The Canadian Election Thread. (Or maybe not...)

Politics & Elections
181

Context, Rysto, context. Those quotes you’ve chosen were made in the context of the historical and political reality Québec comes from, as an explanation for the mentality here and offer a motivation for the behaviour of the province today. They are not attacks on you or the ROC, they are not condemnations. I really don’t know where you’re getting these ideas from, since they are not based upon anything I have said in this thread or on these boards.

FWIW your parents might not have been born, but mine certainly were, as well as my aunts and uncles. My grandmother had to have protection in her home as her father was publicly threatened with his life by the FLQ during the October Crisis. These are not ancient events - they are in living memory, and for many people, still very recent. This province has changed a lot over the past 60+ years, mostly for the good. A lot of that is because people have chosen to stand up for what they feel is right - and for what they feel are their rights, rights that had, in fact, been denied them. Maybe some of it goes too far, but some has yet to go far enough. It’s a balancing act, for sure, and I do not condone everything said and done for this province. But I understand it, and cannot blindly condemn it the way it seems so many other Canadians have.

If the Bloc had never split from the Liberals, but these same people were elected, would all of you have as much problem with it? If it wasn’t an issue of sovereignty at all, but simply the recognition that the cultural landscape is different? It really is different: different language, different (historically very) dominant religion, different social ideas (some), different entertainment and cultural influences, etc. Not better, but different, and for a long time, those differences were ignored, denigrated, tossed aside or used against the people here. Is it really wrong, then, to try and put a stop to that? It’s not about getting “two says” about things. It’s about having a say at all.

I really, really need to stop reading this thread. I think I’m going to regret posting this. :frowning:

182

How on earth do you expect me to interpret this as anything other than a condemnation?

183

All I can say is what I said before. There is a *context *to what I wrote which you constantly ignore; you have taken that quote out of it. I had just been effectively told that my vote, my voice, was invalid because of where I am from. I was responding to that hate and bigotry. I can condemn an individual action without condemning the entire ROC. You can’t seem to be able to do the same about Québec.
I hate this. I am a Canadian. I am also Québecoise. There is no contradiction here, and no problem here, and absolutely nothing wrong with this reality, which applies not only to me, but to millions of other people in this province.

I’m not strong enough for this. This topic is a painful and emotional one for me; I just don’t have the strength to justify or defend myself or my province here. It’s too exhausting. I’m sorry, I will not be continuing to respond. It is my failing, not yours.

184

The first time I ever came across “Quebecois” spelled as “Quebecoise” is in this very thread.

I thought it might be a spelling error.

A little research leads me to this question.

Does this mean you are a woman ?

185

Yes, she is, and a very nice one, as is her husband (we met them in Calgary a couple of years ago).

186

Her husband is a nice woman ? ;):smiley:

187

Uh, let me re-phrase that…:slight_smile:

188

No, I’m sorry - this is the difficulty of political discussion, that the conflict between two beliefs can so easily lead to this type of friction, and that our adversarial method of debate can silence gentler voices who have much to tell us. I regret your leaving, and I hope you will come back at some time. Despite my family’s roots there, I do not claim at all to understand the Québecois point of view.

189

Are these differences being ignored/denigrated/tossd aside/used against you today? If so, in what way are they? I think the issue today is that the majority of the “ROC” is of the opinion that - yes, you’re different and we respect and, in fact, like that. Now can we get on with it (ie being Canada)? And the message from Quebec **seems **to be “No! Not good enough!”

190

Sorry, just catching up on some of the interesting things that have come up in the last couple of days.

First, there’s an article in The Australian that spells out all of the parliamentary offsides committed by the Conservatives. As far as I am concerned, we are apathetic fools if we accept any more of this.

There’s a very good CBC reality check article that finally lets all the air of of Prime Minister Harper’s assertions about the ‘illegitimate coalition’. There is only room for two signatures on the 2008 coalition document, that of Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion. The only coalition document with three signatures on it is the one that was sent to then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson - that one has the signatures of Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe and Stephen Harper. Layton, Duceppe and Clarkson all state that a coalition was what was being discussed - only Prime Minister Harper claims that because the word ‘coalition’ does not appear in the document, the other three are lying. Apparently, they were planning on hosting a BBQ.

I actually like it when Prime Minister Harper goes on about the coalition government - it gives Michael Ignatieff more time to propose ideas that would be good for the country, and it makes Prime Minister Harper look like a hypocritical fear monger, which is all I’ve ever trusted him to be.

191

Someone has to bring this up.

Elizabeth May should be in the debates.

I’m assuming that the Green party will field at least 300 candidates again, almost a complete slate. Almost a million Canadians voted Green last time. That not chicken shit.

What is chickenshit is that I and most Canadians have to waste my time listening to Duceppe whose party I can’t vote for even if I wanted to. His party fields around 25 % of the candidates that the Green party does.

It just isn’t right.

I should be able to listen to May.

This is like the old boys network shutting shutting out an up and coming woman.

192

I seem to recall seeing May at the debates of the last election?

193

You recall correctly. But not this time.

194

Not yet, anyway.

I agree, there are no legitimate grounds to exclude the Green Party.

195

I’m not Quebecois, but this is precisely why I’ve just been watching this thread without saying a word. I tried so much as making a PEEP on someone’s facebook wall, and all the gloves were dropped. :slight_smile:

196

I’ve been keeping an eye on ThreeHundredEight.com, which keeps better track of all the various polls than I can on my own; their current projection is for a Conservative minority, with 151 seats.

The political issues I pay the most attention to are protections of civil rights, and the maintenance of at least a minimal social safety net. According to the Vote Compass, the party closest to my views is the BQ (heh), with the next two closest being the Libs and NDP, with the Greens not too far off. On just about any axis I care to look at, the Conservatives are on the other end from me. I was a member of the NDP for a few years, and am currently a member of the Pirate Party of Canada… though, since the latter is unlikely to run any candidates in my local riding, I’ve got the choice of voting Lib, NDP, or Green.

At present, the Conservatives are polling at just under 50% here - the Libs are 20 points behind them, the NDPs 10 behind them, and the Greens 10 behind them. If I want try to put into place an ABC (Anyone But Conservative) MP - then I should be trying to help direct all the non-Conservative votes towards a single candidate, which would mean strategic voting for the Liberal.

One interesting thought I’ve heard is that if Harper doesn’t manage to get a majority… then the PC might go through some internal struggles that result in it splitting back up into Conservative and Reform parties. If the right is as divided as the left… then that just might allow for some useful politics to get done again. I’m not going to hold my breath, but it is a pleasant thought…

197

Speaking of the CBC, there’s an article out today indicating that the online voter’s compass survey is flawed and defaults to Liberal. I took the survey, answering as an Alberta redneck who loves PM Harper and hates everyone else, and guess what? I’m a Liberal! :smiley:

198

Oh please, yeah it’s a large collective conspiracy where the old boys club have infiltrated the upper echelons of the CBC and Radio-Canada to keep women out of debates because they’re that dangerous. The media is responsible for that decision not the politicians.

I’m glad she’s out. Duceppe should be out as well but as we all know Québec is special /sarcasm. I smoke the odd blunt on occasion should I be able to listen to the Marijuana party debate Harper on foreign policy along with all of the other fringe parties that don’t hold a seat in the house ? You maybe on to something though I’d love to see a Canadian Free Speech Party run by Ezra Levant tear a few leaders a new one.

The debates in their current format are a snore and a joke. They’re too clinical. What I’d like to see is one on one debates an hour long on a limited number of issues with leaders debating others going down the party rosters.

As they stand now they’re not worth watching.

199

Hey, me too!

I’m apparently a gay marriage supporting, abortion loving super social conservative, too. I think the test is completely random.

200

The ‘vote compass’ may be flawed - but not nearly so much as the article seems to imply. The ‘research’ used was to run through it three times, once selecting the first answer every time, once the middle, once the last - and the people who created the questionnaire arranged the questions so that the first answer was ‘conservative’ half the time, resulting in all three run-throughs having the ‘researcher’ end up in the very middle of the two-axis graph. The liberal party’s expressed platform, in the form of its answers to the 30 questions, happens to have it positioned closer to the centre of the two axes than the other parties… and thus, the method the ‘researcher’ used ended up with him getting Liberal as his recommended party all three times.

As for your own results, I’m afraid that not knowing your answers, nor which topics you marked as ‘important’ or ‘not important’, etc, I couldn’t say much one way or the other. My /guess/ is that you disagree with the official Conservative party platform on enough issues to end up in the no-man’s-land between the PCs on one side and the cluster of the other parties on the other. If you want, we can try working through all the questions, and comparing your answer to each question to the parties’ answers, and thus figuring out what aspects of each party’s platforms are closest to yours - or not. If you do, I’m willing to go through my own answers if you want another point of comparison. Up to you, I suppose.