I agree. Minority governments can be a feature of parliamentary systems, as they force compromise when the people are split.
Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is another coalition with the NDP, so what can happen in practice is that the people are split left/right, but instead of getting a moderate government that seeks to appease both sides, you get a government that allies with a more extreme version on its own side, pushing them away from the middle then using the alliance to govern as if they are a majority.
It’s all legal and fair, but it can be a perverse outcome where a minority center-left government will be more extreme than a majority cente-left government because it has to appease the far left to stay in power. And the same can happen on the right.
The NDP is best conceived as a centre-slightly left party with its own factions and splits. It is not solidly left and certainly not far left–it purged the far left decades ago.
Any minority government will seek a partner for a confidence vote. The Liberals have their choice of the NDP and BQ, but it simply is not true to suggest the Liberals or NDP might not partner with the CPC. Any coalition will require some concessions and any coalition partner would be pleased to offer support if enough bones are thrown to their constituents.
Five of the last seven governments, since 2004, were minorities. Most future ones will be too. It is only a problem to the extent it causes extraneous elections.
It’s impossible to appease both sides if they have directly conflicting ideologies and goals. Instead what you have is a parliamentary makeup that reflects the values of the voters, as it should in a democracy. And this will hardly be a case of Liberals “allied with a more extreme version of their own side”, unless one views it from a far-right perspective. The reality is that the NDP will have to do a lot of compromising if they want to see any of their agenda implemented at all.
O’Toole tilted right to win the leadership of the Conservative Party and then tilted to the center in the election. It’s a story as old as time. Unsurprisingly, some of the things he said when running for leadership didn’t appear in the platform. Trudeau kept bringing that up, but between exaggeration and people simply not remembering stuff stated, months ago, during an online party campaign, it didn’t get much traction.
O’Toole had to repudiate the firearms portion of his own published platform
…so there was a bit of boogeyman stuff, which isn’t to say Trudeau didn’t also embarrass himself during the election.
It is extremely, extremely unlikely we will see an actual coalition. A party (almost certainly the NDP) just voting with the government so as to avoid triggering an election isn’t really a “Coalition.” A coalition is a much more formalized thing. Canada at the federal level hasn’t had a real coalition government, ever, except during the First World War.
Have we really reached the point that you think people who disagree with you about politics are traitors?
Not sure the Greens enter into it. CPC, Bloc, and NDP all have enough votes individually to take the Libs over 170, and the Greens don’t. Would have to be some super weird un-whipped confidence motion for the Greens’ two votes to matter.
Well I was just meaning various party’s appetites for another election I can’t imagine the Liberals are thrilled they dumped a load of money running and wound up back at the starting line.
Definitely not. But people whose primary political objective is to undo Confederation and destroy my country (Bloc), or destroy its fundamental social liberal values in favour of racism, hate, and a medieval anti-science ideology (PPC)? Yes, they are traitors. The word is meant to denote the fact that they represent radical, actively destructive ideologies, not just perfectly reasonable views that I happen to “disagree with”. There’s a reason that the PPC attracts all the white supremacists, and the Bloc all the separatists. Admittedly, not all Bloc supporters are separatists, but all of them support the hypernationalism of Quebec über alles.
This is actually the free market solution. The so-called Conservatives hate free markets. They always go for monopoly conditions. Even Adam Smith understood clearly that you needed government regulation to ensure free markets.
I would like to see, not only carbon taxes but taxes on all kinds of pollution. That would likely destroy the oil sands.
The opposition to climate change measures doesn’t have anything at all to do with monopolies. There’s no monopoly in Canada on any aspect of carbon emissions and Conservatives aren’t arguing there should be one (nor is anyone.) It’s not part of the discussion at all.
The problem here is largely an issue of whether/how the government should be pricing externalities, which of course is an issue in a lot of areas, and ALL parties get this wrong across a multitude of issues because it’s not something that usually has a clear constituency.
To use a different example, banning plastic straws and forks is stupid. It’s an insanely dumb, pointless move, but not because reducing plastic usage is a bad idea. That is a great idea. It’s because it targets a small part of the problem with government overreach but fails to address the broader problem at all. A vastly better solution would be to tax plastic. Have the plastic equivalent of a carbon tax. You wanna use plastic straws? Fine, it’s a free country, but pay for it so the government can offset the impact. Give people a choice; you can pay more, or you can choose differently. Then estimate the impact on a lower-income household and hand that money back in tax credits.
Basically that’s the same as a carbon tax. The problem is that it has no specific lobby who wants it; people would just see prices go up and they’d hate that, even if there was an offsetting tax break. “Wahhhh, now a box of straws is twice as expensive!” Plastic manufacturers would form an alliance and run ads bitching about it.
The government tends to react to things that positively affect a small group and negatively affect everyone in a hard to see manner; that’s why they kneel before the dairy industry and let them screw the general population. Taxing externalities, however, has a very visible negative effect (higher prices) but hard to see positive effects.
Even in the case of carbon taxes where the population knows about the risks of climate change people still bitch about carbon taxes and gasoline taxes.
They should just make it so you can/must return any packaging that doesn’t go into your blue bin, to the retailer. They’re the key to the chain. As soon as THEY have to store, manage, transport, pay to landfill, all that plastic, things will change right quickly I expect. Suddenly, we’ll be up to speed in mere months. No government interference between retailer and manufacturers, let the free market do the thing.
(In reality, it could be done without ANY government intervention, if you think about it. Consumers could just take their laundry bottles, shampoo etc, and clandestine like, leave them at the retail outlet. Now they have to deal with it. Haha!)
Around here , them that bring it to the dump pay the fee. So, instead of being in every resident’s garbage bin, and the city paying the landfill costs, the retailer now has to haul it and pay to dump it. Big savings for municipalities, AND a remarkably swift changeover from plastic.
Wait, you meant prices would go up? Yeah, no matter what, that’s def gonna happen when plastic is phased out. No way around it. They still have to compete with each other so that should minimize the rises. Manufacturers will be racing to see who can changeover fastest and get more market share, etc.
Retailers have no legal obligation to let you dump your garbage on their property. There would have to be a law specifically requiring them to do so, but the law would also have to require you be sure you’re dropping it off at the place you actually bought the plastic - in other words, lots and lots of ham-fisted, clumsy intervention.