You do pay attention to American politics, yes? Our policies are now for sale to the highest bidder. Appalling.
I’m sorry, Euphonious Polemic, Stephen Harper does have carte blanche to enact whatever legislation he wishes. He has a majority in the House of Commons and he has control of the Senate. He has that control for anywhere up to five years. I do not know if his fixed date election law will now trigger an election on the third Monday in October, 2015 or not. If it does not suit the Prime Minister, he has the ability to change it or ignore it. That is what was decided last night.
:smack: D’oh! Well, the thread was moving quickly, and I guess I missed it. Good jobs, Annie and CarnalK!
Agreed. Harper behaved as though he had carte blanche and was accountable to no-one even though he had a minority government. If it’s different now, it won’t be for the better. We will become more and more Americanized, and not in the better aspects of the US.
The Conservatives campaigned on a platform of increasing health transfer payments to the provinces by 6% per year.
As for privatization, Canada already has a mixed-mode health care delivery system, and Canadians pay more out of pocket for health care expenses than do people in many other countries with public health care. For example, dentistry and prescription drugs are privatized in Canada, as well as a host of non-essential medical services.
In addition, some of the biggest moves towards allowing private competition to public health care have come from NDP governments in BC and Manitoba. Reality tends to assert itself even for left-wing governments once they get into power and realize how expensive it is to provide universal health care for everyone with no cost controls.
No, if we were becoming more Americanized we’d run huge deficits and expand the size of government dramatically.
Canada is now the right-wing, fiscally responsible, low-tax and low deficit alternative to a U.S. suffering from runaway government spending, out of control entitlement benefits and an unsustainable deficit/debt situation.
Maybe the Americans will elect Republicans next time around and become ‘Canadianized.’ (-:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way. It’s not even a Liberal thing for me…they just seemed to be the ones who best fit the center, which is where I like to be. Now there is nothing.
I’m not confident that either Layton or Harper will move their parties to the center. Just my thoughts.
Well, I see an NDP candidate won in my riding (ew) but the Conservatives won overall, so okay.
It occurs to me that we don’t have the same wedge issues as Americans. Abortion? We got it, nobody cares. Gay marriage? Ditto. Capital punishment? Not enough people want it back. We can afford to concentrate on economic issues and not get sidetracked.
Did we recently repeal the Constitution? Unless we did, then of course he cannot enacy “whatever legislation he wishes,” since of course many theoretically wishable laws are not legal. There’s also, even in a majority government situation, a wide host of things that simply are not politically feasible even if they are legal. If, for instance, Stephen Harper introduced legislation to repeal public health insurance, the government would fall and his party would be annihilated five weeks later and blown out of politics for fifty years.
Honest to God, you may not support the guy, but he’s not Genghis Khan. The histrionics over this are becoming unreal. Of course I don’t expect it would have been any different had, say, things turned out so that Jack Layton led a coalition government - we’d now be hearing about how he was Lenin planning to turn Canada into a Communist state. The Toronto Sun tried to link Michael Ignatieff to Mao, I swear to God.
I said it before but now I have to comment on it; the political tone in this thread, and to be honest in a lot of other places, is (in many, though not all posts) absolutely disgraceful, from all sides, I might add. The level of ignorance, both willful and not, is shamefully extreme. For all they bitch about Conservatives being the puppets of America, I have never in my life heard the Canadian left sound more like Republicans. Everything they disagree with is un-Canadian, everything is un-democratic (never mind we just had one of them election thingies) any voter who disagrees with them is stupid or evil, and Stephen Harper is absolutely on par with Pol Pot and plans nothing but death and destruction. And make no mistake, the Conservative side has been spewing as much venom - not right this minute as they’re too busy gloating, but according to them the Liberals and NDP were dedicated to nothing less than the overthrow of the government and the use of nuclear weapons to incinerate every Canadian and sink the entire country into the sea.
The differences among our political parties are, in the actual real world made of matter and energy and inhabited by sane people, not really that big in the grand scheme of things. None of the serious parties, save the BQ, was advocating any major, life-changing adjustments to the manner in which this country is founded. None advocated any significant change to civil rights or equality. (Shamefully so, as the ongoing travesty of the living conditions of our aboriginal peoples was not an issue in this campaign.) Nobody advocated getting rid of public health insurance, contrary to the bullshit you’ve all heard. Nobody advocated getting rid of any social program of any consequence, in fact. All three parties advocated continued defense spending at current levels, continuing to tax young people and give the money to old people, and most of the fundamental assumptions of Canadian governance built up over the last four decades or so.
To suggest that the election of any one of the three big parties - I could have written this not even knowing who had won - is somehow the death of democracy, or will irreparably harm Canada, or make it (here is a phrase I read 10 times in the papers and that marks the author as either a liar or a mouth-breathing imbecile) “unrecognizable” or some similar turn of phrase - is absolutely, positively stupid. In 2015 or 2016, when the next election takes place, Canada will be very much like it is in 2011. The odds are, given the broad trend over the years, that we will be slightly better off, but some of us might not be. We will have problems, but it’ll be a free and nice country, just as is the case today. We will enjoy political and personal freedom. We’ll be a reasonably wealthy country, with government health insurance. Sometimes the government will screw up but most of the time we will have an effective civil service. Problems will be dealt with as best as political reality and resources allow. The Maple Leafs will still be losing. Perhaps the Conservatives will do a good job. Perhaps they will do a shitty job. Either way it will not be enough of an effect to destroy the country.
This is hardly the first time we’ve had a realignment of the political parties, either. Ten years ago absolutely no one could have believed anything other than Liberals on top, Conservatives in an angry second, NDP in a nattering third outside Quebec, and the BQ dominating Quebec politics. And ten years before THAT, in 1991, if you had told a Canadian that in just two years the PC party would be almost annihilated, the NDP devastated, and opposition run by someone called the “Bloc Quebecois” and “The Reform Party” they would have thought you insane. And yet Canada recovered from those upheavals and continued to run itself pretty well.
This was mostly a pretty good thread for a lot of pages but now, like my Facebook feed - well, no, it isn’t nearly that bad, that’s unfair. But it’s now a litany of sniping and doomsday predictions that to be honest isn’t worthy of this message board or what I, probably stupidly, think is the civic spirit of Canadian politics. I sure hope the next election can be discussed with a little less in the way of spittle-flying screaming and wrist-slashing keening over the death of all that is good and holy. I’m not holding my breath, though.
As long as Harper placates the East by not touching those wedge issues again. Sask, Manitoba and the Territories don’t have enough clout to get anything done, but if Alberta joined in now?
Cat Whisperer and Spoons, you understand what’s going on in Alberta better than I do - would Edmonton and Calgary shut down any attempts at social conservatism? Would it be enough to beat the rural constituencies?
Hah! Read the comments section of any CBC article, those guys are sniping all year long, let alone after a bitter election.
Well, I’m interested in what the Conservatives will try to put through. I mean everyone remembers the party funding issue and that was the trigger for the coalition talks. Everyone seems to forget that they were also going to suspend the right of public servants to strike. And despite Conservative election ads only mentioning the wise steering of the economy through the recent crisis, the House rebellion also forced them to fatten up their stimulus package. I am honestly a little worried about what they’ll do with no check on their power.
Excellent post, RickJay.
While all of us display partisanship from time to time, it’s important to pause and reflect on what that does to rational thinking.
For example, the largest decrease in the size of the federal government we’ve seen in our lifetimes came from the Martin Liberals. While that was happening, partisan Conservatives continued to bash them as socialists, while Partisan Liberals kept quiet or didn’t even notice what was going on. As I mentioned above, some of the biggest moves to open up medical treatments to private clinics have come from the NDP in BC and Manitoba.
This is a form of confirmation bias that all partisans share. To a Liberal partisan, Harper’s secrecy is destroying the country, but the Liberal’s secrecy and sponsorship scandals were no big deal. To a Conservative partisan, Harper’s spending increases are no big deal, but the Liberal’s big cuts in spending didn’t save them from charges of socialism.
It’s totally fair to attack any specific policy, and to keep politician’s feet to the fire when they overstep their boundaries. You need partisans in the opposition for that, because we tend to excuse our own. But try to keep some perspective. I have no doubt that all three leaders believed that they were promoting policies that were best for Canada. All three major parties have their share of idiots and good, patriotic Canadians. All of them can be tempted by power or ideology to do things they shouldn’t do. So it will always be with politicians.
I actually like Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff. And I like Stephen Harper. I think we’re very lucky to live in a country where our major leaders seem like decent people trying to do what they believe is right for their country.
On a lighter note, this is the facebook page for one of the newly-elected NDP members. Party on!
I’ve actually said this same thing myself from time to time.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet, but the NPD-Liberal situation looks a lot like the Tory-Reform Alliance did back in the days.
A smaller faction (Reform/NDP) that would normally be part of one of the two big national parties eventually gets better election results than the big party, resulting in the resignation of the big party leader (1993Campbell/2011Ignatieff). They split the vote, reinforcing their common adversary, so they eventually merge.
Do you think we’ll see a merger between the Liberals and the NDP?
Granted, the history of the NDP isn’t the same as that of the Reform party. The Reform was a breakaway faction of the Tories whereas the NDP was a whole other party since its inception.
I think that an NDP-Liberal merger would be a disaster. It would be just like the Conservatives vs. Labour in Britain – the Conservatives would win the lion’s share of elections. Moving left economically is not a winning mode in Canada.
I wonder what’s with the telephone poles.
Ha ha. 10 minutes ago when I looked at it there was casino and party pics. I guess a photo essay of phone poles was the quickest replacement they had handy. That young lady is going to have to learn politics on a steep curve.
I came here to post precisely on this point. I think it WILL happen before the next election, that is my prediction. But I was dead wrong in the first round of the playoffs, so what the hell do I know? I can see the left of the Liberal party merging to form the Liberal-Democrats under PM Layton. They will be a centre-left party, and it will temper the more extreme socialist fringe of the NDP. Sounds pretty simple to me!
Harper would be wise to hold off on slashing vote subsidies, though. If he did, that would be the last nail in the coffin for the Liberals, that would GUARANTEE such a merger, IMO. I’m still waiting for Grit heavyweights like Allan Rock or John Manley to come out of retirement to lead the party to recovery in four-eight years.
There are rednecks in Alberta like there are in every province, of course, but I don’t think there is any groundswell movement here to change any of those things, or that any idea like that would gain much traction.
I think it would be the biggest hoot in the world to sit down and have a couple of beers with the five leaders. 
I’m a conservative; you guys have known me here for over 10 years. Why do you think that the Conservative party is full of evil baby-eating American wannabes? It’s full of people like me, and as far as I know, I don’t have a reputation here as wanting to destroy Canada and everything we hold dear.
There’s no way a surging NDP would entertain merging with the Liberals at this point. The NDP is going to enjoy official opposition status for 4 or 5 years and then make another run at forming a government after that.
If, after the next election, we have similar results and a Conservative majority, I would think anything would be on the table for the NDP and Liberals at that point.