even more in Quebec if the Parti Québécois wins the provincial election.

When things heat up on the unity front, Quebec federalist voters tend to congregate around the strongest champion on offer.

Coming out of the leadership convention, Mulcair is considered stronger prime ministerial material than Bob Rae nationally by a margin of almost two to one and Quebec is a big component of his score. (Notwithstanding his success in the ring, it is far from certain that Justin Trudeau – despite being very much the Liberal flavour of the month— would get more positive leadership numbers.)

No recent federal NDP leader has arrived with as high a profile as the one Mulcair already enjoys.

His own history and the circumstances that led to his ascent have ensured that but he also got a back-handed assist on the profile front from Ed Broadbent.

The former leader’s anti-Mulcair admonitions sent the message to non-NDP voters that he was not cast in the traditional NDP mould. And while that did not commend him to some party activists, the opposite may be true of less partisan voters.

When it comes to expanding the NDP’s reach in federalist ranks in Quebec, Mulcair’s provincial Liberal roots are a net asset. That may also be true in Ontario, a crucial NDP-Liberal battleground.

In the lead-up to the convention, magic thinking had the Liberal brain trust convinced the NDP would pass Mulcair over for a leader with little Quebec profile. It is rarely sound to base one’s calculations on wishful thinking. And yet, that thinking persists unabated.

Rather than ponder whether they can afford to spend the better part of another year under an interim leader who operates with one hand tied behind his back, many Liberals are frantically looking beyond Rae for an elusive saviour. But it is going to be hard for anyone to turn water into wine when the well has run so dry.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here are two columns, both reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, that suggest that the left-right split that Prime Minister Harper is thought to desire is on the way but that it might not produce the results for which he hopes:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/no-room-for-centrist-compromise-in-a-left-right-split-canada/article2445923/

No room for centrist compromise in a left-right split Canada

JOHN IBBITSON

OTTAWA— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 29, 2012

We are entering an exciting and tumultuous period in national politics, as progressive reaction to Stephen Harper's Conservatives increasingly coalesces around Thomas Mulcair, further dividing Canadian politics into stark choices between left and right. The Western premiers are part of the proof.

Premiers and ministers of the Prairie and Pacific provinces and the three territories are in Edmonton Tuesday for talks. One thing they plan to discuss is the message coming from the new leader of the NDP.

Mr. Mulcair has galvanized debate across Canada with his warning that unfettered development of the oil sands is not only damaging the environment, it is driving up the dollar and hurting manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec.

“This is about the future of the economy of the country,” he told reporters on Monday outside the Commons, “maintaining the equilibrium, coming up with a strategy that will allow us to maintain a vital industrial sector.”

Mr. Mulcair accuses the Conservative government of failing to require oil and other natural resource companies to pay the full environmental cost of their operations, and would compel them to do so if the NDP came to power.

“It's about the enforcement of federal legislation,” he said. “Since the beginning, we've made it clear that we're very concerned that the federal government is not enforcing federal law.”

Mr. Mulcair's message is powerful, first and foremost because he believes it. He was saying it months ago, long before he won the leadership. Cynics forget the impact that a principled argument, passionately held, can have.

The NDP leader offers opponents of Stephen Harper a standard around which to rally. This is the first time that progressive forces have been able to put forward a leader and a message that offer such a compelling alternative to the Prime Minister and his conservative orthodoxy.

The NDP message plays into a great shift under way in Canadian politics, one that pits right-wing and left-wing values against each other on economic issues, with fewer and fewer voters clinging to centrist compromise.

A Forum research poll released on Monday shows the NDP with a narrow lead over the Conservatives, and Mr. Mulcair ahead of Mr. Harper in popularity.

“Mulcair is doing a great job as leader of the NDP,” said Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research. “He seems to be resonating with the public.”

The poll shows a growing tide of concern among Canadians over income inequality. “The country is moving a little bit to the left,” Mr. Bozinoff believes, even as Mr. Mulcair seeks to make his party more credible on economic issues.

English Canadians may not be taking to the streets the way the union-backed students have in Montreal, but many of them are worried and resentful over sluggish economic and job growth, and they are channelling that concern into support for the NDP.

A growing number are also taken with Mr. Mulcair's theory about Western oil costing Central Canadian jobs. A recent Harris/Decima poll showed 41 per cent of respondents agreeing with Mr. Mulcair, while 45 per cent disagreed.

Doug Anderson, senior vice-president of Harris/Decima, cautions that support for the NDP leader's position isn't strong outside Quebec, and that people aren't paying that much attention to federal politics in any case.

He also suspects that Mr. Mulcair could still be enjoying a honeymoon from his leadership victory last March, and that future numbers could show NDP support softening.

Nonetheless, he acknowledged, “it has become the status quo” that the NDP are either first or second in the popular vote, where they have been now for more than a year. This is a tremendous change in the political life of the nation, and it appears to have become entrenched.

When Mr. Mulcair heads west later this week to tour the oil sands and meet with provincial politicians, his progress will be covered closely. It is difficult to remember the last time a trip by an opposition leader has garnered this much attention.

Mr. Mulcair will be heavily criticized by politicians and pundits during his travels. He won't care. He knows he is succeeding where everyone who came before him failed: rallying opposition to the Harper Conservatives around one idea and one figure.

The Conservatives will welcome this. A head-to-head fight between the left and the right, between Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Harper, is exactly what both sides want.

For in a political war between progressives and conservatives, there is no room for a party of the centre, for the Liberal Party, which is entrenched in a distant third place.

That may be Mr. Mulcair's greatest achievement: to take on the Western premiers, to take on the oil interests, to take on the Conservatives in the cause of the environment and of factory workers in central Canada.

And to leave the Liberals forgotten in his wake.

Now, I will not shed a tear for the Liberal Party of Canada - at least not as it has existed since the mid 1960s when it lurched sharply off the course set by Laurier, King and St Laurent - but, for now at least, Canada remains more left than right, more European than American and most Liberals will not migrate to the Conservative Party, they will find a new home in a centrist NDP.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-time-has-come-for-a-progressive-revival/article2445801/

The time has come for a progressive revival

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 29, 2012

Not so bad. Quite reasonable actually. That was the general reaction last week to the Conservatives’ planned reforms to the employment insurance system. And indeed such a case can be made. The measures are hardly draconian.

The same could be said for the cuts – especially at first glance, when not many details were known – in the recent federal budget. The long-range plans for Old Age Security changes? They are arguably judicious as well.

The overall impression is that, okay, while there are some Stone-Age types among our governing entities – Vic Toews, would you please step forward – there’s no need to be overly exercised about what they are doing.

But that might be to miss the story. Let’s go back to a blog last month written by Alex Himelfarb, the Clerk of the Privy Council under Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien and, briefly, Stephen Harper. His piece was entitled, “Going, Going, Gone: Dismantling the Progressive State.”

In it, Mr. Himelfarb cites Monte Solberg, the former Conservative cabinet minister, as lamenting how progressives called the shots in Canada for so many decades and how this has “affected and infected everything.” That “whole way of thinking,” Mr. Solberg went on to say, “must be smashed.”

In the Himelfarb analysis, the smashing is ongoing. The former clerk, a progressive himself, says it’s been a gradual, cumulative process. Along the way, there’s been enough moderate-sounding stuff to ward off much sense of alarm. But the evidence is in the big picture.

His interpretation is hard to contest. When the word “progressive” was dropped from the name of the old Progressive Conservative Party in 2004, few could have realized the significance of the moment.

Today’s Conservatives have brought in criminal-justice and penal-system reforms considered reactionary even by some neoconservatives. On the environment Brian Mulroney’s old Tories got an award for being the most green government. Today’s Tories would get an award for being the least green. Their economic policies tend to favour the well-to-do and the corporations and give way to increasing levels of inequality. Their foreign policy sees a return to a warrior mentality with a buildup of the state security and military apparatus (reduced a bit recently) and a move away from multilateralism.

The progressives’ battering, as Mr. Himelfarb points out, is evident as well in the weakening of the federal role in social policy. It’s seen in the turning over of health-care standards to provincial jurisdiction, the aversion to national programs such as daycare, and it will likely be further abetted by a reduced tax base brought on by the reductions in corporate levies and the GST. Mr. Himelfarb uses the example of the budget to point out many other regressive turns.

So much has a back-in-time look, including the economy with its increasing dependence on extraction-based industries, a trend accelerated by Ottawa’s policy of rampant resource development.

Not to be forgotten, if we’re talking about going back in time, is the decline of our democratic standards as seen in the unprecedented system of information control, the attempt to muzzle those who do not share the governing view, and the like.

If society’s enlightenment is enhanced by erudition, what can progressives think of a government that is sometimes proud to say it goes by gut instinct as opposed to empirical data and sophisticated research?

The list is only a partial one. Until now, the blowback against the undoing of the old Canadian way has been held in check by several factors, among them Stephen Harper’s skill at not appearing radical in what he is doing, the ascendancy of Western conservatism, the weakness of the Liberal party and the power of the Harper team to frighten and intimidate critics.

But there are signs of change. The New Democrats, leading the Conservatives in a poll released this month, have reached historic highs. The issue of inequality is now ranked as the most pressing concern of Canadians. It being an issue that is a hallmark of a regressive society, it could spur a progressive revival.

Let's assume that the national commentariat is correct: Stephen Harper wants to reshape Canada (and Canadian politics) into a left/right model - with both the left and right parties occupying a big share of the centre - so big that there is no room, at all, for a centrist party (something which the Liberals were until 1967).

To do that he must, in my opinion, win the 2015 election. He has one more budget (spring 2013) to make economic reforms - the 2014 and 2015 budgets must:

a. Keep a promise to "balance" the budget (reduce the deficit to near zero); and

b. Give Canadians - those on the political fence, those who might lean right, some "lolly" to but their votes.

If he can win a majority in 2015 then he has room for one more tough budget (2016) - aimed at drying up the public teat, one more moderate budget (2017) and then he (or his successor) will most likely, try to use the next two (2018 and 19) to buy votes again in order to be competitive in the 2019 election.

He needs to hope that the Liberals will put up one helluva fight in 2015 and 2019, refusing to bow down to defeat without furiously attacking their real, deadly enemy: the NDP. If the Liberals fight hard enough they, not Stephen Harper, may be he ones who, unwittingly, undo the legacy of Pierre Trudeau and return us to a country upon which Louis St Laurent might smile.

 

[Journeyman]

....their real, deadly enemy: the NDP.

Strange times, indeed.

 

[Kalatzi]

'Black Out, Speak Out': Canadian internet campaign targets 'undemocratic' bill

Link here http://www.rt.com/news/canada-internet-black-out-418/

One of the problems of an Ominous Bill such as this is that it is Precisely the sort of thing that allows Pork and other nonsense to be stuffed into it. Very difficult to decipher what is in it.  The way the Republicrats and the Demicans can screw up the country. Now,  its here courtesy CPC , Nice.

Here's an example "A line buried deep in the document also ominously states, "The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed."

The change would eliminate a 1985 law forcing companies bidding on federal contracts to pay “fair wages and overtime.”

Did you know that??? My guess is not. Wonder what other toxic goodies are in there??? Me too.

The reason that this example is especially important, is that things such as the 35 hour week, overtime etc, came about as  efforts to minimize the effects of depressions, such as the one that we are in now.

BY now my many detractors must be salivating as they wait their turn. Let me end by noting that the above is not simply my idea. The economist Paul Krugman has devoted a book to it - "End this Depression Now.

Given the state of jollity in La Belle Province It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Any chance of the bill being amended  - We'll have to have a hell freezes over party first

 

[Edward Campbell]

More news that should fuel an all out battle to the death between the Liberals and the NDP, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/how-census-figures-cement-harpers-grip-on-power/article2446248/

How census figures cement Harper’s grip on power

JOHN IBBITSON

OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, May. 29, 2012

The 2011 census confirms what the ballot box has already told us: Aspiring Canada votes Conservative.

If the NDP or Liberals are ever to win government, they must break the bond between these aspirational voters and Stephen Harper.

The latest tranche of data released Tuesday morning by Statistics Canada paints a picture of a country that is about to get old. The population of seniors is growing; for the first time, those who are getting ready to leave the labour force (age 55 to 64) exceed those getting ready to enter it (aged 15 to 24).

But the country is not aging uniformly. Younger, working-age Canadians are moving West, to where the jobs are. And within the big cities, the downtowns are aging differently than the suburbs.

The Conservatives are the party of the West and the party of suburbs. That is why Stephen Harper is Prime Minister.

Once again, the census paints a picture of three Canadas. The proportion of the population over 65 is higher than the national average in Quebec and in Atlantic Canada. Ontario is about average. The West, except for the retirement Mecca of British Columbia, is younger than average.

Generally, an older society is a poorer society, because seniors consume more from government than they contribute through taxes, and because the economy is unable to provide the jobs needed to keep young people from leaving town in search of work.

These consuming provinces east of the Ottawa River predominantly vote NDP or Liberal. The contributing provinces of Western Canada, where a booming resource centre acts as a job magnet, vote Conservative.

But it’s much more than a story of East versus West. Even more, it’s a story of downtowns versus suburbs. As the census observes: “Differences in age structure between central and peripheral areas are particularly striking” in Canada’s largest cities.

In the suburban communities surrounding Toronto, the percentage of families with young children is well above the national average. The percentage of older Canadians is below average. These edge cities – Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Ajax and Pickering, Oshawa –are largely middle-class. They have large populations of working parents. They pay more in federal taxes than they consume in federal services. Many of them are immigrants who have done well. In the last federal election, almost every riding in this suburban belt went Conservative.

In Toronto itself, the number of both seniors and families with children is both below the national average. The city has a large population of singles and DINKs, (double-income-no-kids). Many of these voters are well-educated professionals who work the financial, educational and cultural industries. And the ridings of downtown Toronto are Liberal or NDP.

Both the demographics and the political results are mirrored in Vancouver, (though the population of retirees is higher there, thanks to the weather).

Local cultures, of course, influence results. In Montreal, the Liberals did well in English enclaves; in Calgary the Conservatives prevailed in every postal code; parts of rural English Canada, though older and poorer than the national average, voted Conservative for cultural reasons.

But where it counts, in the populous communities outside the downtowns of cities in English Canada, suburban middle-class voters who seek a better life both for themselves and for their children vote for the party that they believe will look after the economy, protect their jobs and keep their taxes low.

In the next election, these suburban cities will receive the lion’s share of the 30 new seats being added to the House of Commons. Those seats will go Conservative, too, unless the Liberals or the NDP can think of a way to make aspirational Canadians change their minds.

The NDP can beat the Conservatives in 2015 IF they an craft a narrative, a message that resonates with all of the young students, working Canadians and seniors. They will not do that by pitting East against West but there are ways, I guess, to square the circle.

 

[Journeyman]

'Black Out, Speak Out': Canadian internet campaign targets 'undemocratic' bill

So, did you have any, you know....thoughts.....on the topic, or did you just figure the histrionic article from Russian Times (when even the excitable CBC's lead story is on the rising percentage of seniors) says it all?

      :waiting:

 

[Kalatzi]

So, did you have any, you know....thoughts.....on the topic, or did you just figure the histrionic article from Russian Times (when even the excitable CBC's lead story is on the rising percentage of seniors) says it all?

      :waiting:

Thank you, Funny uou should ask.

I could have sworn that II posted this in the budget 2012 forum.  That aside

What do you think of this??

I posted this without really expecting any responses  - if it was in the budget 2012 forum, again I may have screwed up.

 

[Journeyman]

What do you think of this??

I posted this without really expecting any responses 

Then why post it?

Personally, I think that the site would be a better, more informative, and of higher quality site if posters of information pieces would include their views.....AND reasons why those views are held -- preferably with justification.

We have plenty of people who just cut & paste newspaper articles for little apparent purpose -- some to argue their entrenched left/right political views, some for anything involving ambulances, etc.......

I wasn't trashing-talking you.....this time  ....... I just wondered if there was anything behind the posting, because you providing nothing to add to a potential discussion.

 

[Sythen]

Then why post it?

Personally, I think that the site would be a better, more informative, and of higher quality site if posters of information pieces would include their views.....AND reasons why those views are held -- preferably with justification.

We have plenty of people who just cut & paste newspaper articles for little apparent purpose -- some to argue their entrenched left/right political views, some for anything involving ambulances, etc.......

I wasn't trashing-talking you.....this time  ....... I just wondered if there was anything behind the posting, because you providing nothing to add to a potential discussion.

Providing links to informative/interesting articles so that others can form their own opinions based on their own thoughts instead of being force fed the opinions of others is a bad thing?

 

[Journeyman]

No, it's not a bad thing. It is, however, just a first step.

Those interested in learning would most likely be reading a variety of articles from different sources. For those being passively fed posted articles however, I'd personally prefer site members provide some extra effort to inform, provide context, possibly include some contrary info. Even those supposedly interested in learning have a tendency to read only from sources with which they agree; conflicting views can be a good thing, and if you believe in something so strongly, convince us.....or at least encourage us to think.

Opinions are easy; informed opinions are valued.

I'm merely encouraging that extra step.


Note that I do try to avoid being this pedantic in Mess Chatter and Recruiting threads. 

 

[Rifleman62]

Generally, an older society is a poorer society, because seniors consume more from government than they contribute through taxes, and because the economy is unable to provide the jobs needed to keep young people from leaving town in search of work.

A poorer society it may be. Do not forget seniors still pay municipal/city taxes, school tax and sales taxes at the same rate as younger taxpayers. Sure we may get a age reduction on property taxes at age 65, but it ain't much. Seniors will pay school taxes at the same rate as a 30 YOA person, long after their great grandchildren graduate, if they live long enough. And, they still pay income tax on pension/annuity/etc income, even if the income is not the same as it was when working.

Those seniors who have disposable income spend it and pay the tax. Capital gains tax if lucky at the same rate. Estate tax if they were successful.

 

[Edward Campbell]

For many (most?) Canadians health care remains a major election issue. We like our "single payer" health care system and we like to believe, against all the evidence, that it is a good system. But most of us understand that it is strapped for cash and we, broadly, want governments to pump more cash into it ... Why? So that we can have more of this?

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/05/29/nl-tim-hortons-hsc-loss-529.html?cmp=rss

Tim Hortons at St. John's hospital awash in red ink

Eastern Health turns over staffing at coffee shop to private sector

CBC News Posted: May 29, 2012

A Tim Hortons coffee shop nestled in a St. John's hospital stood Tuesday as a symbol of inefficiencies at Eastern Health, as the authority disclosed the franchise lost about $260,000 last year.

The Tim's location in the Health Sciences Centre, the largest hospital in Newfoundland and Labrador, will be fully turned over to the private sector, as will its cafeterias, president and CEO Vickie Kaminski said Tuesday.

"I don't know if any of you have lined up to get a cup of coffee there — the lineups are long, the usage is big," Kaminski told reporters.

The shop had opened in 1995 with expectation that it would turn enough of a profit to pay for the salaries of several nurses.

"Let me tell you why that happens," Kaminski said of the fact the popular shop loses money. "We charge you $1.94 for that large coffee, but we insist that the staff who are pouring that coffee are Eastern Health staff, and they get paid $28 an hour, and no Tim Hortons pays that."

The direct wages are about $20 per hour. Benefits and employer costs account for the difference.

The shop is already privately managed. Kaminski said the private operator will now take care of employees as well.

Eastern Health — which on Tuesday laid out a plan to shave $43 million in spending, much of it to come from attrition and cuts to overtime — also said its cafeterias, like the coffee shop, are losing money it cannot afford to spend.

While private contractors already run some of the cafeterias, the authority pays an annual subsidy of $1.2 million for those operations.

"We cannot continue to subsidize those non-direct-care services, when we know that they can be provided more effectively and efficiently and we can apply that money [elsewhere]," she said.

Kaminski said private companies will now assume full responsibility for cafeterias.

One must ask: who, in their right mind, thought it was a good OK sane idea to pay coffee servers $20.00/hour plus benefits? According to one source the average salary for Tim Horton's servers is in the range of $8.00 to $10.00/hour - less than half what Eastern Health has been paying. It also begs the question: if healh care administrators (please note that health care professionals (doctors, nurses, etc) do not manage hospitals or the system, managing is done by bureaucrats and professional managers) can "manage" a coffee shop this ineptly, how well are they managing the rest of the system, the parts that cost billions and billions of dollars each year? In fact, it begs the question: why are these professional managers still employed? If you owned a Tim Horton's franchise and decided to pay your staff at twice the going rate you would soon be bankrupt, unemployed and homeless.

This is not, strictly, a federal election issue but it is part of the narrative that Stephen Harper is crafting for 2015: "We are good managers, planning for the country's (your) future; we send money to the provinces for your heath care, but they - often being Liberals and NDP - waste it. We want them to innovate, to find new, more productive ways to use the billions we send each year; they just line up and say 'more! More! MORE! Do you really want us to send more and more money into this rat hole? We are going to 'cap' transfers and equalization and stay out of areas of provincial responsibility; it's up to you to elect provincial governments that will serve your needs. And, if you want your money used effectively - not paying $20.00/hour for serving coffee, it is up to you to support us in 2015."

 

[Rifleman62]

One must ask: who, in their right mind, thought it was a good OK sane idea to pay coffee servers unionized provincial liquor store shelf stockers/cashiers $20.00/hour plus benefits? According to one source the average salary for Tim Horton's servers is in the range of $8.00 to $10.00/hour - less than half what Eastern Health has been paying. It also begs the question: if health care administrators public service unions (please note that health care professionals (doctors, nurses, etc) do not manage hospitals or the system, managing is done by bureaucrats and professional managers) can "manage" a coffee shop anything using the taxpayer as a bottomless pit this ineptly, how well are they managing the rest of the system, the parts that cost billions and billions of dollars each year?

Public Service managers are unionized also.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Jeff Rubin, well known and often contrarian economic prognosticator and author (about the effects of $200/bbl oil) posits some of the changes that will impact our politics in the 2015 election and beyond in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/have+have/6703622/story.html

To have and have not

By Jeff Rubin, The Ottawa Citizen

May 30, 2012

The Canadian landscape has always been fractured by regional divisions but the fault lines that will divide the country in the future will be very different from those that have done so in the past. The new divisions are not between east and west or between those who speak English and those who speak French. Those historic differences are overshadowed by a far more formidable force that today unites Ontario and Quebec in common cause as it does Alberta and Newfoundland.

The new fault line in the country is oil, or more precisely between those who have oil and those who do not.

Triple-digit oil prices have transformed Alberta’s tarsands from a marginal energy resource into the world’s third-largest oil reserve. Its development is already catapulting Canada into the front ranks of world oil producers. And its production, roughly one and a half million barrels of oil per day, is expected to double over the next decade. But not without imposing substantial costs on the rest of the Canadian economy.

Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty and Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford have already clashed publicly about oil, as has Alberta-based Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Quebec-based leader of the Official Opposition, Thomas Mulcair, who will be touring the oilsands on Thursday. Canadians can expect to hear the volume of political rhetoric cranked up as the economic divisions across the country deepen. But at the same time we should recognize that our politicians are only reading from scripts that natural resource endowments, or the lack thereof, have written for them.

The second thing Canadians need to recognize about this debate is that no one in it holds the higher moral ground. It’s only the capriciousness of nature that determines which side of the debate you will be on.

If the tarsands were in Kirkland Lake as opposed to Fort McMurray, I dare say McGuinty would have no problem with the country morphing into the energy superpower that Harper fondly envisions. An Ontario premier might even feel inclined to ride roughshod over environmental review processes like Harper proposes to do in order to remove any roadblocks that might slow down the speedy development of energy resources, and the accompanying tax revenues and jobs. But nature dealt Ontario a different hand, and those are the cards that an Ontario premier must play.

There is much at stake. Already oil has redefined the fiscal landscape of Canadian federalism. It’s turned Ontario, the country’s largest and once richest province, and historically the source of most of the country’s equalization payments to poorer provinces, into a have-not province. At the same time, Newfoundland’s burgeoning offshore oil industry has transformed that province from a perennial fiscal basket case into a have province.

Even that stunning reversal of fortune for Ontario and Newfoundland barely scratches the surface. From oil flows fiscal and monetary dynamics that can only further deepen regional divisions and inflame political passions.

Take the Canadian dollar, for example. Many things go along with being an energy superpower like having a super exchange rate that rises in value with not only the price of oil but also the volume of oil the country is able to export. A soaring Canadian dollar isn’t a problem for Alberta oil producers — they are concerned with getting pipeline access to world markets, and world oil prices. But how long will Ontario assemble more motor vehicles than any state in the United States when Canada’s petrodollar trades at a double-digit premium to the greenback?

Don’t turn to the Bank of Canada for help. It, like you or I, is a passive observer of the rising value of the Canadian dollar.

But federal government decisions, like approving the Northern Gateway pipeline, and the increased oil production brought by new pipelines, will govern the currency’s fate. Saving the B.C. wilderness from pipeline spills translates into saving manufacturing jobs in Ontario and Quebec.

The fiscal effects from oil may turn out to be no less powerful and no less divisive on the Canadian federation than the currency effects. Consider for a moment the contrasting impact that rising oil prices and rising Canadian oil production will have on the direction of fiscal policy in Alberta and Ontario. Triple-digit oil prices bring economic stagnation and burgeoning budget deficits to Ontario. The last provincial budget has already given us a taste of what is in store for Ontario taxpayers. It nuked a planned corporate tax cut and imposed a new tax on high-income earners. Future budgets will likely deliver more broadly based tax hikes as well as deeper spending cuts.

Across the country, the same oil prices will spur greater production and increased royalties for the province of Alberta. Alberta is proud of the fact that it has no provincial sales tax, but the “Alberta advantage” could be a bigger magnet for economic activity if the province instead used its petrodollars to eliminate, or at least drastically cut, its provincial income tax. It has only to look to Texas to see the model in action — the absence of a state income tax in Texas has lured more than a few industries from less fortunate states.

How long would Toronto remain the headquarters for the country’s major banks if bank CEOs would no longer be required to pay provincial income tax on their multi-million dollar annual bonuses in Alberta? Banks’ headquarters have moved before in response to changing economic circumstances, and they can move again. Where do you think the Bank of Montreal comes from? Or Scotiabank? They didn’t always have Bay Street addresses.

Which provinces win and which ones lose will depend very much on the policy choices we make around oil. It should make for a very interesting national debate.

Jeff Rubin is the former chief economist of CIBC World Markets and the award-winning author of Why Your World Is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller. He’ll be speaking about his new book, The End of Growth, at the Writers Festival Event at 7.30 p.m. this Friday night at Southminster United Church.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Although I subscribe to the "old Canada/new Canada" thesis, which says that the main fault line in Canadian society and politics lies along the Ottawa River and that it is based more on attitudes (culture) than on economics or language or anything else, I do agree that Ontario and Quebec share common ground: their manufacturing sectors are hurt because of the petro-dollar effect; Alberta's and Newfoundland's good fortune is bad news for the manufacturing sector in Canada's two largest provinces.

But, I also believe that how these two large provinces react, over the next decade or two, will be different. My guess is that Ontario will, sooner rather than later, try to encourage re-industrialization by "getting government out of the way" while Quebec will try to increase the role of the state by "picking winners" and offering subsidies.

I think that Stephen Harper can, with the aid of 30 new seats in the HoC, win another majority in 2015 IF, as I expect, the Liberals and NDP both devote at least as much effort on attacking one another as they do on battling against the Conservatives. He, or his successor, might even get a minority in 2019 ~ by which time Canada, writ large, should be comfortable with a new definition of the political centre, one which will be rather farther to the right than is now the case.

I also agree with Rubin that Calgary will challenge Toronto for "head offices" and for the jobs, money, people, spin-offs (culture, for example) that they bring. The consequence will be a cultural shift to the West and to the political right.

 

[Kirkhill]

The problem of money distribution can be addressed by Ontario and Quebec "going where the money is".

This doesn't mean the provinces or their residents relocating.  It means converting their skills into producing things that other people will buy.

If you can't get poor Americans to buy average quality cars from highly paid Ontarians then maybe you could make a buck by making industrial valves, pumps and controls to a very needy and very rich oil patch in BC, Alberta, Sask, Manitoba, NWT, and Newfoundland.  Or making tanks for storing stuff.  Or making Teflon for lining things.....

We are waiting 6 to 8 weeks out here for simple valves and pumps.

Two to three months for tanks.

Welders and fitters are scarcer than hen's teeth and even good quality junior engineers are hard to come by.

Coincidentally those are the very things in which Northern Europeans excel and export to Southern Europe, along with the very expensive Mercedes which they sell to the very rich living in the South amongst the very poor.

A buddy of mine just came back from Spain which is kind of a second and future home for him.  And we got talking about culture.

He reminded me that the Spaniards still take siestas from approximately 12:00 to 16:00, every day of the week.  They make up for those hours after 16:00 but......

Add to the general European difficulty of many holidays, of general holidays where everything shuts down at the same time (and that includes lunch time), of language difficulties (especially true when everybody tries to communicate in their own brand of English)..... add to all of those the fact that for the entire afternoon Spain is not available to conduct business with anybody.  When they are willing to come to the shop window the only customers available to them are 4 time zones away in Virginia and Newfoundland -  and gawdelp the Spaniard trying to make himself understood in Southdildo.

Quebec.  Meet Spain.
Ontario.  Meet Germany.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The problem of money distribution can be addressed by Ontario and Quebec "going where the money is".

This doesn't mean the provinces or their residents relocating.  It means converting their skills into producing things that other people will buy.

If you can't get poor Americans to buy average quality cars from highly paid Ontarians then maybe you could make a buck by making industrial valves, pumps and controls to a very needy and very rich oil patch in BC, Alberta, Sask, Manitoba, NWT, and Newfoundland.  Or making tanks for storing stuff.  Or making Teflon for lining things.....

We are waiting 6 to 8 weeks out here for simple valves and pumps.

Two to three months for tanks.

Welders and fitters are scarcer than hen's teeth and even good quality junior engineers are hard to come by.

Coincidentally those are the very things in which Northern Europeans excel and export to Southern Europe, along with the very expensive Mercedes which they sell to the very rich living in the South amongst the very poor.

A buddy of mine just came back from Spain which is kind of a second and future home for him.  And we got talking about culture.

He reminded me that the Spaniards still take siestas from approximately 12:00 to 16:00, every day of the week.  They make up for those hours after 16:00 but......

Add to the general European difficulty of many holidays, of general holidays where everything shuts down at the same time (and that includes lunch time), of language difficulties (especially true when everybody tries to communicate in their own brand of English)..... add to all of those the fact that for the entire afternoon Spain is not available to conduct business with anybody.  When they are willing to come to the shop window the only customers available to them are 4 time zones away in Virginia and Newfoundland -  and gawdelp the Spaniard trying to make himself understood in Southdildo.

Quebec.  Meet Spain.
Ontario.  Meet Germany.

Much of that is already happening. There are a number of tool shops, in this area, that have weaned themselves from the auto maker teet and are doing wellhead parts production for Alberta firms.  We have the facilities, expertise and skilled workforce to do it. That's why it's here.

It saved them from closing their doors and putting the workers on the streets.

McSquinty just refuses to acknowledge it, publicly, and just wants to blame the oilpatch, instead of his inept, socialist government, for all his (our) heartache.

 

[Rifleman62]

It has only to look to Texas to see the model in action — the absence of a state income tax in Texas has lured more than a few industries from less fortunate states.

Texas is one the nine states without a state income tax. Some are doing well i.e. Texas/Alaska/South Dakota; some like Nevada are not.

The Right to Work states have a big advantage also, although the nominal head of the union, President Obama, has tried in the past (South Carolina comes to mind) to circumvent the law.

Texas and South Dakota are RTW states as is Nevada.

I see the Manitoba (second largest recipient of equalization payments) government is floating increasing provincial sales tax and petroleum taxes to support the NDP's Greek agenda.

Ontario is in a mess partly because of Liberal spending.

What is the City of Ottawa thinking of blowing $2.1 Billion on?

Give them the authority to take a citizens money and they will spend.

 

[GAP]

Much of that is already happening. There are a number of tool shops, in this area, that have weaned themselves from the auto maker teet and are doing wellhead parts production for Alberta firms.  We have the facilities, expertise and skilled workforce to do it. That's why it's here.

It saved them from closing their doors and putting the workers on the streets.

McSquinty just refuses to acknowledge it, publicly, and just wants to blame the oilpatch, instead of his inept, socialist government, for all his (our) heartache.

But the auto industry is like welfare money...most businesses would rather wait it out and hope for an increase than retool for the oil patch...