Although I personally think their website is in a bit of a shambles, you can read their “living” policy platform here.
I think you might be surprised how divergent they are from the NDP fiscally. The Greens will be way more likely to cut income and corporate tax than the NDP. Their party leader, Jim Harris, is a former Tory.
There’s also the fact that in the last election, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Suzuki Foundation ranked our environmental plan above the Greens’.
The BC vote is easy to determine. Conservative Alliance in all the big ridings without many people, and a mix of Liberals and NDP in the Lower Mainland and Victoria.
But this election? The Conservative Alliance haven’t got a hope until they run a credible candidate in Montreal-- which they can’t do, because their perceived social policies are as homophobic as they come.
Ontario may be the voting battleground, but symbolically, until the Conservatives work out a way to accomodate Quebec voters, they don’t have a hope of being anything other than a regional party.
And I wanted to add that it irks me seven ways to Sunday everytime one of my fellow Westerners (I lived in Saskatchewan until May 2004) brings out this tired and provably untrue claim.
Here’s what the seat distribution looked like, from Ontario eastward, after last year’s election:
Liberals: 118
BQ: 54
Conservatives: 31
NDP: 10
I do believe that’s a Liberal majority government, right there. All those Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. voters were just pissing in the chinook, yes indeed.
The Yankee Empire will have to be careful not to shoot its own Minutemen, standing frozen stiff, muskets still at the ready, determined to stop thousands of Arab terrorists from flooding into the U.S. at Niche, like some crazed, suicidal tsunami.
Most of the Minutemen who can still move are also rubbing their hands together because their mommies forgot to pack their mittens.
So I take it you’re okay with mountains and prairies - it’s just the people who live on them you have a problem with.
Gee, being one of the ‘Alberta Taliban’, I have to say I haven’t noticed the burkas on our women. We have abortion clinics, liquor stores every few blocks, and we gamble the night away. I haven’t noticed any particular religious indoctrination, and as you yourself pointed out, our conservative premier enjoys an adult beverage on occasion.
One thing I’ll give the Liberals - they sure know how to demonize their opposition. You need to stop sniffing whatever it is they are putting in the air and pay a little attention. Alberta has the strongest economy in the country by far, and it’s not all due to oil. We tend to like businesses, and keep the regulations out of their face. We have low taxes, no sales tax, and a live and let live attitude. And despite all the hateful rhetoric from people like you, we are the only province that enjoys a net influx of internal Canadian immigrants. In other words, people from all over Canada are leaving their enlightened liberal and NDP governments and voting with their feet to live in Alberta.
The next election will be more of the same - there are enough people like you who would vote for Pol Pot before you’d vote for a conservative that I have no doubt the Liberals will be re-elected, or the Conservatives might get with a minority government and survive a few months before the Liberals and NDP gang up and force another vote of non-confidence. There will be no effective Conservative Canadian government in the next election.
But wait a few years - Alberta’s economy is outstripping the rest of Canada by a wide margin. Our per-capita income is 40% higher than the Canadian average, and the gap is getting wider. Our taxes are lower than anywhere else in Canada and most U.S. states, and our population is growing so fast the infrastructure is becoming strained. That big population advantage you have is dwindling, and one day you may find that it’s Alberta calling the shots. So be nice.
Guys, seriously. Why can’t we stick to the politicans and their policies and leave province-bashing out of this?
My vote… I don’t know. I really like the NDP and their social platform, but my tax dollars are already complaining, so I think I’ll stick with the Rhino Party. 
I believe that the Rhino Party no longer exists in Canada.
Perhaps you should practice your mystic flying…
I think the Natural Law party is no more either.
Aw, shucks.
Well, better find out how to get an absentee ballot.
We need those yogic fliers. At least we could get some enjoyment out of this election.
And we need the Rhinos back. They wanted to flatten the Rocky Mountains so that Alberta could have a few more minutes of daylight. How can you not vote for that?
It’s off to the pit, Sam Stone.
Because aside from the whole separatist thing (which I acknolwedge is too big to ignore, which is why I would not actually vote for them), their policies are sensible and their leader is the only one who strikes me as remotely trustworthy. He has clearly won every debate I’ve seen him in.
There are heaps of alternative systems: proportional representation, single transferrable vote, etc. Many nations use these or a combination of these with FPTP to great effect. FPTP allows absurd situations like McKenna winning 100% of New Brunswick with only 60% of the vote - that is not very democratic!
er, no, people have been talking about electoral reform since long before that. They’re talking about it in BC, Ontario and PEI, where the “dismal failure of the Conservative party in Canada” is utterly irrelevant.
What? no, for what it’s worth I’m a born-and-bred Southern Ontarian. Sorry that we don’t all match your particular view of how we should think.
If you don’t know much about them, where does that assumption come from? The major difference between the parties is that the Green Party pursues market-based solutions to environmental problems rather than state- or regulation-based ones; their key policy (the Green Tax Shift) is about shifting incentives so that consumers would be rewarded for making environmentally sensible choices. The problem is that they’re not yet very good at things like policy, fundraising or organizing; and their current leadership and administration is either incompetent, or has highly questionable motives.
Yes, this happens when everyone who disagrees with the party line jumps ship.
I agree.
It is also due to Alberta’s extremely low minimum wage, welfare rates, and free one way bus passes for the poor to British Columbia so that BC can look after them.
From MacLeans
Isn’t that interesting. The richest province in Canada has the lowest minimum wage. Yes Sam you are right, it isn’t all due to oil.
Minimum wage laws have, at best, very unpredictable effects on employment (and that’s being generous). Suffice it to say that no consistant advantage in them has been shown. More to the point, in healthy economies they tend to be irrelevant.
I agree. He has won every debate I have seen as well. Doesn’t mean I would ever even remotely consider voting for his party.
Yes, that there are. There are many different forms of democracy, many of which lead to an even further fraction of the political scene. If I remember my Western European Democracy class correctly, Italy is one of the those countries, and they basically never have a majority government, which IMO, leads to a weak government that can almost never get anything done as they have to constantly be campaigning in a sense
Well of course this isn’t a new issue. I didn’t mean to suggest it was. However it has become more prevalent in recent years with the regionalization of the Canadian political scence. How is the dismal failure of the Conservative Party irrelavent in Ontario? Isn’t it sort of the big deal now?
Umm, relax, it was a joke, geez. How you took it otherwise is beyond me.
True enough. The assumption came from preconcieved notions that are probably not valid. I probably shouldn’t have said anything, for that I apologize.
Regardless of how it happened, its happened. The last thing the right in this country needs is more public infighting. They need to show strong leadership, and a more centrist policy. Much like the PC party use to have. Say what you want about Mulroney, he was a strong leader.
A live and let live attitude? Yet the party of Alberta (ok, I am simplifying things) came out strongly against gay marriage? A very important issue to most of us ‘enlightened’ easterners.
No denying that Alberta has the strongest economy in Canada. To say it all has to do with Oil would be wrong, however to say it doesn’t have a vast impact on that provinces economy would also be wrong. Oil rules in Alberta.
Oops, that last quote is from Sam Stone, sorry for not giving you credit.
There are 308 seats in the federal parliment. Ontario gets 106, Quebec gets 75 and Alberta gets 28. See the problem? **Ontario and Quebec have 59% of the vote ** and can and usually do determine the results of a federal election. Granted if they can’t decide who they want to win, then the rest of Canada may have an influence on the results.
I understand that Ontario and Quebec also have the largest populations. But regions vote in blocks and the interests of some regions that can’t form a government get ignored, and it is frustrating. That’s why the West wanted a senate (which has little real power) that was equal across provinces so there would at least be a forum to hear our concerns. Seems a small crumb to throw to the West, but it has been ignored because the Liberals do not need the Western vote to win. In fact making the West a scapegoat is the strategy they used to win the most recent minority.
Can I cast my ballot already? I know which way I’m voting.
Count me as another person that could have waited for this election, but for different reasons than most. I’m moving in a few months (in city) and in my new riding, I could have voted Conservative with a clear conscience, as my new MP would be (and in all real likelyhood will be) Jim Prentice, an all around decent guy. Instead, I’m left with that smarmy neo-con, Mandela-bashing Rob Anders on my ballot. I don’t think the Liberals have been punished enough, so I can’t vote for them, and I have an allergy to voting for the NDP, so I’m left with the “least damage” strategy of voting for the Greens. Not that I mind that much, as I think they’re on to something, and I encourage more voices in politics, but it would be nice to not be backed into a corner.
On the other hand, it guarantees my streak of not voting for the party that forms the government will extend to seven elections (provincial and federal)… in other words, all of them.
