My operating theory is that it’s due to matt_mcl’s hard work.
A few weeks ago I would have agreed that this might have been possible. Now though - you hit the nail on the head with your question about who would become PM. Depends very much on how many seats the NDP gets and how many the Liberals lose. I see Layton being happier in Opposition.
I guess the voters are all stupid and gullible then. 
In some ridings, it may be a case of "whoever has the best chance of beating the Conservative. I could move 10 km, and find myself voting Liberal, NDP or Green.
Nah, he’s probably out prancing around naked in the woods as Wiccans tend to do.
Pretty much.
Only one weekend to go! Do Canadians get to enjoy a media blackout in the days before the election, or must you suffer the advertising right up until polling day?
You call the NDP “smiles and snake oil;” just image if Harper had a majority, it’d be 4 solid years of
[ul]
[li]Tory MPs told to keep their mouths shut.[/li][li]The national press being banned from getting near Harper.[/li][li]The parliament being routinely lied to by the standing government.[/li][li]The opposition being soundly castrated.[/li][/ul]These are not trivial issues; most Canadians have no trust in a government that requires you to have trust in them.
[quote=“orcenio, post:726, topic:575419”]
You call the NDP “smiles and snake oil;” just image if Harper had a majority, it’d be 4 solid years of
[LIST]
[li]Tory MPs told to keep their mouths shut.[/li][li]The national press being banned from getting near Harper.[/li][li]The parliament being routinely lied to by the standing government.[/li][li]The opposition being soundly castrated.[/li][/QUOTE]
This doesn’t sound any different from past governments.
People have strangely short memories. Doesn’t anyone remember how the Chretien government was roundly and regularly criticized for secrecy, or consolidating power in the PMO, for keeping backbenchers shut up?
They’ve been saying this since the days of Sir John A.
I certainly have a short memory so some cites would be helpful.
Well, as I said some two weeks ago:
This was just slightly before the NDP surge (now I wonder if it’s actually true that the NDP has no chance to form the government, even though I’m not expecting that for May 3), but the point was that the NDP has been working hard in Quebec ever since Layton’s been its leader. And they’ve increased their vote share every single time: 1.8% in 2000, 4.6% in 2004, 7.5% in 2006 and 12.2% (and a seat) in 2008. I’m as surprised as everyone that they’re now at 35% or so, but it was a sure thing that they’d increase their share again; looking at polls from March they were already somewhere between 14 and 20%. I guess what we can say is that they’ve suddenly reached critical mass: once you’ve got a sufficient share of the vote, word-of-mouth and media exposure gives you momentum which in turn makes your campaign snowball.
Tout le monde en parle. But I don’t think it’s such a surprise. Switching between the Bloc and NDP isn’t so hard if you’re a moderate nationalist, much easier than you probably think. Layton has the advantage of looking like someone who knows Quebecers and knows what they want Canada to be and what they want their place in the country to be, which we cannot say of Harper or even Ignatieff.
This is true. If they manage to reach 15 or so Quebec seats, it could be looking like the ADQ breakthrough of 2007; anothing political event that was predictable up to a point but surprised the party so much that they entered the National Assembly as Official Opposition with a caucus of placeholders. Their performance was so appalling that they were severely punished in 2008. The same thing could happen to the NDP, so they’ll have to give their new MPs a thorough formation.
What the Bloc is actually saying is “Vote for us because we represent your interests, unlike all other parties who represent the interests of English Canada which are different and often opposite from yours.” And this can definitely work against the Conservatives and Liberals, but the thing is that the NDP has managed to plant the idea that it can also defend Quebec’s interests. So the Bloc has apparently started attacking the NDP’s record as a federalist, left-wing party (and therefore one with a tendency toward centralisation), raising up its role in the 1981 Patriation debate and the debate on the Clarity Act in the late 90s, and demanding Layton answer a few questions about its position on some issues important to Quebecers. I think it’s too late for the Bloc this time, Layton can just keep his mouth shut until the election and his surge will still probably concretise itself. But it may become more of an issue in the next election, which (if the Conservatives do not get a majority, and are not propped up by the Liberals) could happen soon, perhaps before the end of the year. Of course, the leaderless Liberals might very well decide they want to buy themselves some time by supporting yet again another Conservative minority government.
I wouldn’t want to bet my house on it, though. Late surges by unlikely parties sometimes pull back on Election Day and the arrangement of ridings and support in Quebec heavily favours the Bloc; depending on just how large the gaps are, the NDP could win in popular support, but win very few seats. It is quite possible they could win the popular vote in Quebec and still win fewer seats than the Bloc, Liberals, AND Tories. Depends how much they win the popular vote by - it has to be a reasonably good margin to translate into big seat gains.
Terrific Toronto Star story a few days ago about another NDP candidate in Toronto who, so far as anyone can tell, might not actually exist. Well, I’d presume there is some way EC ensures a person exists, but nobody can find her and the NDP won’t say anything about her.
I’m also amused by the situation in Berthier-Maskinonge where NDP candidate Ruth Ellen Brosseau took off to Vegas during the campaign and apparently can’t speak French even though essentially all her potential constituents are Francophone. In a hilarious add-on, Brosseau - who works at a bar in Ottawa - is now refusing interviews because she’s “Freaked out” by media coverage. Talk about your ill-advised job applications. “Sure, I’d like to be an MP. But I don’t speak the same language as the people I’d represent. Oh, and I don’t like media coverage. Also I hate anything involving voting.”
ADQ situation? Entirely possible. I’m also remidned of the surprise NDP win in Ontario in 1990; the slate of candidates wasn’t outright silly like we’re hearing about this slate, but when they had to form a cabinet there were a lot of folks running the province who clearly weren’t ready for management positions.
I think you’ve summed up the Conservative party attitude quite succinctly here.
-They think that 65% of the Canadian voters are stupid and can be ignored.
-They think that nuclear scientists at Chalk River are stupid, and the warnings of the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission can be ignored.
-They think that researchers in the Lancet are stupid, and BC judges are stupid for saying that Vancouver’s safe injection site is a good thing and saves lives. Ideology trumps science, because everyone else is stupid.
- They think that the IPCC is composed entirely of stupid scientists, and that Conservative ideology must be correct in terms of global warming.
I’m in a conflict position on the Chalk River issue and can’t address it. There’s more to the story than you probably are aware of.
I’m not sure what to think of safe injection sites. You might be right on this one.
The Conservative party has in fact acknowledged climate change as an issue. Bankrupting the country through carbon taxes, cap and trades, etc. isn’t going to help anyone right now. Especially since Canada’s output is what, 3% of the global total? We have bigger fish to fry.
The Conservatives have the right policies for the continuation of economic growth. The NDP are promising anything and everything to everyone. The Liberals fall somewhere in between, have no defence strategy, want to institutionalize day care, and a bunch of other stuff I don’t think we can afford.
I gotta conclude you are right from the results; but honestly, I didn’t notice any increase in overall Liberal shittiness over last time around, or anything that the NDP has done to be so attractive.
I’m simply flabbergasted.
Perhaps it is that the electorate has been willing somewhat to give the Libs the benefit of the doubt for a while, and has concluded they are not going to improve, so they lost patience.
FWIW the vast majority of the Liberal ads playing in Québec that I’ve seen have had Ignatieff talking, discussing his platform (insofar as such ads tend to go). I’ve seen the spinning coin ad, while watching a Toronto-based TV channel, which doesn’t mean it hasn’t aired elsewhere, but perhaps speaks to the different approaches being used in different regions.
That’s my experience in Quebec as well. Ignatieff is front and centre and talking strictly platform in the TV ads. They’re really very effective ads. Mind you, I don’t watch an awful lot of tube these days, so maybe I’ve seen a very small sampling.
The thing that Layton will learn about Quebec is that they’ll crush you just as quickly as they’ll raise you to the rafters. I’ve never seen such a bandwagon electorate. My SO is practically on the verge of leaving the Bloc for the NDP. It’s astonishing.
Well, I’m sure you know quite a bit more about Chalk River than I do, but I think I can say that Gary Lunn, MP with 2 whole years of experience as a lawyer knows a whole bunch less than the actual scientists involved. It’s hard to get the facts when federal scientists are told what they can and cannot say by a government concerned with ideology.
Yes, the Conservatives have (finally) acknowledged that Climate Change may have a factual basis, after many years of denial. When they actually come up with potential solutions instead of doing nothing but pissing and moaning about potential solutions, I will actually believe that they are sincere.
Your opinions about the ability of the Conservative Party to do what is best for Canada are certainly sincere, and some of them I agree with. However, to simply paint voters for other parties as gullible believers in “smiles and snake oil” is disrespectful of other valid points of view.
Believing that money grows on trees is not a valid point of view.
In the last couple news clips I’ve seen of Ignatieff speaking, he’s been making the point that the Liberals need to have a clear message to distinguish themselves from the other parties - so at least the Liberals are aware of it. However, all that I end up getting from it is that their clear message is that they need to have a clear message. 
Believing that this caricature is an actual NDP or Liberal belief is not a valid point of view. It just indicates that your knowledge of what the other parties are all about is rather dated.
I dunno. The government signs their paycheque. I think it’s entirely reasonable for your employer to ask you not to discuss recent findings, patents, experiments, etc. You sure wouldn’t have direct access to scientists at say, Dow Chemical, without upper management OK’ing it.
Whatever we do in Canada has to be harmonized with policies in the US or else we’re setting the country up for economic disaster.
I apologize. I think we’re all nervous about this outcome for our own esoteric, and to us, valid reasons.