I don’t know, but when I lived in that area I never voted for him. I thought he was an idiot long ago before all this stuff came up.
The CanaDoper Café (2012 edition of The great, ongoing Canadian current events and politics thread.)
sob
Because like it or not, when you cast your vote, you’re not just voting for your MP. A know a lot of people like to operate under the conceit that you’re just voting for the local guy and, hey, how it works out in Parliament is how it works out, but that is not practically how it works and it is not how most people think when they cast their ballot. It’s not even how the parties campaign. The very parties that will tell how how it’s okay for the minority parties to create a government nobody wanted because, hey, you just voted for your local MP and if we can mix it up in Ottawa no big deal, were the ones who during the election were campaigning on the assumption that you were voting for a specific party to form a government, and who were putting The Count and Bon Jack way, way in front of the local candidate in their advertising. The very party that then turns around and proudly boasts 40% of the vote is a stunning mandate because of the FPP system is the one that wasn’t talking about the local candidate much, but instead had Smilin’ Steve front and center.
The good people of Calgary West had have been putting an AX next to Rob Anders’s name, but they were primarily voting for the Conservative Party and the person of Stephen Harper. And the thing is, they’re correct to decide it that way. The Liberal Party candidate in Calgary West might have been a really nice person but what really matters, let’s be honest, is which party forms the government.
I mean, our local Liberal candidate seemed like a great lady and seemed smarter and more of a thinker than either the Tory or NDP candidates (who in fairness seemed like okay people, but weren’t as personally impressive, at least to me) but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for her because as much as I liked her, the practical matter is that the majority of the effect of that vote would have been to put Michael Ignatieff a step closer to being Prime Minister, a possibility I couldn’t stomach. Sorry, Alyssa, but I had to vote Tory or NDP.
These are all valid points and help explain why the voters hold their nose and vote for Anders election after election. What remains inexplicable is that the Conservative Party continues to let this clown remain in office, in spite of being one of the biggest embarassments to the party (which is saying a lot) and in spite of movements within the riding to have Anders removed and replaced by a non-idiot.
My only guess is that Anders knows where all the bodies are buried and everyone knows he knows.
I heard he was suffering from Harpolepsy.
Stolen from a Globe and Mail reader’s comment.
Could be worse - she could have bought the Als! Can you imagine the half-time shows?
I lived in Calgary West for two elections, and could simply not bring myself to vote for Anders, and I might have voted Conservative in at least one of those elections. Personally, I think Harper likes having a hatchet man in a safe riding like this.
He’s certainly not as visible as he used to be. Whatever muzzle they’ve put on him has been working. Sleeping in committee? That’s a NEW problem. He may find he’s not as safe as he once was…
Calgary West is a disaster for nominations at ANY level of the conservatives - witness what just occurred with the provincial nomination.
I have voted for him - because of the party. Not because of him. My personal impression of the liberal candidate the last two go rounds platform was “Anders is an asshole! Vote for me!” which is not that convincing. I already know he’s an asshole. I very nearly voted for the Marxist-Leninist last time though - the irony, it burns!
Good point - I should be railing at the Conservative party, who refuse to get rid of this idiot.
Why on earth would they want to?
You can’t kick him out of office at all, that’s illegal. You could kick him out of the party, but that’s just a PR disaster. No matter how big a jerk Anders is, for the party to interfere in his being the riding nomination and forcing someone else down their throats would be a PR disaster. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from the Liberals. I’m pretty sure it’d be difficult to do without the approval of Stephen Harper himself, and Harper would be immediately portrayed (with some justification) as bullying the people of Calgary West into accepting a candidate they didn’t want. You’d also weaken loyalty in your own party; if Harper demonstrates that he’ll kick people out of the CPC because he doesn’t like them, 160+ MPs are going to wonder when they’re next. And that’s when they start plotting against Harper.
Furthermore you’d have the guy sitting in the Opposition benches being a thorn in your side until the next election.
It’d be a gigantic fiasco.
:eek:
SOB!!
If it were at a playoff game at the Olympic Stadium, she might bring the house down.
I’m starting to think a strong wind could bring that house down.
I was at the Big Owe a couple of time before Christmas… if the area of the collapse is where I think it is, then yeah, there was a LOT of dirt and heavy equipment piled up in that area and it is certainly above a parking lot. I’m not a civil engineer, but the claim from the professor at Concordia seems odd to me - it seems pretty plausible that overloading a parking lot support column with dirt could cause it to buckle and cause a collapse of the structure. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other issues and that may have contributed (at the time, some work was being done in the parking lot too), but to dismiss it out of hand without having even seen the site is a little weird. Sure, you design buildings and structures to be able to handle excessive loads, but everything has a limit nonetheless.
I love seeing the stadium on the skyline, but I really don’t know what it’s future should be. Even in the unlikely even that MLB would return to Montreal, I don’t think they’d want to play there, even with a refurbishment effort. I was just looking at it the other day as I drove into town - Montrealers think the Big Owe is far an annoying to get to (it’s maybe a 15 minute drive from downtown and has bus and metro access)…what on earth were places like Phoenix and Ottawa thinking by building an arena in Glendale or in Kanata? It doesn’t seem that surprising that sports teams based there would struggle to attract people!
I agree - i think it’s a beautiful building to drive by, especially at night - looks sort of like some alien craft has landed. Pity the execution of the concept hasn’t worked out.
Montréal: Fantastic in theory, somewhat flawed in practice… 
(then again, what isn’t?)
Elections Canada has launched an online complaint form for voters who feel that their right to vote may have been interfered with through this whole robocall/harassing calls scandal.
Here is a direct link to the form, in case anyone reading this thread would like to file a complaint.
I’m somewhat disturbed by the news that the expenses related to the RackNine calling service- in their entirety, even the costs of legit calls - were not reported by the Conservative team in Guelph. It looks incredibly suspicious.
I’m also severely disappointed that Stephen Harper and the Conservative government are not being more vocal about the need to investigate and ensure that this never happens again. If they did nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide. If they did something wrong - or some of them - then those people need to be held accountable, in the name of democracy - this has nothing to do with party politics.
Also, shame on them for making dumbass attacks like “the Liberals did robocalls too” - it’s not the robocall itself that is questionable and possibly illegal (obviously, such a calling service isn’t illegal) but it is the content of the message in the call that needs to be investigated.
I dislike the refusal to answer questions, the refusal to allow Elections Canada more powers to get to the bottom of this and the attempt to attack and deflect by attacking the Opposition. It makes them look guilty, frankly.
Anders already IS a PR disaster and leaving him alone to publicly sleep through meetings (and then insult the people who had the audacity to notice) is doing plenty of damage to the party’s reputation. Kicking his sorry ass out of caucus or publicly demonstrating the party whip bringing about some level of disciplinary measures against him would be a terrific first step that I believe would help the Conservatives’ position, showing their people are, in fact, accountable for their actions. Endlessly defending and standing by their man only shows their opponents that they have no accoutability within their ranks.
Your suggestion that Harper bouncing a known problem from the party would make every other Conservative MP nervous is stupid. The only ones who woud have to worry about their continued tenure within the Conservatives are people who fuck up as regularly and publicly as Anders, which is, by my count, no one. Particularly given that Harper has personally defended Anders on several occasions and the Party as a whole has ignored pleas to remove him, such as when the Calgary West riding association tried to hold a nomination contest in Feb 2010 and were summarily informed that Anders would remain the nominee for the riding (19 members of the 32-member board resigned following the debacle). I mean, the Reform Party and Conservative Party have been making excuses for this tool for 15 years – dumping him could hardly be viewed as some kind of imminent threat to the status of every other Conservative in office.
No, I think the message would be that if you become a big enough nuisance, you’d best start to worry. But you have to be an awfully big damn nuisance to get to that point.
They have pretty clearly said that; I’m not sure what else there is to be said. They’ve said it’s unacceptable, and handed the matter to EC and the RCMP. What more do you want?
What powers have been denied to Elections Canada and why should they have them?
What’s annoying me is, while the opposition is being very vocal and hyperbolic, the Conservatives seem to be spending more time trying to insult the opposition than they are saying " election fraud is bad, if it happened, the people responsible will be punished". They are deflecting and trying to make this into a partisan thing, when it isn’t. I just don’t think they are handling it well.
That was in response to this story- Elections Canada requested permission to be able to audit documents further, and were denied. Note that when I first read the story, it was through a different news source and there were fewer details, so I might be overly annoyed at it, since the implication of the earlier article was that Elections Canada asked for further documents related to this specific investigation and were denied. (If I remembered the source, I’d link it… that’s the problem with just reading off Google News; I don’t always notice what news source I’m reading!)
Still, overall, I don’t think the Conservatives are handling this very well. Everything comes off as being defensive, when I think they should be on the offence, trying to get to the bottom of things.
Frankly, this whole thing is starting to look like another lets start the war drums against the Cons freakshow.
For the record, I want whomever is responsible for this have the book thrown at them . But until then, I ain’t buying the hyperbole. Wake me up when Elections Canada releases their final report or when the RCMP lays charges.