[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Zoupa]

Gawd damn it. English Canada, stop failing us.

That's pretty much impossible.

[viper37]

Breaking story infers the Tories may have their own version of a sponsorship scandal on their hands regarding spending leading up to the G8.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

edit: on reading further news accounts this seems to be much ado about nothing.  Seems one of the supporters of an opposition party obtained a draft of an unreleased auditors report into spending issues that were already known related to the G8.

The Tories are saying they would cooperate fully to have the official report released. 

yeah, the report is dated from January and somehow, it only surfaces now.  But nobody's asking questions about the curious timing...
In 2005-2006, there was a leaked report about the Libs being under scrutiny for an insider's deal.  Turned out to be nothing. But the damage was done.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

my other beef about the whole anti-coaltion thing is... If Parliament itself isn't a sort of coalition, even with a majority gov., then it's broken. It's not all bile & name calling, the parties do occasionally get stuff done, voting things forward, and working across party lines on lots of issues, bills, etc. This kind of bi-partisan actually working for the people instead of the party manifesto thing needs to work it's way back up to the ranks of leadership in all the parties imho.

You say no to a coalition, when there has always been one in place to start with, O Canada you silly goose. Bite your own tail much? :canuck:

I think you are confusing interparty cooperation with the notion of a coalition where a formal agreement is made amongst parties to share power.

Canada has always had the former and never had the latter.

edit: or at least never had a coaltion government in power.

nope. I'm using the broadest definition of coalition, not the semantically dishonest version. The word can be used that way speaking as a layman, which I am as far as politics go. This American style partisanship has ruined Canada forever imho. All we get from the leaders is how much the other guy is a jerk, and will fuck us all over... while in some cases this might be reality, what it's really doing is keeping many people from voting by creating apathy, or distrust in all politicians. The Cons don't care about low voter turnout, in fact it's in their interest.

I still think a real Coalition government would actually be the only effective gov we could possibly have. Politicians ishould actually be looking out for all Canadians instead of looking out only for their own party faithful.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Breaking story infers the Tories may have their own version of a sponsorship scandal on their hands regarding spending leading up to the G8.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

edit: on reading further news accounts this seems to be much ado about nothing.  Seems one of the supporters of an opposition party obtained a draft of an unreleased auditors report into spending issues that were already known related to the G8.

The Tories are saying they would cooperate fully to have the official report released. 

hunh not so weird considering that all the media outlets are conservative mouthpieces.... Harper could be caught doing heinous actual crimes at this point, and the media would slough it off as a partisan attack on "real Canadians". Don't look to the media to actually condemn anything done by the Cons. and most Canadians sadly would do the same.

[Neil]

This American style partisanship has ruined Canada forever imho.

It's not like partisanship is some kind of American invention.

[Neil]

hunh not so weird considering that all the media outlets are conservative mouthpieces.... Harper could be caught doing heinous actual crimes at this point, and the media would slough it off as a partisan attack on "real Canadians". Don't look to the media to actually condemn anything done by the Cons. and most Canadians sadly would do the same.

Are you going MoveOn crazy?

[crazy canuck]

hunh not so weird considering that all the media outlets are conservative mouthpieces....

You have officially jumped the shark.

[Admiral Yi]

Wackiness.

[crazy canuck]

The main issue in the story from my perspective is that they spent 50M on making things look pretty.  That offends my fiscal conservatism.  But the problem the Libs and the rest have is that they offend my fiscal conservatism even more than the conservatives.

I think that is why the Conservatives are still on pace for a majority.  As Malthus put it early on in the campaign - people hate the Cons less than the others.

[Valmy]

It's not like partisanship is some kind of American invention.

The Whigs and Tories of the early 18th century were the modern pioneers.  I sometimes think Walpole and company were the true founding fathers of American government.

[Malthus]

To the point - so far the Libs have run a tight campaign, whereas the Cons have not - they have lots of mini (or not so mini)-scandals to explain, their attack ads suck balls, and Harper as usual exudes negative charisma (remember last time, when they tried making him look human by putting him in a sweater?  ).

Yeah, all this is true ... and still they are not dented in the polls. Even with all the crap pulled by the Cons, with an unsympathetic PM making shitty attack ads, overall people don't want the Libs in power. 

Why is that?

I put it down to the notion that, overall, Canadians feel that while they do not love their government one bit, they love the alternative even less. Harper may be an autocratic bastard, but at least he appears to be in charge - Canadians seem to like that in a leader (after all, they liked Trudeau, who was every bit as much an autocratic bastard - albeit one with charisma too). With Iggy, you get the sense he's been imported for his resume. He's not a career politico (all the better for him personally, but still). The impression is that he's just a mouthpiece. 

Combine that with the economic thing. Canucks are taxed to the limit already - or at least, feel like they are, which amounts to the same thing politically speaking. We came out of the recession in okay shape overall (the Cons may take credit for that, but much of it is surely owed to the previous Libs) but shaky on our pins ... the last thing Canadians overall want is an orgy of public spending (which is why the recent Con frolic of pork-barrelling hurts 'em - albeit pretty minor). The feeling is that a Lib gov't, particularly a Lib gov't beholden to the NDP and the Block (whether in actual coallition with 'em or not), will spend like a drunken sailor on his last night in a Manilla brothel before the Japanese invasion ...

In short, Canucks will but up with (albeit not love) a tight-fisted autocratic bastard, and perhaps even love a free-spending autocratic bastard who also has some sort of claim to charisma and political vision (who can convince 'em that they are opening their wallets for some sort of social purpose), like Trudeau. They will not vote en mass for a guy they think is a mouthpiece who promises free spending but doesn't appear to have a real grip on his *own* party, much less one probably beholden to *two other* parties, one of which is unreasonably socialist and the other of which wants to break up the country.

[HVC]

NDP keep putting flyers on my door. I was indifferent to them before, but now i activily dislike the party. Take that "advertising for your party"!

[crazy canuck]

I think the latest daily polling shows you are correct Malthus.  Harper took a hit in his personal ratings with the G8 spending story but his numbers are still more than double the other leaders.

[Malthus]

This might have been written with Canadian politics in mind:

'To wear a shirt that's relatively clean
You needn't even launder off the dirt
If you have two shirts to choose between
And always change into the cleaner shirt."
- Piet Hein, "A Grook with nothing whatsoever to do with the two party system."

[crazy canuck]

 

Thats great