Here’s some commentary on the Canadian general election from CT’s good friend up north, Tom Slee.
From Boring to Bizarre: Canada Votes 2011
For the second election in a row, Canada’s trip to the polls has, to use a technical term, gone weird. The big story this time round is the rise of the perennial third- or fourth-place New Democratic Party, making NDP leader Jack Layton the probable leader of the opposition and possibly even Prime Minister – something no one (and I mean NO ONE) would have believed possible three weeks ago. I was reluctant to accept Henry’s invitation to comment here because there are many people who know more about Canadian electoral politics than I do, but as NO ONE else had a clue this was going to happen either, it might as well be me to open the comment thread.
For any of you not completely up to date, here’s what’s been happening (note to self – switch to present tense here for that sports-commentator-like sense of immediacy):
- March 25: Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government loses a no-confidence vote that found the government in contempt of parliament. (CBC report)
- March 27: The six-week campaign officially opens. The Conservatives attack Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff relentlessly for being too little Canadian (“He didn’t come back for you”) and too much academic (Harvard for God’s sake), but no issue catches fire with the public.
- April 12 and 13: The mid-campaign TV debates are held, one in English and then one in French. The French debate was moved forward a day so as not to clash with a hockey game. There is no big moment, no immediate announcement of a winner.
- Over the next few days, the NDP starts to pick up support from the Bloc Quebecois, despite never having a significant showing in that province.
- Around Easter, the Liberal vote starts to bleed to the NDP and support for the Grits falls from high 20s to low 20s, and all of a sudden the NDP has almost doubled its share from 17% up to about 30%, clearly in second place (see Andrew Heard’s page at Simon Frasier University, or ThreeHundredEight.com). The Google Trends results for the party leaders summarize the campaign as well as anything.
Which all raises two questions. What caused these dramatic shifts? And what happens next?
Causes first. The leaders are all known quantities; the policy platforms are basically the same as in the 2008 and 2006 elections; the Canadian economy was insulated from the worst of the financial collapse by a combination of oil and good fortune in its banking history; no political or economic issue has taken hold during the campaign. What gives?
It may be worth remembering that it’s the second time in a row that a Canadian election has gone from boring to bizarre. Back in 2008 the Liberals called an election and, then as now, everyone knew that the election would conclude with everything looking the same as before. The Bloc Quebecois would hold on to 50 or so seats in Quebec. The Tories, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Alberta-based Reform Party, were too socially conservative and too doctrinaire to make a breakthrough in seat-rich Ontario and would be limited to about 100 seats from the western provinces, the Liberals would get pretty much all of Ontario’s 100 seats plus some from the maritimes, and the NDP would stay at 20 or so seats. But Liberal leader Paul Martin stumbled and was labelled as “Mister Dithers”, the label stuck and the Tories took 40 seats in Ontario, enough to form a minority government. Once the Liberals started losing support, everything just went from bad to worse for them.
All I can see is that the self-referential nature of recent campaigns, in which poll results themselves have become the major daily news item, lends itself to wild and unpredictable fluctuations as voters’ opinions are shaped by their perceptions of the trends around the country. The patterns remind me of the Salganik, Dodds, and Watts studies of artifical cultural markets from a few years ago (PDF): social decision making leads to cascade-driven inequalities in outcomes, but the outcome is only obvious once you know the answer.
Despite talk of this being Canada’s first social media campaign, I think it’s uncontroversial to say that social media has had little impact. There has been publicity for student “vote mobs” and some questions about the legality of tweeting on election night (before the polls close in the west), but basically the campaign has been mass-media driven.
And as for what happens next? Well who the hell knows. The big questions are whether the NDP polling results will hold up and, in a country with strong regional distinctions, how the nationwide trends will be reflected at the level of individual ridings. It could be that the NDP surge leads to a majority conservative government, or it could be that an NDP-led coalition of the non-right will end up taking power, or it could be… well what? I look to commenters to tell us.
As for me, for the last few elections I have been actively involved in the local NDP campaign, and in 2008 that ended with the Conservatives winning over the Liberals by 17 votes; the closest race in the country. I have never previously considered tactical voting, but this time I have signed up at Pair Vote as my choice is strongly Anyone But Harper. I’d like to think it’s the right thing to do, but with this campaign, who knows?
{ 186 comments }
Michael 04.29.11 at 4:45 pm
There is an error in the chronology reported here: It was in the 2006 election, and not the most recent election in 2008, that the Conservatives replaced the Liberals as the governing party. In 2008 the Conservatives were returned to power with another minority government.
Odm 04.29.11 at 5:01 pm
I think when you talk about the bizarre 2008 election, you mean the 2006 election. That’s the one where the Conservatives took power. My impression of the 2008 election was that it went from boring to still boring.
tomslee 04.29.11 at 5:10 pm
Odm is right of course. Also, a couple of links got mangled in format translation:
Google trends link is here, and the “local” link in the final paragraph is here.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 5:31 pm
I would like to think that, regarding Ignatieff’s unpopularity, people understood that potential prime ministers shouldn’t endorse war crimes.
yeliabmit 04.29.11 at 6:27 pm
I think a significant part of this NDP showing is due to Quebecois considering who they should vote for if not the BQ. Many of them may be deciding that the BQ protest vote, while making a powerful statement, gains them very little federally because it doesn’t represent a coordinated federal politics.
What astounds me (in this or any other election) is the proportion of undecided voters who are over the age of 25. I guess it goes to show how little thought many people put into the political arrangement of their society if they can swing from Conservative to liberal, or from Liberal to NDP. Then again, a lot of people seem to believe that elections are just about whether they pay more taxes.
Personally, I only know of 2 of about 30 people who have openly declared their vote to be for a party other than the NDP, and many of my less political friends are coming out quite strongly for the NDP.
I really hope, if the NDP finally gets some power, that they don’t blow it.
Tom Hurka 04.29.11 at 7:01 pm
The question is whether the rise of the NDP, assuming it carries through to Monday, is a lasting or a short-term phenomenon.
Some of my political scientist friend think the long-term trend in Canada has to be for the centrist party, i.e. the Liberals, to be squeezed to a third-party position between stronger parties on the left and right, like the position of the Lib Dems in the UK and the Free Democrats in Germany. For them the long-awaited natural outcome is now arriving.
But it’s also possible that this is just a blip, caused by the two traditional parties having unattractive leaders while the NDP have a superficially (and it’s very superficially) appealing one. (Ignatieff’s unpopularity has very little to do with his past views on Iraq; Harper also supported the Iraq War. It has to do with the relentless attack ads against him by the Conservatives plus the fact that he doesn’t do indignation, or politics in general, naturally. The turning point in the campaign was the TV debates, and his anger at Harper’s real undermining of democracy just came across, to me at least, as faked.)
It will be an interesting election night. But I’ll say this. The NDP have had very capable leaders and provincial premiers, such as Tommy Douglas and Alan Blakeney. Jack Layton is no Tommy Douglas, and who knows what he might do with real responsibility.
MPAVictoria 04.29.11 at 7:10 pm
“Jack Layton is no Tommy Douglas, and who knows what he might do with real responsibility.”
This may be true, but more importantly Jack Layton is no Stephen Harper. That is good enough for me.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 7:14 pm
I am aware, but I happily hold it against him in conversation with other voters. Regarding Layton I have anecdotal evidence that devoted Tory grannies like the one pictured here are awfully impressed with his various medical trials and the possibility that he is doing Hard Work campaigning as opposed to the other two guys.
Andrew Edwards 04.29.11 at 7:30 pm
I will probably vote NDP on Monday, but I am pretty concerned about Jack Layton, PM – it is hard to look at the NDP and see the bench strength to actually run the country with capable ministers. If Jack is to be PM he almost has to pull some talent from the L:iberals to flesh out a cabinet. I’m hoping for an NDP opposition for one round and then maybe they can have the government
This will be my first NDP vote since I was 18. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but 3 reasons I will vote NDP and not Liberal in a competitive riding:
1) A tone-down of the NDP’s anti-corporate platform and a moderately credible budget plan has made their platform at least not economy-nuking, even though I’m still not comfortable with raising corporate tax rates. Historically they have been just a shade too socialist to be trustworthy.
2) The Liberals’ biggest problem is leadership – it has been a long time since anyone with any charisma has been a Liberal leader, and I’m just sick of careerist technocrats
3) A clear belief that the NDP vote is noth thrown away – that they will be the opposition party – really helps
Myles 04.29.11 at 7:52 pm
or it could be that an NDP-led coalition of the non-right will end up taking power
Not happening. I (and plenty of other Liberals I know) will be tearing up our Liberal Party membership papers the moment the Liberal Party acts to prop up a government headed by Jack Layton as PM.
Plenty of Liberals would rather see a Tory majority than any kind of NDP. Remember, folks, you voted for this government when it does nuke the economy, which it inevitably will. Just ask anyone from BC who lived through the BC NDP government in the 1990’s, for example. Vote NDP if you want to be out of a job.
Myles 04.29.11 at 7:59 pm
Sorry, forget to put the last part of my comment in:
More technically and operationally, I don’t see how the Liberals could possibly survive as the junior party in a left-wing government, unless they are suicidal. A serious proportion of their voters would desert to the Tories, thus expanding the Tories right up to the dead centre, and more importantly, were the Liberals to do anything transferring legitimacy from themselves to the NDP their vote base in Ontario would collapse, turning Ontario back into a Tory stronghold. The Liberal party exists because it’s the party of the general status quo (and formerly, of Quebec federalism); it can’t possibly go on existing if it acts to prop up an anti-establishment party. It would be self-negating.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 7:59 pm
As expected, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:02 pm
As expected, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
What part, exactly? That NDP governance in BC during the 1990’s wasn’t an unmitigated disaster? That at the 2001 provincial election the NDP didn’t manage to only get a little more than one-third the popular vote (and not enough seats to qualify as official opposition) as the BC Liberals? That BC still refuses to return a NDP government even today?
MPAVictoria 04.29.11 at 8:03 pm
“Plenty of Liberals would rather see a Tory majority than any kind of NDP.”
And plenty would rather see an NDP minority.
“Remember, folks, you voted for this government when it does nuke the economy, which it inevitably will.”
Citation needed.
“Just ask anyone from BC who lived through the BC NDP government in the 1990’s, for example. Vote NDP if you want to be out of a job.”
Are we going to hold the Conservative and Liberal Parties to the same standard Myles? Plenty of provincial Tory and Grit governments made a mess of things. In fact NDP governments have a better fiscal record than either Liberals or the Tories.
“OTTAWA – New Democratic Party governments have the best fiscal track-record among all parties, balancing the books more than twice as often than Liberal governments, according to a federal government report released today.
“The NDP has shown that it is possible to invest in the things Canadians say they value, while demonstrating fiscal discipline,” NDP Leader Jack Layton said. “Our approach to the budget this spring delivered important investments in housing, the environment, foreign aid, education and training while keeping the books balanced.”
The report shows that NDP governments have balanced the books 46 per cent of the time. Manitoba’s NDP government has posed surpluses every year it has been in office and Saskatchewan’s NDP government posted 11 consecutive balanced budgets after ending a decade of Conservative mismanagement and corruption.
Despite Paul Martin’s frequent pronouncements on fiscal responsibility, Liberals have the worst fiscal record overall. Liberal federal, provincial and territorial governments have posted year-over-year budget deficits an astonishing 79 per cent of the time.
Conservative governments have only a slightly better record than the Liberals, logging deficits 65 per cent of the years in which they’ve been in power.
The report issued today by the Liberal government’s Department of Finance looks at federal, provincial and territorial accounts over the past 22 years.
Reference: Fiscal Reference Tables, September 2005″
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:05 pm
All of the post I quoted from, though it may be true that you will rip up your Liberal membership card. Which is good!
tomslee 04.29.11 at 8:10 pm
“Plenty of Liberals would rather see a Tory majority than any kind of NDP”
But that’s not the choice you get to make. If there is no majority party but the Tories are the largest, the Liberals have three choices:
– join the Tories in government as junior partner. Don’t see that happening.
– join the NDP in government as junior partner.
– watch from the sidelines as the Tories run another minority government, but this time with the NDP as opposition.
I guess I would predict the latter (with Ignatieff thrown out pronto), but none of them are exactly cheery thoughts for the Liberals.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:13 pm
In fact NDP governments have a better fiscal record than either Liberals or the Tories.
You know, try not to deliberate conflate budget deficits with economic performance. It’s entirely possible for the a third-world government to run a surplus, but it doesn’t change the economic performance. Running surpluses isn’t a measure of economic competence; delivering higher household incomes is.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at NDP running surpluses at all: they’d just tax the hell out of the economy.
MPAVictoria 04.29.11 at 8:16 pm
Myles did you know that under a recent NDP government Manitoba has the lowest unemployment in the country? Of course you didn’t because you just like to make baseless claims and then change the subject when you are called on it. I also notice that you didn’t respond to any of the other points in my post. Are we going to be holding the conservatives and the liberals responsible for the performance of their provincial counterparts as well?
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:17 pm
watch from the sidelines as the Tories run another minority government, but this time with the NDP as opposition.
I guess I would predict the latter (with Ignatieff thrown out pronto), but none of them are exactly cheery thoughts for the Liberals.
The last option is the wisest, obviously. If the NDP does become the opposition, the Liberals will simply have to sit it out. The NDP will quickly shoot itself in the foot and crash down at the next election, and putting the Liberals back in their spot.
If the Liberals act to prop up an NDP government however, that will be the end of the Liberal Party as a viable government force in Canadian politics. It would certainly be enough to permanently make me a Tory.
Oh, and MPAVictoria: I’m entirely familiar with that trick. The Prairies NDP is a different beast from the federal NDP, as the former are not very left-wing at all (there’s no Liberal presence in the hinterland, so the NDP takes up that gap). The BC NDP, however, is quite similar in ideology to its federal counterpart.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:19 pm
Are we going to be holding the conservatives and the liberals responsible for the performance of their provincial counterparts as well?
No, because as you well know, only the NDP has significant federal-provincial links outside the well-known Ontario-Ottawa Liberal one. This with the caveat that the Prairies NDP is not the same beast as the federal NDP, which is well-known for being the berth of various anti-trade/anti-globalization/anti-whatever cranks.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:22 pm
Well, assuming this is true, which we can’t take on faith from you because you are so wrong so often, why not run some of that “you will lose your job” proof by us?
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:22 pm
Oh, by the way, sorry for not catching this trick: Manitoba is a much more rural province than the average. Rural areas have lower unemployment rates whatever the government.
It’s impressive the amount of casuistry NDP supporters will attempt in justifying what is basically an economic illiterate party at the federal level.
Alex Earl 04.29.11 at 8:23 pm
It could be that the NDP surge leads to a majority conservative government, or it could be that an NDP-led coalition of the non-right will end up taking power…
It’s quite wild, really. You have for me and many our worst fear sitting equally probable next to the best governing scenario I could imagine.
If the NDP end up holding the reins in some fashion, long after the campaign is over, attacks on the NDP will be founded in the economically destructive nature of their socialist policies. Considering that the majority of economic growth in neo liberal countries hasn’t been seen by the by the majority of the population, and that the strength of current western economies seems to be strongly correlated with the degree to which they can be categorized as socially democratic (Germany and Scandinavia vs US and Britain), I’m amazed that people can still so smugly drink that swill.
Nuking the economy? What the hell does that even mean. Grow up and bring some arguments to the table. The Liberal party has been in such tatters for so long that it needs an utter defeat. Hopefully then it may wake up and realize what it needs to do in order to reclaim any of its former glory. Those membership papers right now are barely worth blowing your nose with.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:26 pm
Well, assuming this is true, which we can’t take on faith from you because you are so wrong so often, why not run some of that “you will lose your job†proof by us?
It’s rather hard to find cites on this, but here’s what I’ll do. I’ll assert that jobs and economic performance at the very top of motivating factors leading to the 2001 BC election result, which handed the NDP one of the biggest defeats in history. Therefore, in delivering the result that they did, they are in fact confirming that the BC NDP was horrifically incompetent in sustaining a satisfactory level of economic performance and job creation.
I’d probably have to look up some 2001 election literature to do this, but as of right now I don’t see why you can’t take this on faith, even if you disagree with me.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:29 pm
Considering that the majority of economic growth in neo liberal countries hasn’t been seen by the by the majority of the population, and that the strength of current western economies seems to be strongly correlated with the degree to which they can be categorized as socially democratic (Germany and Scandinavia vs US and Britain)
IN the case of Canada, opinion after opinion poll has indicated that overwhelming numbers of Canadians are in favour of free trade. So your point is completely moot.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:29 pm
Because nobody should take anything on faith from you. You make laughable assertions which are easily disproven. But no, I won’t accept election results as an indication that jobs were lost. Hint: THERE IS AN EASY WAY TO LOOK UP PROVINCIAL EMPLOYMENT RATES!
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:33 pm
Hint: THERE IS AN EASY WAY TO LOOK UP PROVINCIAL EMPLOYMENT RATES!
Not very useful, because they are heavily dependent on a) macro factors, and b) structural factors (decline of forestry in BC, for example) and so on. Voters are usually the best judge of whether the government has performed satisfactorily given the existing economic constraints; this is why the federal Liberals slumped to a minority government rather than outright defeat in 2004 even with the Gomery commission, because they were economically very competent.
Pangloss 04.29.11 at 8:33 pm
I’m from Ottawa Centre & like a mob of other downtown voters have already voted in the advance poll over the Easter Weekend – before the so-called NDP surge. I had to wait about an hour at Dominion Chalmers church because of the crowds which seemed too have gotten longer when I finally left the polling station. My vote wasn’t for the NDP candidate, Paul Dewar, a good guy but I just can’t stand Jack, even if I hold my nose. I voted against Harper and his thugs et thuggets and for the candidate of the party with the savant idiot as leader. Last election I voted Green as I was pretty sure Paul would win. This time I’m not sure, we are an old Liberal riding, & I want Harper and his Alberta troglodytes gone. I’m remembering back a few years ago when Ed Broadbent, the leader of the NDP after Naomi Klein’s grandfather-in-law had stepped down (sorry Avi she’s more famous), was suppose to have a surge & I think nothing much materialized.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:33 pm
Dream on Myles. You just wanna lie and need a way to do it.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:39 pm
Hardly. I did look up the unemployment stats just now, from BC STATS. The unemployment rate during the NDP era was usually between 8-9%, while during the Liberal era it fluctuated between 4-5%, excluding the mini-recession in the wake of the dot-com bubble, when it went up to around 8% for a couple years (I was told it hit BC particularly hard, because BC was a dot-com center). All the numbers are in a PDF file.
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/lss/rate_ind/empurindbc.pdf
Of course, I’m not treating the numbers very seriously, because after all, macro and structural factors. Unlike you, I’m actually being generous in my assessment of the opposition party.
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:40 pm
(And try not to accuse me of lying when it’s you, rather than me, who’s apparently lying.)
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:43 pm
Actually, hold on, the high unemployment numbers were during the first few years of Liberal rule, when they were battling remnant NDP (and affiliate) resistance and so on. Once they got through the cruft, the unemployment rate went down continuously until the current financial crisis.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:46 pm
Oh lord, Myles. You are so full of shit.
yeliabmit 04.29.11 at 8:55 pm
@Andrew Edwards: “…Historically they have been just a shade too socialist to be trustworthy.”
So, socialists can’t be trusted to represent your interests (as a capitalist or capitalist-wannabe)? And apparently Jack Layton has brought this “untrustworthy” socialist tendency under control within his party?
If I were to harbour similar feelings about socialists, I think upon some reflection I would realize that I should probably be voting Liberal or Conservative, even though they might lose in my riding. If you’re not in favour of social democracy, and eroding the dominance of private economic power in society, why would you vote for social democrats?
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:56 pm
I don’t see how your table and mine (both from BC Stats agency presumably) could differ so much. Anyways, as I’ve explained, the BC NDP, like the Congressional Republicans of today, insisted on prolonging the misery, so it took a few years for the Liberals to sort out their mess. Voters apparently agreed, giving the Liberals another majority at the subsequent election.
You are talking about a provincial party that is so incompetent in administration that voters won’t even flick out the other party even after the Premier was caught drunk-driving in Hawaii. That’s quite an accomplishment. Heckuva Job, BC NDP!
Myles 04.29.11 at 8:57 pm
(I’m strangely desirous of seeing Substance McGravitas taking a trip to Vancouver and going about declaring that the NDP era was one of prosperity and growth. I give him 30 seconds before someone punches him in the face.)
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 8:57 pm
Incidentally the CBC has put together a tool to locate folks on the political map. The funny part is that if you’re non-committal you end up Liberal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/votecompass/
MPAVictoria 04.29.11 at 9:02 pm
Myles you have asserted, without any evidence, that an NDP government will be bad for the Canadian economy. What exactly in their platform do you find so frightening? Have you actually read it? The NDP are not some scary, crazy leftist party. They are in fact just slightly to the left of the current Liberal Party.
I find your assertion that the Liberal and Conservative parties should not be held accountable for the poor performance of some of their provincial counterparts but the NDP should laughable. Further your implication that not only are the NDP to be held responsible for provincial failures they are also not to be rewarded for provincial success.
MPAVictoria 04.29.11 at 9:04 pm
Cut out a sentence there
should read:
Further your implication that not only are the NDP to be held responsible for provincial failures they are also not to be rewarded for provincial successes is illogical and inconsistent.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 9:04 pm
It’s really puzzling isn’t it? Jeepers.
When I travel there and do that I’ll let you know, but I have a strange suspicion that once again you are completely wrong.
omnivore 04.29.11 at 9:19 pm
Paul Martin was not the Liberal leader in 2008, as you seem to say. He left office in 2006, and it was Stephane Dionne who took over. I don’t remember anyone being called Mr. Dithers, but Dionne was very ineffective.
On the election itself, the primary factor is the awareness that Canada is on the cusp of becoming a country where minority governments are a generational, continuous phenomenon. A major factor has been the spoiler status of the Bloc, who have denied the Conservatives and the Liberals the pool of votes that have made them majority governments in the past.
On the one hand, this has led to a dawning awareness that this may not change for a while by those outside Québec; and at the same time, an awareness in Québec that Pauline Marois will probably displace Charest in the next provincial election. Québecois are not sufficiently interested in nationalism that they want to have their representatives at both levels of parliament dominated by seperatists. So paradoxically they’re leaving the Bloc just as the rest of Canada adjusts to the potentially ongoing presence of the Bloc in Ottawa. And the NDP represents the only political option that captures the core socialist values of the Bloc and PQ, while allowing Québec to continue to punish the Liberals for the sponsorship scandal, and the Conservatives for just generally being the dickheads they are in Quebec.
If the NDP has any sense, they’ll hold off on all their “socialist” (oy vey) agenda for two things : strenghtened Medicare, possibly including the restoration of Federal standards, and better transportability of medical care; and on the other hand, constitutional reform that will introduce elements of proportionate representation. That’s the real reason they’re being flexible in Québec on Constitutional Reform, an issue they know that neither the Liberals or the Conservatives will challenge them on, until they decide that Québec is a total loss to them.
Myles 04.29.11 at 10:00 pm
When I travel there and do that I’ll let you know, but I have a strange suspicion that once again you are completely wrong.
Ah, so you are one of those Vancouver’s Dave Sparts types. That explains everything. Of course you’d vote NDP; you don’t actually give a damn about Canada. Your politics are American-centric.
Myles 04.29.11 at 10:01 pm
Tell me, would you happily vote for Canada to join the Unite States if (hypothetically) the US suddenly became as left-wing as Norway? Of course you would.
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 10:14 pm
Myles, your assumptions about the way things work anywhere in the world never make you right. No amount of this sort of thing is going to help.
Myles 04.29.11 at 10:21 pm
By the way, to double back, if you look at just the dataset you gave, BC unemployment peaked in about 2002, right after the election and about the time of the dot-com crash, and trended quickly downward until it was between 4-5%, where it remained until the financial crash.
Care to dispute me on this, McGravitas-whose-chief-political-interests-seem-to-be-American?
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 10:24 pm
Not at all Myles, but that wasn’t what you were wrong about. If you’re not worried about unemployment numbers anyway it seems I have to link to this again.
Myles 04.29.11 at 10:28 pm
What exactly was I wrong about? That NDP governance is economically incompetent and disastrous? Since you dispute this “not at all,” then I don’t see where the disagreement is
Substance McGravitas 04.29.11 at 10:30 pm
Woo!
Myles 04.29.11 at 10:30 pm
(By the way, it’s a rare patriotic Canadian whose chief political obsessions seem to be picking apart the silliness of obscure right-wing American political magazines opining on wholly parochially American issues. Very Canadian, that.)
ckc (not kc) 04.29.11 at 10:35 pm
Yeah, Subby – stop looking at those americans!
ckc (not kc) 04.29.11 at 10:43 pm
(By the way, Stephen Harper seems not unaware of some of those wholly parochially American issues. Very interesting, that.)
Scott 04.29.11 at 10:47 pm
As an Australian living in Canada, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but my wife is voting Green (we live in a rock solid Tory riding.)
This election should go down in history as a textbook example of why very smart people who are not politicians should not try to become Prime Minister. Michael Ignatieff has been completely thrashed by Harper from the right and Layton from the left. As you might expect. Being Prime Minister is not just a matter of intellect, you need cunning, a high EQ (and I would argue Harper has a very fine tuned ear to the fears and hatreds of Tory and potential Tory voters) and self-discipline.
I think that the NDP surge (the Orange Crush) as the media are calling it, is probably going to fade out to some extent, as they don’t have the ‘on the ground’ expertise needed to get out the vote, but I think they will do enough to overtake the Liberals and become the official opposition. There’s not the slightest chance that they’ll beat the Conservatives who will form yet another minority government, imho.
Stephen Harper’s conservatives are, frankly, vile but they are brilliant at the technical aspects of winning elections. They’ll only get about 35% of the vote but will get close to a majority, and bear in mind a great deal of that vote is ‘wasted’ in their Alberta heartland. But they know how to get their voters to the polls and keep down the votes of their opponents. The anti-Ignatieff advertisements have been very effective. They really know how to push people’s buttons. They play on people’s hatred and fears, and they are disciplined.
Of course, what do they do with this power? Screw the Canadian public in order to syphon money to the big corporations. Almost no one benefits from voting Tory, as far as I can tell.
Splitting Image 04.29.11 at 10:50 pm
“I find your assertion that the Liberal and Conservative parties should not be held accountable for the poor performance of some of their provincial counterparts but the NDP should laughable. Further your implication that not only are the NDP to be held responsible for provincial failures they are also not to be rewarded for provincial success.”
I have trouble believing he’s a Liberal. I’ve always found that anyone who insists that party A’s provincial affiliates are totally and completely unconnected to the federal party and those of party B are a reliable indicator of the federal party’s future performance are invariably hardcore supporters of party A. I would put Myles as a fairly solid member of the Conservative party. If he’s still got a Liberal card he’s basically a Canadian version of a Dixiecrat.
Incidentally, the notion that “plenty of Liberals” would be upset at an NDP-Liberal coalition doesn’t fit the facts. Polling consistently shows more Liberals support the NDP as a second choice than the Conservatives. It’s hard to believe that NDP-leaning Liberals would prefer a Harper majority to a Layton-led coalition.
http://autonomyforall.blogspot.com/2011/04/could-ndp-and-liberals-get-along.html
vasi 04.29.11 at 10:51 pm
I’m not sure whether to expect the NDP surge in Quebec to last past an election or two. Politics have been somewhat volatile here lately. Witness the 2007 rise of the ADQ from nowhere to provincial official opposition, and then the crash back down to a handful of seats in 2008. Also the meteoric rise of the Tories in 2006 from 8% to 24% of the vote. I wish I had some idea of the cause behind said volatility. Maybe it has something to do with the higher dimensionality of politics here? First-Past-The-Post just doesn’t seem well-designed for five major political parties and at least three salient dimensions of political issues.
Substance McGravitas, I rather like your theory that Layton’s health issues have made him more sympathetic. Up until now, I thought the NDP’s rise in Quebec was mostly attributable Layton’s wild reaction to the Habs scoring. I look forward to the next election, when all political interviews are held while watching hockey games. Political engagement will skyrocket!
Myles, I don’t know what I’d think of an NDP-led coalition myself, but I’m skeptical that most Grits would turn to the Tories in disgust. Polling shows (PDF, page 6) that five times more Liberals have the NDP as their second choice than the Tories. I suspect that most Liberals liable to turn to the Conservatives have already done so.
Chaz 04.29.11 at 11:15 pm
And the Sarah Palin Award for Stupidest Statement From Someone Who Occasionally Speaks Intelligently goes to . . . Myles SG! Come see a replay of the two stunningly stupid assertions that are wowing the world!
Myles SG: The best (and only) way to judge a government’s economic policies is the outcome of elections.
Myles SG: A majority of Canadians support free trade, proving that free trade is the best economic policy.
Would he care to name any actual policies that he thinks ruined BC’s economy? No! What of the fact that a majority of Americans support protectionism? What does that prove? That Americans are troglodytes of course!
The Tragically Flip 04.30.11 at 12:21 am
Thanks Vasi, I was eager to make that point about Liberal voters’ second choice preferences when I saw Myle’s claim upthread too. This Liberal will revolt if Ignatieff won’t work with Layton if the opportunity arises and Layton agrees to reasonable terms for either a coalition or an accord.
It may well destroy the Liberal party as a viable force, but I’m prepared to risk that to actually get Harper out of power. The Canadian Nixon is setting the stage for a Canadian movement conservative take-over and it’s well past time to stop letting him stack the courts and bureaucracy with undercover wingnuts, while hollowing out the regulatory state’s ability to protect Canadians and tweaking the electoral and media laws to set the stage for Canadian hate radio and the rest of the Big Bag of Republican ratfucking tricks (note we are already seeing Liberal voters experience harassing phone calls supposedly on behalf of their Liberal candidate from some call centre in North Dakota).
I’m a Liberal because up until now they have been the viable way to get small-l liberal policies enacted in Canada. That seems to have ended in 2006 and I’d rather go with PM Jack than hope Justin Trudeau or some Chretien retread can miracle back all those lost voters in Quebec, and somehow rebuild the party in the West without utterly capitulating on all of Big Oil’s demands.
Maybe Jack will falter and the Liberals will resurge, or the NDP will adapt to its big-tent status, and moderate its positions in order to (in the end) become the Liberal party, or something like it. Look what happened to Labour in the UK.
Geof 04.30.11 at 12:39 am
The NDP ruled BC from 1991 to 2001. I moved to BC in 1997 and voted against them in 2001.
I believe BC fared much better than the rest of Canada during the slump that started in 1991, (which was much longer and deeper here than in the US), but because of close ties to Asia was hit much harder by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
When the NDP was voted out the dislike was visceral. In 1999 the RCMP raided premiere Glen Clark’s home. He later resigned over accusations that he received a free $10,000 deck for his cottage in return for influence. (He was replaced by Ujjal Dosanjh, now a federal Liberal.) The NDP was also responsible for the fast ferry fiasco, in which nearly half a billion dollars were spent on two locally built catamaran ferries which proved to be unreliable and created shoreline-eroding waves. Clark was despised. The “fast cats” remain the NDP scandal.
Whether the NDP’s economic reputation is deserved I don’t know. Both Vancouver-area newspapers and several TV stations are owned by the same company (CanWest Global), and they have been staunch Liberal supporters. My NDP-run municipal government in Burnaby is reported to be one of the most prudent city governments in North America.
By now it is the BC Liberals who are well hated (no relation to the federal party – their links are to the federal Conservatives). Not because of the convention center cost overruns (amounting to about twice the cost of the fast cats) or because they sold off the provincial railway after promising not to before the election (attracting a legislature raid by the RCMP and ongoing court battles over influence peddling), but because they apparently concealed the budget deficit before the last election and brought in the HST (harmonized sales tax, beneficial to large resource companies but harmful to restaurants and certain other local businesses) after saying they had no plans to do so – even though they initiated negotiations with the feds before the election. The HST is so hated that opponents managed the amazing feat of forcing a referendum by getting 10% of registered voters in all 85 BC ridings to sign a petition. Meanwhile, BC has long had the lowest minimum wage in Canada (though it’s going up under our new premiere) and the highest rate of child poverty.
I wouldn’t draw too much from the experiences of BC. Politics here are famously wacky compared to the rest of the country. Also, the suggestion that voting patterns are a good indication of economic stewardship is absurd. People vote against their economic self-interest all the time. I sense a certain affinity to circular logic about individual decisions in the market being the most reliable indication of what people like.
christian_h 04.30.11 at 1:01 am
Just to be clear about this: Myles is making stuff up. The unemployment rate in BC behaved very similarly to the unemployment rate in Canada as a whole – which I seem to recall was mostly governed by the Liberals. Who, to add, were thrown out of office and likely will not win these elections even though everyone (with the exception of Myles potentially) hates Harper, proving by Myles’s logic that the Liberals are socialists who have nuked the economy and will do so again.
The Tragically Flip 04.30.11 at 1:14 am
Another thing, as a member of the “Anyone But Ignatieff” Liberal party base revolt that put Dion in the leader’s chair over Ignatieff, who was the plurality leader, I have to say while Dion didn’t exactly work out so hot, I am mollified that I was right about Ignatieff being a bad pick too. Too much baggage to start (Iraq was a big one for me), and frankly after having the base of the party reject him, putting him in charge in 2009 was just collossally stupid. It’s not shocking to me that the Liberals are bleeding support to the NDP. Dippers (said affectionately) love Jack but try and find many Liberals who love Ignatieff. Ignatieff has had fairly poor approval ratings since he hit the scene, and the lack of a home team cheering section has to be a factor in all this. Conservative attack ads will of course be aimed at anyone the Liberals could have picked, but at least pick someone your own base can rally around.
Actually, Iraq deserves another mention. Not only is it bad for Ignatieff and the Liberals that he supported the war, it removes a fairly potent weapon that could be used against Harper. Martin got some mileage out of this, and Dion too. It was one of the proudest moments of the Chretien years that he kept us out that debacle, and the Liberals can’t use it (but the NDP and BQ certainly can).
MPAVictoria 04.30.11 at 1:51 am
“Myles, I don’t know what I’d think of an NDP-led coalition myself, but I’m skeptical that most Grits would turn to the Tories in disgust. Polling shows (PDF, page 6) that five times more Liberals have the NDP as their second choice than the Tories. I suspect that most Liberals liable to turn to the Conservatives have already done so.”
Myles specializes in assertions not evidence.
Substance McGravitas 04.30.11 at 2:01 am
Hmm, April 29 and counting…
MPAVictoria 04.30.11 at 2:04 am
Hmm, April 29 and counting…
My god they are getting desperate. I hope people can see through this crap.
Henry 04.30.11 at 2:50 am
Myles – as I believe one of my co-bloggers has noted, you are exhibiting a distinct tendency to take over threads. I would suggest that you limit yourself to at most two comments per day per thread.
GSSingh 04.30.11 at 3:01 am
I am an landed-immigrant, now a proud Canadian citizen, living in Brampton.
I will be voting Conservative for the same reason I left India and came to Canada. I want more economic freedom and fewer transfer payments that shrink the overall economic pie. I don’t want Canada to go further down the path towards the “License Raj.” Also, our incumbent Liberal MP is accused of bringing the practice of abusing servants from India to Canada–not sure if it’s true, but it’s horrible if it is and has no place in Canada.
Sandwichman 04.30.11 at 3:14 am
Hmm, April 29 and counting…
That crap will backfire. The Conservatives are saying it wasn’t them that planted the smear and pointing at the Liberals. Watch “The Sun” go down.
The Tragically Flip 04.30.11 at 3:24 am
On the other hand, this is pretty damn funny.
Substance McGravitas 04.30.11 at 3:57 am
You may, then, be interested in the Tory attempts to lessen your freedom.
GSSingh 04.30.11 at 4:43 am
Substance McG,
That link doesn’t make any sense, standing on its own.
What the optimal bounds of intellectual property are is a difficult question, and not one to be answered simplistically by a link like that. This is the sort of dumb one-minded monism that I left India to come to Canada to avoid. Please don’t be doing it here, too.
By the way, what does your ID mean?
Myles 04.30.11 at 4:49 am
You may, then, be interested in the Tory attempts to lessen your freedom.
Without engaging further in the NDP/anti-NDP debate, I will point out that as a matter of fact, the outcome on this particularly piece of legislation is a foregone conclusion, whether the government is Liberal or Tory: stronger protections for intellectual property is one of the EU’s non-negotiable conditions for free trade with Canada. As of right now, this debate has moved out of the political realm as an independent matter, and will have to be stomached if you are at all pro-free trade with Europe.
Substance McGravitas 04.30.11 at 5:13 am
It’s a swell thing, those Americans doing the Europeans such favours.
Chaz 04.30.11 at 6:26 am
GSSingh: elitist upper middle class Indian spewing talking points, or white Canadian pretending to be Indian spewing talking points?
Or right wing American pretending to be right wing Canadian pretending to be Indian spewing talking points? (Unlikely, but a guy can dream)
GSSingh 04.30.11 at 6:57 am
Chaz,
One thing I have noticed here–so-called “progressive” whites feel free to use racism against brown conservatives. F-you for calling my posts “talking points.” Go kick an immigrant who doesn’t toe your line.
John Quiggin 04.30.11 at 7:01 am
With reference to the previous post on AV, it would seem to me that the combination of FPTP voting and a strong aversion to coalition governments is a recipe for the kind of thing we are seeing. In this kind of system, it makes sense to voting for whichever of the two potential winners you prefer, and I think, if you support a system like this, you are more or less obliged to vote this way.
So, as long as the NDP are a third party, and the Libs have a chance of winning, that’s the way people vote. If the Libs look like losing anyway, it makes sense to vote NDP in ridings where they have a chance, and if there are enough of these, the NDP becomes the alternative to the Tories.
Chaz 04.30.11 at 8:03 am
If I were inclined to assume that 100% of blacks/hispanics/mainly lower class immigrant community members toed some sort of working class/oppressed minority line, I most certainly would not include “elitist upper class Indians” in that group. In fact I was suggesting you are part of an almost exactly opposite group (quite stereotypically, I admit, but if I’m going to insult you I may as well stereotype you as well).
I called you a fraud because you writing style suggests it. I don’t actually know you, so I could easily be wrong. Of course you’re spouting the same bs either way, so I don’t really care.
cheem 04.30.11 at 9:03 am
Myles, dude… it’s hard to deny that the NDP government in BC was a ridiculous circus replete with cronyism and corruption. However, it’s even harder to deny that what came afterward was worse. While the NDP was corrupt, they did not privatise profitable crown corporations, did not firesale the provincial railway crown corporation and did not force through certain odious and ridiculously unpopular taxes after having promised not to during the previous election campaign.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there… the important thing is that a Harper majority would be an absolute disaster to most of the Canadian smallfolk… look at the campaign that’s being run. The Conservatives are barely even making promises any more, nor are they even attempting to engage so-called “undecided” voters. Their modus operandi is to stack the deck in favour of corporations, appeal to their loyal base of voters to turn out and let the rest of us go to hell.
I’m just hoping that the NDP surge doesn’t give the conservatives a majority by splitting the vote on the left. That’s about all I’m hoping for out of this.
Chaz 04.30.11 at 9:05 am
@John Yeah, and as folks above are saying, that’s why the Liberals are so hesitant to cooperate with the NDP, and why they’re in such a terrible position if NDP outdoes them by even a couple seats. The system naturally pushes people toward two parties, which helps the Liberals hugely. If the Liberals and NDP both seem equally viable then the NDP, being further too the left, should be able to peel off the Liberals’ leftist base and leave them with nothing but the centrists. And with just the centrists they are a lowly third party, which pushes them down even more. The Conservatives threaten the Liberals’ policy preferences, but the NDP threatens the Liberal Party’s very existence. So to stay on top, the Liberals need the NDP to fail to win elections, to fail in government and be kicked out, or to somehow fail as the opposition.
That means that if the Not-the-Conservatives win a majority with NDP ahead of the Liberals, the Liberals really, really want to lead the coalition anyway (is there any chance NDP would put up with that?). If they end up in a NDP-led government, they are severely tempted to make that government a failure. If the Liberals or Bloc choose to prop up Cameron or Cameron has a majority, then the Liberals want that government to last until they manage to surpass the NDP in popularity.
In eleven dimensional tactical voting, what does that mean? I think it means that if you want a stable leftist coalition government above all, and you think the coalition can spare a couple seats, then you vote for the Liberals (or possibly the Conservatives), even if the NDP candidate is more viable in your riding, because the Liberals will probably behave much better if they beat the NDP (they are sort of holding you hostage), but the NDP would probably behave either way. A cohesive coalition is better even with slightly fewer seats. But of course if you think the election will come down to just a couple seats then you want to vote for the most viable candidate, because even an unstable (potential) coalition is better than a Conservative majority.
If you are more long term focused and want the NDP to become dominant then you vote NDP (or possibly Conservative), even if the Liberal candidate is more viable (you throw the seat to Harper). If you are a long-term focused Liberal partisan you vote Liberal.
So to sum up, this whole thing is ridiculous and everyone should use a Condorcet system or PR.*
*Both of which still give the Liberals these perverse incentives, but maybe a bit less!
tomslee 04.30.11 at 1:13 pm
@Chaz. I suspect that if there is not a conservative majority and the Liberals and NDP are unable to form a coalition there will be a large number of people in both parties (like cheem #75 and myself) angry at an unwillingness to put voters ahead of parties. On the bright side, if Ignatieff comes in third and he doesn’t join a coalition, he’ll be out on his ear, so his personal incentive must be to be coalition-minded.
I can see that the dynamics of the system cannot support more than one non-right party for long. But the corollary of that is that whether that party is labelled NDP or Liberal might not make much difference to its actual politics. The label matters for PR reasons, but surely not in any substantive way.
The New York City Math Teacher With New! Improved! Law School! 04.30.11 at 1:40 pm
bestmishu deploys a new spam tactic @77 by copying text from earlier in the same thread added to its web address.
Kieran Healy 04.30.11 at 1:53 pm
One thing I have noticed here—so-called “progressive†whites feel free to use racism against brown conservatives. F-you for calling my posts “talking points.†Go kick an immigrant who doesn’t toe your line.
Though you may indeed be living in Brampton, Canada, GSSingh, your IP address is consistently in Charlottesville, Virginia, from where you’ve been posting—under four aliases—since you appeared last month. Perhaps there is some consistent non-troll story linking “Academic Trad (skmitchell39@)”, “DWong (DarrylW954@)”, “TamBram (tambrahm21@)”, and “GSSingh (gsingh983@)”. But—especially in a context where someone is leaning on claims about their identity to call another commenter a racist—let me remind you of our Comments Policy, which says, in part “We are happy to accept pseudonymous comments but we will not knowingly accept comments from sockpuppeteers (individuals using more than one id and thereby giving the impression that their comments originate from more that one person).”
Kieran Healy 04.30.11 at 1:58 pm
a new spam tactic @77 by copying text from earlier in the same thread added to its web address.
Nice catch. Turns out he’d snuck in a few threads ago and has been living quietly, louse like, on the site since. Blocked for the future.
Daragh McDowell 04.30.11 at 3:12 pm
As a Canadian exile who still marvels at my homeland’s use of the monumentally stupid FPTP sytem, I think the NDP’s commitment to electoral reform is possibly reason enough to vote for them, even if my own policy preferences lean to the grits. For one thing it immediately ends all the Duverger’s law and vote splitting silliness that were the only reasons Nixon Jr. (Harper) was able to oil his way into government.
OTOH – I have to stick up for my old digs of Calgary. That’s right I’m a former resident of the fascist bastion of Tory-town. But here’s the thing – even though my old riding must forever bear the shame of electing Rob Anders (a man whose prior professional experience, non-Canucks, consists of being a ‘professional heckler’ for Jim Inhofe) 90% of my friends and neighbours back home would find his political views repellent. But they also recognise that the Grits have and the Dippers would treat the province as a massive piggy bank, not out of any anti-western prejudice but because the electoral system gives them precisely zero incentive to even try and attract AB voters (outside of Redmonton) and every incentive to shift the proceeds from its resources to seat rich Ottawa. So they elect Tories because they’re the only party that is in any meaningful way looking to attract their vote. And this quickly devolves into a vicious circle to the point that the other parties become so locally atrophied and weak that the only real decision for non-Tories is whether or not to bother to show up and cast a protest ballot for the Greens.
Now this is not to deny that Texas-of-the-North isn’t full of reactionary assholes (by Canuck standards.) But replacing the current electoral system with one that rewards parties for attempting to construct truly one party platforms, and at least trying to mobilise their supporters and win converts in Tory bastions seems to me to be an unqualified ‘good thing.’
It also assures us that the prospect of another PM in the Harper mould will be electorally almost impossible, which seems to be an unqualified ‘great thing.’
Myles 04.30.11 at 5:22 pm
However, it’s even harder to deny that what came afterward was worse. While the NDP was corrupt, they did not privatise profitable crown corporations, did not firesale the provincial railway crown corporation and did not force through certain odious and ridiculously unpopular taxes after having promised not to during the previous election campaign.
The economy improved. That’s all one needs to know why the Liberals keep getting re-elected. Stupid privatisations and unpopular taxes are entirely incidental in an environment where the environment was noticeably improving. I think if you didn’t have a job during the NDP era, and you did during the Liberal era (as the unemployment statistics seem to indicate is true for many), it could hardly have gotten worse; it must have gotten better.
Quite aside from their incompetence, the NDP of British Columbia, I think, was just really slow and dim in understanding the structural changes to the economy. Wikipedia says that Glen Clark, the NDP premier, initiated the fast ferries partly to prop up the domestic shipbuilding industry. What is fascinating, to me, is the mindset at work here, rather than just the incompetence: that the provincial government of BC should be in the business of propping up unprofitable sunset industries as a part of provincial industrial policy. Any awareness of the structure of Canadian federalism, not to mention the economic geography of Northwestern North America, would have alerted one to the unbelievable levels of egomania required to believe this.
Ambrosia 04.30.11 at 5:28 pm
Slightly OT, but a serious cultural faux pas:
it’s Simon FRASER University, expired sit-coms notwithstanding.
Myles 04.30.11 at 5:29 pm
If you are more long term focused and want the NDP to become dominant then you vote NDP (or possibly Conservative), even if the Liberal candidate is more viable (you throw the seat to Harper). If you are a long-term focused Liberal partisan you vote Liberal.
I would dispute this (forgot to input this into the last pot): I’m a Liberal partisan, and right now my preference is for a slight and extremely weak Tory majority. Not because I like the Tories, but because only a Tory majority would jolt voters into understanding the consequences of voting NDP. A Lib-NDP coalition would just legitimize the NDP and would be counterproductive, while the NDP as the official opposition in a minority parliament would also legitimize the NDP. As the NDP, rather than the Tories, poses the existential threat to the Liberal Party, the first priority is to weaken and destroy the NDP, not to defeat the Tories.
Substance McGravitas 04.30.11 at 5:33 pm
Gee whiz, Myles, that’s three in a day.
ckc (not kc) 04.30.11 at 5:41 pm
only a Tory majority would jolt voters into understanding the consequences of voting NDP.
as one of the voters for whom you so confidently forecast, I think this assumption about what NDP voters understand is the height (or depths) of arrogant imbecile partisanship.
McKingford 04.30.11 at 5:56 pm
A few points:
1. I can’t think of a single website that has more benefited from modeling its name after another one that has benefited more (unjustly) than threehundredandeight.com. Nate Silver is fantastic, but just because a Canadian has modeled the *naming* of his site on Silver doesn’t give him the same credibility. 308 has exactly zero federal elections of modeling under its belt. As of right now it’s projections are laughably outdated. The NDP has been polling over 40% in Quebec for almost 2 weeks now (and consistently 17-22 points ahead of the Bloc) yet 308 shows the BQ losing a mere handful of seats. I’m sorry, but there is simply no formula that can have the NDP taking 40% of the Quebec vote without also taking a majority its seats. Punditsguide.ca has a good breakdown of 308’s shortcomings. I note that all the polls, from different sources, in the last few days has the NDP trending higher nationally (and now even or ahead of the Liberals in Ontario). Every poll since Tuesday has the NDP at 30+ nationally (the latest polls – which will be the last before the election because of a legal 3 day ban before elections put the NDP at 33%).
2. I don’t doubt that there are other so-called Liberals like Myles who would rather see a Harper majority than the NDP taking power of any kind. But the national polling (which has the NDP over 30% as a first choice) shows upwards of 55% of voters having the NDP as a second choice. The Liberals are going to have a stark choice facing them with the NDP firmly in second with a Conservative plurality: in every election since 2004, the Liberal strategy has been to appeal to the centre-left as the only alternative to the Conservatives. Indeed, the NDP has been frustrated in election after election because its voters have strayed to the Liberals out of fear of a Harper government. But an NDP breakthrough in Quebec threatens to reduce the BQ to a stump (10-15 seats); if this is the case, the arithmetic works for an NDP+Liberal = majority…ie. they wouldn’t need the BQ’s support to hold power. In this scenario, a failure by the Liberals to support the NDP would be disastrous for the Liberals – it would essentially undermine the chief Liberal claim of the last 4 elections: that a vote for the Liberals was a vote to oust Harper.
3. People keep cautioning that an NDP breakthrough in Quebec can’t happen because they simply don’t have the organization and ground game. It is certainly true that this may cost them a handful of seats where the election is extremely close. But the fact is, polls of *likely voters* has them over 40% there consistently. Organization only matters around the periphery. If 40% of Quebecers make their way to the polling station and vote NDP the breakthrough will happen – even absent an organization. On a macro level, 40% will produce a plurality of Quebec seats. In short, the lack of a serious ground game in Quebec may mean the difference between 40 and 45 seats, but it won’t mean the difference between 10 and 40 seats.
4. Iraq is now starting to fade from the memories of most Canadians. But Afghanistan isn’t. And much more than his Iraq war cheerleading, it is his position on Afghanistan that has sunk Ignatieff – especially in Quebec (which opposes that war at much higher levels than the rest of Canada). He has worked relatively hard to regain a toehold in Quebec but his continued support of the Afghan mission, contrasted with the NDP position of an immediate end has given Quebec voters a reason to look to Layton.
McKingford 04.30.11 at 6:01 pm
the NDP as the official opposition in a minority parliament would also legitimize the NDP.
I think this is slightly off: the failure of the Liberals to cooperate with the NDP in bringing down a Harper minority would finally put the lie to the Liberal claim of the last 4 elections: that the only way to save us from Conservative rule was to vote Liberal…and thus would legitimize the NDP as the only true vote against Harper.
McKingford 04.30.11 at 6:05 pm
#81: I’m sorry, but that simply reveals the bizarre narcissism of Albertans – that it is somehow only by virtue of their hard work and industriousness that oil appeared under their feet.
I don’t think it is so much a desire to use Alberta as a piggy bank as it is a need to have Alberta pay for the (massive) externalities of tar sands extraction.
ckc (not kc) 04.30.11 at 8:05 pm
desire to use Alberta as a piggy bank
It’s a confederation, n’est-ce pas? Transfer payments, universal health care, etc. That’s the way we (mostly) like it.
BKN in Canadia 04.30.11 at 8:32 pm
Re McKingford #89: In His geological decisions, God rewards the righteous.
Daragh McDowell 04.30.11 at 9:00 pm
#89 and 90
To be clear – I’m on your side (though I don’t thing Tar Sands and their externalities were much of an issue around the time of the Trudeau salute.)
But for better or worse, the perception of Albertans (and after all in politics perception is what matters most) is as I described above. And frankly it would be the same in almost any federal political union for any (population wise) small province seeing ‘its’ resources transferred to a population heavy one.
My point was that the retrograde nature of the voting system encourages political strategies, on the part of both the Tories and the Grits/NDP that entrench these attitudes. Tories give goodies to the West. Grits/NDP don’t – so why vote for them? Change the voting system, give all the federal parties an incentive to compete (and BTW, formulate more federalist ‘one Canada’ platforms) and you might change those attitudes. The alternative, IMHO, is the eventual emergence of a PQ style western secessionist movement.
Substance McGravitas 04.30.11 at 9:27 pm
It has not yet been seen if the NDP will do their part in pandering to the West, so uncoupling them from the Liberals might be wise, although I suppose if your definition of “goodies” is “things that Tories would do” that might hold. Certainly there’s NDP support in BC, and we’ll see if the current lone Albertan keeps her seat.
Beauzeaux 04.30.11 at 9:31 pm
This is my first election as a Canadian citizen. (We are emigrants from the US.) My husband and I voted early because I have to have eye surgery on Monday. We’re old coots and not fans of Stevie Harper. Ignatieff has actually run a better campaign than expected but I don’t like the Liberals’ positions on many questions.
So we voted NDP — not that the NDP has a hope of capturing this riding. But it’s better to vote for what you want and not get it rather than voting for what you don’t want and getting it.
Daragh McDowell 04.30.11 at 9:51 pm
@93 – Very true. And perhaps I should have used the term ‘Prairies’ rather than ‘The West’ as BC is a whole different world. And Edmonton, as always is a special case. Tories might lose all three ridings this time out.
yeliabmit 05.01.11 at 1:25 am
@Daragh: “And perhaps I should have used the term ‘Prairies’ rather than ‘The West’ as BC is a whole different world.”
Yes, please. As a lifelong BC resident, it really grates on me when Alberta is included in “The West.” The Rockies really do seem to represent a cultural as well as a geographical boundary.
And I heartily endorse everything McKingford wrote above.
Scott 05.01.11 at 1:40 am
BC is a different world, alright. And the triumphs and travails of the Vancouver Canucks in the NHL playoffs are bound to depress turnout.
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 3:06 am
A local Tory operative I know claims he knows – grain of salt time – a bunch of Tories who are voting NDP because they see advantage in a more polarized political sphere and hate Liberals SO MUCH. He’s voting for my guy. Welcome aboard I guess.
Chaz 05.01.11 at 3:46 am
“I would dispute this (forgot to input this into the last pot): I’m a Liberal partisan, and right now my preference is for a slight and extremely weak Tory majority. Not because I like the Tories, but because only a Tory majority would jolt voters into understanding the consequences of voting NDP. A Lib-NDP coalition would just legitimize the NDP and would be counterproductive, while the NDP as the official opposition in a minority parliament would also legitimize the NDP. As the NDP, rather than the Tories, poses the existential threat to the Liberal Party, the first priority is to weaken and destroy the NDP, not to defeat the Tories.”
Mm, you’ve got a predicament. You want to make sure the Cons win a majority, but you also want to make sure the Liberals beat the NDP. That means if the Cons look like they can’t pull it off (without your crucial tactical vote, that is) you vote Con. If the Libs are in danger of coming in third you’ve got to vote Lib. And if both are true, you’ll have to choose which bullet you’d rather eat. Fortunately, this stuff really only applies if your riding is a Con-Lib race. Otherwise you can vote not-NDP and go have a drink.
“Nate Silver is fantastic, but just because a Canadian has modeled the naming of his site on Silver doesn’t give him the same credibility. 308 has exactly zero federal elections of modeling under its belt.”
I have to say I was skeptical when I saw that they are using a proportional swing model. Nate Silver made up a model like that for the UK election, and it was a total flop. Another interesting similarity to that election: the Lib Dems had a big late surge in the polls. Commentators were attributing to the unpopularity of Labour’s leader and suddenly increased popularity of Nick Clegg (among young voters no less!). But in the actual election that support completely disappeared. Perhaps after the election Harper will offer Layton a referendum on AV, in exchange for a few compromises of course.
Myles 05.01.11 at 5:58 am
Mm, you’ve got a predicament. You want to make sure the Cons win a majority, but you also want to make sure the Liberals beat the NDP. That means if the Cons look like they can’t pull it off (without your crucial tactical vote, that is) you vote Con. If the Libs are in danger of coming in third you’ve got to vote Lib.
Not really, frankly. At this point the Liberals are such losers that coming second or third is entirely superficial in the case of a Con majority: everybody knows they are losers and the big deal is dumping Iggy as soon as possible, and picking someone who can appeal to middle-class Canadian suburbia. The important thing is to not legitimize the NDP in any way, and given the probabilities of their either actually having a claim to government, or forming the official opposition in a hung parliament, the ideal outcome is one where the NDP wouldn’t have any leverage whatsoever: i.e., a (slightly, just-over-the-edge) Tory majority.
Liberals coming in third is only a problem in a situation of hung parliament: it might be pressured to prop up a NDP government, which would be the literal end of the Liberal Party as a political movement. Or it might be forced to sit on the side while the NDP takes the limelight granted to the official opposition in a situation of minority parliaments and thus become further legitimized. The ideal outcome is one where being or not being the official opposition is completely irrelevant: i.e., a majority parliament, because right now the NDP looks like it might get the official opposition spot. (Canadian majority parliaments are famous for their lack of any kind of parliamentary democracy, so a NDP stint as official opposition in a majority parliament would just be a joke.)
Certainly there’s NDP support in BC, and we’ll see if the current lone Albertan keeps her seat.
One of the odd things about BC representation in the federal parliament, which I found out while researching the Commons, is the weird and dualistic nature of the NDP vote in BC. To wit: its BC seats (usually around 10 or so) are basically split, except for the Victoria constituency, between a) rural/forestry mill/mining/industrial small-town ridings, and b) the poorer urban Vancouver ridings. Neither category is growing (in fact the former is shrinking), so there’s actually an upper limit to NDP’s BC seat count.
Other than Victoria, the current NDP seats in BC are: Vancouver-Kingsway (urban Vancouver), Vancouver East (ditto, and here the NDP got a higher vote percentage anywhere else in the country), Skeena-Bulkley Valley (rural, northern), New Westminster-Coquitlam (urban Vancouver), Nanaimo-Cowichan (seemingly rural), Burnaby-Douglas (urban Vancouver), Southern Interior (rural, but amusingly just outside the nice part of the Okanagan). I can’t see the NDP getting any of the new Commons seats that are bound to come down the pipeline at some point, once the Commons goes to 340 MPs or so.
I think this is slightly off: the failure of the Liberals to cooperate with the NDP in bringing down a Harper minority would finally put the lie to the Liberal claim of the last 4 elections: that the only way to save us from Conservative rule was to vote Liberal…and thus would legitimize the NDP as the only true vote against Harper.
I can see why you would (and would want to) believe this, but it genuinely isn’t the case. It’s first important to understand what the Liberal Party of Canada is: i.e., anything but a party of consistent ideological principle. To support a broad-left government in which it is not the leading part is against its nature; it does not recognize such identifications as the “broad left,” because its only political preferences are those which get Canada safely to the next station, decade, century, whatever. It has desire neither for vague idylls of social justice nor fiery claims of moral approbation.
If it supports a NDP government it ceases to have any justification or purpose for existence as an organization and political movement. If the goals of Liberalism is governance by left-wing ideology, why not vote NDP? Why bother having a Liberal Party at all? It’s the mistaken identification of the Liberal Party with the broad left that is silly; the Liberal Party should ‘fess up that it has no principles and its only interests involve getting Canada to the next station, snug and warm, with itself in the driver’s seat. This, rather than some vague incantation of left-wing hopes, is what millions of middle-class Canadian voters vote for. Insofar as Harper was set up as the Liberal bogeyman for electoral purposes, it was because he had a political ideology at all: if the voters found out that his chief interests were sleeping with prostitutes and accepting small-time bribes he probably would get more votes.
So, let’s imagine the unimaginable. If the Liberals support the NDP, what would it mean? It would mean that it seems to subscribe to some sort of political ideology, however vague, rather than just a general lust for power; this is poisonous for the Liberal Party especially, because any affirmation of any kind of ideology is bound to alienate the other half of the party (Blue Grits) who doesn’t subscribe to the particular ideology. It would certainly mean that its broad political identification with the left overrides its destiny as the natural governing party of Canada, and I submit to you that the Liberal Party is absolutely worthless if it is not the natural governing party of Canada, but a generic party of the left, because it is, and has always been, absolutely shit at being a part of the left, even during the Trudeau era. (Pearson never got a majority, not even once.) Basically, it’s turning its entire political purpose on its head; reversing what is important and categorical (natural governing party of Canada) with what is entirely instrumental and supplementary (being of the broad left). I don’t see how the Liberal Party can survive in that condition. Certainly, the Liberals would sustain some damage once the remaining voters who believed that the Liberals actually have any kind of consistent ideology (of the left) are thus disabused of this belief, but I submit that it would be far more than outweighed by the existential damage of self-denial, in completely rejecting the very purpose of the Liberal Party, which is to govern Canada irrespective of ideology or political fashions. I see how a NDP supporter would like to believe the opposite, but that’s just not the case. Jean Chrétien, the most effective Liberal leader in decades, was a complete moral vacuum, and everybody knew it; he had no ideology but the ideology of power, and he had no policy but the policy that which keeps Canada nice enough of a country for it to be worth the bother. Yet he consistently got majority after majority, not because he was some sort of Moses of the broad centre-left, but because he kept the budgets balanced, the economy running along smoothly and nicely, whose chief qualities were that his policies allowed people to go back to their naps.
john c. halasz 05.01.11 at 10:22 am
Myles is a Schmittian, though, being Canadian, a very “nice” one.
vasi 05.01.11 at 12:14 pm
Daragh: I hope you’re right about the NDP’s “commitment to electoral reform”, but I’ll believe it only when I see it reflected in legislation. The BC NDP’s negative stance on the BC-STV referendum was horribly disappointing.
Canadian citizens have so far proven to be very conservative when it comes to electoral systems, I’m not entirely sure why. After all the bizarre election results we’ve seen, you’d think the need for change would be obvious. In any case, once you add the fact that the winning party(ies) are almost always beneficiaries of FPTP, I suspect Canada is more likely to revert to a two-party system than to change voting systems.
Daragh McDowell 05.01.11 at 12:36 pm
@vasi
Sadly I think you’re probably going to be proven correct. But TBF Layton did make it an issue during the debates, and hopefully will follow through in parliament.
McKingford 05.01.11 at 1:56 pm
#100: Myles, you expound at length as if to suggest vast disagreement, when in fact there is very little. I heartily *agree* that the Liberals are not a party of the left or centre-left, but one that is ideology-free with a view simply to govern (for the sake of governing). And this is why it has bothered me to no end to hear cries of “unite the left”, which has – until now – been essentially a call for the *real* left (the NDP) to unilaterally disarm.
Surely we can at least agree that – even if they didn’t mean it (and they likely didn’t) – the Liberals have campaigned in at least the last 4 election cycles by appealing to the left so as to stop Harper. Indeed, the real reason I think we are seeing the collapse of the Liberal vote (and certainly the reason the Liberals aren’t really competitive vis-a-vis the Conservatives) this election is their consistent failure to do *anything* to appeal to the centre-right. In essence, they have ceded Harper a slice of 35-38% of the electorate with the hope of making it up by cutting into the vote on the left. And now that Canadians are wise to this as a failed electoral strategy they are abandoning the Liberals in droves.
Now, *if* the Liberals truly have no intention of bringing down Harper (and I concede it is entirely possible), then they will lose a ton of credibility (ie. it puts the lie to their claim of the last 4+ election cycles). So from that perspective, it is preferable for them that Harper secure a majority so that they have that veneer of cover: ie. “we woulda voted out Harper but we didn’t have the votes”. But it still would leave us with the disaster of a Harper majority. I realize that this wouldn’t bother you because you are too patrician to have any real concern for small-d democracy, but for the rest of us Harper’s authoritarianism and contempt for open government are a cause for grave concern for the direction of our country.
But you overlook the possibility that this election is more than a blip, and that this will represent a true realignment in Canadian politics (especially if the NDP supplants the BQ as the true force in Quebec, which is social-democratic in its values – since it will give the NDP a base of 40+ seats from which to build in elections going forward). So in the face of that kind of realignment (where – forget “fortress Ontario”, “fortress *Toronto*” is threatened) the Liberals may well be on their way to extinction. In short, if the raison-d’etre of the Liberals until now has been as the natural governing party, but they can’t actually win, then they face an existential threat…unless there is electoral reform. Up until now the Liberals have rejected electoral reform on the deluded assumption that they could once again strike the winning conditions of the Chretien years to form a majority. But that strikes me as pretty unlikely. So the Liberals will likely *benefit*, from this point forward, from a form of PR. And the NDP can (and should) make that happen.
Ed 05.01.11 at 2:04 pm
Assuming the Liberals don’t recover in the next couple of days, I’m curious what the correct Liberal strategy should have been after 2006. Not selecting Ignatieff, or Dion and Ignatieff, would have been a start, but I don’t remember the other contenders in the leadership contests being particularly strong candidates.
What approach should a hypothetical liberal leader selected in 2006 should have taken?
McKingford 05.01.11 at 2:43 pm
105: I don’t even think you have to go back that far. The biggest folly Ignatieff committed was deciding against taking the reins of power in his very first decision as leader. Faced with the possibility of becoming PM (through a coalition) himself in early 2009, he apparently decided that Stephen Harper would make a better PM and thus began a “strategy” of supporting the Conservatives that continued with little abatement for 2+ years.
I mean, seriously, how can you campaign for PM when you had your chance but decided instead to endorse the other guy – your chief rival?
I realize that the proposed coalition would have horrified the pearl clutchers like Myles, but of course he represents a vanishingly small constituency (really, pretentious wannabe aristocrats in Canada you can probably count on one hand, especially since Lord Tubby of Black renounced his citizenship).
The Liberals are dying on the vine this election because people simply don’t believe them when they say you must vote for them to get rid of the Conservatives – after all, they had the chance to *take power* and decided against it (and thus burdened us with 2+ years of Harper), and continued to prop up the Harper gov’t time and again over the course of that time.
Daragh McDowell 05.01.11 at 3:16 pm
Here’s a question – Grits are now at rock bottom. The average of last 8 polls now shows the NDP within 4 pts of the Tories. From a strictly practical standpoint, if Liberals want a non-Harper government, the NDP is now the only game in town. Do you think this will lead to a further collapse in the vote on Monday, or will the hardcore stay hardcore?
Uncle Kvetch 05.01.11 at 3:47 pm
I heartily agree that the Liberals are not a party of the left or centre-left, but one that is ideology-free with a view simply to govern (for the sake of governing).
Apologies for the US-centrism, but this is the best description of our Democratic Party since Bill Clinton that I’ve seen in awhile.
tomslee 05.01.11 at 3:50 pm
@Daragh McDowell: It might not be Kim Campbell time, but I find it hard to see anything other than further collapse at this point. Anyone But Harpers and some number of Anyone But Laytons will surely leave in many ridings.
bigcitylib 05.01.11 at 4:04 pm
Reasons for our current situation:
1) Iggy is a cold fish. his charisma is quite a bit less than t’was originally advertised. The accusations of self-regard levelled against him were not invented from the whole cloth. His books (some of which I’ve quite liked otherwise) are full of it.
2) S. Harper is a cold fish, and a dickhead. I’ve never come across a Canadian leader and or party that made so little effort to be liked by the voters. Part of this is playing to “the base”, the knuckle dragging rurals that form the hard core of CPoC support. If you’re not acting like a jerk, they think you’ve gone soft.
3) Jack Layton is a likable guy whose been at it a long time and outperforms his rivals.
Issues? Whoa! Can the hippy talk, star-child. None of the parties has a particularly coherent platform, and nobody expects the platform to mean anything a minute after the votes are counted. So people default to the guy that looks best on TV.
PS. One nice thing. Odds are about 50/50 that we wind up with a Green Party candidate in the form of Lizzie May in the HOC. If you want some reason for optimism, then thats about all their is.
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 4:30 pm
The Green Party is a funny case in which I get to work up a Myles-like lather about vote-splitting. The Greens, to my eyes, aren’t different enough to the NDP to justify another party, but they can certainly peel off some of that leftist vote ensuring NDP losses. On the other hand if the Liberals are finally destroyed (Can you believe that? It’s like all the maple trees are dying!) some future Green/NDP coalition seems much more likely than a Liberal/NDP one, at least from the perspective of the current Liberal era of manic triangulation. I guess I can see the Greens as a future good thing, although I am stamping my little feet about them now.
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 4:34 pm
The local free weekly’s slate for Greater Vancouver.
http://www.straight.com/article-390033/vancouver/straight-slate
McKingford 05.01.11 at 4:37 pm
107 & 109: Of course there is a hardcore Liberal vote. There are a number of ridings (eg. the 905 area code surrounding Toronto) where the NDP stands no chance at all (ie. sub 10% support), so it remains a fight between the Liberals and Cons…and so Liberal voters have a reason to get out and vote true to their party colours.
I would think the more dangerous thing, from a Liberal perspective, isn’t that Liberals switch votes, but that they stay home. The dirty little secret of the 2008 election is that the Conservative raw total vote was almost completely flat from the 2006 election. Yet they made big gains in vote % and in seats because 800,000 Liberals stayed home. There is good reason that with polls this dispiriting a lot more will do the same this election.
bigcitylib 05.01.11 at 4:38 pm
SM,
There are a lot of people like me (well, maybe a couple of per cent of the population) that were NDP but saw how quickly they betrayed their green roots whenever they got into power provincially. In BC, for example, whenever it became a question of balancing union vs. environmental issues, the unions won (the “war in the woods” after Clark got in, for example). I would love to see a party that is pro-environment but not beholden to labour, so my options nowadays in Canada are Green or Lib.
Myles 05.01.11 at 4:41 pm
But it still would leave us with the disaster of a Harper majority. I realize that this wouldn’t bother you because you are too patrician to have any real concern for small-d democracy, but for the rest of us Harper’s authoritarianism and contempt for open government are a cause for grave concern for the direction of our country.
I thought the sky was falling down when in 2006 Harper got a minority government. Turns out to not be the case. Crooked and occasionally inexplicable, yes, but the economy has doing fine, and they’ve managed to start negotiating free trade with Europe. If nothing else, I want to keep Harper in place (original preference, minority) because that’s the parliamentary configuration that lends itself most easily to passing the thing. The NDP is more or less captured by the anti-Eurotrade forces, so any government that includes the NDP is going to be very unreliable on this. Whereas if the Tories table it, the Liberals will discreetly assent, the NDP will kick and scream but secretly be happy that it won’t have to answer to the loony anti-trade base (and more than a few anti-trade MPs), and the thing will get passed. As this is the most important legislative priority in Canadian politics right now, I want it passed pronto. I’m willing to put with almost any kind of government as long as it passes Eurotrade, and then kick it out at the next election. Given the inevitable downward slide of the US economy, it’s imperative that Eurotrade be secured ASAP.
Not selecting Ignatieff, or Dion and Ignatieff, would have been a start, but I don’t remember the other contenders in the leadership contests being particularly strong candidates.
What approach should a hypothetical liberal leader selected in 2006 should have taken?
Frank McKenna, keep going to John Graham (which was more than competent), who knows. The Liberals needed someone who could both a) appeal to Bay Street, and b) middle-class Canadian suburbia. Also, there’s the structural issue of the Chretien-era campaign finance reform, which advantaged (unfairly, in my view) parties with numerous small donations rather than large chunks of donations, which was how the Grits were traditionally financed: i.e. massive donations from Bay Street. The first legislative priority of a Grit government should be to repeal this idiotic and self-limiting law.
I realize that the proposed coalition would have horrified the pearl clutchers like Myles, but of course he represents a vanishingly small constituency (really, pretentious wannabe aristocrats in Canada you can probably count on one hand, especially since Lord Tubby of Black renounced his citizenship).
I actually didn’t mind the coalition possibility, although a lot of people did at the time, but the situation has changed to such an extent that any coalition government with the NDP now would be far more damaging in my view.
Up until now the Liberals have rejected electoral reform on the deluded assumption that they could once again strike the winning conditions of the Chretien years to form a majority. But that strikes me as pretty unlikely. So the Liberals will likely benefit, from this point forward, from a form of PR. And the NDP can (and should) make that happen.
They could, if they reform the campaign finance laws so that the Tories and the NDP get absolutely buried in Liberal money. PR is interesting, because I happen to be ambivalent about it. It will almost certainly reduce the vote-count of the NDP, because a huge chunk of its vote base will go where they naturally belong, the Green Party. I am entirely happy with this, because to me the NDP is more pernicious than the Green. In some federal ridings, the NDP is already behind the Greens, despite the latter never having elected a single MP. (Blair Wilson was a Green MP, but he was elected as a Liberal.) If I have to guess, in a PR system the NDP (rural and urban vote) and the Greens (inner suburban and urban vote) will each get about one-sixth of the electorate, with the NDP possibly dipping below the Greens (which would be awesome). So the Liberals, if they are smart enough, can in fact form a permanent coalition that locks the NDP out of power under a PR scenario: just ally with the Greens and ignore NDP bleatings about blah blah blah.
In any case, the whole thing is utterly stupid. Canadian politics doesn’t necessarily involve ideology; one of the most pleasant aspects for me, in fact, is that it’s largely an ideology-free zone. What Jack Layton has going for him is his charisma, but not as many people care for his particular ideology (or indeed, ideology of any kind). If the NDP tries to institute its economic programme it would probably find itself more unpopular than Harper, and if the Liberals somehow, in an act of terminal idiocy, choose to prop up a NDP government, it’s next to guaranteed that the coalition would be the engineered to fail. Even if the leadership were to go into it genuinely, there are enough Grits around who will find ways to bring it down and thereby discredit the NDP. Which is fine by me.
What we need, in fact, is another small-time corrupt politico like Chrétien; the country ran fine under him, and I don’t see why anyone needs anything different. I don’t like politicians who believe stuff, and I especially don’t like Canadian politicians who believe stuff.
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 4:45 pm
Indeed, provincially both Harcourt and Clark managed to betray the environmental cause pretty convincingly in favour of either union interests or business interests when they felt the need. The federal NDP has had the enormous advantage of being able to vote as they liked without fear of tipping the balance to election while the Liberals were dithering; I expect some attitude changes if there’s a shift in the balance of power. As I would with the Greens.
Daragh McDowell 05.01.11 at 4:49 pm
I don’t like politicians who believe stuff, and I especially don’t like Canadian politicians who believe stuff.
Gosh, I wonder why Iggy and the Grits didn’t try to galvanise the electorate with such an inspiring message…
Myles 05.01.11 at 4:51 pm
The local free weekly’s slate for Greater Vancouver.
The endorsement of Globe and Mail, the national newspaper of record, usually perceived to lean very slightly centre-left:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/the-globes-election-endorsement-facing-up-to-our-challenges/article2001610/
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 5:18 pm
Probably worth noting that it’s the third Harper endorsement in a row for our centre-left G&M.
tomslee 05.01.11 at 5:37 pm
…and here is a list of other major newspaper endorsements. Reprinting:
Daragh McDowell 05.01.11 at 5:46 pm
Hold on a sec – I thought Macleans endorsed the Grits? At least Coyne did.
MPAVictoria 05.01.11 at 6:38 pm
“Endorsements by the corporate media, to date:
Globe & Mail: Stephen Harper
Ottawa Citizen: Stephen Harper
National Post: Stephen Harper
Calgary Herald: Stephen Harper
Sun chain: Stephen Harper
Vancouver Province: Stephen Harper
Montreal Gazette: Stephen Harper
Edmonton Journal: Stephen Harper
Maclean’s magazine: Stephen Harper
Winnipeg Free Press: Stephen Harper
Hamilton Spectator: Stephen Harper”
It is nice to see Canadians being so well represented by their media.
MPAVictoria 05.01.11 at 6:40 pm
Myles you do realize that the NDP are the second choice of more liberals than any other party? Most Canadians are progressives who favour a strong social safety net. Hence the fact that left of center parties routinely get around two thirds of the vote. This is why NDP support is surging.
IM 05.01.11 at 8:07 pm
A question: Does anybody else think that a trade treaty between Canada and the EU – hardly the first, I assume – is the most important thing in canadian politics?
It is hardly mentioned here in the EU.
tomslee 05.01.11 at 8:25 pm
The endorsement list I posted at #120 is looking a bit dodgy (thank you DMcD). I cannot find an editorial endorsement from Maclean’s but yes, Coyne has said he will be voting Liberal. The Ottawa Citizen has endorsed one Tory (in Nepean-Carleton) and one Liberal (in Stormont-Dundas-South). I have verified the G&M, National Post, Calgary Herald, Toronto Sun, Vancouver Province, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, Winnipeg Free Press, Hamilton Spectator and also Kitchener-Waterloo Record endorsements for the Tories. I’d post links but then the comment would probably be spam-blocked.
MPAVictoria 05.01.11 at 8:33 pm
“A question: Does anybody else think that a trade treaty between Canada and the EU – hardly the first, I assume – is the most important thing in canadian politics?”
In a word no.
IM 05.01.11 at 8:38 pm
I guessed so.
Daragh McDowell 05.01.11 at 8:40 pm
@125 No probs. Just took a look through a couple of the endorsements and its remarkable how similar they (including the Economist’s.) They basically all boil down to ‘yes Harper is an untrustworthy Nixonesque viper, but now that is clear Iggy doesn’t have a hope in hell the prospect of PM Layton scares the bejeezus out of our corporate overlords. Just close your eyes, hope for the best and think of those tax-cuts.’
Except for the Alberta papers of course, all of which basically just say ‘OIL! OIL! OIL!’ over and over again.
Substance McGravitas 05.01.11 at 9:56 pm
No.
Steve LaBonne 05.01.11 at 11:42 pm
Jebus, I didn’t realize that your corporate media had gotten as bad as ours. My condolences.
Myles 05.02.11 at 12:43 am
Toronto Star: Jack Layton
Ah, the only newspaper in the world edited by a dead man. I thought common law-based societies generally looked unfavourably upon mortmain?
They basically all boil down to ‘yes Harper is an untrustworthy Nixonesque viper, but now that is clear Iggy doesn’t have a hope in hell the prospect of PM Layton scares the bejeezus out of our corporate overlords.
Just to repeat: polled endorsement of Layton as the “best choice for PM” is not an endorsement of his (troglodyte) economic agenda. “Best choice for PM,” for those not familiar, is traditionally the irrelevant popularity contest of Canadian politics. Some people even vote Duceppe for it!
Most Canadians are progressives who favour a strong social safety net.
Let’s try to sort this out:
Strong social safety net =/= Northern European-style social democracy with 90% unionization rates and wages determined at the level of national negotiations.
Strong social safety net (in the context given) = a generally free economy, with salaries freely determined, a liberal democracy with strong public services and assistance for Canadians in need.
Liberal Party of Canada = a generally free economy, with salaries freely determined, a liberal democracy with strong public services and assistance for Canadians in need.
NDP = Northern European-style social democracy with 90% unionization rates and wages determined at the level of national negotiations.
Strong safety net (in the context given) =/= the platform of the NDP.
There has never been, and hopefully never will be, any kind of majority among Canadians whatsoever for any kind of social democracy. The NDP is a party of social democracy, if not socialism.
And also: in fact I suspect the Greens would be the second choice of Liberals were the Greens a viable party, but it’s not. The NDP poaches Green votes much more massively than any party poaches anybody else’s votes. Endorsement of Jack Layton is not endorsement of the NDP’s Neanderthal economic programme.
MPAVictoria 05.02.11 at 2:31 am
“The NDP is a party of social democracy, if not socialism.”
This word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
” Endorsement of Jack Layton is not endorsement of the NDP’s Neanderthal economic programme.”
You keep asserting this Myles. Yet you refuse to say exactly what about the NDP platform scares you so much. Also how do you know what exactly NDP voters are endorsing? Or are you just asserting that as well?
ckc (not kc) 05.02.11 at 2:36 am
There has never been, and hopefully never will be, any kind of majority among Canadians whatsoever for any kind of social democracy.
…universal health care? …Canada Pension/OAS?
Chaz 05.02.11 at 7:06 am
“A question: Does anybody else think that a trade treaty between Canada and the EU – hardly the first, I assume – is the most important thing in canadian politics?”
A certain set of people will make a huge deal out of economic reforms which they see as win-win (i.e. no obvious negative tradeoff) and as a common sense improvement, even when the measures make only minor efficiency improvements, or are mostly symbolic.
You see people arguing in favor of the euro based on nothing but slightly lower transactional costs for tourists. We had the Bush administration and parts of the media make a huge deal about free trade deals with Central America and Chile. And you see people insisting that the cornerstone of American economic policy should be protecting the dollar’s status as the dominant international currency. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s idea of economic policy was making a trip to Israel to personally hawk Californian exports. People will drop everything for a free lunch.
On the other hand, Myles did say he basically doesn’t care about any ideological issues. Once you cross those off the list, maybe an obscure trade deal is all that’s left.
Myles 05.02.11 at 9:23 am
…universal health care? …Canada Pension/OAS?
These are features of a strong safety-net liberal free-market economy, not necessarily of a social democracy. Social democracy isn’t just an euphemism for “things I like”; it has specific meaning.
Once you cross those off the list, maybe an obscure trade deal is all that’s left.
It’s certainly obscure for Europe, but it’s crucial for Canada. Basically, with this trade deal, Canada would be in the very nice position of being at the pivot of North American and European free trade. Not only does this partially insulate Canada from possible U.S. economic decline, it also relieves Ontario of the current (although decreasing) reliance on American industrial subsidiaries. The most promising prospect, however, is that of Canada becoming the location of choice for commercial concerns wishing to serve both European and American markets from a single location, tariff- and hassle-free. This would be salubrious not only economically, but also culturally and politically, pushing Canada in a more internationalized, cosmopolitan direction.
It would, in fact, be a partial recovery of Canada’s old position as the conduit between the British Empire and the Americas, which is to be celebrated. This kind of internationalization and cosmopolitanization is the sort of thing that has the potential to make Canada not a poorer but nicer cousin of the U.S., but a leading North Atlantic community that transcends the continent.
This is the sort of practical, win-win initiative that is the natural province of the Liberal Party. Too bad it’s the Tories pushing it now. Like the LSE-TSX merger, it is one of a series of steps toward making Canada not just a great country, but the best country. A country where universal, quality healthcare exists in partnership with commercial success, community feeling with cosmopolitan openness, egalitarianism with universal wealth and prosperity.
Chaz 05.02.11 at 10:07 am
Well there you have it. Myles is in the win-win, minor economic improvement/symbolism group. He also demonstrates the non-ideological, booster mentality typically involved, and he brings up the Hong Kong/Singapore/London/Dubai (ha, Dubai wishes!) we-will-be-the-trade-hub strategy*, which I failed to mention. To this I say: making yourself the trade hub is not an easy thing, and if it does pan out the extra corporate headquarters and reexport companies will give only a very minor increase in employment and tax revenue relative to the total Canadian economy (although they may be significant to Myles personally, considering his career goals). But I guess if the trade deal isn’t costing you anything (except your IP laws?) then you might as well go for it. Just don’t go all Dubai and invest real money in the plan.
*Not to be confused with the more pernicious Delaware/Ireland/Caribbean we-will-be-the-tax-haven strategy.
Anyhoo . . . Bin Laden dying helps Harper, right?
Emma in Sydney 05.02.11 at 10:38 am
“a leading North Atlantic community that transcends the continent.”
What does that even mean? Canucks in space?
IM 05.02.11 at 10:46 am
Since Bin Laden is dead – and died in Pakistan – the NDP position that the boys should brought home from Afghanistan is obviously correct.
I am joking. Will this event influence the election in any way? Even the trade treaty is more important…
The Tragically Flip 05.02.11 at 11:31 am
Someone above said the Liberals have ceded the 37% of the vote to the CPC by not appealing to the centre right. Uhm, except for 2004, conservative parties have been taking high 30s support going back to 1997, back when Liberals were balancing budgets and slashing transfers. In 2004, the newly merged CPC dropped to 30%, possibly because a lot of PC voters were scared of Harper, but they came home by 2006.
Point being, I dont see this bloc of winnable centre-right voters unless Harper lets the mask slip, but that’s not really in Liberal control.
VV 05.02.11 at 5:48 pm
“which advantaged (unfairly, in my view) parties with numerous small donations rather than large chunks of donations, which was how the Grits were traditionally financed: i.e. massive donations from Bay Street. The first legislative priority of a Grit government should be to repeal this idiotic and self-limiting law.”
Fer chissakes! You’re in favor of big money control of elections?! Seriously?
On second thought, please don’t answer that….
Substance McGravitas 05.02.11 at 7:29 pm
Good luck everyone.
MPAVictoria 05.02.11 at 8:05 pm
Good luck indeed. I hope everyone (even you Myles) goes out and votes today. We owe it to ourselves and to our country.
christian_h 05.02.11 at 8:12 pm
So the NYT had ONE article total about the Canadian campaign this weekend and it didn’t even say when the elections are. Nothing today of course since “we” “won” or whatever… idiots.
Blain 05.02.11 at 9:27 pm
Peter Russell (the most prominent scholar of the Canadian constitution) on the danger of a Harper victory: http://thestar.blogs.com/politics/2011/04/peter-russell-speaks-out.html#c6a00d8341bf8f353ef01538e3f877c970b
john c. halasz 05.03.11 at 2:55 am
It’s a good news/bad news joke. So much for electoral politics. Under a flawed system.
Salient 05.03.11 at 3:04 am
Congratulations to the NDP for their projected 100+ ridings, but also hearty congratulations to Elizabeth May of the Greens!! who currently leads in the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding!! …by… 566 to 544 votes… with… only 7 of 245 polls reporting. Oh.
Well, hey, take what you can get. Looks like a safe Harper majority. Good luck twice over, everyone.
christian_h 05.03.11 at 3:09 am
Can somebody explain to me why the Star would be writing (a) that in the Atlantic provinces, the seats are Lib 12 Con 13 NDP 12 after having been Lib 17 Con 11 NDP 4 (which already doesn’t add up) but then claim the NDP only picked up 2 seats and the Conservatives 3? It’s one thing to call constituencies “ridings” but this makes me wonder about Canada I have to admit.
Salient 05.03.11 at 3:18 am
christian_h, I haven’t a clue, but of the various sites I’m obsessively refreshing instead of finishing my exam grading, CBC seems to have the most up-to-date information. I tried to look up the answer to your question, but I don’t know how Star is categorizing things, here’s the latest CBC collated data:
* 4C-3N-4L Nova Scotia
* 8C-1N-1L New Brunswick
* 1C-2N-4L Newfoundland / Labrador
That’d be 11C, 6N, 6L, so maybe Star was/is including some but not all of the ridings CBC categorizes as Quebec?
Salient 05.03.11 at 3:19 am
Uh, 4 + 1 + 4 = 9, so 11C 6N 9L. Which still doesn’t match either of your totals. :-/
christian_h 05.03.11 at 3:33 am
Oh well thanks for the help. Bulls lose, Tories win. Time to hit the booze.
tomslee 05.03.11 at 3:44 am
“Time to hit the booze”.
Right. I see four long years of heavy drinking.
Myles 05.03.11 at 4:04 am
Disaster. So, worst of all worlds: Liberal decimation, NDP surge, Tory majority.
Thanks fucking lots, Jack Layton!
john c. halasz 05.03.11 at 4:20 am
Goodnight, Myles. And goodbye!
gray 05.03.11 at 4:47 am
Some of the people who stood for the NDP in Quebec are placeholders who can’t speak French and didn’t campaign, now they have been elected. That is dreadful. Plus Harper Majority that is double dreadful
Salient 05.03.11 at 4:52 am
Elizabeth May pulled it off. I will struggle to contain my enthusiasm somewhere safely below the pinky-key-stuck-on-shift-full-throttle level, here, but congratulations to May and the ~22,000 voters who elected her. I hear she plans to save the world in her spare time.
…and I hear the Liberals (Bob Rae at least) went ahead and
renamed themselves the Bloc Atlanticopened discussion of whether they ought to consider merging with the NDP, which seems awfully drastic, but…Chaz 05.03.11 at 5:14 am
“Hey man, if you support the Liberals you should probably, like, vote for them.”
“No way! I want a Conservative majority to hold off the NDP! Who cares if the Liberals come in third, as long as the NDP is kept out of government the Liberals will recover.”
. . .
“Disaster. So, worst of all worlds: Liberal decimation, NDP surge, Tory majority.” :p
For the record, the Liberals were not decimated. My Latin is not very good, but I believe they were sexagintated.
MPAVictoria 05.03.11 at 5:17 am
Just wanted to admit how off my projections were. It is a tough night to be a left of center Canadian. Still seeing the ndp with over a hundred seats gives me some hope.
Also you guys just have to checkout Harpers Victory speech. It is very moving and points the way forward for Canada
Chaz 05.03.11 at 5:21 am
. . . or maybe they were duoated . . . I have no idea what I’m saying.
Myles 05.03.11 at 5:21 am
For the record, the Liberals were not decimated. My Latin is not very good, but I believe they were sexagintated.
Yes, this is like the best night ever for pedantry isn’t it? Just disaster.
I just realized that a Tory majority means that the Liberals will be stuck with thirty-one seats for FIVE YEARS. And the NDP will have more than one hundred seats FIVE YEARS.
…and I hear the Liberals (Bob Rae at least) went ahead and renamed themselves the Bloc Atlantic opened discussion of whether they ought to consider merging with the NDP, which seems awfully drastic, but…
That’s not a merger, that’s the NDP swallowing the Liberal Party of Canada, the party of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, of William Lyon Mackenzie King, of C.D. Howe (!!!), of Louis St. Laurent, of Lester B. Pearson, of Pierre Trudeau, of even Jean Chrétien, wholesale.
If this isn’t a disaster, I don’t know what is. Now Canada will have just another of those dinky little miserable pissing contests between idiot right-wingers and idiot socialists.
Salient 05.03.11 at 5:40 am
…Myles, that was almost persuasive, but you forgot to switch to present tense for that sports-commentator-like sense of immediacy.
dsquared 05.03.11 at 6:45 am
I have to say I was skeptical when I saw that they are using a proportional swing model. Nate Silver made up a model like that for the UK election, and it was a total flop.
Just for the record, this isn’t quite right. Nate didn’t have a good outcome on UK elections, but a number of other UNS models did; as far as I can tell, the problems with the 538 model were related to the specific departures from UNS that they made.
Blain 05.03.11 at 7:01 am
“I see four long years of heavy drinking.”
I started two hours ago.
Myles 05.03.11 at 7:56 am
“I see four long years of heavy drinking.â€
I started two hours ago.
You guys did this to yourselves. You want to destroy the Liberal Party? Congratulations, you did it! Fun while it lasted! You now have brand-spanking-new NDP Official Opposition. See how much good it does you.
I am so unsympathetic to the wailing of the Canadian left that it’s hard to describe. The common saying is that don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but I’m just willing to go out there and say that the Canadian left is so idiotic that they probably can’t tell the perfect and the good apart. If there’s any redeeming feature about this election, it’s not the defeat of the Bloc (who actually helped rather than hurt federalism), but that the unblemished idiocy of the Canadian left came back to haunt them.
Martin Bento 05.03.11 at 8:16 am
Myles wrote:
“the ideal outcome is one where the NDP wouldn’t have any leverage whatsoever: i.e., a (slightly, just-over-the-edge) Tory majority.”
Then wrote:
“Disaster. So, worst of all worlds: Liberal decimation, NDP surge, Tory majority.”
Didn’t you pretty much get what you wanted, within the spectrum of what you recognized as possible? Perhaps you would have preferred a slightly smaller Tory majority, but you can hardly cry “worst of all worlds” if it misses your “ideal outcome” by only a few seats, and those not decisive for determining the government.
Myles 05.03.11 at 8:25 am
Didn’t you pretty much get what you wanted, within the spectrum of what you recognized as possible? Perhaps you would have preferred a slightly smaller Tory majority, but you can hardly cry “worst of all worlds†if it misses your “ideal outcome†by only a few seats, and those not decisive for determining the government.
No. What I wanted was something like Tories 153 of so (enough to prevent NDP having any ideas about government, but not enough to actually be powerful), Liberals 60 or so, NDP a bit lower, the rest go to Bloc. Frankly, I would have preferred the entirety of Quebec go to Bloc.
And I made a mistake in thinking a Harper majority would be harmless: I didn’t factor into the fact that a majority is a full-length, five-year parliament, so that would actually strengthen the NDP and further weaken the Liberals. Yikes.
Chaz 05.03.11 at 8:45 am
Just for the record, this isn’t quite right. Nate didn’t have a good outcome on UK elections, but a number of other UNS models did; as far as I can tell, the problems with the 538 model were related to the specific departures from UNS that they made.
Nate didn’t use uniform national swing. He made up a new model that he called proportional swing. When a party gained in the poll, he tried to guess what proportion of that additional support had come from each other party. He then applied that support switch across all constituencies, in proportion to the parties’ previous standings in each constituency.
So for example, if Labour went from 31%->34% nationally and the Tories went from 40%->37%, with the other parties unchanged, Nate would say that 7.5% of the Tory voters had just switched over to Labour. Then in each constituency he would increase Labour’s vote and decrease the Tories’ vote by 7.5% of the amount that the Tories had previously gotten in that constituency. A UNS model, by contrast, would simply raise Labour and cut the Tories by points across the board. Unlike UNS, Nate’s model was internally consistent, but it had the obvious flaw that with more than two parties, Nate had to subjectively assign the support shifts. It’s not clear if that’s what killed his model or if it was other factors.
I’m not sure if this is what the Canadian site does. I didn’t look too closely.
Chaz 05.03.11 at 8:55 am
That’s supposed to be, “A UNS model, by contrast, would simply raise Labour and cut the Tories by 3 percentage points across the board.”
Steve LaBonne 05.03.11 at 10:54 am
Oh boy. I wish the best of luck to my Canadian friends. I have a feeling you’re gonna need lots of it.
Sucks that North America will at least temporarily be deprived of its island of sanity. Now where will I go when Palin is elected President? ;)
praymont 05.03.11 at 1:22 pm
Voter turnout was around 60%. Disgusting. I don’t think there’s been a Canadian federal gov’t with so little representation from Quebec. The only thing that can possibly hold Harper in check now is revivified Quebec separatism.
Substance McGravitas 05.03.11 at 1:26 pm
I think you have to look to the Liberal Party for that one. But who said they wanted to destroy the Liberal Party?
christian_h 05.03.11 at 2:35 pm
Well from this non-Canadian point of view the hammering the Liberals took is a plus- although it’s sad that the Liberals split the vote like this. Myles’ horror of the formerly mildly social democratic NDP is really quite amusing. It can’t possibly all be based on one stint in the BC government… is it personal? Maybe Myles’ old nemesis from high school is running for the NDP?
piglet 05.03.11 at 3:32 pm
An orange Quebec. Incredible.
piglet 05.03.11 at 3:36 pm
Alas the result is another giant advertisement for proportional representation.
piglet 05.03.11 at 3:52 pm
NDP seat gains: 1 NF, 1 NS, 57 QC, 6-2 ON -1 MN, +3 BC.
dsquared 05.03.11 at 3:57 pm
#166: I toyed with a similar methodology a couple of elections ago, but called it the “Allocated Regional Swing Estimate” (as in ‘here’s a forecast I just pulled out of my ARSE’).
McKingford 05.03.11 at 4:16 pm
A few points:
1. Myles, as one of the internet’s great pedants, you of all people don’t get to complain of anyone’s (supposed) pedantry – even on the night of teeth gnashing.
2. The NDP is not to blame for the Liberal decimation…the Liberals are. Take a look at their last 2 leaders. Stephane Dion was a decent man, but lets face facts: communication skills are essential to a successful political leader, and Stephane Dion was barely comprehensible in English. After him they chose Iggy, who began a life in politics in his 60s. I’m sorry, but politics isn’t just something you can pick up as a skill late in life, it involves skills that are honed over many years. The Liberals – despite 2+ years of knowing (with a minority gov’t) that an election at any time was possible – were woefully unprepared for this one. Ridings that they hoped to win back didn’t have candidates until the last minute; fundraising was entirely anemic; and on day one of the election campaign, Iggy was entirely unprepared in how to answer what was surely to be the #1 issue Harper would raise in the campaign – the prospect of a coalition. So who is responsible for these two disastrous failures of leaders, the NDP or Liberals who chose them?
3. As a Toronto resident, on one level I am absolutely shocked at the fall of Liberal ridings around the city. I thought that maybe – *maybe* – Davenport and the Beaches could possibly go NDP if everything went right, but the margin of victory was just stunning; but far more stunning was the NDP pickup of ridings in Scarborough, as well as the Liberal losses to the Cons all over Etobicoke. But I really shouldn’t be shocked, because the Liberals have treated Toronto – their supposed bastion – with absolute contempt. Year after year Toronto sends billions more in taxes to Ottawa than it gets back in services, and yet the city cries out for federal support for transit and other things and has to keep its municipal budget together with duct tape and bailing wire. The Liberal MPs from this area did SFA to do right by their own city, and the chickens finally came home to roost.
Myles 05.03.11 at 4:27 pm
By the way, since nobody else has noted it: the NDP has formed a modified Mulroney party: the party of Quebec and the West.
McKingford 05.03.11 at 5:16 pm
#176: Volume MMCXII in Tales of how Myles is Wrong About Everything Canadian…
Ontario seats: NDP 22, Liberals 11
Myles 05.03.11 at 5:55 pm
Ontario seats: NDP 22, Liberals 11
And Mulroney had more seats in Ontario than the Liberals as well. Didn’t change the fact his was a fundamentally Quebec-Western coalition. What’s your point? The actual intra-party geographical composition is not meaningless. The Tories are still a heavily Alberta/Western party even though did get a good number of Ontario seats.
Substance McGravitas 05.03.11 at 6:03 pm
His point is that you are wrong. And he is of course right and you are wrong because you are Myles. It’s a fish-in-a-barrel thing.
roac 05.03.11 at 6:38 pm
Myles has just confirmed for me, in another forum, that electoral districts in Canada are called “ridings” after the (former Three Ridings of Yorkshire. As a big fan of archaism I love this, but it occurred to me to wonder: Why not hundreds? Why not wapentakes? Wiki says Kent was divided into lathes — why not lathes? (In Kent they had rapes, but I can see why that wouldn’t do. The Canadians already had to change the name “rapeseed oil” to “canola oil.”)
McKingford 05.03.11 at 6:39 pm
Myles, you are nothing if not consistent in finding new ways to be wrong.
Mulroney’s PCs imploded precisely because the West, far from being a meaningful part of his coalition, felt entirely disaffected – thus giving rise to the Reform party. The schism of the right in the 90s was entirely a product of Western alienation.
Now Layton’s caucus breaks down as follows: 58 QC, 22 Ontario, 6 East and 16 from the West (and North). Of the QC contingent, since most of them were placeholder candidates with zero political experience (I have to laugh at the story that blew up in the middle of the election of the woman who ran a bar 3 hours away from the riding she was nominated in, which she had never visited – because she doesn’t actually speak French, and so she took a trip to Vegas mid-election…yet she *still* won!), only a handful of the new MPs from there will be on the front bench. Layton and his wife are from Ontario, as is much of the NDP strength in talent. They’ve made huge gains in Toronto. And in fact, they were almost entirely shut out in the West outside of urban BC. Yet in Myles’ bizarro world this represents a QC-West coalition.
MPAVictoria 05.03.11 at 6:55 pm
Lets take a break from picking on Myles. Anyone know what comes next? Am I alone in wanting a merger of the two parties? In riding after riding last night (especially in Ontario and BC) I saw NDP and Liberal candidates split the progressive/center left vote and Tories come right up the middle. The only way to avoid a repeat of this in 4 years is to end the vote splitting.
From my perspective the parties are similar enough that I have voted for both of them at one time or another and I would certainly vote for some sort of combined Liberal Democratic party. Do enough people share my perspective to make a merger a success?
mijnheer 05.03.11 at 9:53 pm
For the first time, Canada has a social-democratic party with significant representation from sea to sea (to sea). If, over the course of the next four years, Layton and company can convince social-democratic Quebeckers that they have a real home in the NDP, that will solidify a major realignment of the Canadian political landscape. Not only will the Liberal Party be expunged as a significant national force, but it could (could) mark the effective defeat of the Quebec independence movement. If Layton & Co. fail to convince leftish Quebeckers, then everything will be in play again.
In any case, the Liberals are in a very grim position. This is much worse than their former historic low of 40 seats in 1984. Then they still formed the Official Opposition. But next election (2015?), the NDP will be the go-to party for anyone wanting to oust the Tories. In the coming years we can expect leftish Liberals to migrate to the NDP, and rightish ones to the Conservatives. The NDP may move to the political centre to attract former Liberals, but on the other hand the need to hold its Quebec social-democratic bastion will give it good reason to stay left.
H.P. Loveshack 05.04.11 at 5:00 pm
If you think that the NDP surge in Quebec means the end of Quebec separatism, you’re in for a surprise! People in Quebec barely know the NDP, they didn’t really vote for them, they voted for a party that wasn’t the Liberal party they thought could beat the the conservatives. I know for a fact that many separatists voted for the NDP simply because they knew the Bloc wouldn’t be able to do much to hurt the Conservatives. Besides, the independence of Quebec is a Quebec matter. The Bloc was merely a long lived protest party.
I think the NDP will be unable to give Quebeckers what they want without alienating their support elsewhere in Canada. And once Quebeckers realize it, the support for the NDP will drop. Mark my words: the support in Quebec for the NDP is a passing fad. I doubt it will last till next year, let alone till next election! I’ve seen this before: a few years ago, during a provincial election, Quebeckers made the ADQ, until then a small party, the official opposition, and then dropped them when it became clear that they weren’t the breath of fresh air they were expecting.
chris 05.04.11 at 6:02 pm
I saw NDP and Liberal candidates split the progressive/center left vote and Tories come right up the middle. The only way to avoid a repeat of this in 4 years is to end the vote splitting.
Or electoral system reform, but presumably you won’t get that with Tories in power, since they’re the ones who benefit from it.
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