Canadian Election Tread (part deux)

[St Leo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
To get Prop Rep passed they need the acceptance of every provincial government in addition to a majority in every province.

Would a federal PropRep allow for provincial FirstPastThePost?

Anyways, Thread Retired.

[KrazyHorse]

?

Why not?

[Tingkai]

Proportional representation would have to be by province because Bloc would never agree to a single national representation. They would lose too many seats.

[Tingkai]

How long will it be before the knives start coming out for Harper.

He ran a god awful campaign.

With all the scandals, the Liberals should have gone down in flames, but Harper failed to take advantage.

Not apologising for the child porn gaffe and calling Martin a liar backfired big time.

Spending the last day of the election campaigning in Alberta was exactly the most brilliant of moves.

Pissing off right wing columnists was not a good idea (a bunch of them were complaining about how unfriendly Harper was. He wouldn't even respond when they said good morning).

There's got to be a bunch of Cons who think they could have done a better job.

[JohnT]

604 posts? Is that some sort of post "we're going to close all threads past 500 posts" record?

[St Leo]

New Thread

[Flinx]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
To get Prop Rep passed they need the acceptance of every provincial government in addition to a majority in every province.

The constitution only talks about how many MP's in each province are to be elected. How they are elected is an ordinary federal law and to change to a form of proportional representation just needs a simple majority of the House (and Senate).

[KrazyHorse]

Really? That surprises me.

[Ben Kenobi]

He's dead, Ben. He's had every conceivable advantage in this campaign:

1) The voters are tired of the Liberals as it's been ten years - that's natural.

He's the leader of a party all of 3 months old. Growing pains.

Secondly, inertia is hard to overcome. Look at Ontario. They are always used to voting Liberal, and decided on the last day to change their minds about this Conservative government.

2) The Liberals have been mired in scandal.

Those who benefit from the scandal hardly bite the hand that feeds them.

3) They ran a terrible campaign.

Granted. Everyone expected the Conservatives to do better than they did, yet no one predicted the folks in Ontario to swing 10 percent in a day.

But the Liberals will still be the government because they are most in line with voters in Ontario. Most right wing Canadians are like Asher: they are economically conservative, but aren't bigots.

Why vote for the status quo, when you can vote for a social progressive? Just because the Liberals support some progressive issues and not others in no way makes them 'socially liberal'.

They are dinosaurs on other progressive issues, especially compared with the Conservatives.

There is no way they will vote for a socially conservative party. Kudos to Canada for that.

Much truth in that term. Whatever is socially conservative = what the liberals preach. There is no way the Conservatives can be anything other than 'socially conservative' given that definition.

Unless, of course, they completely drop the religious right and abandon US style politics.

Why is the religious right 'socially conservative'? The changes they call for are progressive in nature, in extending rather than abandoning human rights.

That means revitalising the PC party which Canadians trusted on social issues – "Progressive Conservative" sounded like an oxymoron, but it is the only viable form of conservatism in Canada.

The 'progressive conservative' in my riding lost votes to Meslo and Dosanjh. Tell me how progressive conservativism has any future in the crowded left?

[Sava]

600 posts and COUNTING!

[Ben Kenobi]

Now I'm actually going to have to buy a party membership, for the first time ever. Someone's gotta ***** slap the Conservatives into shape. If Clark is too much of a wuss to stick around and do it, others will have to get involved.

Somebody's gotta rein in the social conservatives.

[Ben Kenobi]

What do you think? Vote again in March?

With the split?

September.