The Canadian Election

[Balduran]

@Sam Stone

Of course, Alberta doesn’t get anything for those taxes, since we pay out $3500 more per person to Canada than we receive. Nova Scotia, on the other hand, receives an additional $4500 per person from the equalization system.

Well, this is something I’ve harped on before and it arises from using those sort of statistics and grouping people into have and have-not provinces. Tax money is going to among other things, people on welfare. There are a higher proportion of people on welfare here so we receive more per captia. But I’m not getting it. When you divide the money in and out by the population of a province, it makes it sound like all Albertans are giving more money and all Nova Scotians are taking money.

Say there are more people below the poverty line in Peace River than in Calgary. Should a hard-working and profitable farmer from Peace River feel grateful towards Calgary because his city is receiving more money per capita from the province than Calgary? The average Calgarian isn’t contributing any more than he is.

I guess the reason this gets to me is all my family still lives in Calgary. Pretty much everytime I talk to my father he complains that they don’t get any thanks for being a have province and providing for this country.

What I find especially grating is when provinces ship out unemployed and homeless people to other provinces to protect their treasured “have” status. Why should BC thank them for that?

[Sam_Stone]

Gorsnak said:

Huh? Libertarians oppose national child care because they see it was an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. How the heck is a program which guarantees access to child care intrusion into private lives? It’s not like it’d be mandatory to place your kids in it. Your examples here are all places where the agreement is on the economic interference side of things, or places where laissez-faire economics happens by chance to support the social status quo.

It’s a matter of interpretation. You can call it an ‘inappropriate use of taxpayer money’, but another way of looking at it is a distortion in the market with the use of coerced funds. Left to their own devices, people make choices between work and child care. When the government comes in and taxes income and uses the money to set up public day cares, they are pushing people from the choices they would naturally make into the choices the government thinks are the right ones.

Sure, I can choose not to put my child in day care either way. But now I’m being punished for that choice. I’m being taxed more to pay for something I don’t want. By subsidizing a certain way of life (working more and letting the state look after the children0, the state will create more of it. More people will choose to put their kids in day care if it’s cheaper relative to the alternative of giving up a job and staying home to look after the kids. Social conservatives oppose this because they see it as helping to destroy the nuclear family. Libertarians oppose it both on tax grounds and on the grounds that it is a form of coercion. Some of us oppose it on both grounds. I can be a Libertarian and oppose it for fiscal reasons, AND I can recognize that it is not in society’s interests to subsidize a choice that involves taking kids out of the family and putting them in day cares.

That doesn’t mean that we have to be opposed to helping the poor who really need it. Harper’s plan, for example, is to increase the child tax benefit across the board, and also to increase the GST tax credit for low income families by 25%. This makes taxes more progressive, but it does so by reducing taxes on the poor rather than increasing them on the rich. This is the approach that the Liberals in the U.S. advocate, isn’t it?

As for my examples not showing nihilism, I have to disagree. Nihilism is a philosophy that there are no objective truths, and that all values are baseless. Nihilists believe in nothing, and are motivated by impulse and a desire to simply change the status quo for the sake of tearing down structure.

I think that characterization fits a movement that claims to be for women’s rights, but which finds itself on the same side as the Taliban in opposition to the United States. That claims to oppose Fascism, but finds itself on the same side as fascist Arab regimes. That claims to oppose racism, but stays silent when racist genocide takes place in the Sudan. That want all drugs legalized, but want tobacco banned or heavily regulated.

[Gorsnak]

@Sam Stone

It’s a matter of interpretation. You can call it an ‘inappropriate use of taxpayer money’, but another way of looking at it is a distortion in the market with the use of coerced funds. Left to their own devices, people make choices between work and child care. When the government comes in and taxes income and uses the money to set up public day cares, they are pushing people from the choices they would naturally make into the choices the government thinks are the right ones.

Except that libertarians vehemently deny that economic coercion is coercion at all. It is, after all, a key element in their philosophy that only physical force is coercive. To make the argument you suggest, a libertarian would have to accept arguments in favour of labour standards, etc., on pain of inconsistentcy

As for my examples not showing nihilism, I have to disagree. Nihilism is a philosophy that there are no objective truths, and that all values are baseless. Nihilists believe in nothing, and are motivated by impulse and a desire to simply change the status quo for the sake of tearing down structure.

I think that characterization fits a movement that claims to be for women’s rights, but which finds itself on the same side as the Taliban in opposition to the United States. That claims to oppose Fascism, but finds itself on the same side as fascist Arab regimes. That claims to oppose racism, but stays silent when racist genocide takes place in the Sudan. That want all drugs legalized, but want tobacco banned or heavily regulated.

Well, okay, you do understand what nihilism is. You just completely misunderstand the positions of the left. My mistake.

[Sam_Stone]

ElvisL1ves: What if the situation were reversed, and the oil was found in Newfoundland? Well, I suspect that then Alberta would have been receiving a large amount of social assistance from Canada, and that would have impeded our need to diversify our economy. We’d have more farmers, but they’d have to be heavily subsidized because there would be more than the market can bear. We’d probably be in worse economic shape, DESPITE that fact that we might actually be receiving more money in equalization payments than we currently earn from our oil.

Alberta’s oil revenue is about 7.2 billion a year. We give over 3.5 billion dollars of this revenue to Canada to fund the equalization system, leaving us about 3,500 per person in revenue from oil.

But consider this: Nova Scotia receives more than $4,500 per person in equalization payments. So on a per-capita basis, they get more ‘windfall income’ than Alberta does. Ours comes from oil, theirs comes from a combination of our oil and Ontario’s industrial strength. Quebec is also a huge recipient of Equalization money, getting almost half of the 10 billion dollars or so that is collected from Alberta and Ontario.

So it’s not that Alberta is rich because we’re making money hand over fist from oil. Oil is certainly part of it, but Alberta also has the lowest taxes in Canada by far (and even so, we’d be running a balanced budget without oil revenue). We have no provincial sales tax. We operate in a low regulatory environment. The population is very entrepreneurial. Edmonton has been ranked as having the lowest costs for doing business of any city in all the G8 countries. As a result of these structural benefits, we tend to attract risk-takers and go-getters and larger businesses. Alberta’s population is growing faster than any province in Canada.

The Fraser Institute and CATO did a joint report on economic freedom in North America, measuring both tax rates and regulatory burdens on business. All of Canada’s provinces wound up at the very bottom of the list, except for one: Alberta was ranked 23rd, as I recall, meaning that it was not only the most economically free province in Canada, it was more economically free than more than half of the states in the U.S. Quite an achievement considering that we have high federal taxes, a federal sales tax, and public health care.

And it didn’t have to be that way. Before Ralph Klein was elected, Alberta was in real fiscal trouble. We had high deficits, a big debt, and a government that tied itself to the price of oil by constantly making rosy revenue projections and spending all of it. Klein came in, and cut government dramatically. My wife is a nurse, and she took a rollback of 4% of her salary, along with other public employees. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over all this, but Klein stood firm. So we cut spending, and diversified our economy, and revenue started to pick up. Eventually we ran big surpluses, and instead of spending it as the left was demanding, we paid down the debt. Now Alberta has almost no debt, we run surpluses, and our taxes are low. Corporate taxes are even lower than the U.S, and going lower. Corporate taxes in the U.S., between federal and state taxes, average 40%. In Alberta, it’s 33%, and we’re movng towards a target of 30%.

As a result of our aggressive lowering of taxes, we’ve seen our economy diversify dramatically. Alberta exports have doubled in the last ten years. In 1995, our energy revenues made up 36% of our overall revenues. Today, despite the fact that oil is priced higher, energy only makes up 22% of revenues. And as far as social justice goes, we may not have programs as extensive as other provinces, but then, we don’t have as many people on unemployment and welfare, either. Our unemployment rate is lower than Canada’s by a wide margin, and lower than the unemployment rate in the U.S.

Canada could learn some things from Alberta, if they were willing to listen and would stop characterizing us as a bunch of redneck cowboys. Conservative economic policies DO work. Low taxes and regulations create the conditions for economic growth, and it’s economic growth that ultimately benefits everyone. Alberta’s economy has grown at an average of 4.2% over the past ten years, which is an astounding rate.

[Sam_Stone]

Except that libertarians vehemently deny that economic coercion is coercion at all. It is, after all, a key element in their philosophy that only physical force is coercive. To make the argument you suggest, a libertarian would have to accept arguments in favour of labour standards, etc., on pain of inconsistentcy

Economic coercion is physical coercion when it’s done at the point of a gun. That’s what taxes are. When the government says, “We’re going to take an extra thousand dollars from you this year. If you want it back, you can put your child in day care.” That is physical coercion.

Free market economic choices also restrict people’s ability to do what they want, but that’s not ‘coercion’, it’s reality. If I open a day care and charge $1000 a month, and you can’t afford it, you are not being coerced. Likewise, if you wish you could go to work but don’t because you can’t afford day care, it is not coercion. It is just the reality of the market.

Well, okay, you do understand what nihilism is. You just completely misunderstand the positions of the left. My mistake.

Well, why don’t you enlighten me, then? Tell me what overriding values cause some on the left to run around carrying, “Free Mumia!” placards, defending the Taliban, ignoring the Sudan, supporting Clinton’s actions in Bosnia while opposing Bush’s action in Afghanistan. Maybe there’s a coherent thread there somewhere, but for some of us it’s pretty hard to see.

[Raygun99]

Sam, that’s about as accurate a summation of the position of the left as saying the right wants to bomb the ME into a radioactive parking lot because some guy on World Net Daily talked about bringing out the neutron bomb.

[Gorsnak]

@Sam Stone

Economic coercion is physical coercion when it’s done at the point of a gun. That’s what taxes are. When the government says, “We’re going to take an extra thousand dollars from you this year. If you want it back, you can put your child in day care.” That is physical coercion.

Free market economic choices also restrict people’s ability to do what they want, but that’s not ‘coercion’, it’s reality. If I open a day care and charge $1000 a month, and you can’t afford it, you are not being coerced. Likewise, if you wish you could go to work but don’t because you can’t afford day care, it is not coercion. It is just the reality of the market.

Of course taxation involves physical coercion. And that is why libertarians oppose a national day care plan. That’s what I said.

But offering to “give taxes back” in the form of free services in exchange for organizing your family a certain way, i.e., by using national daycare, is not physically coercive. If it is coercive at all, it’s economically coercive, i.e., manipulating the financial circumstances of people so that they have no realistic choice but to behave as you dictate. But this isn’t coercive by libertarian lights, and so you can’t say they’d oppose national daycare because it interferes in family structures, since it doesn’t interfere at all.

Well, why don’t you enlighten me, then? Tell me what overriding values cause some on the left to run around carrying, “Free Mumia!” placards, defending the Taliban, ignoring the Sudan, supporting Clinton’s actions in Bosnia while opposing Bush’s action in Afghanistan. Maybe there’s a coherent thread there somewhere, but for some of us it’s pretty hard to see.

Charicature much? I’m not going to “enlighten” you in this regard because

1. This isn’t the thread for it
2. Your gross distortion of things doesn’t merit discussion anyways.

[Northern_Piper]

If anyone’s interested, I’ve done some number-crunching on the election results and posted them in the thread on First-Past-the-Post v. Proportional Representation.

[Uzi]

@RickJay

It’s the job of courts to make decisions based on Constitutional law. Ultimately, however, Parliament can make law one way or another. We had the option to choose a party that hinted it would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision, and most chose not to. No matter how many times you bitch about unelected judges, it is still the choice of the voters in the end to select a government that will or will not use the notwithstanding clause, or even amend the Constitution, to make law as it sees fit.

If it is Parliaments job to make law as it sees fit, then they aren’t doing so in this case. Ask youself if the people who originally implemented the laws for marriage had it in their minds to allow for same sex marriage? Probably not given the time these laws were originally passed. So, if the SC determines that marriage laws don’t follow what the constitution intends and denies certain people rights that others have, it is not their job to fix that, but to overturn the offending law and then pass it back to Parliament to do their job.

No, and straw man arguments don’t impress anyone, you know.

Do the Strawman Dance, 123,4, Cha cha cha!

What a lot of people DID have a problem with was parties suggesting that other candidates “support child porn,” which is stupid. Child porn was not an issue that Canadians found compelling because everyone is opposed to it.
There’s already lots being done to stop it, and there would be lots done to stop it no matter who’s elected. Issues that matter are issues on which the parties disagree. Suggesting that the other parties support child porn is transparent bull, and the voters knew it.

But it is an issue for people who found it noteworthy that some parties may be playing politics in not supporting a bill that they may have supported if it came from one of their members. If that was the case (and it happens all the time in Parliament everytime members are required to vote the party line), then they could make the accusation that other parties are supporting kiddie porn due to their inaction.

Someone who is RUNNING FOR PARLIAMENT is sure as hell a spokesperson for their party. These are the people who would, you know, make up the government, remember?

I guess that is the difference between parties. One is willing to let their party members decide who will run in a particular riding, warts and all; while the other parachutes choice candidates into a riding in spite of what the members may want. I’ll let you decide which is more democratic and better for the people in that riding.

No, it doesn’t, apparently, since most Western voters did not vote for the Conservatives. Look it up.

Where are you getting your numbers from? The Conservatives received a larger percentage of votes, by province, than any other party in the west. Which would probably account for all those Conservative MP’s who are going to Ottawa soon from the West.
CBC Election Results

[Gorsnak]

@Uzi

I guess that is the difference between parties. One is willing to let their party members decide who will run in a particular riding, warts and all; while the other parachutes choice candidates into a riding in spite of what the members may want. I’ll let you decide which is more democratic and better for the people in that riding.

This is false. The Conservative Party overruled the party members in Souris-Moose Mountain on their choice of candidate, just because that choice was Grant Devine (former Sask Premier whose PC govt went down in flames with several members prosecuted and convicted of fraud).

This isn’t to say I think highly of what the Liberals did in a few ridings, but let’s be fair here.

[RickJay]

@Uzi

If it is Parliaments job to make law as it sees fit, then they aren’t doing so in this case.

Of course they are. Part of “making law as you see fit” is deciding whether or not to use the notwithstanding clause when the courts overturn a law. Parliament has elected not to.

Ask youself if the people who originally implemented the laws for marriage had it in their minds to allow for same sex marriage?

I am quite certain they did not. It is also true that the people who originally implemented the Citizenship Act did not want Chinese to be citizens. It is also true that the people who originally implemented the Indian Act didn’t want Indians to be allowed to vote. Times change.

But it is an issue for people who found it noteworthy that some parties may be playing politics in not supporting a bill that they may have supported if it came from one of their members. If that was the case (and it happens all the time in Parliament everytime members are required to vote the party line), then they could make the accusation that other parties are supporting kiddie porn due to their inaction.

Since child porn is against the law and always has been, I am curious as to what the excuse could possibly be.

I guess that is the difference between parties. One is willing to let their party members decide who will run in a particular riding, warts and all; while the other parachutes choice candidates into a riding in spite of what the members may want. I’ll let you decide which is more democratic and better for the people in that riding.

Well, thanks. You know what’s an even better idea? Let’s let THE ENTIRE COUNTRY decide, by giving each competent adult over the age of 18 the option to cast a vote to choose who they want to run the country. That way they can either choose between the warts-ridden candidates or the parachute candidates. And then you’d have nothing to complain about because people would be given a choice as to who they wanted to…

…hey, wait a minute! We did this very thing just five days ago! Whaddya know!

Where are you getting your numbers from? The Conservatives received a larger percentage of votes, by province, than any other party in the west. Which would probably account for all those Conservative MP’s who are going to Ottawa soon from the West.
CBC Election Results

As you can see from your own cite, most people in the West did not vote for the Conservatives. The CPC got more votes than anyone else but they still only got a bit over 40%. So your statement that it’s “pretty obvious in the West” why people should vote Conservative is apparently not true for most Westerners - the majority of Westerners apparently DIDN’T think it was very clear why they should vote Conservative.

[Northern_Piper]

@Uzi

@Gorsnak

No, it doesn’t, apparently, since most Western voters did not vote for the Conservatives. Look it up.

Where are you getting your numbers from? The Conservatives received a larger percentage of votes, by province, than any other party in the west. Which would probably account for all those Conservative MP’s who are going to Ottawa soon from the West.

The Conservatives got the largest share of the popular vote in the four western provinces, but they did not get a majority of the votes. Here’s a table I’ve put together from the individual pages for each province at the Globe & Mail election results:

**WESTERN CANADA
Party    Pop. Vote   % Pop. Vote** 
Cons     1,772,879       45.5 
Libs     1,045,418       26.8 
NDP       789,837        20.3 
Green     212,248         5.4 
Others     76,378         2.0 
**Totals: 3,896,760       100.0**

A majority of voters in Western Canada, 54.5%, voted for some other party or candidate.

[Northern_Piper]

@Gorsnak

@Uzi

I guess that is the difference between parties. One is willing to let their party members decide who will run in a particular riding, warts and all; while the other parachutes choice candidates into a riding in spite of what the members may want. I’ll let you decide which is more democratic and better for the people in that riding.

This is false. The Conservative Party overruled the party members in Souris-Moose Mountain on their choice of candidate, just because that choice was Grant Devine (former Sask Premier whose PC govt went down in flames with several members prosecuted and convicted of fraud).

And prior to that, the Alliance Party refused to take sitting MP Jim Pankiw back, and kicked out Larry Spencer, their family law critic. Not that I disagree with either of those decisions, but it indicates that the Alliance/Conservative Party screens its candidates/MPs just like any other party, to make sure that they are reasonably consistent in expressing the party position.

[Sam_Stone]

Rickjay said:

As you can see from your own cite, most people in the West did not vote for the Conservatives. The CPC got more votes than anyone else but they still only got a bit over 40%. So your statement that it’s “pretty obvious in the West” why people should vote Conservative is apparently not true for most Westerners - the majority of Westerners apparently DIDN’T think it was very clear why they should vote Conservative.

This is splitting hairs, really. I do take your point that the Conservatives did not get a majority, but that’s to be expected in a race that has so many parties. They did, however, get almost twice as many votes as the next nearest party, which is an incredibly strong mandate.

And of course, in Alberta the conservatives got a whopping 61% of the vote, which again is pretty amazing when there are numerous other parties to vote for.

Clearly, the west favors conservatives over the other choices, by a substantial margin. I think that was the spirit of what Uzi was saying, and it’s correct. You are, however, technically correct.

But if we want to split hairs even more, we could say that it’s really Alberta that is the conservative stronghold. BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have voted for NDP provincial parties. They vote in their share of Liberals, too, although not the same numbers as conservatives. But Alberta is a big exception. We rarely vote in anyone BUT a conservative. The NDP is virtually nonexistant in the province, and the Liberals only got two ridings (and those ridings were very, very close and in the case of Anne McLellan, her platform was basically, “Hey, it’s good to have a westerner with a powerful voice in government, even if she’s a Liberal.” If it wasn’t for those two powerhouse candidates, it would have been a complete conservative sweep in Alberta, and it almost was anyway.

And I predict Alberta is going to stay conservative or even move more strongly conservative, for a couple of reasons - one, I expect the federal government to move to the left, which will piss off Albertans, and two, because Conservative policies work out here. We have an economy that is the envy not just of the rest of Canada, but of the world. We’re not about to mess with success.

As an aside, this board is starting to go seriously overboard with the ‘gotcha’ games of demanding perfect accuracy from opponents and parsing their messages with a fine-tooth comb to look for anything to rip apart rather than making honest attempts to understand the other person’s position. Everyone is spinning and trying to ‘win’, rather than trying to learn. It’s getting tiresome. Uzi’s point that the west favors conservatives is true. It is true that conservatives didn’t get a majority of the vote, but if you want spin, consider this - the conservatives out west got 46% of the popular vote, but the Liberals won the election with only 36% of the popular vote in Canada as a whole. The Conservatives also got a higher percentage of the votes in the west than the Liberals got in Ontario. Clearly, if this were a western election, the conservatives would have won in a landslide.

So when someone says, “clearly the west favors conservatives, why is that?” It might be better to consider whether the question has merit, rather than wasting a whole lot of energy trying to dig up statistics that can be used to do an end-run around it.

[Uzi]

@Northern Piper

And prior to that, the Alliance Party refused to take sitting MP Jim Pankiw back, and kicked out Larry Spencer, their family law critic. Not that I disagree with either of those decisions, but it indicates that the Alliance/Conservative Party screens its candidates/MPs just like any other party, to make sure that they are reasonably consistent in expressing the party position.

To tell the truth I was unaware of these and the Devine situation. It is probably due to the fact that half the time I am out of the country and the time I am back home I’m more interested in making up with my wife than worrying about what politicians do.
That being said, I do understand why a party wouldn’t want just anyone representing them. And I do see a difference between rejecting someone that is considered unacceptable and not giving the members in a particular riding a chance to have their say at all by parachuting someone in. It may not be a large difference, but it is there none the less.

[Uzi]

@RickJay

Of course they are. Part of “making law as you see fit” is deciding whether or not to use the notwithstanding clause when the courts overturn a law. Parliament has elected not to.

Are the courts overturning a law, or are they expanding the definition of a current law further than what was originally intended? That, I think, is an important distinction.

And then you’d have nothing to complain about because people would be given a choice as to who they wanted to…

Part of our system is letting the party members in a particular riding choose who they want to represent their party in that riding. Otherwise you end up with only one voice in Ottawa and that would be the one who does the picking. Again, I see a difference between ‘anyone but x’ vs. ‘only x’. One allows a far broader range of candidates.

As you can see from your own cite, most people in the West did not vote for the Conservatives. The CPC got more votes than anyone else but they still only got a bit over 40%. So your statement that it’s “pretty obvious in the West” why people should vote Conservative is apparently not true for most Westerners - the majority of Westerners apparently DIDN’T think it was very clear why they should vote Conservative.

Given that rational it is pretty obvious that most voters across the country didn’t vote for the Liberals, either, and yet they will be the ones making the decisions. But, Sam has said it better than I, so read his post.

[Gorsnak]

@Uzi

Given that rational it is pretty obvious that most voters across the country didn’t vote for the Liberals, either, and yet they will be the ones making the decisions. But, Sam has said it better than I, so read his post.

Actually, the Liberals can’t make any decisions without the assistance of (at least) the NDP, and together those two parties polled over 50%.