They won’t create a new entitlement of universal day care
They won’t raise corporate taxes and destroy the first big tax advantage we’ve had against Americans in decades.
They wont’ screw up one of the few fiscally sound retirement systems in the G8 by increasing senior’s entitlements through the guaranteed income supplement, which is already quite reasonable if you ask me.
They won’t raise 11 billion in new taxes and use it to fund 11 billion in new spending programs, many of which will be permanent entitlements impossible to cut, resulting in perpetually higher taxes and bigger government.
For example, consider universal day care. If Canada implements that, it will result in more children being raised in institutions instead of being raised at home. It will change the structure of families and result in more two-income households. Once family structures have re-arranged around free daycare, it will be nearly impossible to go back without major disruptions to the work force. It becomes an entitlement.
In the meantime, the demand for those free day cares will go up, which will result in a shortage of available teachers.
I was a director of a day care, and our city government got involved to ‘improve’ them. They brought in bigger subsidies, and decided to require that all workers be teachers or people almost finished a teaching degree. This resulted in the layoffs of a lot of great day care staff with years of experience , most of whom were mothers or empty-nesters looking to keep busy, who did the job because they loved little children. They were replaced by young women who didn’t yet have teaching jobs and didn’t particularly want to be there. Our staff turnover went through the roof.
It also drove up costs, which required even greater subsidies. Even so, we couldn’t find enough staff to meet the minimum child to staff ratio, and wound up operating on waivers perpetually. The quality of child care went down substantially, and the costs went up to the point where the subsidies had to extended way up into the middle class to make it affordable.
This is the kind of meddling in child care the Liberals want to do on a national scale. It’s a very bad idea.
That’s what the question is: if the government falls, can the opposition request that it be allowed to form a government? My research indicated that nobody knows, so there would be a constitutional debate over what to do. Some (likely Harper) would argue no, and some (likely Ignatieff and Layton) would argue yes. My own guess is that the matter would be referred to the Supreme Court for an answer eventually, as it has ruled on constitutional issues in the past; and the Yes and No sides would argue it there. But I don’t think that right now, anybody can say for sure what would happen.
If the Supreme Court gave an answer, it would not be binding. The court ruled in 1981 (the Patriation Reference) that constitutional conventions cannot be enforced by courts. While they are a part of the constitution, they aren’t ultimately law.
The view that we are doing better than the other countries through the recession isn’t good enough for you? You’d rather be in Greece’s position, which would happen if the NDP were ever in power unless you have your head up your ass to think otherwise. What ground shaking programs will the Liberals introduce that will make it any better?
And if you are accusing me of scaremongering, what do you think is happening in this thread regarding same the accusations around sex marriage and abortion? You’ve been told by every ‘conservative’ member here that it would never happen, that parliament wouldn’t allow it, and yet you still have the bug up your ass over it. We do know for a fact that the Liberals implemented the NEP, so there is precedent for our beliefs.
I think it would be possible for any party to become the government provided that it held the confidence of the House, regardless of how many seats it held. For example, minority governments do not hold a majority of seats. Coalition governments can exist, so I see no reason why a coalition government has to have a majority any more than a non-coalition government has to have a majority. If a party can not hold the confidence of the House, and a coalition is not formed to replace it, there is no immediate reason why a non-coalition party could not ask to be made the government, provided that it held the confidence of the House despite the other parties not being willing to go so far as to formally make a coalition.
It then becomes a matter of the GG to decide how far down the chain to go before pulling the plug and calling an election. Having the bright line test of whether or not the proposed party has the confidence of the House is, in my opinion, the test the GG should apply – not whether there is a formal coalition or not.
Re: scaremongering. I am quoting Conservative party members, including their leader, stating their points of view on various subjects. Stephen Harper is still going on about the illegitimacy and instability of a hypothetical coalition government of ‘socialists and separatists’, even after one of his opponents has gone on public record as saying he will not seek a coalition if he does not win a majority of seats.
Nobody is disagreeing with you that he said these things.
What I am pointing out is that it doesn’t matter. Universal health insurance and gay marriage aren’t going anywhere. Hell, Harper doesn’t even suggest in your link that we get rid of universal health care; he’s merely advocating that private care be allowed, something that ALL the best health care systems in the world allow. Canada is rather unique amongst rich countries in trying to ban private health care. By European standards our system is weird and inflexible. We should be trying to get better, not just stay the same. Look at France’s system, widely held to be the best ever devised - they have private health care alongside a public system.
Which strikes me (and a lot of other people) as a bald-faced lie, because as we have discussed, there is no known way at this point for Ignatieff to form a government without a coalition if the Liberals win only the seats that we anticipate them winning.
Every election, more and more people without landlines become voters. Polls which only poll landlines will become more and more skewed, as those being polled are becoming older and older.
This election might not have many surprises where the polls are incorrect. Then again, it might.
I’m unsure what this has to do with Cat Whisperer’s post. Where did she speak about polling; specifically, telephone polling?
While I am sure you are correct in that telephone landline polling will skew older, owing to pollsters’ tendencies to call landlines, what about the fact that only 37 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in 2008? (Cite.) I think it’s great that young people are organizing “vote mobs” and exercising their franchise, but I wonder–in the end, how many 18-24-year-olds will actually vote?
A journalist friend of mine admits that polls are necessarily inaccurate. It is easy to ask people whom they will vote for, and to have them answer. But all they are doing is answering the question of a pollster, perhaps at times they are not prepared to answer–the baby is in the bath, supper is on the table, the kids are in the background whining, “M-o-o-o-o-m”; but the fact remains: the polled people are not by themselves, in the voting booth, with a ballot and a pencil. As a result, he says, the only poll that counts is the one on election day; and the media only reports pre-election polls because the public demands it. There is no real way of knowing who will win until the votes are counted. I think he has a point; and so, I don’t put a lot of faith in polls of any sort.
In other news, our local Conservative candidate (and this is a riding where the Conservatives could kick puppies, strangle kittens, and streak down Third Avenue, and still be elected) has decided he will not attend all-candidates forums. This has made more than a few people locally think twice about voting for him. He is new, as our old Tory MP has decided that he will not run. The fact that he is an unabashed Mormon may also have a bearing on the vote count–let’s face it, religion plays a very small part in Canadian politics, but many locally are worried about what role his religion will play if he is elected. It will be interesting to see what happens.
The fact that the conservatives have misled the Canadian public in the course of the last two parliaments. Bev Oda altering documents, Jason Kenney altering documents, the leaked first draft of the Auditor General’s report indicating that parliament was misled over G8/G20 spending, the use of the wrong quotation (which actually concerned the liberals!) claiming the Auditor General’s approval of the G8/G20 spending - the list goes on and on. Some of these have earned apologies after they have been caught out, many have not.
Bottom line - I have not been given any reason to trust the Conservative party, and I have been given plenty of reasons not to trust them. I have not been given any reason not to trust Michael Ignatieff, and I do trust him. From a standpoint of policy, I agree with much of the Liberal platform, and I don’t agree with, well, any of the Conservative platform. That’s the way I see it.
And yet every election the really good poll analysts are always pretty much bang on with their predictions. You don’t think that the polling companies haven’t accounted for this stuff?
You can’t trust a single poll much, but good meta analysis is generally fairly accurate. The Conservatives are probably going to win a minority with a great many more seats than the Liberals; it’s possible they will win a small majority but it’s not likely. Barring some horrific revelation or catastrophe concerning the Tories in the next nine days, the Liberals are not going to win. The pollsters and analysts can’t be THAT wrong.
The nail in the coffin for me in terms of the Conservatives was when they decided to prorogue (suspend) Parliament the second time, in December 2009. The first time they did it in 2008, it was supposedly because a coalition of the other parties was going to defeat them on a non-confidence vote. Conservatives painted the opposition as “un-Canadian” and possibly even traitors.
The second time, it was a transparent ploy to avoid difficult questions that had arisen about Canadian officials handing Afghan detainees over for torturing.
The question was: What role did the Conservative government play in this policy of handing prisoners over when we KNEW they would be tortured?
The scum Conservative party successfully avoided these questions by suspending the democratically elected body whose job it is to ask these difficult questions.
I voted yesterday, and I was startled at the number of people at the advance poll. First time I’ve ever had a chance to vote on a major religious holiday. I actually went home and came back an hour later, lucked out as there were only ten people ahead of me in line. As I left, the line was back up to thirty or forty.
Regardless of the outcome, I was heartened to see so many people out at an advance poll.
Her post spoke of ‘anticipated’ wins. How else does one form electoral expectations?
See, that’s just it – it’s no longer just the 18-24 year olds who eschew landlines. Actual voters aren’t getting polled now, too.
The statistical analysis of websites like fivethirtyeight has been proven accurate more than once. But that’s because their method of information gathering has been based on a fairly accurate model. I think that model’s becoming less accurate as time goes by, and I haven’t yet seen evidence of a change in their method.
Out of curiosity, Spoons, in which riding do you live? I ask because I’ve heard the same behaviour from three local Conservative candidates – the candidates for Guelph, Kitchener Centre, and Kitchener-Waterloo have all refused to participate in local debates or all-candidate forums. (And all three ridings are very tight races.)
