Canadian Election 2011

[billymills]

Disclaimer: Canadians only. If you don't know what a tuque is, this topic is not for you.

We've got another election coming up. I'm going to keep this post unbiased, so I'll just say you can vote for a variety of political parties on May 2nd.

Who are you going to vote for; Why are you going to vote for them; Why aren't you going to vote; etc.

 

[Firestorm]

Discussed this a decent amount on IRC. I'm in an odd position right now as I'm currently in the Kitchener-Waterloo riding and will be until September but my home riding is Vancouver-Kingsway. Both are fairly close ridings. In Vancouver-Kingsway, the NDP MP won by <2000 votes in the 2008 election. Waterloo's was probably the closest last year with the Conservative winning by 14 votes. This year is going to be very interesting as Waterloo's a university town and most students won't be here on the May 2nd election date.

I think I'm going to have someone vouch for me and vote in Waterloo. I'd probably align myself closest to the NDP. I love my NDP MP back home and hope he wins again. I think he will as he's quite popular there. The man stood up for good digital policy even before it became a big issue and I love that. Vote Don Davies if you live in the riding! I just think my vote may be better used here as I'd like to prevent a Conservative majority. I'll have to vote for the Liberal here as the NDP and Greens are not a factor at all in Waterloo =/ Boo strategic voting but I'll have to do it.

 

[Firestorm]

For those Canadians who "don't give a fuck about politics", I'd at least encourage you to follow OpenMedia.ca's Vote for the Internet campaign as this is something that more than likely affects you greatly. You can choose who to support based on that.

 

[Mr. Hadwick]

I just turned 18 this year so I'm pretty fucking stoked to vote. I originally wanted to vote Green but with the vote split (I'm so sorry Green ;_;) I'll probably go NDP. But honestly I'll be happy as long as we get Harper out, that guy's a douch.

 

[Vineon]

Voting for the Bloc and hoping for a Conservative majority that involves as few Québec Conservative MPs as possible and a maximum of secessionist MPs.

Once this happens and with the Parti Québécois (secessionist provincial party) en route to easily win the next provincial elections, it all makes up for an explosive cocktail likely to lead to a re-opening of the Québec independence debate (and possibly eventually to another referendum on independence).

I'm confident a strong Conservative party with roots in western Canada has all the chances to rile up a lot of Québécois into believing this is not a country they belong to.

 

[Brain]

Voting for the Bloc and hoping for a Conservative majority that involves as few Québec Conservative MPs as possible and a maximum of secessionist MPs.

Aw, come on, I know you want to secede, but that is no reason to wish a catastrophe on the rest of Canada :(

 

[Jackal]

conservatives all day every day.

looking at it from a day to day life point of view, harper has done nothing but make daily life better (lower taxes) without really fucking up. At least not half as much as the liberals did.

hopefully the conservatives get their majority.

also fuck quebec splitting up seriously find something better to do with your time you are not a "troubled nation" at all. You have a distinct and important place in Canadian culture, please continue to fill that niche.

 

[Morm]

Vineon is voting for an unconstitutional party in favor of promoting a province that doesn't contribute to anything but spending?

BIG SHOCK

I am spoiling my ballot, I think. Not that it matters, my riding will be 95% conservative. I am honestly so sick and tired of canadian politics. Don't we have better things to do than point out Ignatieff not even living in Canada and only returning to run? Or pointing out that harper is "evil"? How how Jack Laytons only impressive trait is his moustache?

I honestly WANT a party that's almost smack in the middle of the conservatives and Liberals.

On a brighter note, the old person that looks at my ballot when counting will be met with a glorious veiny penis, much to their horror.

Edit: Harpers economic action plan FUCKED my demographic sideways, into 25% unemployment. SO MANY incentives to hire students that I am being passed up for fucking 14-20 year olds with no god damn experience.

 

[Vineon]

Aw, come on, I know you want to secede, but that is no reason to wish a catastrophe on the rest of Canada :(

Your post would be better used explaining why exactly you believe electing a majority Conservative would be a 'catastrophe' for Canadians. That is not something I claimed nor believe ; I'm just thinking of the best scenario working towards a referendum. No, I'm not wishing doom upon Canadians, which I happen to appreciate.

also fuck quebec splitting up seriously find something better to do with your time you are not a "troubled nation" at all. You have a distinct and important place in Canadian culture, please continue to fill that niche.

You talk of "troubled nation" as if it were a commonly used term and I've never seen it. What are we not?

This "importance" we have (as a nation, not a province, avoid the parallels with other provinces) will never amount much more to that of a minority. There is a natural drive for self-governance inherent to all nations making the split if not inevitable, at the very least always considered and legitimate. I know Canadians wouldn't accept being just the 51st state of America and the Québécois shouldn't either.

I can't think of anything "better to do" concerning Québec. This is something that will work better for everyone once its finally done and over with. A good divorce is the best alternative to a bad marriage.

 

[Morm]

Jackal, to be fair, if they held the referendum in the west we would vote them the fuck out!

 

[Vineon]

Vineon is voting for an unconstitutional party in favor of promoting a province that doesn't contribute to anything but spending?

BIG SHOCK

BIG SHOCK but I lack a better alternative.

If the Bloc is unconstitutional, I advise you to bring it to court. You better believe someone would have done it by now. They present a platform and people vote for them, as long as this is happening, they will have MPs in the parliament. A beef with this happens to be one with democracy.

Québec does send taxes to Ottawa, that I assure you, or else my paycheck is lying. Returns in transfer payments represent about 23.8% of Québec's budget, just a little below the 22.5% seen in Ontario and a ratio better than in 4 other provinces. Your province was built using federal subsidies heavily paid by those two provinces when not a soul believed the tar sands could ever be profitable, the same province that has the nerves to complain that those two provinces now receive a bit of their investment back in transfer payments.

Jackal, to be fair, if they held the referendum in the west we would vote them the fuck out!

If only your politicians were representative of that idea. Have them put it forward.

 

[Morm]

You're just TOO easy to bother Vineon...I tell yah!

Conservatives are effectively to the west what the bloc is to quebec and green is to vancouver island, lol.

 

[VKCA]

I really really wish quebec would separate if only for the fact that the rest of canada wouldn't have to deal with the bloc stalemating the fuck out of the rest of canada.

Random question:
What exactly would happen if the bloc won a majority? Like, simultaneously, everybody decided to troll everybody else and vote the bloc in to power. Would quebec just separate immediately?


If I could vote, probably be ndp. I've known jack since I was a kid, and riverdale's been ndp as long as I can remember.
Apparently jack layton was my dads politics professor.

 

[capefeather]

You have to be in Quebec to vote for the Bloc, because they only have candidates there :P

I was actually thinking of making this thread myself. Anyway, I don't terribly mind the Conservative Party or its predecessors in principle, but Stephen Harper is a nutjob who shouldn't get a majority government. He's abused his power to an almost unprecedented extent. He's brazenly lying and misleading us about how our democracy works (or at least is supposed to work). Finally, he's promoting a divisive, cynical brand of politics similar to what the Americans have.

The other parties already make every effort to shed light on Harper's power abuses. What happened to the Harper who said he'd promote accountability? Why is he putting DEFEATED CANDIDATES into the Senate, and using it to (effectively) veto bills passed by the House of Commons? Sure, the U.S. President gets to do that, too, but this is not the U.S. The Senate is just a waste of tax dollars and should be scrapped in light of what's happened.

I think that Harper is really counting on people who either never had a mandatory "civics" class or simply forgot, because his outright lying and manipulation throughout his campaign are astounding. "The party with the most votes forms the government." "The coalition is not democratic." These have never been necessarily true, and since the coalition in WW1 ran AS a coalition, there's no true precedent to use as comparison. In any case, Parliament as a whole should be calling the shots. Even more incredulous is his claim that the triumph of a possible entity that represents over 60% of the population is somehow not indicative of a democratic process. Not that I'd necessarily support a coalition government, but why should Harper get a majority government if it doesn't even represent the majority of the electorate?

Harper is trying to stereotype the other parties and Parliament as a whole as entities that don't represent Canadians. (He shows favouritism toward Conservative ridings, though, which might mean that he's merely deluding himself.) The problem is, there's a difference between cynicism and blind mistrust. What we are essentially being told is that the representatives who we elected to represent us don't represent us. But if Parliament is broken, it's not because it disagrees with the Conservatives. More amazing is that he's implicitly using this to try to downplay the validity of the contempt of Parliament motion that defeated his government. If only the sheep who are trained to say "YES" at his rallies would realize this...

Notice how a lot of these aspects mirror aspects of American politics? Harper seems to think that the negativity that he's brewing for his benefit is justified because American politicians do it. But McCain's and Obama's idea of "clean politics" doesn't have to be our idea of clean politics. Just because Obama used buzzwords like HOPE and YES WE CAN, that doesn't mean that our politicians should do the same. Just because Americans talk about the "Bush Administration" or the "Obama Administration", that doesn't mean that calling Canada's government the "Harper government" is OK (he actually did try to have that name put on government stationery and such). We're better than that. We should be better than that. (I haven't even talked about greenhouse gas INTENSITY and other lols.)

I'm not entirely sure of who I'll vote for. Not that it matters much; my home riding is decisively Liberal, and my school-area riding is a race between a prominent NDP and a Liberal. That's why I'm posting this so that other people see how important this election is. Harper's party was defeated by a motion convicting him of contempt of Parliament. As I understand it, this has never happened anywhere in the Commonwealth. We shouldn't be rewarding this behaviour any more than we rewarded Paul Martin for the sponsorship scandal.

(Someone had to make this post :P )

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

Im not canadian

 

[alamaster]

I don't really know anything about politics, but I'm voting Harper anyway just because I can. Umad?????im a fuk

glen b ragin

 

[Morm]

Random question:
What exactly would happen if the bloc won a majority? Like, simultaneously, everybody decided to troll everybody else and vote the bloc in to power. Would quebec just separate immediately?

Much like other provincial parties, which should be limited to provincial elections, the bloc does not intend to ever run outside of Quebec. Federal parties should at least try to pretend to run federally.

 

[Bologo]

I was thinking about voting for the Liberals, but that was before I knew how shitty Michael Ignatieff was...

To be perfectly honest, he got destroyed in the english debate, mostly by Jack Layton, and his arguments basically consisted of spouting the same stuff over and over. Jack Layton pointed out that Ignatieff has missed 70% of the votes in parliament, which is horrible, and I agree that if you don't go to work, you shouldn't get a promotion. :/ Not to mention that Ignatieff sounded horribly arrogant, and he just sounded like he was getting angry the entire time. At one point he had no comeback against Jack Layton so just threw out a petty insult to NDP just to say something in return. :/

I wasn't a fan of Jack Layton before, but I definitely gained some new respect for him in the debates, and his party's actually been gaining some much needed momentum.

I'm not particularly a fan of Harper, but I do really like that he said he'd lower taxes and he actually did it. I do worry about what's gonna happen if he gets a majority though; while we won't have another election for 4 years, I have a feeling that the other parties are literally gonna have no input on anything if he gets a majority, which is...not good.

I think I might vote for NDP, since I feel like this might be their big chance to actually become the official opposition, since Liberals somehow got someone worse than Stephane Dion, and they're most likely going to set a record low this time.

Honestly though, I'm still not completely sure. Definitely either Conservative or NDP though, most likely NDP.

 

[Buzzcut]

I was thinking about voting for the Liberals, but that was before I knew how shitty Michael Ignatieff was...

To be perfectly honest, he got destroyed in the english debate, mostly by Jack Layton, and his arguments basically consisted of spouting the same stuff over and over. Jack Layton pointed out that Ignatieff has missed 70% of the votes in parliament, which is horrible, and I agree that if you don't go to work, you shouldn't get a promotion. :/ Not to mention that Ignatieff sounded horribly arrogant, and he just sounded like he was getting angry the entire time. At one point he had no comeback against Jack Layton so just threw out a petty insult to NDP just to say something in return. :/

I wasn't a fan of Jack Layton before, but I definitely gained some new respect for him in the debates, and his party's actually been gaining some much needed momentum.

I'm not particularly a fan of Harper, but I do really like that he said he'd lower taxes and he actually did it. I do worry about what's gonna happen if he gets a majority though; while we won't have another election for 4 years, I have a feeling that the other parties are literally gonna have no input on anything if he gets a majority, which is...not good.

I think I might vote for NDP, since I feel like this might be their big chance to actually become the official opposition, since Liberals somehow got someone worse than Stephane Dion, and they're most likely going to set a record low this time.

Honestly though, I'm still not completely sure. Definitely either Conservative or NDP though, most likely NDP.

In general I like the NDP. They have a solid strategy every election to convince young Canadians that their party is best (Youtube commercials now and I saw him on Much Music 6 years ago or so). Jack Layton is very competent and knows what he's doing, and if elections are happening every ~2 years or so, I think that's better for the NDP party.

For my riding, however, the NDP candidate is some random candidate that lives in Ottawa, and I went to school and was friends with the Liberal candidate's daughter, so if I vote I'll vote Liberal. Not that I want Ignatieff to win exactly, I just see more benefit in voting for my area as it effects me more directly.

For everything else I haven't really looked key issues much since the UBB issue was dropped (the threat is gone now, right?). I see Conservative commercials all of the time and they're just terrible. Their anti-Liberal propaganda is just "IGNATIEFF LIVES IN AMERICA AND WANTS TO RAISE TAXES" and I don't really care. I saw one Liberal commercial and it was saying that Harper wanted to get rid of universal Health Care (is this true?), which to me is a huge issue.

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CANUCKS LOST TONIGHT

 

[Morm]

Bologo: don't forget that the smear campaign by the conservatives isn't lying at all. That fucker lived 95% of his life in the USA and came back because he wanted power. Mind you, running a smear campaign is what turned me off the conservatives EVEN MORE, so it works both ways I guess.

 

[Vineon]

The other parties already make every effort to shed light on Harper's power abuses. What happened to the Harper who said he'd promote accountability? Why is he putting DEFEATED CANDIDATES into the Senate, and using it to (effectively) veto bills passed by the House of Commons? Sure, the U.S. President gets to do that, too, but this is not the U.S. The Senate is just a waste of tax dollars and should be scrapped in light of what's happened.

Harped pulled quite a u-turn as he used to be really adamant about getting rid of the senate. Of course now that the senate plays in his favour, it changes everything. I really wish that was still one of his priorities. =(

Bologo: don't forget that the smear campaign by the conservatives isn't lying at all. That fucker lived 95% of his life in the USA and came back because he wanted power.

That's England.

 

[Firestorm]

Bologo: don't forget that the smear campaign by the conservatives isn't lying at all. That fucker lived 95% of his life in the USA and came back because he wanted power. Mind you, running a smear campaign is what turned me off the conservatives EVEN MORE, so it works both ways I guess.

Hear that kiddos? Teaching at Harvard and writing books about human rights makes you less fit to run a country.

I'm not particularly a fan of Harper, but I do really like that he said he'd lower taxes and he actually did it

looking at it from a day to day life point of view, harper has done nothing but make daily life better (lower taxes) without really fucking up. At least not half as much as the liberals did.

He lowered the GST by 2% which did pretty much nothing for us on a day-to-day basis (woo cents saved) while taking us from annual surpluses into the largest deficit in history. At the same time, he increased the income tax for mid-income people by 1% (more of an impact than a consumption tax) and helped usher in the HST in both BC and Ontario which put an extra 5% tax on items we weren't being taxed for before...

 

[Morm]

That's England.

You guys lost, get over it. Again and again.

Hear that kiddos? Teaching at Harvard and writing books about human rights makes you less fit to run a country.

It does when

To be perfectly honest, he got destroyed in the english debate, mostly by Jack Layton, and his arguments basically consisted of spouting the same stuff over and over. Jack Layton pointed out that Ignatieff has missed 70% of the votes in parliament, which is horrible, and I agree that if you don't go to work, you shouldn't get a promotion. :/ Not to mention that Ignatieff sounded horribly arrogant, and he just sounded like he was getting angry the entire time. At one point he had no comeback against Jack Layton so just threw out a petty insult to NDP just to say something in return. :/

Honestly when Jack Layton makes you look like a dickforge you have some serious issues. I was ADDING to Bologo's point, though I appreciate the political relevance (especially this year) of a sarcastic smear campaign.

 

[Vineon]

You guys lost, get over it. Again and again.

?

What I meant was Ignatieff "spent most of his life" in England, you troll. If at least most of the 80s and 90s.