Tag: elections

… And Parliament goes on vacation

Well, it’s disappointing. Truly, the GG’s precedents for this were thin on the ground, so this decision was as valid as the other, but it’s still disappointing. It amounts to a reprieve for the Conservatives. Now they can wander off and cobble together a budget that takes all the best ideas from the coalition and present it and have the other parties look silly for voting against it.

Of course, it’s good if this actually reins the Conservatives in. But it’s unfortunate that it means we’ll likely continue to have a Prime Minister whose character is so clearly deficient, so far from what the country needs at this time.

And also, can we afford to have no federal action for two full months? Not exactly the best time for them to be off on vacation on our dime.

What’s been good

Well, it’s certainly engaging many Canadians in a way I’ve rarely seen before. Thousands of comments on news articles, pages full of letters to the editor… There’s very far from being a consensus of opinion on this. And more thoughtful commentary than I would have expected.

Opinions I have little patience with

“It’s a coup, it’s undemocratic, it’s a power grab, we didn’t vote for a coalition…”

Realizing my impatience with it will not make this opinion go away (especially with the Conservatives running ads on this theme), we elected a Parliament. The way we always do. We do not elect Prime Ministers. The elected members of Parliament can organize themselves in whatever combination they wish to form effective government. Coalitions, while rare in Canada, are perfect valid and completely in line with our democratic system.

“We need to have another election first.”

I actually can’t believe some people are of this opinion. Shall we just convert every vote in the House to an election then? For heaven’s sake! We just had a freakin’ election. We can’t afford the time, expense, and sheer aggravation only to likely end up with pretty much the same thing.

These are the people we elected. Let them find a way to govern for a little while, one way or another.

Opinions I’m more sympathetic toward

“I don’t want Dion as Prime Minister”

Yeah. Much as we don’t literally vote for Prime Ministers, I still think Canadians clearly expressed that they didn’t want Mr. Dion to be P-M. Hence his resignation from the leadership post the next day. Realizing they didn’t have a lot of time, I still wish the Liberals had gone with another interim leader for this coalition. (I wish Mr. Dion had recognized that could be in the best interest of the country as well.)

And regardless of what happens next, the Liberals seriously need to think about electing a new leader sooner than May. That’s too far away. Frankly—and even though I don’t particularly like Ignatief—I still think any of the three Liberal contenders would be a better bet than anything else on offer from the other parties (Duceppe’s separatism and May’s lack of a seat in the House rather hobbling these otherwise decent options).

And speaking of Duceppe…

“I don’t like that the coalition includes separatists”

The Bloc are annoying fact of Parliamentary life, but the math says the only way to bring the Conservatives down is to get Bloc support. And if it weren’t for the Bloc, the Conservatives would have their majority, and the other parties would have lost their financial capacity to fight them in future elections.

So while sympathetic with that point, me, I can live with them being involved. (Just like Stephen Harper could back when he was in opposition.) They wouldn’t actually sit in government; they’d just agree not to bring it down for 18 months. Seems an acceptable compromise.

What not to lose sight of

This crisis is Stephen Harper’s doing. Period. He has not taken responsibility for that, and he has not shown one iota of remorse for it.

Doing my bit for democracy

For the first time in my life, I voted in the early polls. That’s it, I’m done. Now I can focus on a truly inspiring Canadian contest: Who is Canada’s favourite dancer? (Seriously, if you haven’t seen So You Think You Can Dance: Canada? You should. It’s been delightful so far.)

But the economy is tanking, the polls are tightening, and the election is beginning to look like a bit of a booby prize—whoever wins this one is going to be blamed for the bad times, even if it’s not their fault.

So with all the market turmoil, can we just forget about combating global warming now? Wouldn’t that be nice. Remember, economic crises—we’ve gotten over them before, we’ll get over them again. Ecological crises—not so much. I’m going to quote Andrew Nikiforuk quoting Thomas Friedman, because they’re both real conservative guys:

By Friedman’s evocative accounting, the globe has now entered the “Energy-Climate Era” and faces several hot emergencies: petropolitics (it gives power and money to leaders who have earned neither); dramatic climate disruption; the rise of middle classes in India and China; and a real weapon of mass destruction, the catastrophic loss of biodiversity in the world’s forests and oceans. The global economy has become “a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck and we’ve lost the key.” Unless we switch to cleaner fuels, “our lives will be reduced, redacted, and restricted.”

And we’ve got about 10 years to do it. Cheery, huh?

Also interesting—because I just haven’t heard about it anywhere else—was Doug Saunders article about a scheduled meeting between presidents of the EU and whoever is Prime Minister on October 14. Subject: A potential economic partnership with Europe. Problem: All the Canadian provinces would have to agree with this, and Canadian provinces don’t agree on much. Saunders blames Harper’s policy of “open federalism” for just making this disunity worse.

Despite Europe’s stock market also being in a “boomerang” crisis, it’s still likelier to be a healthier trading partner in the next few years than the US, the source of the collapse. And it would be nice to have a PM who wasn’t philosophically opposed to getting all the provinces into one trading agreement with that lucrative market.

An environmental take on strategic voting

Generally, I have to say, I hate voting strategically. However stupid it is in our “first past the post” system (and I still haven’t quite forgiven Ontarians for voting against changing it), I prefer to vote for something than against something else.

That said, I’m must admit to being relieved, this election, that the party I really do want to vote for also happens to be the party with by far the best odds of defeating the Conservatives in this riding.

But I come to this topic from an email I received from the environmental group, Just Earth.

What’s an environmentalist to do in the federal election? Even for card-carrying Greens, it is complicated. The party worst on the environment in general, and climate change in particular, is the Conservative party. All four others are better, although they differ on particulars. The Liberals have the excellent Green Shift plan, which the New Democrats reject, but the NDP is better on clean energy.

Strategic voting will be the option for many. A website has been launched that will help voters make a rational choice (www.voteforenvironment.ca). A riding by riding breakdown identifies races where the Conservatives won by a small margin, and are therefore vulnerable, and ridings where they are a close second and a threat. Some 60 ridings will make the difference, argues this (somewhat incognito) website.

With split votes, this would be the result: Conservative 147 seats, Liberal 76, NDP 34, Green 0, Bloc 49, independent 2.

If we “vote smart,” this would be the result: Conservative 97, Liberal 109, NDP 46, Green 1, Bloc 53, independent 2.

Not easy, though. Imagine being a federalist in Quebec faced with the “strategic” choice of with voting Bloc or getting another Conservative elected!

Also interesting was a report from the Sierra Club, which compares and grades the party’s environmental platforms as follows:

  • Green Party: A-
  • Liberals: B+
  • NDP: B
  • Bloc Québecois: B
  • Conservatives: F+

I must say, their assessment of the differences between Green, Liberal, and NDP on this front were smaller than I thought.

(Remember when votes used to get split on the right side of the political spectrum, too? I really miss those days.)

Reason of the day to not vote Conservative: Preventing candidates from speaking to the media

First wrote this in September 8, 2008. This tactic has become considerably worse since. Now they don’t talk to media at all, never mind only waiting for “talking points”, and they routinely skip debates.

This is a small point, but still significant, I think.

Can’t find a link, but CBC Radio reported yesterday that they were not able to interview some new Conservative Party candidates in certain Toronto ridings. Reason? The party specifically instructed them not to speak to the media until they’d sufficiently guided by the party in how to do so. And when would that be? “That’s a good question.”

One can appreciate Harper’s desire not to be embarrassed by candidates who run amok, making homophobic or other inappropriate comments, as has happened in past elections.

But one might suggest that the party try to find better-quality candidates, rather than stifling the lot of them.

Because, it doesn’t matter that not everyone cares who their local candidate is. The fact is, that’s who we vote for to represent us. We have a right to know who they are. The only practical way to find that out is through the press.

If my potential MP sincerely believes the world was created in seven days, I want to know!