Canadopers: fall federal election[!]

How do you feel about a party which would attempt to unilaterally, retroactively cut nurses’ pay during a pandemic?

I mean, as long as we’re playing “Whattabout?”

Yes, while amusing to contemplate what the negotiations might have been like for a CPC/NDP coalition, I suspect the reality would have just been Jagmeet doing his best Letterkenny “Hard no!” impersonation.

I think that the NDP might be willing to help a minority CPC government if the compromises were good enough. Again, Canadian parties are not worlds apart.

Here are the party platforms, updated as of September 9. SeewhatImean?

The last I hear “the Jagmeet” has not ruled out supporting the Conservatives in a minority government

And now the separatists in Quebec might want to play with the Conservatives - of course if they are given enough goodies.

Something, something, politics, strange bedfellows….

Just watching the debate, I like this Q&A format.

While I can’t stand the party I do really enjoy Blanchet’s debate performances.

It’s easy to “debate” if you have a single point (let’s leave Canada) and don’t actually give a shit about leading the country (or actually about anyone in 9 provinces and 3 territories including Francophones there)

Oh I know it gives a huge amount of freedom to swan about but the man is very good at poking. I thought it was very clever when he said he would give his time to O’Toole so O’Toole could expand on his French language debate talking point about not allowing pipelines in Quebec.

I did like how well Annamie Paul seemed to do up there. Unbelievably dumb of the Greens to self destruct with her there. I found her much more focused and decisive than Elizabeth May ever was.

The Blocheads have moved beyond leaving Canada. They are now “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine”.

I missed that. That was clever.

I think it’s because the government actually commissioned a report on electoral reform and it said that ranked or instant runoff voting is only barely better than first past the post, and various types of proportional representation was the best. The Liberals probably would lose seats overall under proportional representation systems (though, their seats would probably be better distributed throughout the country), so I suppose the Liberals felt it looked better to sweep it under the rug rather than implement what the report said was the second worst form of voting. They probably would have been better off making their platform implementing ranked voting up front instead of forming that committee (perhaps they realized they wouldn’t be able to get enough support from the other parties to make that change anyway).

I think Trudeau actually did intend to enact ranked voting - it would, after all, be advantageous to the Liberals, as in 3-way races with Conservatives and NDP they’d do well with the second choice rankings of the voters of whichever of the other two was eliminated first. Then his commission came back recommending proportional representation, which would be disadvantageous for the Liberals. Oops.

Memory may be hazy, but when Trudeau was in third place (when he took over the party), that was when the calls for reform were loudest. I thought he was talking PR. Of course, once his leadership style became popular and the ratings soared there was little further talk of reform. Also, voters in BC (?) rejected the idea, so maybe it was assumed to be a no go.

By BC voters, do you mean the referendum on provincial elections? Because that was a mess that left everyone confused

It was tried here in London. Not exactly well received. In fact, they applied for the feds to reimburse them for the costs.

In the end, while a large part of the population thought it a good idea. In the aftermath it came out that it made no difference, in this instance, to the results, in any way.

And it substantially reduced confidence in the results. A lot of people felt disconnected from the outcome, thought it was confusing overall, and weren’t certain they could trust such an obscure process.

I’m guessing that trial may have affected why it was no longer being talked about.

As people have noted, much depends on just what system is chosen. All systems have some problems; it’s a matter of which flaws you prefer. FPTP has flaws I’m not thrilled with, including a narrowing of debate and views and the possibility, commonly realized, of a party getting seats wildly disproportionate to its popular vote

In BC, in 1952, the Liberal and Conservative parties were worried that CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of the NDP) was doing well in the polls. So they brought in a preferential ballot, where you ranked the candidates. They reasoned that Liberal voters would rank Conservatives second, and vice versa, so both parties had a better chance to win. They also thought CCF voters would support either Liberals or Conservatives as a second or third choice.

What they didn’t realize was voters were more deeply polarized. Instead of voting for the “obvious” second choice, they voted for a fourth party hardly anyone had heard of: the Social Credit Party. Which ended up forming the government. For the next 20 years.