Canadian Politics: 2011 Edition

Firstly, a primer to non-Canadians:
Conservatives ? Blue ? Official Site | wiki
Liberals ? Red ? Official Site | wiki
NDP ? Orange ? Official Site | Wiki
Bloc Quebecois - Blue and Red - Official Site | wiki
Green Party - Green - Official Site | wiki

Canada is likely off to the polls again, for the fourth time in seven years. The incumbent Conservatives minority government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, looks likely to fall in a confidence vote on the budget on Friday. In a fair number of opinions, the timing of the election seems to favour the Conservatives over the Liberals and NDP.

Some of the questions being raised at the moment are:
-Will the Conservatives be able to pull off a majority? It's been denied to Harper so far, but as time goes by the Liberals seem to grow weaker and weaker, while the Conservative base entrenches and ridings in Ontario and British Columbia swing blue.

-Why can't the Liberals and NDP effectively attack Harper? The Federal debt is higher than its ever been, wiping out over a decade of Liberal party financial conservatism. The Federal government has grown during Harper's tenure. Facing a $40 billion deficit, Harper is looking to increase the size of the Canadian prison system, buy more fighter jets, and cut corporate taxes. Harper's government has been hit by multiple scandals regarding both ethics and its secrecy ? freedom of information requests take years longer than they should, if they are handled at all. But Ignatieff and the media seem utterly incapable of finding ways to make the average Canadian care. Further, despite the recent scandals regarding the Conservatives (take being found in contempt of Parliament for example), Canadians feels that the Conservatives are the most trustworthy party.

-Can Ignatieff find a way to inspire people? Or at least to get people to think that he'd do a competent job as the Prime Minister? Can Jack Layton take advantage of the situation and bring the NDP past the Liberals in the polls? Will the Green Party finally win a seat? Will the Bloc Quebecois... never mind, there are no questions regarding the Bloc. And will Harper be able to continue to inspire confidence in his competence, while

-If the Conservatives don't win a majority, will the Liberals form a minority government supported by the NDP and Bloc? I've seen commentary from the west of Canada indicating that such an alliance would not be taken warmly, and might rev up Western separatism. The right wing seems disgruntled by the idea of such an alliance, pointing out the position that the party with the most seats should be the one in charge. The left wing seems cautious but willing regarding the position, saying that so long as the Conservatives are winning less than 50% of the votes and seats, it's actually the left wing that's been given a mandate, that if we had a two party system in the American style we'd be seeing left wing governments.

-Will a poor showing in this election

 

So basically Stephen Harper's trying to turn Canada into the US? Oh happy days. I'm surprised the average Canadian still finds him or his party trustworthy after his dissolution of parliament. A guy who'd do that just to save his government from being taken over by the opposition party is just screaming to have his political career go down in flames.

Ignatieff to introduce a motion of non-confidence. This should be fun to watch and it's a shame that it'll be barely reported in the US.

 

I'm not liking how this is off to an early start. I'm pretty much a Liberal voter -- the best thing I can say about this Conservative party is that it is marginally better than the LAST Conservative party (Canadian Alliance) and that Stephen Harper is a better PM than Stockwell Day.

If you've ever seen Stockwell Day's record, you'd realize what low praise that is. Things were so much better when the PCs were the alternative. Yes, they were much closer to the Liberals: but to me that only means they were that much more sensible.

I actually hadn't minded Harper very much until relatively recently. Yes, there was always an uneasiness that he was only being held in check by his minority government status, but you can't keep that sort of opinion year after year without Harper doing anything: that wouldn't be fair.

However as the past year or year and a half, he hasn't impressed me. This crime bill of his is first and foremost in my mind: it makes no sense. The corporate tax cuts I can understand to an extent if we can afford it, and I don't mind us buying a little more military equipment... again, if we can afford it.

But I was unaware our prison system was in crisis. It sounds to me like many other conservative ideas in the US: cry and cry about wasted government money so that you can throw even more cash at an even BIGGER waste of money that is somehow related to making sure that someone, somewhere, gets a comeuppance. In this case, prisoners. At least that's better than the US, where the current trend is targetting the supposed rabid hordes of lazy, unemployed bums: at least we know the prisoners happen to exist.

And yeah, this contempt of Parliament thing is not exactly winning me to his side. At all.

Unfortunately I don't think people CARE about a lot of this, which is dumb of them. I'm fairly worried that the Western Provinces are getting too attached to the Conservative Party in the way Red States in the US are attached to the GOP. That they think of it as "their" party rather than a Canadian Party. Which will mean that no matter how bad Harper or his successors do, they will vote for them as long as they keep appealing to our greater sense of avarice.

In which case each election will be the Praries pitted against BC, Ontario and the Maritimes, with half of Quebec up in the air (since the other half will consistently and stubbornly throw away thier vote on the Bloc).

 

Snipping out a bit of your post that pretty much aligns with what I think. I haven't always agreed with Harper, but that's fine. I don't agree with anyone all the time. I wished that his bailout during the economic crisis was smaller, but it was still smaller than what the Liberals/NDP would have done. Generally speaking, Harper had done a competent (if sometimes slimy, notably when he prorogued Parliament) job of governing the country.

Or like how Quebec votes for the Bloc? There is a difference though. The Conservatives can win seats in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec as well.



Finally, I just want to say that I miss the old Progressive Conservative party. I'd vote for Joe Clark ahead of any of the candidates showing in this election.

 

The Harper government falls via a contempt of Parliament no-confidence vote.

So, it's official, we're off to the polls.

 

I will never understand how having an election is a bad thing.

 

The complaints are the expense (the last one supposedly cost a total of $300 million after all was said and done) and the frequency (this is the fourth in seven years). The frequency is something people complain about because a) people will complain about anything, and b) we have three major parties and one significant minor party, none of which has had enough support nationwide to clinch a majority and avoid an election.

 

Just for "the duration of the crisis".

Many a despot has used that phrase. Of course, the crisis is perpetual.

 

So Canadians/Canadiens, do you think Ignatieff has a shot as prime minister, or will this be a conservative victory again?

 

The election isn't a bad thing: the fact that it costs a lot of money is a static matter so I don't complain abut that at all.

The frequency chafes a little, but it's actually not as frequent as elections in the past. It's been 33 months, and that's longer than most people expected.

I think a lot of people are worried that this is going to give Harper his majority. Although I was young at the time, it reminds me alot of the re-election of Brian Mulrooney. It was one of those things that a lot of people around me just KNEW was going to happen, and KNEW the country would be the worse for it and it was going to cause things that had to be fixed.

In the end they weren't as right as they thought they were, but they were right enough. Mulrooney wasn't quite as bad as people say, but he was bad enough and those that voted for him were ruing the fact only a few years later. But they had only themselves to blame, really.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the election happening is going to just solidify a lot of people voting against thier own best interests. But that's what happens in Democracies -- c'est la vie. The country is always at the mercy of these things.


So Canadians/Canadiens, do you think Ignatieff has a shot as prime minister, or will this be a conservative victory again?

Oh, Ignatieff certainly has a shot. Let's not kid ourselves. But people don't warm to him all that much, and Harper's sort of dominated the political scene. He starts from behind and has to make up ground.

The good news is that Harper's position is a fairweather one in many provinces. He can get seats in every province, but in the non-Prarie provinces, he can lose thme just as quickly.

The frusterating thing is that he has a lock on those prarie provinces, particularly Alberta, which is essentially the Conservative stronghold like Texas might be to the GOP. I don't mind that the Conservatives can win seats there, but elections in Canada don't like they're going back to how elections ran there in the 1970s anytime soon. I fear that in times of extreme Conservative mismanagement (which it is true we have yet to see), Alberta will still give them a blank cheque.

As it is, we have a government which is still inferior to the one the preceeded it. It is not as bad as some make it out to be, and in some practical terms it is better than Brian Mulrooney's government. In terms of debt management it is still kind of superior to Pierre Trudeau's government (in that it hasn't created QUITE as much debt). But it is still a step down from the government Canada had under Chretien and Paul Martin (although Martin wasn't as good at the public political game, but like Joe Clark he had a greater sense of ethics whereas Chretien wasn't above fighting dirty -- Chretien though knew when and how to do it to maximum effect, and might have been the better leader for it).

I'm thinking at this point the Conservatives will walk away with a 4-year majority. But after the 4 years they will probably be out of power again. I can't see Harper getting mass support like Trudeau or Chretien once had, and by 2015 whoever the leaders are will be able to say that harper's been in power almost a decade and that it's time for a change. In order for the Conservatives to dodge that bullet, they will have to have the sort of major success that has eluded them. Their recent slip-ups won't get them traction after 9 years. Even thier better "minding the store" reputation wouldn't be enough. After 9 years they're going ot have to say they did SOMETHING. The Liberals were able to say they balanced the books and got the country through the referendum. And it took them something like 5 years to get there. If the conservatives have had 9 and don't have anything as impressive... well why exactly are people voting for them?

 

Yes and yes. If the conservatives are elected with another minority government they can be overthrown in a confidence vote.the opposition parties can then try and form their own government, which would make Ignatieff, assuming the liberals win more seats than the NDP and Bloc, the PM.

 

Ignatieff is the Canadian version of John Kerry - an unlikable, uncharismatic academic egghead who never brings a single good idea to the table.

I am hoping for a Conservative majority. Then and only then can we truly judge Harper as a Prime Minister. So far the Conservatives have been hamstrung by always having to bend legislation and decisions to appease an opposition party. Harper and Conservative supporters have always been able to point that out.

And I really can't see the Conservaives doing a bad job on their own.

 

Two items:
A) Under the Conservatives, our national debt has reached all-time highs.
B) Under the Conservatives, freedom of information requests have been routinely blocked and government secrecy has increased.

Maybe the Conservatives will reverse their course on A - given the budget that they wanted to introduce, I doubt it, but it's a possibility. But there's been nothing to indicate that item B would improve due to a Conservative majority. On the contrary, without the opposition parties having much real power, it would become even harder to get information out of the government.

This article is a year old, but still very pertinent.

Of special note:

For me, this is the biggest reason why I'm not voting for Harper.

 

I blame the Liberals for this.

They forced the minority Conservatives to spend, much like the Liberal Senate forced the Mulroney government to spend during the 80s.

 

I blame the Liberals for this.

They forced the minority Conservatives to spend, much like the Liberal Senate forced the Mulroney government to spend during the 80s.

Oh yeah! Like how I forced the surrender of Nazi Germany that one time.

 

And yet, when the Liberal party was in power, we had surpluses. The Conservatives are in power. They're the one making the budgets. Further, Harper has shown that he's perfectly happy to go to the polls rather than to get a budget he doesn't want. Given the track record of the parties in the post-Trudeau era, I think that the Liberal party comes out far ahead in terms of its ability to balance a budget.

 

Correct. Firstly to say that Mulrooney was forced by the Liberal Senate to spend is an odd argument to make. The Senate is rarely much of a factor in policy. Mulrooney had a majority government in both his terms and was able to pack the senate during that time: yet the Liberals managed thier surplus in a shorter time than Mulrooney had available to him.

Secondly it's a silly thing to say that Harper is somehow forced by the Liberals to spend more money than the Liberals would have spent themselves. That's suggesting that Conservatives have less power when in control of the government then when not in control. I don't know how that works.

Remember that the Canadian system has LESS checks and balances than the American system, not more: if a PM wants to get something done, the Senate is barely a blip on the map. The other parties are the only way to stop him, and in the case of a majority they are unable to do so. The only real check on Parliament is the Supreme Court and the Queen of England: and the Queen knows better.

As the trade-off, Parliament is many times more permiable than any American body: in times of minority, the Government can collapse almost literally at any time. Even in times of majority, the party has the power to destroy its own government if it so chooses. What's more, political parties can be completely "destroyed" in a single election. This is held in had with the fact that when a party DOES receieve a majority, which is usually the case, they run the board and the courts and a common sense of decency are really the only things to stop them from kicking puppies in the streets.

That means our system is actually fairly more corrupt than the American. But it also means things get done quicker and the parties are more likely to be held accountable for what they are responsible for in one night.

 

The Prime Minister only gets to appoint Senators when positions become available. It's not like Mulroney could just clean house and appoint all PC spoorters to the Senate.

The leader of the opposition in the Senate during Mulroney's tenure was named Allan MacEachen. Look up that name. He was John Turner's flunkie at the time, and the Liberal-dominated Senate literally stonewalled every single cost-cutting measure that the Mulroney government tried to implement. And one cannot underestimate this activity. This behavior literally forced an election over NAFTA. When Cretien's government came to power, they had no troubles with the Senate blocking any of their legislation, because most of the Senators were Liberals who were there previous to Mulroney's government. Not to mention, the Liberals had Mulroney's newly-implemented GST and NAFTA to play with to help balance the country's books.

As for surpluses, 3 of the 4 largest surpluses in Canadian history were under Conservative rule.

Back in 2008, Harper's government did not want to run a deficit, but he had to first, respond to the global recession that finally took its toll on Canada, and secondly, appease the spend-hungry opposition parties who already tried to oust his party from government just a couple months previous to releasing that budget.

 

What recession? If I recall correctly Harper, in his infinite wisdom said

"While it has slowed down considerably, and while there remains this considerable instability, the American economy has not crashed, has not itself entered into recession. My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now"

Scratch one for our friend Harper's grip on reality.

Appease?

would that be referring to...
-the $679 million dollar G20 summit that only cost the UK $50 million to host a year prior?
-the $30 billion or so spent on fighter jets (which is incidentally only projected to create $12 billion in revenue over 40 FREAKIN' YEARS...Maybe?)
-the corporate tax cut to 16.5% which costs a government running a fairly large deficit by an additional $6 billion annually which seems even less necessary since no recession was apparently going to happen

What exactly did the opposition parties manage to bludgeon Harper into spending exactly?

As for your egghead comment earlier, only Harper would try to market intellectualism as a vice. It's as if he's saying the smarter you are the less you qualify to run Canada. As a Canadian I find it twisted that being a former war correspondent and professor is somehow equated with a criticism. You're not seriously going to tell me that if your kid got a job teaching at Harvard that you'd laugh at him would you?

Apparently knowing history, being an author, reporter and having a historically oriented opinion on human rights somehow make you LESS of a Canadian.

In Stephen Harper's world anyhow.

That's disgusting, insulting and sends a message that good little Canadians should all stay home and not take an interest in affairs outside Canada.

Personally I'd love to see them in one-on-one debate.I've read Ignatieff's "The Warrior's Honor" which was both thoughtful, moving and insightful and I have nothing but respect for someone who was a director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights and has spent the night in farmhouses being used as military posts interviewing soldiers during the Balkan conflict. This is a man whose views have been at least partially shaped by actually going out and talking to people involved. He's toured with the Secretary General of the UN to see the corpses and ruins of the Rwandan genocide first hand.

And Harper portrays him as an egghead.

Even if Ignatieff were not leader of the Liberals I'd spit on Harper for attacking anyone with Ignatieff's experiences that way. Apparently being worldly isn't Canadian.

My only concern with Ignatieff is that based on what I know of him, his writings and his beliefs I'd be inclined to say he'd probably be the kind of person who'd hate politics.

But then again, maybe that's what would make him a better leader. He's not here for the game. He's here because based on his history and varied experiences he seems to honestly give a damn about his neighbour (be he Canadian or otherwise).

 

The Prime Minister only gets to appoint Senators when positions become available. It's not like Mulroney could just clean house and appoint all PC spoorters to the Senate.

Yes, but b the time his term was finished, Mulrooney had been in power from about 1984-1993, 9 years. He's had considerable time to put in new Senators.

The leader of the opposition in the Senate during Mulroney's tenure was named Allan MacEachen. Look up that name. He was John Turner's flunkie at the time, and the Liberal-dominated Senate literally stonewalled every single cost-cutting measure that the Mulroney government tried to implement. And one cannot underestimate this activity. This behavior literally forced an election over NAFTA.

Right, the same NAFTA the Conservative government had been against as late as 1984 when they came to power. The election itself was 1988 and negotiators only began working out a deal in May 1986. The agreement was signed the month BEFORE the 1988 election. The stonewalling didn't exactly last all THAT long.


When Cretien's government came to power, they had no troubles with the Senate blocking any of their legislation, because most of the Senators were Liberals who were there previous to Mulroney's government. Not to mention, the Liberals had Mulroney's newly-implemented GST and NAFTA to play with to help balance the country's books.

The measures were NOT new. NAFTA was signed in late 1988. The GST was introduced in 1991 (January 1, 1991 in fact -- they first proposed it in 1989: what exactly were they doing for those first 5 years?). The conservatives remained in power until November of 1993. By the time the Conservatives left power, NAFTA had been in place for about 5 years. The GST was newer, but had still been going on for almost 2. I'm not exactly aware of how the deficit got any better during that time. As I'm aware, it just got worse.



As for surpluses, 3 of the 4 largest surpluses in Canadian history were under Conservative rule.

...and those conservative parties aren't even the same as THIS conservative party. Let me guess: those 3 surpluses were at the time the Conservative government still advocated stronger ties with England. Which would place them... oh, I don't know... somewhere that's at the earliest in the early 1960s, when Stephen Harper was, at most, 4 years old (Harper was born in 1959 and Diefenbaker left office in 1963 -- but somehow I don't think we're talking about Diefenbaker's government)? Or are we going back further in time? Those conservative parties were literally not even the same party as this one. Don't believe it is? Just ask Joe Clark.


Back in 2008, Harper's government did not want to run a deficit, but he had to first, respond to the global recession that finally took its toll on Canada, and secondly, appease the spend-hungry opposition parties who already tried to oust his party from government just a couple months previous to releasing that budget.

Oh, right, the same money hungry parties that balanced the books in the '90s. And a global recession that took so long to reach Canada because of really bad Liberal management, or something.

Here's the thing about that global recession: it happened due to the very sort of policies that Harper sides with. Had his sort of government been in power in thew 90s, we most likely would have been much worse off during that recession, not to mention gone into Iraq with everyone else.

 

American question:
Reading through this and seeing Alberta being called the same as Texas in terms of strongholds, and wondering if I'm missing something since I don't see how they're the same, and maybe this is a gov't structure thing I'm not seeing. Looking at Texas in the House of Representatives, they've got 23 Republicans to 9 Democrats, which is Republican heavy, but not terribly exclusive, but I'm looking at the House membership for Alberta, which has 27 Conservatives and 1 NDP. The analogy doesn't seem functional. It seems most like New England and the Democrats here (Massachusetts if you picked just one state). There something about the Texas comparison I'm not getting?

 

I'm guessing it was an off-the-cuff comment regarding political party strongholds. I would personally have said Utah instead of Texas, and how some regions tend to swing to a particular direction.

If you compare voting in Canada during the 2008 election to voting in America during the 2008 election (Presidential election, by county) you can see a certain similarity, where people on the coasts and in and around large cities tend to vote for left wing parties and people in the interior tend to vote for right wing parties.


The CBC has a vote compass up. I'm where I expected to be, almost dead-on center.

 

Reading through this and seeing Alberta being called the same as Texas in terms of strongholds, and wondering if I'm missing something since I don't see how they're the same, and maybe this is a gov't structure thing I'm not seeing. Looking at Texas in the House of Representatives, they've got 23 Republicans to 9 Democrats, which is Republican heavy, but not terribly exclusive, but I'm looking at the House membership for Alberta, which has 27 Conservatives and 1 NDP. The analogy doesn't seem functional. It seems most like New England and the Democrats here (Massachusetts if you picked just one state). There something about the Texas comparison I'm not getting?

Yeah, that was my own comment and Raven is correct: Utah is probably the better collary. I probably didn't use Utah since I thought Texas seemed a stronger comparison on a few superficial things: although Texas actually votes a bit more diversively -- especially in the cities -- a large amount of GOP leadership of late tends to be from Texas. That could just be the Bush administration influence, but I think it's still the largest, most populous "Red" State. Although there are states that are more conservative overall than Texas -- several, in fact -- if there was any state that I'd think of as "the leader" of the others, it would be Texas, even if it is itself more Liberal than some others and it's a little less slanted to the GOP than Alberta is to the Conservatives: I feel sometimes that Calgary is becoming its own mini-Ottawa.

The Conservative Party also differs from the GOP in that it is less socially conservative. Keep in mind I say LESS: social conservatism is by no means absent -- in fact it is more active than many realize, Stockwell Day a case in point. The original leader, Preston Manning, is an evangelical Christian. It is certainly more socially conservative than the old Progressive Conservative party, which was the major conservative party in Canada that Brian Mulrooney and Joe Clark were part of and was essentially destroyed in 1993 (although it didn't dissolve as a federal entity until around 2004, and as of at least 2006 still existed as an official party at the provincial level of many eastern provinces).

The Conservative Party itself has been managed better by Harper than he has managed the country, where Harper cannot claim any particular success -- although he has not endured abysmal failures either. He's been working much harder to avoid the problems the GOP has in the US in getting the minorty vote, a strategy that may pay off this election cycle. I doubt that Harper's government will be in the best interests of these minorities, but he's seeing that his party will probably not suffer the same crisis the GOP is on course to face in the next 10 years since they're VERY behind the times in garnering votes from non-Caucasian Americans that don't hail from Cuba.

 

Well, when one looks past the surface, sometimes Liberals cut taxes and sometimes Conservatives increase social spending.

I did vote for the Liberals in the 1990s. At the time I thought they were the best party for fixing Canada's financial woes, but the way you downplay the importance of some of the economic tools that came into their own after Mulroney's government is a bit silly. Heck, our government and nation still is still reaping the benefits of NAFTA and the GST. Personally, I think Mulroney was a better Prime Minister than he gets credit for.

Anyhow, I'd like to point out that Harper's Conservatives also ran large surpluses until the global economic recession hit us. They did preserve a lot of the legislation that kept Canada's economy stable, and I think they deserve some credit for that. And yes, they (obviously) ran a large deficit afterwards, but I attest that the size of it mostly due to opposition pressures, and I can't even comprehend how anyone can argue that.

But now the Conservatives have outlined a plan to gradually reduce spending to balance the books, and the Liberals under Ignatieff are not making any promises to try and balance the budget. I don't see how Liberal supporters can be so angry with Harper for running deficits when their leader wants to do just that. Instead of cutting back, the Liberals are peddling a Trudeau-esque tax-and-spend agenda which I cannot support, because it is a careless thing to do, in my opinion.

Sometimes I vote Conservative, sometimes I vote Liberal. This time around, I think Harper is on the right track and Ignatieff is not.

 

These motions were started while the Liberals were in power. The Conservatives are just following through with this Liberal legislation. I don't see how Harper is so wrong for this.