Canada election watch

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Sadly, I know more about American politics than Canadian. Maybe I'm too naive. I dunno. I voted NDP for the first time in the last provincial election, and Conservative in the federal election, after always voting Liberal in every election before that. But being from Northwestern Ontario, nobody listens to us. People in Toronto think Sudbury as northern Ontario. Hah!

[Jeff]

Though more reasons are still needed for me to worry less.

Harper has reason to worry: Nanos poll

JOHN IBBITSON | Columnist profile | E-mail
OTTAWA— From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Sunday, Mar. 20, 2011 10:00PM EDT

A new poll suggests Stephen Harper has reason to worry as Parliament returns amid such tumult that the government could fall within days, forcing a spring election.

Trust in the Prime Minister’s leadership has waned over the past month, amid charges that the Conservative government is in contempt of Parliament for hiding information; after party officials were charged with breaking the election law in 2006; and now with allegations emerging that Bruce Carson, a former confident of Mr. Harper, sought to win contracts that benefited him and his much, much younger girlfriend.

A poll conducted by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail and CTV reveals a sharp drop in the past month in Mr. Harper’s leadership index score – a compendium measuring Canadians’ attitudes toward the trustworthiness, competence and vision of political leaders.

That score declined from 99 in February to its current level of 83, eliminating the gains in popularity that the Conservatives had purchased through a saturation campaign of negative advertising.

...

Unfortunately for the Liberals, Mr. Harper’s declining leadership index score is not mirrored in gains for Michael Ignatieff, whose score inched up from 37 to 40. The real winner was NDP Leader Jack Layton, whose score leapt from 44 to 51.

That improvement was also reflected in increased support for the NDP in the West. Nationally, the popularity of the Conservative Party declined by a single percentage point, to 39 per cent, with both the Liberals (28 per cent) and NDP (20 per cent) up one point from the month before. These numbers are well within the margin of error (3 per cent) and suggest little or no change in support for the three national parties.

But in Western Canada, though the much larger margin of error warrants caution, the Conservatives are noticeably down and the NDP noticeably up.

While that means little in the Prairies, where support for the Conservatives declined from the astronomical to the merely stratospheric, the numbers in British Columbia, a crucial battleground, should give the Conservatives pause.

There, support for the Conservatives dropped from 45 per cent to 38 per cent, while support for the NDP shot up from 21 per cent to 30 per cent. The Liberal vote remained largely unchanged, at 24 per cent.

....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le1949229/

[Jeff]

Harper wants an election, but doesn't want to appear as though he does. The Conservatives wouldn't introduce a budget with even these half measures if they intended to enact them. I don't think this is a desperate bid for NDP support to keep the government afloat, but rather a hollow gesture to appear moderate pre-election.

Conservatives call 11th hour budget meeting with NDP

CTV.ca News Staff

Date: Tue. Mar. 22 2011 2:51 PM ET

The Conservative government is pulling out the stops to try and make a deal to pass the federal budget, organizing a last-minute meeting this afternoon with the NDP.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is releasing the budget today, and it appears the New Democrats are the only party that could possibly support the document.

...

On Monday, the government began to leak details about the coming budget, which suggested the Conservatives were looking to win Layton's support and avoid an election, said Fife.

According to finance department officials, the government is putting $400 million toward the home energy retrofit program, one of the key demands Layton had made of the budget.

Additionally:

* the retrofit program will offer grants of up to $5,000 to make homes more energy efficient
* the budget contains a boost to the Guaranteed Income Supplement of up to $600 per year for a single senior citizen, and $840 for a couple
* the government will forgive $40,000 in student loans for doctors and $20,000 for nurses who choose to work in rural communities
* at least two research facilities will get funding, including $50 million for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, and $4 million for the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute

Those are all key areas for the NDP, but Fife said the olive branch being offered by the Conservatives may not be sufficient.

NDP officials told Fife that Layton considered the items to be "half measures."

"They said the only way they would win their support...would be if there was a major commitment in the budget to double the Canada Pension Plan and Conservatives say that isn't there because they can't get provincial approval," Fife told CTV's Canada AM.

"If they don't see that big move, that big commitment on the CPP it's pretty likely the NDP will vote down the government."

The NDP had also called for an end to the tax on home heating fuel, but there's no sign the government will meet that demand either.

...

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20 ... es-110322/

[Jeff]

Layton won't support budget as it stands now

Tuesday March. 22, 2011

The NDP will not be supporting the Conservative government's proposed budget as it currently stands, NDP Leader Jack Layton said Tuesday, likely triggering a spring election.

With the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois also announcing their opposition to the budget, the government is poised to fall unless there is an 11th-hour deal, setting the table for a May 2 or May 9 election.

The defeat of the government will probably occur this week, either over the budget or in a non-confidence motion planned by the Liberals this Friday over the Tories' recent ethical troubles.

The budget contained a small number of olive branches to Layton, but he said Prime Minister Stephen Harper missed an opportunity with the budget.

"We set out where we wanted this budget to go and Mr. Harper chose not to go there," Layton told CTV News. "He chose not to give us a budget that gets the job done."

The NDP had set out five conditions for their support of the budget: pension reform, cutting the sales tax on home heating, relief for low-income seniors, raising the number of family doctors, specifically in rural areas, and boosting the EcoEnergy Retrofit program.

But Layton said he was "very disappointed" because there was no cut to the sales tax on home heating, and nothing for Canadians without a family doctor in the budget.

...

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20 ... on-110322/

[stefano]

How did that happen? Did Harper think Layton was bluffing, or does he have people telling him that the company tax cut is non-negotiable? Also that's a pretty astonishing number of planes.
____________

The prime minister's budget calls for corporate tax cuts.

But the opposition parties have argued that a growing deficit is plaguing the country, and it will only worsen if tax cuts take place.

They have also argued against Mr Harper's plans to spend $9bn (£5.6bn) on 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the military, which will cost the country at least another $5bn in maintenance costs.

[DrVolin]

Usually, one tries to have several pilots available for each combat aircraft. Not several combat aircraft available for each pilot.

[Jeff]

A general election will be held in Canada on May 2, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Saturday after his minority Conservative government was brought down on a nonconfidence vote in Parliament the day before.

Harper's ignoring the judgement that his government has been found in contempt of parliament - first time, ever, for a Commonwealth state - and is attacking the constitutional premise of a governing coalition. He's an effective liar, especially since he doesn't get called on his lies, so I think he'll get away with it, too.

Lots of polls; Angus Reid's is representative of most: Conservatives 39%, Liberals 25%, NDP 19%, BQ 10%, Green 7%. A third of the seats are in Ontario, and the Conservatives are polling well here now, and if that continues it's going to be a Harper majority.

Weekend Edition, March 25 - 27, 2011
A Parallel Universe
The Coming Canadian Elections

By MURRAY DOBBIN

In trying to anticipate what the federal election campaign will look like it is striking that the biggest issues facing humankind are not even on the radar, yet alone being framed as planks in any party's campaign platform.

This amounts to whistling past the graveyard, with potentially fatal consequences. In our conventional political universe we are talking about spending billions on jet fighters, another round of corporate tax cuts, growing the economy and abolishing the unelected Senate -- and if we are lucky some sidebar mention of poverty and the dire financial straits of seniors.

But the other universe is virtually invisible despite the fact that it is very real and well known. That parallel road that no one in politics wants to acknowledge is one which is taking us over a cliff. That universe tells us that we are rapidly reaching the planet's limits to growth, that we are well past the start of a global fresh water crisis, that rapidly rising food prices will lead to mass starvation in the developing world.

...

This represents one of the right's propaganda coups of the past 20 years, beginning with so-called free-trade with the U.S. Through control and strategic use of the media and the establishment of think tanks, the right has been able to turn the role of the economy on its head. In the so-called golden age of capitalism of the '60s and most of the '70s, the political question was always how could the economy serve the country/nation/society/families. In short, the economy was secondary to these institutions and integrated with them into a nation. It wasn't abstract and it wasn't decoupled from society.

Every politician talked about "full employment" even if they didn't believe in it because that was a social objective that no politician could ignore. But I cannot recall hearing or seeing that phrase in print even once in the past 10 years, maybe more.

We are now 20 years into an era where the question "Is it good for the economy?" is on the lips of virtually every politician. Canadian bureaucrats at international meetings no longer refer to Canada and other nations as countries. They refer to them as "economies." It is a fundamental change in language that has infected our governing institutions and helped justify the now constricted economic role of governments: they just need to get out of the way of business through deregulation, privatization and tax cuts.

...

http://www.counterpunch.org/dobbin03252011.html

[JackRiddler]

Lots of polls; Angus Reid's is representative of most: Conservatives 39%, Liberals 25%, NDP 19%, BQ 10%, Green 7%. A third of the seats are in Ontario, and the Conservatives are polling well here now, and if that continues it's going to be a Harper majority.

So 39% gets you a majority when the three of the ostensible opposition have 52% together? Please explain briefly how Canadian election results are determined. (I'm a lazy guy, I know. Figure you'll make it more fun than wikipedia.)

.

[Jeff]

We have a first-past-the-post method of counting ballots. That's fine with two major parties, but that makes for screwy results when you have four or five of them. (The Bloc Quebecois obviously only running in Quebec, and the Greens drawing 7% of the vote last election but without sufficient concentration of votes to win a single seat.) Most hilariously demonstrated in 1993, when the late Progressive Conservative Party lost all but 2 of its 169 seats despite its 16% popular vote. (The same election, the Bloc won 54 seats with only 13%.)

This is fun! the fair vote calculator:

Grab the handles around the pie and adjust the popular vote percentages for the parties. When you let go, you'll see how that translates into number of seats in our current First Past the Post system and compare it to the number of seats they'd get in the proposed Proportional System.

Proposed by no one in power, naturally, because fairness would disempower them.

This is not democracy

The idea of representative democracy is simple. Citizens elect their representatives. The majority win the right to make decisions. Or as Ernest Naville wrote in 1865: "In a democratic government, the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to all."

Does Canada actually have representative democracy? In the 2008 federal election:

* 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party elected no one, while fewer Conservative voters in Alberta alone elected 27 Conservative MPs.
* In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the votes of the Liberals and NDP combined, but took seven times as many seats.
* Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
* New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 49 seats, the NDP 37.

http://www.fairvote.ca/en/problem

[JackRiddler]

.

Well that sucks. Compare to Germany, where in Baden-Wuerttemberg the following results today mean that the Greens will lead the government (first time ever) in a coalition with the SPD:

According to the vote projections, the Christian Democrats won the most votes — around 39 percent, down from 44.2 percent in 2006. Yet the weak showing of the Free Democrats, the pro-business party with which Mrs. Merkel governs nationally, left the conservatives no hope of forming the next state government.

The Free Democrats looked likely to squeak in to the state Legislature with just 5 percent of the vote, the minimum required. In 2006, they got 10.7 percent.

If the polls are confirmed, the Greens are in a comfortable position to head the a coalition with the Social Democrats in Baden-Württemberg, which has some 11 million inhabitants and is among the most prosperous and successful of Germany’s 16 states.

The Greens were projected to win 24.8 percent of the vote, compared with 11.7 percent in 2006. The Social Democrats were forecast to garner 23.5 percent of the votes, little changed from 2006.

“If the results are confirmed, then this is a major breakthrough for the Greens,” said Nils Diederich, political science professor at the Free University in Berlin.

“And it is huge blow to the chancellor,” he added. “For the Greens, the big question is whether such success can be sustained on the federal level. Its opposition to nuclear energy and its environmental policies really did galvanize its support.”

There was more good news for the Greens in neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, where the Social Democrat premier Kurt Beck has governed with an absolute majority since 2006.

According to the vote projections, the Social Democrats suffered sizable losses, with its share of the vote falling from 45.6 percent in 2006 to 38 percent on Sunday.

The Greens, which failed to get elected to the regional parliament in 2006, won 16.8 percent of the vote. Mr. Beck is expected to ask the Greens to join a coalition with the Social Democrats.

The Free Democrats were voted out of the regional parliament in Rhineland-Palatinate, a further sign of their cratering popularity and failure to make a mark in federal government.

SNIP

In Baden-Württemberg, by contrast, the Christian Democrats suffered not only from Mrs. Merkel’s reversal on nuclear power — in a state with four nuclear plants — but from a lackluster and unfocused campaign.

SNIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/world ... rmany.html

Too bad the ultra-market FDP fuckers still squeaked into the parliament in Baden-Wuerttemberg (5 percent is the minimum for representation).

.

[Jeff]

.

Well that sucks. Compare to Germany, where in Baden-Wuerttemberg the following results today mean that the Greens will lead the government (first time ever) in a coalition with the SPD:
.

Precisely why Harper has demonized the word "coalition" for Canadian politics since it was a serious prospect in 2008, and shutdown parliament until the Liberals lost their nerve and their leader. Why, despite his government having fallen because it was found in contempt, he's making the specter of coalition the issue - despite having been quite prepared to form one himself when in opposition - and even forced Ignatieff to swear he'd never be part of one.

The media's complicity in the farce is the worst of it.

Still relevant, from 2008:

[Jeff]

Thanks to iverglas on DU, 2008 US/Canada party comparisons from Political Compass:

[Jeff]

On the Liberal fallacy of "strategic voting."

[norton ash]

Agreed... we're in a depressing American-style double-bind. Although I will still maintain FAINT hope that a Liberal-NDP coalition could see the Liberals blocked from the corporatist-militarist-oligarch enormities of the past decades if they need NDP allies. But then I look at the UK, and hope fades..

[Jeff]

But then I look at the UK, and hope fades..

Labour certainly isn't cranking out the Aneurin Bevans these days. Though Ed Miliband does provide the faint relief of not being David Miliband.

Health care paramount campaign issue so far: poll

...

When asked to name, unprompted, what their most important national issue of concern was, almost 30 per cent said health care. However, it appears that the economy is again coming to the forefront as a key issue (percentage-point change from March 15 survey in brackets):

Health care: 28.5 per cent (-0.7)
Jobs / Economy: 19.5 per cent (+1.4)
Education: 7.9 per cent (-0.9)
Environment: 4.7 per cent (-2.8 )
High taxes: 4.8 per cent (-0.1)
Unsure: 12.1 per cent (+3.0)

...

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... ection2011

Unsurprised. 1988/2011: