Well, strangling the military is definately an old tradition. I’m still baffled by how all that dough got blown on the gun registry(with a properly managed registry that issue would have died long ago).
On the last point, I always have trouble finding examples of this “idiotic hostility to the United States”. Little help?
Actually, I’ve always been a little baffled by your vehement dislike for the (current) Liberals, since you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and the Liberals have been exactly that for a decade now. They would seem a better match for your views than the socially conservative Reform/Alliance bunch. But anyways, I’d like to dispute your suggestion that the Liberals’ success is due primarily to their shift to the right. Not that that hasn’t been a part of it, but the single biggest factor for the current government’s longevity is the fact that Mulroney singlehandedly pissed off Quebec nationalists and Western conservatives enough that they both split off to form splinter parties and in the process destroyed the only national rival that the Liberals have. Chretien probably could have co-opted Broadbent’s policies and won three straight elections too, given the situation. (Okay, an exaggeration, but not by very much I don’t think.)
Admittedly, the Liberals do have more credibility in terms of fiscal responsibility than the Tories do now, but I don’t think I’d characterize that as a Clintonesque shift to the right. It was simply facing the reality that the deficit spending of both the Trudeau and Mulroney governments couldn’t be continued. I guess I don’t really see this as a left/right issue, since in my experience fiscal irresponsibility hasn’t been more prevalent anywhere on the political spectrum. The biggest deficits in my lifetime, both provincially and federally, have been run up by PC governments, and the only real deficit fighting I’ve ever seen has been by Liberals and (provincially) NDP.
You know, this is really pretty small potatoes. Spending cuts were spread across the board; it’s not like the military was singled out, though I freely admit they’re in need of some money. But there you go, wanting to increase government spending again! Just like a conservative. 
The gun registry has been, from where I sit, ill conceived and ill executed, but by itself it’s not an issue that would sway my vote (it does, however, contribute to my general dislike for Allan Rock). And Chretien isn’t hostile to the US. He got on famously with Clinton. So Bush doesn’t like him, because he refused to toe the American line on Iraq against the wishes of the majority of the Canadian electorate. I’m fine with that. It’s perhaps not very hardheaded realpolitik foreign policy, but I think you’ll find yourself in a rather small minority in this country thinking that he should have knuckled under, even among conservatives.
I’d be fine with that. Can we sweep the whole Reform/Alliance and Bloq mess under the rug and resurrect her dad’s old party while we’re at it?
Sam, I have to admit I do not see how your cite in any ways contradicts my assessment of Ms. Stronach. She is certainly a powerful businesswoman, but she is a powerful businesswoman because her father gave her a big company. She did not build Magna or make it what it is; she’s not responsible for its success. If Bill Gates went nuts and suddenly handed me all his shares of Microsoft, would you say I was a brilliant businessman who built a huge software company?
Her sitting on various advisory councils is, again, because her father gave her a huge corporation to run. She’s on those councils for making donations and being a pretty face, not because she’s an academic. She recieved an HONORARY degree because… well, because she got a big company from her dad and gave a lot of money to the school. Paul McCartney won an honorary degree too, as did Bill Cosby, Lennox Lewis, and Tony Randall, but I wouldn’t suggest any of them lead the Conservative Party. That’s essentially her entire resume; My Dad Gave Me A Company. The National Post is all starry-eyed about her primarily because… she’s rich. (The Post also said it was inevitable that Stockwell Day would become Prime Minister.) I have seen no evidence at all that SHE is particularly competent. She would be the least qualified political leader in the history of the country.
Her DAD was a hell of a businessman, though. Maybe he should run.
I don’t want to resurrect the old Tory party - I thought they were the worst sorts of crony capitalists.
To be honest, I don’t like many Canadian politicians at all. I thought Joe Clark was a terrible leader, and Stockwell Day was just as bad.
My antipathy towards the Liberals goes way back - back to the days of the NEP, to the Liberal party’s flirting with dictators like Castro, their disastrous military policies, and the contempuous behaviour towards the west. Being a fairly young man when Trudeau came through Alberta on a train waving the bird to all of us sticks in your memory.
To be honest, the only Canadian politician I like is Klein. He’s been a great premier - the best Alberta ever had. Fiscally conservative, socially liberal - that’s Klein. It’s no accident that Alberta is by far the wealthiest, most free province in Canada, aand it’s not just because of our resources. The Tory party was running Alberta into the ground. Even when oil prices were high we were running deficits, and then when oil prices crashed we got hammered. Then Klein came along, instituted drastic cuts across the board, cut taxes, and now Alberta has one of the best economies in North America. Maybe the best. I think unemployment in Alberta is now at something like 4.6%. There was a recent report that said that if the Edmonton-Calgary corridor (the main populated area of the province) were a country, it would have the second highest standard of living in the world. And that’s after we ship $3,500 per person in equalization payments down east. Klein deserves no small amount of credit for that.
But other than him, the whole Canadian political scene just leaves me cold. I don’t like the Liberals, I don’t like Reform, and I don’t like the old Tories. It’s like you have a choice between arrogance and cronyism, or incompetence and stupidity. Yee haw.
But to be honest, if we had a federal system like the U.S. does and directly voted for Prime Minister, I’d be tempted to vote for Martin this time around, just because the CPC looks to be so incredibly lame.
BTW, I don’t think those issues I mentioned are trivial. I think the mismanagement of our military has been a disaster for Canada. There was a time not too long ago when Canada rode pretty high on the world stage. Our military was small, but highly respected. That gets you a voice, and some influence in world affairs. But after 12 years of Liberal stewardship, our military is falling apart. We can’t even meet our commitments to NATO and NORAD any more, and it’s getting worse. I think having a solid, professional military is extremely important. Canada built one of the best in the world, and the Liberals have squandered it.
And I suppose you don’t live out west, if you think the gun registry is no big deal. There is a TON of resentment towards it out here. It is largely seen as a useless, expensive infringement on our rights imposed on us from down east.
Ummm…I guess I’m just an unenlightened Easterner here in Saskatoon, but could you explain to me how Klein is a social liberal?
Come on, he only became Premier after failing his audition for ‘Spuds’ McKenzie
Well, I suppose spluttering about invoking the notwithstanding clause to prevent gays from getting married in Alberta might look socially liberal, if you squint really, really hard while standing on your head.
Lip service is not the same as actually doing something, Gorsnak. Klein certainly is not a reactionary. Of course, a provincial premier has fewer opportunities to demonstrate social liberalism than a prime minister, since criminal law and such is all federal.
Sam you aren’t shipping equalization payments to Ontario, so leave us out of that blame game, please. And don’t forget you’re shipping money off to B.C. and the Prairies, too.
As to the issue of the military,
“Twelve years of Liberal stewardship”? Umm… weren’t the Liberals elected in 1993? 
In fairness, the military was screwed over by the Mulroney government pretty bad, too.
The state of the Canadian military is the fault of a lot of people; the Trudeau government, the Mulroney government, the Chretien government, and the military leadership itself. The level of rot and corruption in the senior ranks should dissuade anyone from thinking it’s just the government beating up on the poor noble generals.
We’ve dealt with this before, but what should be done about the military is certainly NOT just giving them more money. Adding billions all willy-nilly to the CF will, it is certain, result in spending boondoggles of staggering scope and idiocy. The entire CF needs to be reorganized, starting with the dismissal of most of the officers above the rank of light colonel and the complete redesign of the CF order of battle.
Sorry, my ‘down east’ comment wasn’t meant to be a complaint. I was just pointing out that Alberta has an economy as good as it is despite shipping almost 10% of our per-capita income out of province.
As for the military - my experience with it is as a civilian who worked on a base (CFB Edmonton), and had lots and lots of military friends, plus teaching classes to military people (ground school for private pilot candidates). I know the Canadian military is way too top-heavy in brass - that’s been a standard complaint for a long time. And I’m sure a good house cleaning would be a good thing. That said, the fact is that the military is horribly under-funded. Hell, we had to send our soldiers to Afghanistan in jungle camo, and our soldiers borrowed desert fatigues from the Brits to avoid standing out like an oasis.
Our military deserves better, because even with its lack of funding it is damned good. Just ask the Americans, who awarded what, 40 bronze stars in the Afghanistan compaign to Canadians? The NATO tank games in Europe were nicknamed the “Canada Cup” because Canada won it so often, and Canada kicked ass in the top gun fighter competitions in the U.S. every year they competed in them. Canada’s military has a very rich culture all its own, and that culture breeds superior warriors. That is a priceless national asset to have, being able to punch over your weight. We are rapidly losing that, just because the people in power have no respect for them.
You’d have to go a long way before you could classify spending on the military as ‘willy-nilly’, considering how egregiously under-funded it is. You could double our military budget and still not be spending enough. Of course the money has to be spent sanely - no one’s talking about carte blanche.
So we can still call them the CRAP party? Hope so. That’s the best thing to come out of this whole mess.
My opinion: Martin is talking like McGuinty (a provincial premier who recently defeated the incumbent in an election, and is blaming his predecessors for the financially shit creek we are up). Martin is acting like he’s just been elected, by the people, on a mandate of “fixing up what the other party messed up.”
Wrong ! He was elected by his party. No one asked me if I wanted him to be PM. And I’m pretty sure I’m on the voter’s list.
And, it wasn’t a different party that got us into our alleged financial difficulties. It wasn’t even Mr Martin’s own party. It was … MR MARTIN! He’s been the finance minister for years, and now he’s trying to undo the damage done, and hoping that no one will notice that it was him that caused the damage in the first place. So far he seems to be succeeding.
NDP: I was hoping that the CRAPping of the Progressive Conservative party (and the comments of Larry Spencer) would mean that so-called Red Tories would flee to the Liberals, causing left-of-centre (orange?) Liberals to flee further left to the NDP. This doesn’t seem to be happening, partly because I think most Canadians are scared of voting NDP.
But I think there is an up-and-coming party which will happily absorb these new lost Lefties: the Greens.
People are starting to realize that not all of us on the Left are alike. We tend to split on the “labour” vs “environment” issue, and often these debates are difficult to solve. Also environmental issues are (for just about everyone, I think) much more relevent than labour issues. I think, in time, the Greens (ie Environment) will surpass the NDP, due to growing distaste for unions (which I share, although I love Layton and Broadbent and Rae) and thus for the NDP.
These are all my own little theories that have sprung from trying to explain Paul Martin’s overwhelming and (as far as I can tell) entirely unjustified popularity. All I can conclude is that he’s hugely popular because there’s no alternative (to the right because it’s, well, crap, and to the left because it’s the NDP). Can someone please tell me why he’s so popular?
Anyone?
The continuing dominance of the federal Liberals is frankly a terrible thing for Canadian democracy - and I am more or less in favour of their mix of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism.
Why? Because the longer a party continues in power without challenge, the more corrupt it gets. There seems to be a “competence arc” (as a party gets used to the business of managing and governing) and a “corruption arc” (as a party gets used to unopposed power). They work as opposites. A party must be in power for a while in order to get used to the business of government; but if it stays in power too long, it gets used to corruption. Parties have to be turfed every once and awhile, just to keep 'em honest.
Frankly, this new party does not seem up to the job of turfing the Liberals. Which is too bad.
Interesting thread here – thanks for starting it, Governor Quinn. I think the main reasons for Martin’s popularity have already been outlined by others – there is no viable alternative and Martin gets the credit, rightly or wrongly, for keeping the economy going for most of the Chretien era. There’s still a good deal of uneasiness about him, of course, especially in the left wing of the Liberals.
What I’ll be most interested to see is (a) the fate of the Bloc and (b) that of the ‘New’ Tories in the Atlantic provinces. With the election of Charest in Quebec, it seems like whatever wind was still left in the Bloc’s sails has been taken away. From what I have read, Martin ‘plays’ well in Quebec (the Martin family is of Franco-Ontarian heritage, IIRC, and Martin himself speaks perfect French). He might do well among those who support the ADQ at the provincial level as well as Liberal voters. These factors, combined with the identification of the ‘New’ Tories with the Reform Party (the lone PC MP from Quebec just announced that he will sit as an independent until the next election, after which he will leave politics) suggest that the Bloc will lose a significant number of seats, with the spoils going to the Liberals. It’ll also be interesting to see how many traditional Tory voters the ‘New’ Tories can keep in the Atlantic provinces, especially with all the recent high-profile defections and resignations.
Of course, the NDP is another issue altogether. Jack Layton has yet to prove himself and it remains to be seen if he can capitalize on the recent shake-up of the landscape. All in all, interesting times in Canada’s political life. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
Thank you for the compliment.
Martin also benefits from not being Jean Chretien, whose Trudeauiste pedigree was unpopular in some Quebecois circles.
Add to that the impending implosion of the Bloq within Quebec. Since there is no longer a conservative choice like back with Mulroney’s PC coalition there are a mitt full of seats to be plucked by the Liberal party.
Not good in my opinion. A predominately western opposition facing a predominately eastern government. That should nicely sooth regional complaints. :rolleyes:
One of the stations of the cross, in any Canadian political discussion, seems to be saying “the NDP can’t win.” It’s already happened several times this thread.
But this election is going to be like 1993 – all bets are off, because everything has shifted. In NDP circles, there’s an excitement I haven’t seen since I became involved in it. And while we haven’t won over any MPs (yet), I’ve talked to more than a few disaffected, left-leaning Liberals who are ready to trade in their increasingly-right-wing party for one that really represents the values of a “just society.”
Do I think Jack Layton will be the next prime minister? No. But I think we have a damn good chance at the opposition. After all, who’s left?
Actually, I think that with a well run campaign the NDP could quite easily snag 45 seats or more and Opposition status. They’re in a position to make a cut right through a scattered defence.
The question, however, is whether or not they can run a campaign. The last few were horrifically bad. Layton cannot possibly be a worse campaigner than McLaughlin or McDonough.
I disagree, however, that the NDP stands to gain much from the Liberals. Where they can gain with some savvy directed campaigning is in the West; they can take big time seats from the new Conservative party. Reform/Alliance suppoters have always been loathe to admit it, but a lot of Reform/Alliance votes were Western anger votes, cast without regard to ideology. If the NDP can again position itself as the party that hears the West, they stand to gain from the shattered remnants of the CPC.
Just a nitpick: of all the nasty adjectives I could think of to describe the Martin campaign, “lethargic” would not be one of them.
Martin had been working for a years at purging Chrétien supporters from the party at the riding-association level. He succeeded at getting his supporters riding-association president positions, and they, in turn, have been very careful about who they give membership forms to. This guaranteed that the membership was overwhelming pro-Martin.
If there’s one thing Layton can do, it’s campaign 
Seriously, I think we’ve been in the news more times since Layton became leader than we were for all of Alexa’s tenure. He’s charismatic and he’s committed to his beliefs, a rare combination in politics, on any side of the spectrum.
To say nothing of Quebec, and the disaffected Bloc vote.
Layton will certainly be an agressive campaigner, and that will make things interesting. I remember when Layton was running for the NDP leadership that there was concern about whether he’d be able to successfully appeal to the Western, agricultural segment of the party – I think of him as being from the “urban” wing of the NDP – he is very much a Torontonian, after all. Won’t this curtail his chances of getting “Western alienation” votes?
The NDP has a lot to gain, but a lot to lose too. Depending on the poll numbers, NDP voters in some ridings may be inclined to vote Liberal to stop Conservative candidates from winning in close races where the PC-Reform split had previously ensured Liberal victories.
And as for votes in Quebec – when I lived there, in the mid-to-late 1990s, the NDP used to run real political neophytes in ridings in the Montreal area – students and activists who had never before run for public office. (I remember many McGill students running for the NDP and none of them ever did very well.) While their intentions were noble, I think that the NDP will have to start taking Quebec more seriously if it is going to win seats there.