Probably I will either vote conservative or not vote. Though if I decide not to vote I’ll still go in and spoil my ballot.
Slight hijack: Are we still doing that bit with the parties getting $X per year in funding for each vote they receive?
Another NDP voter here. If my riding goes to the Conservatives from the Liberals, it’s going to be 1993 all over again with the shoe on the other foot. My riding is as red as you can get.
Likely the Greens again. I’d vote Conservative if they fielded a sane candidate. Of course, since it’s Alberta, we’re stuck with thie guy we’re got until he retires in 20 years (he’s young) or completely implodes.
Conservative. I don’t know what kind of anti-conservative propaganda you guys down east seem to get, but you know what? Voting for Conservatives won’t throw Canada back to the 8th century. It won’t demolish our cherised ‘Canadian values’, whatever the hell those are. We won’t have a state religion, evolution thrown out of schools, or gays being rounded up into concentration camps.
We have had a Conservative government in Alberta like, forever. Guess what? It’s a pretty nice place to live, even for those who like their vices. I’ve never seen any special persecution of gays, and we don’t drown our poor in the North Saskatchewan river.
In fact, people are coming from all over Canada to live in Alberta.
If a Conservative government is elected in Canada, here’s what you can expect: 1) tax cuts. 2) and end to the idiotic gun registry. 3) Friendlier relations with our biggest trading partner and bestest buddy, the U.S. 4) No doubt, some religious rhetoric as a sop to the base, without changing government policy in any way, 5) A reinvigorated military.
Aside from the religious pandering that I could do without, the rest sound pretty good to me.
I will probably vote conservative in a a Riding that will be overwhelmingly Liberal or NDP.
If I were supreme dictator of the world, Canada would have a Conversative Minority Government. (I like minority governments, less likely for any one skewed view point to run roughshod over the country and policies for 5 years. The only drawback is an election every 12-18 months).
-DF
(Yes, I was raised in the west: I like guns, a balanced budget, and the ability to meet the country’s military obligations. I also like access to quality health care, and I believe that post-secondary education should be dearly purchased (with student loans if need be) as a valued investment. Make of this what you will.)
Conservative. And, what Sam Stone said.
Concentrations camps? Hopefully not. But I do recall that there was a sitting Alliance member not so long ago who believed homosexuality should be re-criminalized. And the merger of the parties likely did little to help, since the saner PCs (Brison, Keith Martin) jumped ship.
Given the things he said, I strongly believe that Harper is an evangelical Christian who saw how Stockwell exploded in front of the media, and is being very careful to keep his real views under wraps. I think the Conservative party is a Trojan horse of evangelicals – their occasional antigay spasms and things Harper says in less-guarded moments would seem to confirm that.
As for anti-Conservative propaganda, please note that the link posted above is a transcription of a speech of Harper’s own words, in a right-wing magazine. We don’t need to put words in their mouths since what they actually say is so scary.
Also, let’s not forget that Klein is the only premier in the country who’s threatened to use the nothwithstanding clause to make sure people like me stay second-class citizens. Harper has demonized us to sell his campaign. He has threatened to take away our hard-won equal rights, and claiming he hasn’t would be an insult to our intelligence. And he did propose an amendment to bill C-38 that would have killed it.
Either this man is a bigot who’s prepared to use the force of law to deny us a right to equality, or he’s a compulsive and consistent liar. I’m not sure either recommends him as leader of a country.
When a politician tells me, “I’m going to make you a second-class citizen,” I’m inclined to trust them. It’s dangerous not to.
So in short, Liberals and others on the left side of the political have shifted rightward economically and Stephen Harper made the argument that conservative parties now had to attempt to shift the social spectrum rightward to differentiate themselves. From Paul Martin Liberals in particular as the article states.
I’m under whelmed Hamish; you could’ve at least gone and found bit where he was going to re-criminalize sodomy like Tom Wappel would like (Liberal).
As to Klein’s threat to use the not withstanding clause, coming from a Quebecer it’s a little rich. Thank you Boo-Boo. I would think that the appeal of the not withstanding clause to provincial parties appealing to electorates unready for (or afraid of) change would be apparent to a Quebecer.
I think he’s more referring to “[The Left]'s system of moral relativism, moral neutrality, and moral equivalency is beginning to dominate its intellectual debate and public-policy objectives…” and the various references to “strengthening the institution of marriage,” all of which means down with us. To say nothing of various other things that we disagree with, such as hammering away at social programs, abandoning Kyoto, supporting the war in Iraq, et.seq.
Oh, don’t worry, we don’t really like young Mr. Wappel either.
Okay, that was a non sequitur. You realize that Hamish and I are both Anglophone, right? And do you realize that Quebec’s language lawshaven’t used the notwithstanding clause since 1993, right?
In any case, how does any of this prevent us from thinking it’s vile that Ralph Klein contemplated using this extraordinary mechanism to stand in the way of gays and lesbians’ enjoying our right to marry?
My riding, I am 100% certain, will go Liberal no matter what. As such, I will be voting with my conscience - NDP. If there was any contest, I would vote Liberal.
It blows me away that the Conservative Party hasn’t clued into this yet. They totally boptched the last election because of that exact belief, held by everyone outside of Alberta–nobody trusts Harper and that is why the Liberals will win the next election.
And I still don’t understand how anyone can “prefer” a minority government! Nothing is accomplished and its a huuuuuge waste of time and money. The Conservatives passing a vote of non-confidence will cost as much as that stupid Adscam (yes, elections cost money)!
If anyone out there has any voice within the Conservative Party, I’m begging you, pleeeeeeease get them back to being PROGRESSIVE! We need a viable alternative in this country, and there needs to be varience in how our economy is managed, which is why I would love to have a strong Conservative party. Both Alberta and Ontario did extremely well with concervative politics, but our country on a whole is not regressive.
A while back I heard or read somewhere a series of sound bites from Conservative party members. I think it was during their recent policy convention. One of them was lamenting what was being hailed by the media as a “move to the centre” (i.e., not committing to an anti-abortion plank in the platform) and commented to the effect that she thought they’d gotten rid of the ‘progressive’ part of the party with the name change. I’m not very optimistic about the chances that the Conservative Party can re-incorporate a socially progressive wing.
Perhaps there is one chance. If the Tories pick up a bunch of seats in Ontario and form a government, some of those rookie Ontario members are going to end up in the cabinet. If at least a handful are more progressive (right now there’s really only Stronach), perhaps they can have a moderating influence. The thing is, I’m not at all sure that the party is progressive enough at a riding association level to nominate the moderates you and I would like to see, so this might be a lost cause, at least for the moment.
Well that makes three of us. My point is that the article does not appear to paint a cold calculating frothing at the mouth evangelical conservative ready to sterilize the disabled and put homosexuals in concentration camps. Rather the article from the leadership run-up shows a calculating politician setting the expectation of his social conservative membership fairly low, while making them feel central to the party.
I apologize for my snarkiness and since I don’t want to get this poll punted to GD I’ll finish up quickly.
Of course I know you guys live in Montreal. My point was that it was liberals that restricted recognized rights while conservatives have proposed using section 33 to prevent the expansion of recognized rights. That undermines the arguement that the threat of the not withstanding clause as an exclusive weapon of the nefarious right. Besides being Quebecers I figured the use of Quebec provincial governments appeal to majority’s fears of assimilation/change would be an obvious parallel to Albertans reluctance to change a basic societal institution.
Either way, the Conservatives have made no secret of their agenda. I mean, the Conservatives tried to link same-sex marriage to the sponsorship scandal, for chrissakes. Any way you slice it, a Conservative government is bad news for Queer rights.
Not really. First, I think it’s incongruous at best to compare the maintenance of French as a vehicular language in an Anglophone continent to the maintenance of second-class status for gay and lesbian relationships.
Furthermore, we’ve seen over the last twelve years that substantial protection for the French language is possible without the use of the notwithstanding clause. It is also clear, however, that any further restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples only will contravene the Charter and require the notwithstanding clause. This is an indication that whereas one goal is in line with the Charter’s goals, the other is not.
Grey, polyester/pure laine blend here, the reason the Conservative party will flop again here (the same reason the NDP has not had a breakthrough although its policies are much more palatable) is that they are both perceived as Anglo parties and we learned from experience to never trust Anglos with the future of our language/culture. The Feds had over a hundred years to show their goodwill towards Francophones and they squandered it with their inaction, now that trust has to be earned back. You’ll notice that the only time the PC did well in Quebec in recent history, was when it was lead by someone who was perceived as a Quebecer (Mulroney AKA Moose Jaw) and also there’s the fact that whenever a Western politician blatters against bilingualism it is the top headline here (I still remember Van der Zalm’s comment about how the fact of seeing French on his cereal box in the morning made him sick :eek: ). So figure that out, the Conservatives are lead by an Anglophone and its power base is located in the West, you do the math.
Oh, and I intend to vote NDP in the next election.
It gets more interesting…
Our poll now stands at:
45% NDP
25% Conservative
12.5% Liberal
12.5% Undecided / abstain
4% Green Party
::sigh::
I live in Diane Ablonczy’s <sp?> riding. She wins elections by margins of 10K votes and more, so my vote isn’t going to count very much. She does seem to have her head screwed on pretty straight, even for a former reformer. I’ve always been a lifelong liberal supported, except for when Chretien got a little too megalomaniacal towards the end. Regardless of the Gomery scandal, I’m really disapointed in the current governement’s lack of leadership and initiative. Martin is really turning out to be a big-talker little-doer. I can’t abide the NDP’s fiscal policy, so I will probably wind up voting conservative this time around, one more tiny drop in the Albertan ocean…
This is a good question. I don’t want to vote for any of them. I don’t want to encourage our current political system to continue. I would like to scrap our current system and create one that actually works for Canada and Canadians. I would vote for the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation if they ever fielded a candidate. Maybe I’ll write-in a vote for David Suzuki.
Dang it, I broke the thread.
chow