We’re at a political stalemate for the next 10-15 years unless someone gets their act together. The West and Quebec are dead set against the current crop of Liberals and Stephen Harper hasn’t shown that he understand what it takes to win in Ontario. I wish I saw a way out of this soon, but I don’t.
Depends. Quebec may have changed since I last lived there but they’re not politically stupid. They see the Liberal scandal as a provincial embarrassment, perpetuating the image of a province filled with crony patronage and people that can be bought off by the feds. In my view that means more Liberal blood on the floor.
However, Quebec gets very little from the Bloc now, they’d get even less should they have no Quebec cabinet ministers. If it looks like the Liberals will loose (and that means Ontario has to be willing to kick them out) then there’s potential for the NDP and Conservatives to pick up some seats in the Montreal/Gatineau regions.
As for a referendum, maybe a Quebecer could speak to that better than I can, but right now all I see is dissatisfaction with one of the two viable ruling parties. Unless the ADQ suddenly tap into a rich mother load of votes it’s either the PQ or the Liberals.
But again, given the choice between voting for crooks or people with differing views, why would you vote for the crooks?
Umm…
I do agree the Yes side could win, but that reason is just insane. As time passes, old people may die, but the people who stay alive GET OLDER. Those young people get older and more conservative. The population of Quebec is NOT getting younger.
Aside from the breakup of the best country in the world, a massive economic depression in Quebec with all the suffering that entails, tremendous violence and civil unrest, and the likely further breakup of both component nations?
Yes, I get it. You don’t like the Liberals. Really, it’s too bad they didn’t have companies give shares to their wives at prices far below market value, or allow oil companies to underestimate project costs massively and intentionally to avoid paying royalties. Those sorts of scandals you can forgive. You’re still voting for Klein, aren’t you? Answer your own question then - At what point do you stop giving that miserable collection of crooks and incompetents a pass simply because they happen to match up somewhat with your ideology?
Gorsnak, when do you?
I mean, even if you can’t force yourself to vote for the Conservatives over the crooks, could you at least see yourself voting for the Greens or NDP?
I did vote for the NDP last time. Though to be honest, it wasn’t out of opposition to the Liberals, per se. However, if you will check out post 33, I announced that I couldn’t vote for the Liberals in the next election. So, does that answer your question? What tipped the balance was the routing of taxpayer money directly back into the party, in effect using us to fund their campaigns. For some reason this pisses me off far more than handing out sweetheart deals to cronies.
I think what makes this worse is that at the same time they were lining their party pockets they were modifying legislation regarding the funding of the other parties. Essentially they made sure they could lock any election using laundered taxpayer Dollars.
I also think that while the Bloc may sweep Quebec it doesn’t necessarily mean another referendum or that the entire province will vote Oui. They will oust the Liberals but hold off on assuming the country will be split up on this… Unless of course my entire province keeps taking its stupid pills and votes these crooks back in.
Well, I live in Gatineau (I see you’re in Ottawa, we’re quite close!), and the last survey I saw showed that if an election had been held at the time, the Bloc would have been elected here. I think this was at the beginning of the year. If the Bloc can be elected here, it means that the whole province has decided to go against the Liberals.
I think you’re right that the Conservatives could possibly gain a few seats in Québec, especially in anglophone ridings, if it seems like they could win the next election. I don’t see much hope for the NDP, though.
The ADQ is doing a good job getting protest votes, but it doesn’t seem to get translated into seats yet. And they really still have to clarify their platform. They are considered Québec’s most conservative party, but when Yves Séguin was excluded from the government, they tried to recruit him, despite the fact that he was considered Charest’s most left-wing minister. And they won a by-election in Québec City almost entirely on the strength of their support for CHOI FM. I don’t think they deserve to get more seats, much less to govern the province, until we know what they really stand for. They still have a few years until the next election, so maybe they’ll find something.
Even if we accept that people get more conservative as they get older, which doesn’t seem that obvious to me, at least not for all the definitions of “conservative”, that doesn’t mean that Québec sovereignists who get older become federalist. It’s true that the nationalist movement is usually associated with the left, but it’s not a necessity.
Best country in the world? Do you have a cite for that? 
We really don’t know what would happen if Québec separated from Canada. You say it would lead to a massive economic depression, but I think that would mostly depend on how much both countries would be willing to cooperate. I’m sure there have been several neutral studies done on the subject, and I’ll try to find one of them if I have the time.
Actually, I live in the region that might be the most affected by separation, given our economic dependence on Ottawa.
I doubt, though, that we would experience “tremendous violence and civil unrest”. There would probably be pressure to further divide Québec and Canada, though; and that’s one of the risks. I’m not saying independance is necessarily a good thing, I’m just saying it doesn’t seem as bad an idea to me as it does to you.
I don’t know where this is going, though I’m quite worried about the statistics that are coming through (if statistics are to be believed). The idea of a Harper government scares me – his homophobia, his use of ethnic stereotypes to promote homophobia, his Freidmannesque economics, and his kowtowing to US foreign policy all terrify me, and I think the country would fall into disaster under him.
No matter how corrupt the Liberals get, they’d still be better than the Conservatives if they were using solid-gold…
checks forum. sees it’s not the pit
…toothpicks to pick their teeth, on public funds. I can’t understand how Canadians would want to move over to the worst form of corporatist government when there are better alternatives in this country. But if we were really two-party system, and the NDP and Greens didn’t exist, I’d vote Liberal – petty evil beats the greater evils of hatred and the introduction of the Woeful State*, where the poor and the sick are left to fend for themselves
*the contrary of the Welfare State, as in “for weal and woe…”
Yeah, look what a disaster the Conservatives have been in Alberta. We have no sales tax, low provincial taxes, one of the best economies in the world, we used our surpluses to pay off our debt rather than spend wildly, and as a result we have no provincial debt and no interest payments, giving us more money to spend on health care and infrastructure. We rank higher than all other provinces and half the U.S. states in economic freedom, and people are flocking here in droves from all over Canada and the rest of the world. We also have the lowest unemployment in Canada, and our real estate market is going up 11% per year due to population pressure.
But yeah, those Conservatives sure are scary. They must be, since Eastern politicians have been screaming about the dangers of them for so long, it must be true.
Alberta is far to the right of every other Canadian province, and farther to the right than most U.S. states. And yet, we’re wildly successful. Go figure.
And before you say, “It’s all because of oil!”, I have to point out that Albertans get less money per capita from oil than Quebec gets from equalization payments (or at least, we did before the oil price spike. We might be doing better than them now, but that hasn’t had a chance to trickle through the economy yet). So how come Quebec is such an economic basket case? Could it be perhaps because they have the highest taxes in Canada and the most regulated economy? Nah.
By the way, the last time I looked we weren’t running a theocracy here, either.
In 2002/03, the Alberta government received $7.1 billion in oil/gas revenues, for 30% of its total revenues. (cite) I believe I read somewhere that in 03/04 they came in at ~10b, or 40% of total, but I don’t have a cite handy for that. With a population of 3.1 million, that’s $2300 per capita in 02/03 and $3200 per capita last year (assuming my memory is correct).
In contrast, in 03/04 Quebec received $4.5 billion in equalization. (cite) With a population of 7.5 million, that works out to $600 per capita.
That’s a pretty substantial difference, if you don’t mind my saying.
The simple fact is that Alberta’s prosperity depends in large part on oil and gas. Sure, there are other factors, and sure, the massive resource royalties have allowed the Alberta government to institute a very low-tax regime which is conducive to business of all sorts. But you couldn’t be running at such low tax rates without that essentially free money unless you racked up huge deficits, so it seems rather odd to suggest that the answer for a province without gobs of resource royalties is to imitate Alberta’s tax policy. Sure, they could do it, and sure, everyone would love it while it lasted, but they’d be literally bankrupt inside a decade.
Now, I’m not inherently opposed to Conservative economic principles. But they need to be applied with a modicum of common sense. I’m not saying the Conservatives wouldn’t, but it bears pointing out that the last PC government rang up successive $40+ billion deficits, and the Liberals have 8 straight years of budget surpluses. I doubt that Harper would return us to the bad old days, but aggressive tax cuts could quite easily send us back into deficits.
As for the whole social conservatism thing, I should hardly think you’d be surprised that Hamish, as a gay fellow, wouldn’t be too keen on someone who wants to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to deny him his Charter rights. I know Harper isn’t in line with Klein on this, but Harper’s being awfully disingenuous about the whole gay marriage thing.
Oh, not at all: it just depends where you look.
Sure he is, because he plans on doing nothing to stop it. I mean, that’s as clear as day; he’s already talking about allowing his caucus a “Free vote,” which is code for “allowing a vote I know full well will result in the total, crushing defeat of any attempt to stop gay marriage.” The man isn’t stupid; he can do the math, he knows the other parties will vote the party line AGAINST any attempt to stop gay marriage, and he knows that means the bill will be blown off Parliament Hill. Then he can shrug and tell the party faithful, “Well, I tried. Never mind that. On to the next issue!”
That’s assuming the vote even happens, which it’s likely it won’t, since the impending and obvious doom of any such bill would allow him to declare it a pointless exercise, point out to his caucus that it would be embarassing for them even if it were formally declared a free vote, and just quietly kill it right there in caucus. A few dorks would complain, like that Myron Thompson guy who never takes off his comboy hat, but no biggie; he can convince enough of that power base that he tried, while pleasing the nervous Red Tory/Ontario caucus that the Neanderthals didn’t get their way. He can save face (more or less) with the religious right and not piss off the populace.
It’s really his only option. Attempting a whipped vote with a minority government means his government falls that very day, because you know the other parties would force an election over it. (Actually, it might cause his government to fall even with a small majority.) On the other hand, if he refuses to entertain a defense-of-marraige bill at all, the party faithful who care about it will determine he’s a lying weasel, and the party will be split into two camps. By allowing the “DOM” bill to charge headlong into the machine gun fire, he looks blameless.
Make no mistake about it; Harper’s talk, such as it’s been, on this issue has been deliberate hot air. He’s got about as much intent of seriously fighting a battle against gay marriage as he does of cutting off his own head.
I mean he’s being disingenuous about not needing to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause. I’m sure he’d bring in the legislation he’s talking about (or at least, he’d try). But he knows full well it would be challenged and found unconstitutional, at which point he’d wring his hands about the courts, etc., before “reluctantly” trying to pass legislation invoking the NC (assuming he thought it remotely likely that he had the votes to do so). Barring a Conservative majority, there’s no way he’d get past this last step. Maybe even with one he couldn’t, as a majority would require a lot of Ontario MPs who might balk at the NC. But I think it’s entirely likely we’d have to go through the first steps if he gets even a minority government, unless the Liberals invoke party discipline, which I don’t think is likely.
On preview, I must completely disagree with RickJay. Harper wants to pass legislation that will, according to him, fully protect the rights of gays, while maintaining the traditional definition of marriage. Never mind that this is impossible under the current interpretations of the Charter. Harper will sell it as a compromise, and unless the Liberals invoke the whip, a lot of Liberal backbenchers will vote for it. Heck, there’s enough Liberals now that are iffy in their support for Bill C-38 that its passage isn’t a foregone conclusion. There are something like two Conservatives that will support it. In a hypothetical Tory minority, I’d think there would be a very, very good chance Harper’s “compromise” would pass if the Liberal MPs are free to vote as they please. I see little reason to believe they wouldn’t be.
Harper is completely sincere in his social conservatism, and you’re a fool if you believe he’s just playing to his constituents without intending to follow through.
Gorsnak said:
Yes, and we sent 3.5 billion out of province in the form of equalization payments, for a net windfall revenue of about 3.5 billion dollars. Quebec received 4.5 billion in equalization payments (5.4 billion in 2000-2001), which means the province received a windfall revenue a billion dollars higher than did Alberta.
As for the per-capita thing, I confused Quebec with one of the Maritimes provinces, but looking at the latest numbers, it appears that they aren’t receiving more than Alberta on a per-capita basis.
And of course, this is restricting the scope of discussions to royalties alone, before we even begin to consider the myriad of other ways that the energy sector contributes to Alberta’s tax base. Is it really so hard to admit that a significant portion of Alberta’s prosperity is due to geological good fortune?
Both BC and Saskatchewan have oil and gas resources yet aren’t as successful. BC has a huge wealth of oil off the Queen Charlottes, but has done nothing to develop it. And it has other resources that Alberta and Saskatchewan don’t have. While being lucky enough to have the second largest oil reserves in the world is a stroke of good fortune it still takes the will to let people and business take advantage of it. The trick now is not to squander that resource and plan for the future for when it finally runs out. A good start was paying off the debt. Now is the time to build up the infrastructure for the long term and diversify the economy.
Definitely Alberta is starting to have infrastructure problems. I read a report that said it was the largest risk to large economic growth in the Edmonton-Calgary corridor. We definitely need infrastructure investment.
Gorsnak: Sure, we are lucky to have the oil reserves. But we have also done a very good job managing this resource and the revenue from it. We didn’t go on spending sprees (despite the screams of the opposition). We paid off the debt, lowered taxes, and then modestly increased spending after the debt was paid off and we were free of interest payments.
We could have pulled a California. California’s problem is that when the dot-com boom hit and revenue in California skyrocketed, the government spent like drunken sailors. Then the money ran out, and California wound up with a huge structural imbalance.
What a pity that some people don’t accept blogs as valid sources of information.