Why would he bother doing that? Ford’s win in Ontario demonstrated that the conservatives can win without posting a serious budget projection, so why would they ever put one out ever again? Keeping mum won’t cost them conservative votes, and won’t provide actual ammunition to the opposing parties that might cost them swing votes.
For the love of god Conservatives why are you not killing it? CBC News Canada Poll Tracker (has Liberals still leading).
Someone explain to me the Conservative election approach? You’ve got a center-left party that’s failed environmentalists, failed to implement electoral reform and managed to combine ethical lapses with targeted smearing of accomplished women. Each and every one of those things should be having their left leaning supporter peel off to the NDP & Greens. What has Sheer and company done? Targeted tax breaks and, I guess, cutting foreign aid.
Honestly Ontario is ripe to elect a socially progressive centre-right party but for some reason the Conservatives simply can’t seem to be that party.
It looks to me that with this “we will cut foreign aid” promise, Scheer is trying to target Bernier’s “We hate brown people” demographic. Wrong approach in my opinion.
What’s next? Is Scheer going to promise to build a wall <ahem> sorry, a “fence” like Bernier promised?
Honestly? I’m happy withdrawing from the AIIB and I’m not sure actual funding in countries that are in or advancing through middle-income levels makes a lot of sense. Besides cutting foreign aid is a default/classic position of conservative parties.
Which is why I see the move as an attempt to stake out a “responsible steward of your money” when compared to “deficits for as far as you can see”. I mean it looks like a wash, people don’t get % GDP views but framing Liberals as spending more than they’re taking in (which they have and will) is completely legitimate.
In a way you’d think Scheer would be jumping for joy with the PPC. They’ve pulled more nativists/intollerants than libertarians and given the Conservatives a chance to “not be those guys” and swing hard for centre right liberals.
And wow I use “” too much.
You’d think… because this makes sense. But I just don’t see the Conservatives moving to the center any time soon.
The Conservatives certainly are trying the tactic of “the liberals will spend more than they take in.” Which has the benefit of being entirely truthful.
But what they don’t mention that this is exactly their plan as well.
The Conservatives would win this election if they stuck to policies like balancing the budget, strongly supporting the environment (in a way that addresses some concerns of the oil patch), boosted the active military, addressed the concerns of small businesses and came up with strong foreign policy alternatives. These are not the Liberals strongest points.
They should avoid attacking immigration and strong American-style social conservative views. As per Jason Kenney, they should aggressively seek the votes of the many immigrants who sympathize with classic conservative views.
I don’t know what to make of the commercials where Scheer is kind of talking away from the camera for most of it. It makes him seem evasive.
I agree with you Grey. A socially progressive conservative party would clean up. I’d likely vote for them depending on the specifics of their platform of course.
Of all my issues with the CPoC, the biggest is that Scheer comes across as trying to hide something. And that greatly concerns me.
All you need to know is that he’s not Trudeau.
By the way, Scheer is on Face to Face with National Leaders tonight on CBC. I’m looking forward to seeing it in hopes of learning more about Scheer.
Oh wait I forgot, supposedly I’m a hyperpartisan who has drunk the Kool-aid. LOL
Scheer’s answers last night were more or less what you would expect from a politician seeking election. Overall, I think he did a good job presenting himself. He seems like a nice guy. I think I would get along better with Scheer than Trudeau. I’d say he increased my odds of voting for him from 0% to maybe 3%. I simply do not like his plan for dealing with climate change. And that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s sincere about it.
Did anybody else what it?
Because they’re losing. So, you know, maybe they should try something else.
Sure.
What you have in the Conservative Party is a classic conflict between the base that creates the party and the need of the party to expand beyond that base. It’s all well and fine to say that the Conservatives should seek to reach out to Canada’s many socially liberal/fiscally conservative voters, and I am sure that would gain some votes, but that conflict with he wants of the Conservative base, which is in fact socially conservative. These are the people who MADE the party. They don 't want the party to change from what they wanted in the first place to get votes that aren’t aligned with who they are. To take this to a logically absurd point, they could steal votes from the NDP by embracing flat-out socialism, too, but at that point they’ve left behind all their base.
As it is, the Conservative leader always has to strike a balancing act between reassuring his base that he’s socially conservative while not actually doing anything socially conservative; it’s why Scheer’s line on abortion is “well, that’s how it is now” as opposed to any sort of actual position. Stephen Harper was a master of this game, retaining social conservative cred without ever doing anything that justified it.
If Scheer abandons the pretense of social conservatism, what will happen is social conservatives won’t vote for him, and they are literally the base of the party. Ten years ago the risk to that would have been that your base becomes disinterested and doesn’t turn out, which is bad. NOW, the risk is they vote for the People’s Party, which is worse. Here are the latest popular vote estimates:
Conservative Party - 34.3
Liberal Party - 33.6
New Democratic Party - 13.1
Green Party - 10.3
Bloc Quebecois - 4.9 (QC 21.0)
People’s Party - 3.0
Three percent doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is. It’s actually kind of impressive Bernier could get his weird little party’s support that high in such a short period of time. As it stands, the Conservatives are neck and neck in popular vote but will probably lose anyway because of vote distribution. If they had that 3 percent, or even 2 of the 3, their odds of forming a government would be much higher. In a very fractured popular vote scenario, a few percent is a massive difference. The PPC vote drains votes away from the Conservatives but gives the seats almost entire to the Liberals; the PPC themselves might win Maxime Bernier’s seat but won’t win any others.
A shift to the left on social issues isn’t going to snap up easy seats - especially not three weeks before the election when most people’s metal images of parties are set. It’ll piss off the base more than anything else, and with the PPC growing, just throw pointless votes to them.
Exactly.
Here’s an interesting piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EDX-Wcxpp4
Sure but that base is small compared to the potential centre-right. In fact the centre-right defection from the Harper government was what gave the Liberals the ability to leap frog the NDP and win the last election. The last election was suppose to be a Conservative/NDP fight.
Watched the Trudeau Face to Face - Moderator was hardly confrontational and these seemed to be social concern voters. Trudeau, whatever his failings, is really adept at settling in with the people questioning him. Even the woman from Cold Lake Alberta was hardly confrontational given the rhetoric. Not nearly the questioning about past policy I would have expected.
Watched the Scheer Face to Face - Moderator seems more aggressive in this one. Voters were more fiscally focused. I thought the guy from New Brunswick is the perfect person Elizabeth May needs to be confronted with. Scheer comes across as less 'slick" than Trudeau and honestly I thought he held his tone and composure well. Lots (more) policy questions than the Trudeau session.
Today Singh is, yet again, confronted for not being Canadian enough. sigh At least he wasn’t accosted for being an Islamist this time.
Scheer completed one of four insurance broker courses.
Days after the story broke the Conservative Party`s website biography currently still states - Before entering public life, Andrew worked in the private sector as an insurance broker.
No doubt this will not change any votes but I think this goes way past resume embellishment. Scheer is applying for Canada`s top job. No doubt many people polish their resumes - but in my opinion it should be limited to stating you are really good at doing something you actually did and was legally qualified to do (when in fact your experience and ability may currently be less than average). But this is stating he was doing something he never did and was not qualified to do. Objectively I can definitively state that at my work I flat out wouldn’t hire someone if I found they lied to this level on their resume.
The funny thing is, at the end the guy says “I hope you win”.
ETA I think. It gets clipped at the end
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-ndp-montreal-turban-sikh-1.5305840 has a transcript where the man says ““All right, take care, eh?” the man called after him. “I hope you win.””
Glad to see little/no maliciousness.
I have to agree.
I don’t mind if Scheer is a “career politician”. I actually think that committing to a career of public service is not a bad thing - it’s a good thing. And I think often too much is made of anyone needing to “know business” before they can do a good job in government (in fact, often it can be a detriment - see down south).
And I don’t mind resume embellishment - to a the degree that everyone does it. I mean, if you show that your worked for an insurance company for “six or seven months” and "supported “the whole team, answering questions from customers and clients - and passed on information to people who would come into the office.” That’s OK. Everyone knows that this means you were the receptionist. (Direct quote from Scheer). No problem with that.
I DO HAVE A PROBLEM THOUGH, if you then say you were an accredited insurance broker and "“I did receive my accreditation. I left the insurance office before the licensing process was finalized.”, when you ONLY COMPLETED ONE OUT OF FOUR REQUIRED COURSES.
This is what is known as A BIG FAT LIE. And I have a problem when someone who aspires to be Prime Minister lies about his past experience.