It's Election Season in Canada(?)

Who would you vote for?

  • Total voters
    94
What's the attraction to voting for the Green party, over say, the NDP? It strikes me as needless fracturing of the left-wing vote. Not that I'm complainin' :p
 
That's FPTP for you.
 
Well, the Green Party is small enough that their actual policies aren't as fixed as other parties. Individual members get greater say (due to the party size). We can see that it's drifted left-wards. I guess there should be a point in making them more centrist.

edit: CBC has an online poll asking if May should be allowed in the debate. Obviously, the more clicks this story gets (and the more votes), the better.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunit...rty-leader-be-invited-to-the-tv-debates.html?
 
shadowplay said:
What's the attraction to voting for the Green party, over say, the NDP? It strikes me as needless fracturing of the left-wing vote. Not that I'm complainin' :p
Click to expand...

The Greens and NDP are nowhere near the same. The Green Party was founded by disenfranchised Progressive Conservatives.

They draw support from all across the spectrum. I'm a former Liberal voter who now supports the Greens, I have a friend who was a Conservative voter who now supports the Greens.

People should look at the Green platform before deciding what they're all about.
 
contre said:
How on earth is it acceptable to put single-province party into a national debate, but not a party running candidates in every single riding?
Click to expand...

Selon le porte-parole du consortium des médias qui diffuse les débats électoraux, Marco Dubé, seuls les quatre chefs dont les formations politiques sont représentées à la Chambre des communes ont été invités à participer aux débats. La chef du Parti vert, Elizabeth May, pourrait ainsi être absente des prochains débats électoraux, les verts ne comptant aucun député à la Chambre des communes.

M. Dubé a précisé que les cinq réseaux diffuseurs, soit CTV, Radio-Canada, CBC, Global et TVA, « ont unanimement décidé qu'ils voulaient inviter les quatre formations politiques comptant des représentants à la Chambre ». Il a refusé d'expliquer cette décision, se contentant de dire « qu'il s'agit d'une décision relative à la programmation ».

http://elections.radio-canada.ca/el.../29/028-elizabeth-may-debats-electoraux.shtml
Click to expand...

Only parties with elected MPs can participate, as decided by the media consortium hosting the debates. Up to GPC partisans & sympathyzers to pressure them and the party leaders again.
 
shadowplay said:
What's the attraction to voting for the Green party, over say, the NDP? It strikes me as needless fracturing of the left-wing vote. Not that I'm complainin' :p
Click to expand...
When the rule was that parties got a small amount of per-vote funding, I voted Green so they could build up their coffers. Of course it also happened to be that neither my local Liberal or NDP candidates were any good.

El_Machinae said:
Well, the Green Party is small enough that their actual policies aren't as fixed as other parties. Individual members get greater say (due to the party size). We can see that it's drifted left-wards. I guess there should be a point in making them more centrist.

edit: CBC has an online poll asking if May should be allowed in the debate. Obviously, the more clicks this story gets (and the more votes), the better.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunit...rty-leader-be-invited-to-the-tv-debates.html?
Click to expand...
I've signed the petition, and sent a letter to Stephen Harper's office (not that he'll ever see it personally, of course) saying that he should support including Elizabeth May in the debates.
 
I've heard that the Green Party had some organization difficulties lately, so I do wonder if they will be able to do as well.

As for the debates, I can only echo what these guys have said:

The debate we get about the Greens' participation in the debates every election shows why we need a firm set of guidelines on how debates are run in Canada. Right now, the only criteria being used seems to be having a seat in the House, but that strikes me as a rather arbitrary rule. I mean, was Blair Wilson really the Greens' ticket to the debates in 2008? This was a candidate elected as a Liberal, booted from the party in the midst of an Elections Canada investigation, who joined the Greens a few weeks before the election. If Helena Guergis joined the Pirate Party today would the Pirates qualify for the debates?

What I'd like to see would be a more far reaching set of criteria. How about a point system along the lines of:

5 * MPs elected last election + 5 * Current MPS + number of candidates in upcoming election + number of votes in previous campaign / 10,000

Anyone with over 500 points gets a spot in the debate. We can certainly play with the math or we can set benchmarks parties need to reach, but the point is we need to remove the power from backroom negotiations between the broadcasters and parties. Having firm guidelines would spare us from repeating the debate debate every election.
Click to expand...

Meanwhile, the debates need to be either radically changed, or simply abolished. There are lots of suggestions floating around, some better than others. My own preference would be three or four debates, each conducted according to the rules of passive bilingualism we used in my old department at the University of Montreal: Each participant is entitled to ask, or answer, any question in the official language of his or her choice.

In my ideal scenario, only one of the debates would involve the leaders. The others would be between government ministers and their portfolio critics in the opposition parties.

This would serve two useful functions. First, it would help reduce the “winner-take-all” character of the current debates, where everyone is afraid to take a risk lest there be a fabled knockout punch. Second, it would rehabilitate the principle of cabinet government. Everyone claims to abhor the way our democracy has slipped into governing from the centre, but the leader-centric nature of the debates only reinforces that tendency.
Click to expand...
 
In my ideal scenario, only one of the debates would involve the leaders. The others would be between government ministers and their portfolio critics in the opposition parties.
Click to expand...
Interesting idea... since Harper doesn't usually let most of his cabinet ministers speak outside the Commons. Other than Jason Kenney and a couple of others, how many cabinet ministers are ever allowed to take part in scrums? Not very many, I'm guessing.


The only sensible reason I can see for limiting the debate to leaders who already have at least 1 member with a seat is because of the nightmare scenario of having all the party leaders demanding a place in the debates. I don't know how many fringe parties there are these days, but it's a lot.

Might be entertaining, though, to hear from the Rhinoceros Party. Do they still run candidates anywhere? :crazyeye:
 
Valka D'Ur said:
Might be entertaining, though, to hear from the Rhinoceros Party. Do they still run candidates anywhere? :crazyeye:
Click to expand...

The old Rhino Party disbanded in 1993. There is a new one, but I have no idea where they have candidates.
 
SuperBeaverInc. said:
The old Rhino Party disbanded in 1993. There is a new one, but I have no idea where they have candidates.
Click to expand...

Neorhino is redundant. There's already a joke party on the ballot.
 
contre said:
I know you can't assume the same origin, or even the same scale, but I find it odd how greatly politicalcompass varies from the CBC graph.

I think I prefer CBC's.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that they are comparable, at least not superficially. In CBC's scale economic policy is represented on the x-axis and social policy is represented on the y-axis. In PC's scale economic and social policy are represented on the x-axis, and authoritativeness is represented on the y-axis.
 
de Maistre said:
I don't believe that they are comparable, at least not superficially. In CBC's scale economic policy is represented on the x-axis and social policy is represented on the y-axis. In PC's scale economic and social policy are represented on the x-axis, and authoritativeness is represented on the y-axis.
Click to expand...

Social policy isn't represented on the x-axis: PC's authoritativeness / libertarian axis is their social scale.
 
de Maistre said:
Oh, nevermind then. They must be doing something differently, the disparity is pretty huge.
Click to expand...

If the scales are the same between countries, basically PC is saying that the Liberals are significantly to the right of the Democratic leadership in the US, and significantly more authoritarian. Which is a bit silly of a claim.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Birdjaguar
2022 US Election
7 8 9
Replies
172
Views
10K
Farm Boy
Farm Boy
Aiken_Drumn
Israel heading to polls as coalition moves to dissolve parliament
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
r16
r16
Broken_Erika
US Debt Ceiling
7 8 9
Replies
178
Views
7K
Farm Boy
Farm Boy
Valka D'Ur
Canadian Federal Election coming on September 20.
11 12 13
Replies
255
Views
12K
Uncle Sparky
Uncle Sparky
Uncle Paul
  • Locked
Uncle Paul's political arguments
2 3
Replies
41
Views
3K
The_J
The_J
Top Bottom