[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

Can we stop the "socialist" rhetoric yet? The NDP is not a socialist party. Look up socialism.

Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system. A primary goal of socialism is social equality and a distribution of wealth based on one's contribution to society, and an economic arrangement that would serve the interests of society as a whole.[1][2] As a form of social organization, socialism is based on relatively equal-power relations, self-management and a reduction or elimination of hierarchical forms of management in the economic structure of society.

Let me see:

• re-nationalization of Petro-Canada, or the nationalization of natural resources as indicated in Jack's public bitching about the privatization of Petro-Canada wich gave us nothing but high gaz prices.
  
• nationalization of all kindergarden to create a public system
  
• higher corporate and personal taxes.
  
• financing public project at any cost (from Anne-Marie Day, Quebec city)
  
• no more private clinics allowed (reinforce the public health act of Canada)
  
• adding doctors&nurses by deciding who studies what instead of the student themselves and forcing people to work where they may not want to
  
• nationalizting retirement homes for the elderly to establish a national program à la kindergardent thing
  
• fixing the interest rates instead of the market (be it the Bank of Canada or credit card companies)
  
• abandonment of the free market principles when it comes to foreign investment with the establishment of a "net benefit for canada" test wich most companies will fail, curiously...
  
• investing in public transportation, no matter the cost, no matter the benefit when more&more studies point the inneficiency of developping said system by pissing off car drivers
  
• enforcing Canadian property for all medias, reducing competition
  
• enforcing Canadian property for all banks and financial institution, reducing competition
  
• promoting citizen arrest to make sure all dissident will be properly evicted from society
  
• hiring more police officers across the country to make sure all dissent will be crushed when the time comes
  
• enforcing pay equity instead of pay equality wich result in highly inflated wages for the public work force based on dubious criterias
  

You'll have a hard time convincing me this is not socialism.

[viper37]

What really did it, at least IMO, is the first poll, half-assed, unscientific poll, where the NDP was portrayed as surprisingly rising. That opened the doors for people to think that the NDP was a viable option for fighting the Conservatives and going around the status quo. That showed that Quebeckers did not pay too much attention to the dynamics of the campaign outside Quebec, and entertained few deep thoughts about the programme of the NDP, apart from the feel-good rhetoric. 

Last time, it was because of the thrash radios in Quebec city.  Now, it's because of the polls.
Really, according to Bloc voters, we, Quebecers, are really dumb&dumber, unable to take any kind of meaningful decision by ourself, only guided by #3 and #4 radio stations in a particular city or by national polls.

I think we should abandon democracy...

[Oexmelin]

Last time, it was because of the thrash radios in Quebec city.  Now, it's because of the polls.
Really, according to Bloc voters, we, Quebecers, are really dumb&dumber, unable to take any kind of meaningful decision by ourself, only guided by #3 and #4 radio stations in a particular city or by national polls.

I think we should abandon democracy...

I don't see how your second and third proposition follow from the first.

Politics is not an individual matter: it is a collective one. People do not necessarily follow orders (and this is not what I said), but they like, and often require, objects around which to cristallize half-formed ideas. This is not being dumb: this is what politics is all about. People want to feel as though they are not alone in thinking what they are thinking. In both the trash radios of Quebec (for the Cons / ADQ) or the NDP polls cases, I think this played.

[garbon]

This is not being dumb: this is what politics is all about. People want to feel as though they are not alone in thinking what they are thinking.

Is this another difference about the French mindset/system?

[Grey Fox]

Duceppe lost in his own riding.

I think it's the first time two leaders of major political party lose in their own riding at the same time.

2, maybe 3 Bloc MPs left in the province.  We're all socialist now, save for 6 ridings, including my own.  Fuck.  This is bad for Quebec.

Can we stop the "socialist" rhetoric yet? The NDP is not a socialist party. Look up socialism.

It's viper. It's like the guy was born in Soviet Russia & is consistenly afraid that the man is going to take away his money.

We should re nationalize Petro-Can, atleast we'd rake the profits instead who knows who.

[viper37]

Last time, it was because of the thrash radios in Quebec city.  Now, it's because of the polls.
Really, according to Bloc voters, we, Quebecers, are really dumb&dumber, unable to take any kind of meaningful decision by ourself, only guided by #3 and #4 radio stations in a particular city or by national polls.

I think we should abandon democracy...

I don't see how your second and third proposition follow from the first.

Politics is not an individual matter: it is a collective one. People do not necessarily follow orders (and this is not what I said), but they like, and often require, objects around which to cristallize half-formed ideas. This is not being dumb: this is what politics is all about. People want to feel as though they are not alone in thinking what they are thinking. In both the trash radios of Quebec (for the Cons / ADQ) or the NDP polls cases, I think this played.

It's thrash, like thrash metal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrash_metal

I think people, especially in Quebec, are build of emotons&feelings.  When they voted for the Bloc, no one ever questionned if they read the Bloc program or not.  No one ever questionned if it was really a vote for Quebec's independance or for something else.

Once they stop voting for the Bloc, you see all kind of analysisi surfacing.

If people were rational, they would vote for the Cons and the ADQ.  Not some leftist party promising the moon.  They would vote for the parties promising to balance the budget and spend responsibly.
We both know that ain't gonna happen.

I don't think the radio stations of Quebec city had that much of an impact. First of all, the Bloc tried that spin over&over.  Yet, they lost to the Libs long before Jeff Fillion was Quebec city's worst nightmare for anyone to the left of Thatcher.  CHOI FM sits at #3 for the last polls, before that, it was #5.  Honestly, that's like saying Le Voir is an influantial newspaper accross all of Quebec.  Just because some leftist journalist like to think their political pets are perfect and only lose because of the big bad media, it ain't true.

With the ADQ, I don't think you can say people in Mascouche or Montreal's south shore voted because they were told so by the medias.

Duceppe argued for the last two campaigns that Quebec should stop the right wing politics.  Right wing politics = bad for Quebec.  So what did the poeple do?  They listen to good old Gilles, and they voted for the party most likely to adopt leftist policies or force the government to adopt some.  They recall the success of the opposition in forcing the government in a unuseful stimulus program for the country, so they figure a national party has more chances or being a counterweight to right wing power than a regional party.

No one ever reads the political program of either the Bloc or the PQ.  Yet no one ever questions why poeple vote for these parties.  But when they don't, all kind of questions gets asked, as if it's impossible that people, by themselves, build up an idea, based on their feeling at the moment that party X is the best one.
Sometimes it's the Bloc, sometimes it's something else.

What amazes me is that people who deny the free will of the people to choose by themselves are also the ones who expect them to vote for their idea when comes referendum time.  That leaves me a bit scary about the future of our province.  I mean, it's nothing new that people vote with their feelings.  In 1995, Parizeau made a campaign on the facts of seperation and he was losing.  When Bouchard came along, he rejected all the economic analysis and told people to vote with their feelings and it almost worked.

[viper37]

We should re nationalize Petro-Can, atleast we'd rake the profits instead who knows who.

It worked so well in Venezuela, let's do just like them!
Oh, and I remember the 80s.  Cheap oil, yeah.  shortage of gaz too.  Lineups at the gaz stations, cars getting syphoned, and a big fuck you to Alberta.

Let's do to Quebec the same thing: the Feds should force us to sell our electricity to Ontario below the cost of production and buy it from Newfoundland for twice the price

It's always amazing to see people voting for a nationalist party who's against intervention in the provincial affairs by the Feds support such interventions in other provinces.
Maybe if we were to start drilling our oil, we'd be less inclined to have it sold below the productions costs.

[Oexmelin]

It's thrash, like thrash metal.

I much prefer the other spelling.

If people were rational, they would vote for the Cons and the ADQ.

I just don't see anything to add to the discussion. As always, whenever you feel like yours is the only rational option, either you have a very skewed, or, being charitable, narrow view of rationality, or you are being unreasonable (irrationally?) partisan.

As for the rest, you once again mistake influence and politization (i.e., the process through which people form their political opinions and express them) with "giving and receiving orders".

[garbon]

I just don't see anything to add to the discussion. As always, whenever you feel like yours is the only rational option, either you have a very skewed, or, being charitable, narrow view of rationality, or you are being unreasonable (irrationally?) partisan.

Yeah, his post collapsed at that point.

[Grallon]

Viper regularly makes a fool of himself whenever socialism and homosexuality are mentioned.  It's his special thing.

-----

And no Malthus - the collapse of the Bloc doesn't mean the end of Quebec's nationalism - despite the wishful thinking of Canadians.




G.

[Grey Fox]

We should re nationalize Petro-Can, atleast we'd rake the profits instead who knows who.

It worked so well in Venezuela, let's do just like them!
Oh, and I remember the 80s.  Cheap oil, yeah.  shortage of gaz too.  Lineups at the gaz stations, cars getting syphoned, and a big fuck you to Alberta.

Let's do to Quebec the same thing: the Feds should force us to sell our electricity to Ontario below the cost of production and buy it from Newfoundland for twice the price

It's always amazing to see people voting for a nationalist party who's against intervention in the provincial affairs by the Feds support such interventions in other provinces.
Maybe if we were to start drilling our oil, we'd be less inclined to have it sold below the productions costs.

Hydro is nationalize & it's raking the profits? Sure it's selling home electricity cheaper but that's not the real problem. The problem is all the preferable tariff Alcan & the like gets.

[viper37]

I just don't see anything to add to the discussion. As always, whenever you feel like yours is the only rational option, either you have a very skewed, or, being charitable, narrow view of rationality, or you are being unreasonable (irrationally?) partisan.

Nope.  It is a fact.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,2687256.story
http://www.livescience.com/13608-brain-political-ideology-liberal-conservative.html

As for the rest, you once again mistake influence and politization (i.e., the process through which people form their political opinions and express them) with "giving and receiving orders".

What I saw yesterday is that unions have much more power than media in influencing the vote

But my point is mainly to demonstrate that when people vote Bloc/PQ, there is no analysis of the vote.  We declare they voted for sovereignty, and that's the end of it.  There's no "X influenced them" or "it's because of Y recommendations".  It is assume to be the normal attitude, that a sane person will vote PQ or Bloc, just like a sane person would not hurt themselves intentionally.  Whenever people vote for a different party, it's the blame game.  It started in Le Devoir in the early campaign, trying to paint the low Bloc ratings as being the fault of RadioX "nasty campaign" against the Bloc.  It was pure bollocks, but lots of people believed it, including you.  It seems that when it's writtent in Le Devoir, it becomes The Truth, for some reason.  Of course, nasty comments ensued, as usual, from Montreal.  Be it on Le Devoir's site or on SRC, it was the same.  Quebec = bad.  Why?  They were rejecting the Bloc, an act that was seen as truly evil.

[viper37]

Hydro is nationalize & it's raking the profits? Sure it's selling home electricity cheaper but that's not the real problem. The problem is all the preferable tariff Alcan & the like gets.

Hydro is buying electricity from Newfoundland at 0,02$ a kw/h and selling it 0,15$ to the Americans.  Once the deal expires in a few years, things might be a little tougher for HQ.

And currently, an analysis of HQ financial statements would probably reveal that it is less profitable than other public utility companies.  Just try to remember that it's a monopoly, that it does not assume most of its debt wich was taken by the government of Quebec, either to build the gigantic dams of the North or to buy off the existing electricity companies in the 60s.

Give this to any private corporation, and they'll turn a gigantic profit too.

HQ has tried to sell its expertise abroad, in a free market.  It was always a failure, and we had to sell our operations.  HQ tried to developp an electric engine.  It was a failure.  HQ tried its hands at oil exploration, again a failure.

Just because the government tells us HQ is a successful business, it doesn't make it so.  Just because a company turns a profit, it doesn't mean it's actually profitable.  There's the whole use of capital to consider.

[Barrister]

Just because a company turns a profit, it doesn't mean it's actually profitable.

I'm pretty sure it does, actually.

[crazy canuck]

Just because a company turns a profit, it doesn't mean it's actually profitable.

I'm pretty sure it does, actually.

Not if it is not accounting for the public subsidy properly.