Election 2015

[Altair]

Why are attributing to Stephen Harper the same criticisms that have been attributed to Trudeau, Mulroney, and Chretien as if he invented Parliament himself?  Nothing to see here folks, move along.

And trust me, if JT or TM resorted to the same tactics in parliament,  I would turn on them as well. I'm not blindly partisan.

In 2011, despite being a lifelong liberal, I didn't want anyone to win, so I stayed home.

But the whole he's not that bad because others did it before him doesn't hold water to me. I don't care if chretien or Trudeau ot Mulroney did it, I care that Harper is doing that now. I wasn't even alive for trudeau,  I couldn't even vote for Mulroney and I only became politically aware at the end of Chretiens rule. What they did or didn't do interests me as much as the reign of Joe Clark.

 

[Remius]

The seeds of all of these problems were planted before Mr. Harper, I would say.  However, he has cultivated all of them to a level that far surpasses what others have done before him.  Mr. Harper appears to have decided that his government governs best when Parliament is broken and rendered completely dysfunctional.  His contempt for the judicial branch is unconcealed.  There have been Conservative policies that I can support, but what I cannot support is a deliberate effort to dismantle Parliamentary democracy, which is what I have seen from this government.  In our system, constitutional and Parliamentary conventions are the glue that binds the system together.  In my view, the conventions are more important to our democracy than most laws that are passed by any given government.  But in order for the conventions to have hold, they must be internalized and respected by Parliamentarians, including members of the cabinet.  In the current government, I see a Prime Minister and Ministers who have utter disregard for constitutional and Parliamentary conventions.  This is the primary reasons why the Conservatives will not have my vote in this election.  It would be the same for any party that has acted this way.

Although I haven't fully decided (too many long times to go between now and the election) this is one thing that will have an impact on my decision.  It certainly will balance against the CPC.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The seeds of all of these problems were planted before Mr. Harper, I would say.  However, he has cultivated all of them to a level that far surpasses what others have done before him.  Mr. Harper appears to have decided that his government governs best when Parliament is broken and rendered completely dysfunctional.  His contempt for the judicial branch is unconcealed.  There have been Conservative policies that I can support, but what I cannot support is a deliberate effort to dismantle Parliamentary democracy, which is what I have seen from this government.  In our system, constitutional and Parliamentary conventions are the glue that binds the system together.  In my view, the conventions are more important to our democracy than most laws that are passed by any given government.  But in order for the conventions to have hold, they must be internalized and respected by Parliamentarians, including members of the cabinet.  In the current government, I see a Prime Minister and Ministers who have utter disregard for constitutional and Parliamentary conventions.  This is the primary reasons why the Conservatives will not have my vote in this election.  It would be the same for any party that has acted this way.

There is an interesting bit in today's Ottawa Citizen in which M Trudeau admits (to Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV) that his father, Pierre Trudeau, began the "rule by PMO" which, I think, is at the heart of most complaints.

Now, Altair says he doesn't care because it happened before he was born. I am very disappointed. In my opinion, if you want to understand the problem you must understand how and why (and even when) it came into being.

M Trudeau promises to change that ... if you believe that then you must also believe in the tooth fairy.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I guess some people just can't stomach the fact that SH is no different that those that have gone before him.

As in days of old the witch will be either burned at the stake, or drowned, by the flaming faggot, pitchfork crowd stirred by hidden leaders and whispering malcontents.

Look hard as you may, you'll find no righteous messiahs in politics.

As I said above, I find it disheartening that many of the ABC persuasion aren't voting on policies and platforms. They are voting simply because they've been told SH is evil and has to be put down.

 

[Altair]

There is an interesting bit in today's Ottawa Citizen in which M Trudeau admits (to Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV) that his father, Pierre Trudeau, began the "rule by PMO" which, I think, is at the heart of most complaints.

Now, Altair says he doesn't care because it happened before he was born. I am very disappointed. In my opinion, if you want to understand the problem you must understand how and why (and even when) it came into being.

M Trudeau promises to change that ... if you believe that then you must also believe in the tooth fairy.

how far back do I need to go in history when deciding to vote for current parties and leaders?

John A Macdonald? Louis Laurent?  Pearson?Campbell?

I judge current leaders on their current actions, promises and personalities.

And while I might be naive to vote for a guy who promises to change the problems with how parliament  is run, it's better than voting for the guy who doesn't even see it as a problem.

 

[George Wallace]

And while I might be naive to vote for a guy who promises to change the problems with how parliament  is run, it's better than voting for the guy who doesn't even see it as a problem.

Perhaps your problem can be solved by reading up on the Parliamentary System, the British North America Act, and other books that will describe the Canadian Parliamentary System.  It will also clarify many of your misconceptions, perhaps total lack of knowledge, of the Senate, as well.

 

[CougarKing]

Elizabeth May making another impossible promise regarding university education all over Canada:  :

CBC

Green Party platform promises to expand rail, eliminate tuition
Elizabeth May wants to grow green jobs, tackle climate change and wean Canada's economy off oilsands

The Green Party wants to wipe out university and college tuition fees, expand Canada's rail and urban transit systems and halt the use of fossil fuels by mid-century.

The party's 44-page election platform, released by party leader Elizabeth May in Vancouver today, makes big — and expensive — promises to help students, seniors and small business. It focuses heavily on planks to tackle climate change and wean the national economy off the oilsands.

Accusing the Conservative government of "serial vandalism" of Canada's public policy, May said she would work to clean up the environment, reform criminal justice and overhaul immigration and refugee practices.

May predicted a minority government after the Oct. 19 election, but said she does not want to join any formal coalition. She said the best way for Canadians to effect positive public policy change is to elect more Green MPs.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Edward Campbell]

how far back do I need to go in history when deciding to vote for current parties and leaders?

John A Macdonald? Louis Laurent?  Pearson?Campbell?

I judge current leaders on their current actions, promises and personalities.

And while I might be naive to vote for a guy who promises to change the problems with how parliament  is run, it's better than voting for the guy who doesn't even see it as a problem.

First: you don't need to go back past last week. There is no need to understand when, why or how things came to pass, it is sufficient to just be dissatisfied with the way they are ... very, very few Canadians even know that there is a PMO, much less a PCO and fewer still know what they do and why they do those things.

Second: you are quite right to judge the current leaders on their (recent) records.

But, how, I wonder, do you judge the guy with no record at all? Those of us who listened to Preston Manning, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he promised to "do politics differently" and those of us who listened to Stephen Harper when he promised to clean up the Augean stables like mess that the Liberals left behind were sadly disappointed, weren't we? What makes you think that M Trudeau can, would or even wants to do things any differently from the ways the Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper did them?

    (Parenthetically: I can remember when the country was governed without the big, all powerful, all encompassing PMO that Pierre Trudeau built. I recall that Louis St Laurent was a much better prime minister than any who followed him,
      light years superior in every possible respect - intellectual, political, human - to Pierre Trudeau and Stephen Harper, and the country was better managed, too, because the civil service, the Mandarins worked in tandem
      with ministers, they were not a separate, more powerful "hidden government" (and they, like Louis St Laurent vs Pierre Trudeau, were, generally, superior to today's versions, too).

Governing from the Centre is not just a Canadian disease: the UK Cabinet Office is just as bad as our PMO. The US have been at it much longer, although a US president does not have the advantage of a compliant parliament. It is also a problem, so I have read, in Australia, France, Germany and India, to name just a few. How on earth does Justin Trudeau plan to change it? The short answer is: he doesn't. He doesn't even, really, understand the problem and if he ever gets to sit behind the big desk in  the Langevin Block his handlers will explain to him why this system works better, for him than any other.

 

[cupper]

Elizabeth May making another impossible promise regarding university education all over Canada:  :

CBC

But when you have no hope in hell of becoming PM, you can promise the moon and no one will expect that you will be in the position to deliver anyway.

Damn that was a cynical response. The bane of the political junkie. 

 

[Privateer]

Governing from the Centre[/url] is not just a Canadian disease: the UK Cabinet Office is just as bad as our PMO. The US have been at it much longer, although a US president does not have the advantage of a compliant parliament. It is also a problem, so I have read, in Australia, France, Germany and India, to name just a few. How on earth does Justin Trudeau plan to change it? The short answer is: he doesn't. He doesn't even, really, understand the problem and if he ever gets to sit behind the big desk in  the Langevin Block his handlers will explain to him why this system works better, for him than any other.

Hope springs eternal, and sometimes there is a Parliamentarian who will take a principled stand for the better: witness Michael Chong, who, in respect of Parliamentary convention, resigned his cabinet seat to make a principled stand on an issue contrary to government policy, and who drafted and championed the Reform Act.  Perhaps Mr. Trudeau would take steps in the right direction.  As Altair said, I'll take someone who at least acknowledges the problem and says that he intends to fix it, over someone who thinks that there is no problem.

 

[ModlrMike]

People like to hold up Germany as an example of free university tuition. Here's an article from the BBC that provides food for thought:

How Germany abolished tuition fees

Interesting bit this:

In Germany, about 27% of young people gain higher education qualifications. In the UK, the comparable figure is 48%.

I think our rate is probably on par with the UK. I wonder how it would go down if we were to slash our seats by 50%.

 

[McG]

We probably should be sending more to college than university anyway.  We could maybe afford a reduced, more competitive university intake.

 

[George Wallace]

We probably should be sending more to college than university anyway.  We could maybe afford a reduced, more competitive university intake.

True.  The Colleges are more likely to put young Canadians into a good Trade and into good paying jobs quicker than universities.

 

[ModlrMike]

True.  The Colleges are more likely to put young Canadians into a good Trade and into good paying jobs quicker than universities.

Absolutely, but you can't tell the young that.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I'm sure the LPC and NDP would be very happy if the CPC said, "Oh, there's no hope" and dropped out, even though the time remaining is about as much as most prior elections.  I doubt anyone is going to win a majority.  That leaves a minority, and the prospect of having enough seats to form a second minority after the first loses confidence, to fight for.

For those who need to elect a NDP government to find out that the NDP is the most centrally, top-down controlled major party in Canada, fill your ballot accordingly.  Keep subsequent lamentations to yourself, please.  How far can you trust them?  A short while back I asked a NDP supporter - now candidate - what the policy was on a particular issue.  The response was basically: you'll have to elect us to find out.  Where does that rank for "secretive"?

You don't need to go back very far to understand that pretty much everything Harper does is based on lessons learned from predecessors from PET forward.  Given that knowledge, you can dismiss the fantasy that a different leader/party will make a difference to practices (the promises go by the board as soon as they get briefed in and start trying to do things) and focus on policy.

Understand: this is an election about nothing significant.  The strongest slogan the opposition parties have is "ABC" (really, "ABH").  Usually voters don't reward opposition parties for merely saying, "We'll do/be better than the incumbents.  We promise"; but sometimes they do.  It'd be a shame to reward such laziness.  The rest is basically "tax more, spend more" fly-sh!t issues and party quiffs; and, there are a lot of frustrated, organized, and vocal groups out there who lost their rice bowls and want them back.  The biggest issues the media wants to discuss are "Duffy is a poor senator" and "more refugees, please".  As immediately recent events demonstrated, in the internet age the proverbial lie is now orders of magnitude faster than the truth in getting out there.

We should be talking about whether "stimulus" works very well - if at all - in the Canadian federal context, and whether it is even appropriate for a commodities price slump.  (From announcements I read today, AB is going down the "stimulus" sinkhole.)

We should be talking about whether the economy has been constrained by consumer deleveraging (debt acquired during the 1997-2007 "boomlet"), and is about to be more constrained in the near future when deleveraging for the current round of low-interest debt acquisition comes due.  So much future spending (hence future taxation) is being pulled into the present that there is bound to be a big, hard recession (a true one: a demand shock).

I predict that if the next government is not fiscally conservative, Canada is going to be caught moving in the wrong direction (higher taxes, increased social spending commitments) when the recession strikes.  And, there are no cushions left: the dollar is low, interest rates are low, commodities prices are down, consumers are over-indebted, most of our trading partners' economies are lacklustre.

 

[dimsum]

I wonder how it would go down if we were to slash our seats by 50%.

I'd guess that there would be more Canadians (who can afford it) going overseas to places like Australia, etc. for their degrees then.  I think we've discussed this before, but the cultural attachment to higher education, especially in Asian cultures, pretty much makes College a non-starter unless it's done after a Bachelor's degree.

 

[dapaterson]

I'd guess that there would be more Canadians (who can afford it) going overseas to places like Australia, etc. for their degrees then.  I think we've discussed this before, but the cultural attachment to higher education, especially in Asian cultures, pretty much makes College a non-starter unless it's done after a Bachelor's degree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFKn1LgSwZk

 

[PuckChaser]

So I did a little fact checking, to see how the various parties would personally affect me with their income tax plans. The assumption is married couple, single earner $80,000 a year. No other deductions (kids, cpp, etc) federal and provincial tax payable for entire family:

Tories (Income splitting, no change): $16,040
Liberals (Scrap income splitting, middle tax bracket to 20.5%): $19,583.65
NDP (Scrap income splitting, no tax rate change): $20,113.13

These are my rough personal circumstances, and are likely common across the CAF for single income families. Voting anything other than CPC takes $3500-4000 from my pocket more every year. No real surprise that these figures aren't tossed around when the Liberals and NDP tout their "help for the middle class".

 

[The Bread Guy]

It doesn't get clearer than this:  "NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says his first acts as prime minister would include pulling the Canadian Forces out of Iraq and Syria, bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees and reducing taxes for small and medium-sized businesses ...."
To use the "house on fire" analogy some else brought up, an NDP Canada would move from helping put out the fire to manning more of the nets to catch folks jumping to safety.

Still more than 5 weeks to go, though - lots can still change ....

 

[Edward Campbell]

It doesn't get clearer than this:  "NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says his first acts as prime minister would include pulling the Canadian Forces out of Iraq and Syria, bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees and reducing taxes for small and medium-sized businesses ...."
To use the "house on fire" analogy some else brought up, an NDP Canada would move from helping put out the fire to manning more of the nets to catch folks jumping to safety.

Still more than 5 weeks to go, though - lots can still change ....

I am not opposed to a complete military withdrawal from the entire Middle East ... IF M Mulcair uses the bully pulpit of his office to encourage all of the US led West to leave, too. (It's OK if Russia gets drawn in: quagmire is the word I think we're all looking for ...)

I vehemently oppose settling any Syrian refugees in Canada ... I've explained why several times. But I would not oppose to sending tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars to aid agencies that are doing effective work helping refugees in the Middle East.

But, it seems to me, the choices, for the West, are stark: either Simplify the problem as I described elsewhere ~ which requires concerted, US led, Western military action, or, as I have also discussed elsewhere, isolate the region, nearly totally, until ~ the work of generations ~ the Arabs and Iranians and Israelis have found an acceptable modus vivendi for themselves.