Hello, everyone! We’ve had a very interesting conversation over the last eight weeks in the Canadian Election thread. Well, the election is over but I’m hoping there might be enough interest among the Canadopers to continue to discuss current events, politics, culture and history here.
I wasn’t sure whether to start this thread here, or in Great Debates. I eventually went for Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share, partly because there is no specific debate at present and also because, like with the Election Thread, I’m hoping for a respectful exchange of ideas among friends who don’t share the same opinions. Maybe this will get moved, maybe this will devolve into a shouting match or maybe we will continue in the same manner that the election thread went.
At any rate, lots of things on the horizon. Two Supreme Court appointments, a change in the numbers in the House of Commons, with three more recounts to come.
My home town has had the worst flood since nobody knows for sure, and the Manitoba government has now breached the dike at Hoop and Holler, sacrificing 150 farms and homes to save 850 other farms and homes. Compensation has been promised but that’s a Hell of a sacrifice to ask people to make. The one sure prediction - the Prairies are going to have trillions of mosquitoes the size of ravens this summer.
I hope it doesn’t devolve into a shouting match. Even though we had a few disagreements in the Canadian Elections thread, I will say that all Dopers who participated remain on my “Dopers whom I’d like to have a beer with” list.
As for the current floods in Manitoba, I hope all works out. My Dad was a volunteer in the Winnipeg flood of 1950 (he travelled from Toronto to help out). After hearing his stories, my thoughts are with the Manitobans who are struggling.
My thoughts go with all the people in the west and south who are dealing with these floods.
Yes, the election thread was good. I’m really interested to read the views of others. We tend to think that everyone thinks like we do, and we Ontarians can learn from Quebeckers and Albertans both.
In other news, I was visiting my aunt in Peterborough on Saturday, and she showed me a book the local NDP had put together, a history of local members. There was a page describing my grandfather, who’d been involved in the NDP and its predecessor, the CCF, since WW2. ‘A lifelong socialist’ indeed, always working for ‘a fair deal for the working man’.
There was a collage at the back of the book; I recognized the NDP logo from the seventies. At the very back of the book was a mock ad showing an elegant 1920’s-style lady, complete with mink stole and cigarette holder, smiling, over the caption, " ‘I vote for them because I like them.’ Join the big swing to the New Democrats."
Yes. It was my mother. Did I mention that in addition to working for the NDP in the elections when I was in high school, she was also in theatre?
I think a bit of history transpired a couple of days ago. We have in support of Libyan operations, a handful of F-18 Hornets and the frigate HMCS Charlottetown.
Due to the Libyan regime both mining the waters off Misarata and harrassing Rebels, two small boats, I was originally thinking they were cigarette boats, but after reading a bit more, they seemed to have been zodiacs, entered the bay and Nato tasked the C-town, HMS Liverpool and the French frigate Jouet to intercept.
In carrying out the order, the C-town was taken under fire from the zodiacs, while the other frigates were taken under fire from shore batteries. The Liverpool and Jouet both responded to the shore batteries with counter battery fire from their 4 inch guns, while the C-town responded to the zodiacs with machine gun fire.
Making it the first time since the Korean war, that a Canadian warship fired in anger.
Just curious, and perhaps this is something to hang a discussion on…
Does the “working man” of 2011 want socialism? Does “a fair deal for the working man” mean socialism is necessary?
I’m saying this as a former working man. I punched my card, drove the trucks, operated the forklifts, and belonged to a union. Actually, a couple of them. Now, in all honesty, this was during the late 80s/early 90s, but I never got the impression that the NDP (the federal/provincial “labour” party) stood for me–a laborer. And if the impressions I recall from the boys on the line (etc.) are anything to go by, neither did they.
This may make me a pariah among certain elements here but–Where did the NDP go wrong? When did they stop crusading for the working man?
In the right circumstances socialism is probably going to get a lot of traction in the working world. A lot of the automotive towns that had factories closed down, others that have seen their former industries offshored and such, it could sound attractive.
Most of what the NDP wanted for the working guy had already been won, and the education of the working guy had elevated from needing grade ten, to most having at least grade twelve or thirteen (in Ontario) and the start of the college grads coming into the workforce.
So they paid lip service to us, and we paid lip service to them and it never really translated at elections to the NDP in terms of seats. Bob Rae on the provincial side, I think pretty much killed any chance for the NDP to be seen as a labor party primarily.
Just a guess, but probably when Ed Broadbent resigned. To me , the new blood in the NDP was not the same level of politician that he was.
The Richelieu and Champlain rivers south of Montreal are also getting hit hard by rain and flooding - it’s been a couple of weeks and this week’s forecast calls for near constant rain as well (it’s also cold and miserable out!). About 1000 people have been displaced. I heard on the radio that about 100 farmers could lose their crops entirely for the year.
I thought Environment Canada predicted a hot and dry summer? Though I guess it is technically still spring… it feels like November out there today!
Rita Chretien released from hospital. She was the lady who spent seven weeks in the Nevada wilderness when the GPS in their van got them particularly lost. I’m glad that she’s doing okay, and I hope they find her husband, but every time I hear about this story, I’m still struck by how the hell did they get THAT lost? Why hasn’t her husband been found? Wouldn’t he have just walked on the road back the way they came? So many questions.
True enough. Even if you didn’t like the NDP, you had to like and respect Ed.
Just as an aside, I find it interesting that the NDP tends to have leaders with “everyday” names: Ed, Jack, Bob. You can find guys with names like this at the bowling alley or sports bar. But would you find guys named Brian, Stephen, or Robert there, as the Tories have had leaders named over the years; or Pierre, Michael, and Paul for the Liberals? There are exceptions, of course (Joe Clark of the Tories, Audrey McLaughlin of the NDP), but it’s almost as if NDP leaders deliberately choose to run under a diminuitive name, in order to present themselves as everyday people. Nothing wrong with that, of course; just something I realized as I read your post.
Your anglophone-ness is showing; Pierre (in English; Peter), Michael (in French; Michel) and Paul are about as “everyday” a name as you can get. They are all Biblical names.
Great thread idea. I’ve been looking for a Manitoba flood thread. I am of course, not in Manitoba, (Thunder Bay) but because my work is tied to Winnipeg the stuff happening there directly affects us. For instance, it is difficult to get hold of some of our senior people, because they are involved with planning and strategic stuff for Prairie Region. Of course , as noted above there are also floods in Quebec, and that big fire up in Slave Lake.
The new Parliament will be interesting.
The whole Libya thing is wild, esp. Charlottetown’s involvement. More Canadian casualties in Afghanistan.
Ever feel like clutching your head and saying…wow too much news!
What’s the situation with reform of the Canadian Senate i.e. having its members elected? Was this an issue at all in the recent campaign? I imagine that the more left-wing parties would support such a move. What’s the Government’s position? Do opinion polls suggest strong voter support for such a move? Would it be difficult to do constitutionally (Québec etc.)?
Well, my point is that it was never Pete and Mike. (Granted, you cannot do much with Paul.)
Although now that I think of it, Ontario did have Mike Harris as Premier, and we currently have Ed Stelmach in Alberta–both Conservatives. Ontario Liberal Premier David Peterson was always David, never Dave; though in some histories, I’ve seen Liberal Premier Mitchell Hepburn occasionally referred to as Mitch. And, looking at federal Liberals, Ignatieff was always Michael, though Lester Pearson somehow picked up the nickname Mike.
So maybe my theory isn’t much of a theory. Oh well.
Are there diminuitive forms of Pierre, Michel, and Paul in French?
We saw the Slave Lake fire on the news today - holy crap! A third of the town has burnt down! I was living in The Pas the summer when there were bad fires coming up to town (you could see the orange glow on the horizon at night it was so close), but it didn’t come into town. I can’t even imagine how awful that would be.
They don’t. The NDP supports abolishing the Senate completely, and won’t support any rearrangement of the deck chairs. The Liberals usually just equivocate on the issue.
Yes. It would take the approval of at least 7 provinces, which have to contain at least 50% of the population (I believe Harper was claiming at one point that it could be done by Act of Parliament, but I imagine that he asked a lawyer or really just someone who could read the Constitution and found that his position was spectacularly wrong).
Ontario and Quebec between them have more than 50% of the population, so any reform package has to be approved by at least one of them. The current Ontario government doesn’t really support it, and the Premier has made noises about supporting abolition rather than elections. They’ll probably lose the provincial election in October. The leader of the opposition is on record as supporting an elected Senate, but it’s very much not a priority of his.
The current Quebec government opposed the most recent Harper proposal on the grounds that it was blatantly unconstitutional (which it was), but I don’t think the Premier has said more on the issue. The next election in Quebec will possibly elect a PQ government. Even if they were really supportive an elected Senate (they aren’t), they wouldn’t just give support without favors in return, and if the Constitution is opened for amendments, they’ll probably have a few suggestions of their own.
Even if Quebec and/or Ontario supported reform, that’s not a guarantee that other provinces would play along.
There aren’t really, which I guess is what mnemosyne was saying. (Well, Michels can sometimes be called Mike due to the English influence, and I have seen “Paulo” for Paul before, but that sounds kinda weird and certainly isn’t very common. Neither is Paul as a name, for that matter.) French does use some diminutives (Phil for Philippe, for example), but less so than English. Raymond Bourque was never called “Ray” by francophones, to use the example that comes first to my mind.
The idea of an elected Senate is currently pretty much dead in the water. Harper was in theory committed to it at first. He comes from the Reform Party/Western populist movement, which supported an elected Senate with equal numbers of members from each province (like the US Senate) and increased powers, as a way of shifting some power to the West. But such a change to the Senate definitely requires a constitutional amendment, which would open the door to difficult constitutional negotiations and is pretty much on nobody’s minds, in English Canada at least. So what Harper decided to do was to only nominate senators who’d been previously elected by their province’s voters in an advisory senatorial election, the kind Alberta had been holding since the late 80s. Such senators-elect are called “senators-in-waiting”. (He did however also appoint Michael Fortier of Quebec to the Senate to serve in his Cabinet, with the promise that Fortier would resign and run in the next federal election. Fortier lost the election.) Harper also tried to reduce the senators’ mandate to eight years at most, which arguably can be done without going through the whole constitutional amendment formula. That point, however, is in debate.
By the 2008 election, the eight-year mandate bill hadn’t been passed yet and still only two provinces (Alberta and I believe Saskatchewan) were electing senators-in-waiting. After the opposition parties threatened to form a new government if Harper lost confidence of the Commons, and after he controversially prorogued Parliament, Harper got scared and decided to fill all vacancies in the Senate with Conservatives, so an eventual new government couldn’t do it in his place. This move was criticized, but now nobody remembers it and it gave Harper the go-ahead to just keep on nominating senators like all prime ministers before him. And so there’s now nothing in Senate reform for Harper, since he can just keep on filling it with political appointees.
As for the left-wing parties, the NDP, now the Official Opposition, officially supports abolishing the Senate. (So does the Bloc québécois, but they won’t have a big role in this Parliament.) So we’re presumably going to hear precious little about the Senate in the next four years. There’s no political will, either on the government or on the opposition side, to reform it. And those who’d abolish it aren’t in power, and would need a constitutional amendment to do it anyway. Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s senators-in-waiting will probably keep on getting appointed when vacancies occur in these provinces (they’re quite likely to be Conservatives anyway), but I don’t see any other province putting such a mechanism in place. In fact, I’m not sure senatorial elections would even be constitutionally feasible in Quebec: unlike in the other provinces, in Quebec senators officially represent districts drawn in the constitution itself, and have property requirements in this district, instead of representing the province at-large. Not to mention that Quebecers overwhelmingly support abolishing the Senate, so we’d laugh in the face of the provincial government ministers who’d suggest such a half-assed thing.
I don’t think the current Quebec government has any official position on the Senate, though they will react to proposals by the federal government. (I don’t expect any further proposal from the federal government.) As for the next election, it should be remembered that it won’t happen before late 2012, and that voting intentions in Quebec are currently extremely volatile, because none of the established parties hold the electorate’s favour. This became dramatically obvious to the whole country in this month’s federal election, but it’s true also at the provincial level. So it’s much too early to make predictions about the outcome of the next provincial election.
I saw some of the pictures of Slave Lake today - it’s heartbreaking to think of what those people are going through. The 2009 forest fires missed by sister’s ranch in BC by less than a quarter-mile. I wish we could have sent some Toronto rain or Brandon flood water to save some people’s houses.
There is a good collection of photos at the Globe and Mail’s online site today, and a recently-updated news story indicates that it was not an orderly evacuation, but somewhat chaotic. (Link to the story, with a link to the photos off the story’s page.)
