Canadian Election 2015

[Radiant head]

Well with New Labour, voters were choosing between Tories and Tory-lites, and people probably just thought might as well vote for the actual thing.

I want to like Corbyn, but he has some really dumb views on Nato/Russia.

[I.M. Gei]

It helped, but I feel as though it would have been a majority of English voters voting for the Tories regardless, perhaps more due to Labour's failings than Tories' successes. Labour had some dire public polls going into it IIRC.

yeah labour really seems to have some serious structural issues; they've lost scotland, they're losing wales, they bled a lot of their white-working class base to ukip (given that ukip seemed to post its best result in old coal-mining constituencies in places like yorkshire and the north east and south wales), and there seemed to be a lot more libdem voters in england inclined to vote tory over labour (looking at the libdem seats that changed hands, anyway)

anyway i guess we're getting off topic

Edited October 20, 2015 by I.M. Gei

[Tryhard]

Aye.

I don't know a lot about Canadian politics, but all the Canadians I've spoken to generally hate Harper's guts and I can only assume the Liberals will be better for them.

Edited October 20, 2015 by Tryhard

[kingddd]

Aye.

I don't know a lot about Canadian politics, but all the Canadians I've spoken to generally hate Harper's guts and I can only assume the Liberals will be better for them.

It's more of a mixedbag. A lot of staff internally like the MPs are given a very limited time to speak with the press, restrictions in what they could say and the policies were being changed so that it only goes through the administrators rather than through the courts. The young and middle class do not like the Conservatives in general however they are also the least to turn out in most of the previous elections. I remember when I was in a political science 101 class, the professor asked who voted in the last election me and 2 guys put their hands up over the 120 students in the class. It was such a sad site to see and most of them are Canadian citizens.

Harper is actually very popular with the Prairie provinces because the Progressive Conservative originated in the Prairies before it was merged into the current Conservative party we know today and he has a lot of influence in that region. Not to mention the seniors and rich are the ones that like Harper in general.

Also it was awesome to see Darshan Kang a Liberal for winning a Calgary seat. Which they have not won since 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5RF4c39-eo

Edited October 20, 2015 by kingddd

[I.M. Gei]

It's more of a mixedbag. A lot of staff internally like the MPs are given a very limited time to speak with the press, restrictions in what they could say and the policies were being changed so that it only goes through the administrators rather than through the courts. The young and middle class do not like the Conservatives in general however they are also the least to turn out in most of the previous elections. I remember when I was in a political science 101 class, the professor asked who voted in the last election me and 2 guys put their hands up over the 120 students in the class. It was such a sad site to see and most of them are Canadian citizens.

Harper is actually very popular with the Prairie provinces because the Progressive Conservative originated in the Prairies before it was merged into the current Conservative party we know today and he has a lot of influence in that region. Not to mention the seniors and rich are the ones that like Harper in general.

Also it was awesome to see Darshan Kang a Liberal for winning a Calgary seat. Which they have not won since 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5RF4c39-eo

i think you mean the reform party there

also i heard this election had the highest turnout since 1993

Edited October 20, 2015 by I.M. Gei

[kingddd]

i think you mean the reform party there

also i heard this election had the highest turnout since 1993

I always get the names mixed up. Brain is farting right now.

Around 68%. Previous election was 61%. It just needs to be higher though since it was 70 and 80% back then historically.

[Life]

Meanwhile you would have been screwed by having a dual citizenship under the Conservative government anyway and if you were to ever travel with the current Conservative government.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/what-dual-citizens-need-to-know-about-bill-c-24-the-new-citizenship-law-1.2426968

http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/pattitamaralenard/conservative_law_creates_second_class_citizens

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/29/new-law-gives-ottawa-the-power-to-revoke-citizenship-of-those-convicted-of-serious-crimes.html

I read those articles before you posted it and it's literally people looking for a way to badmouth Harper.

Besides, I'm a Jew. We're second class citizens everywhere aside from Israel and there, we're racist. 70 years ago, we were being told to leave Europe. Now we're being told to leave Israel and move back to Europe because "that's where the Jews are really from". Shame on us for existing in the first place.

Shit like that riles me up a bit.

EDIT: I would have preferred Ignatiaf over Trudeau. He's going to make the same mistakes as his father and run the country into the ground. And in a couple of years, when you are all crying about how taxes went up and Trudeau is a terrible leader, I'll simply say "I told you so".

Edited October 20, 2015 by Jim Moriarty

[dondon151]

i'm pretty sure that israel is going to continue to exist whether canada has any say in it or not

i mean how many times have you predicted the end of israel when a foreign election didn't go your way

at this point you're just crying wolf LOL

Edited October 20, 2015 by dondon151

[Life]

i'm pretty sure that israel is going to continue to exist whether canada has any say in it or not

i mean how many times have you predicted the end of israel when a foreign election didn't go your way

at this point you're just crying wolf LOL

That has nothing to do with anything.

I'm born Canadian, have Canadian citizenship and my parents and other family members live in Canada (vast majority in Toronto). I'm pretty sure that I have the right to give a shit about who gets elected in Canada.

Kindly shut the fuck up.

Edited October 20, 2015 by Jim Moriarty

[Tryhard]

The young and middle class do not like the Conservatives in general however they are also the least to turn out in most of the previous elections. I remember when I was in a political science 101 class, the professor asked who voted in the last election me and 2 guys put their hands up over the 120 students in the class. It was such a sad site to see and most of them are Canadian citizens.

This is the case in any country. Generally, the youth can't be bothered/are not willing to vote. It's really not that surprising. I would know - I abstained from voting.

I always get the names mixed up. Brain is farting right now.

Around 68%. Previous election was 61%. It just needs to be higher though since it was 70 and 80% back then historically.

The average turnout for the UK election was ~66%, and that was considered high for recent years.

Edited October 20, 2015 by Tryhard

[I.M. Gei]

yes, dismiss those articles as "oh they're just trying to talk shit about harper" and whine about tax rates even though yours are at 90 year lows, this totally isn't going to make you sound like a CPC shill or anything

"we willingly contracted dutch disease! strong stable economy! which by the way totally isn't suffering from the crash in oil prices over the past year!" LOOOOOOOOL

Edited October 20, 2015 by I.M. Gei

[dondon151]

That has nothing to do with anything.

yes it does. why do you care at all about canada's position on israel if israel can do just fine without canada blowing money out its ass at it

I'm born Canadian, have Canadian citizenship and my parents and other family members live in Canada (vast majority in Toronto). I'm pretty sure that I have the right to give a shit about who gets elected in Canada.

Kindly shut the fuck up.

no. i refuse. i have family in canada too. try all you want, you're not going to make me shut up LOL

considering that you threatened to renounce your canadian citizenship, maybe you don't value your right to give a shit about who gets elected in canada very much.

Edited October 20, 2015 by dondon151

[Life]

yes it does. why do you care at all about canada's position on israel if israel can do just fine without canada blowing money out its ass at it

no. i refuse. i have family in canada too. try all you want, you're not going to make me shut up LOL

considering that you threatened to renounce your canadian citizenship, maybe you don't value your right to give a shit about who gets elected in canada very much.

Hyperbole, bro. I did that too on Facebook months before the election.

Here's an answer for you. You might have some family in Canada. I have my entire maternal family in Canada, including my immediate family. I'm personally disgusted in the country because it's at the best spot that it's been in since WW2 and yet people are nitpicking at small issues and making mountains out of molehills with regards to Harper.

He's easily the best PM we've had since Diefenbaker. Major advances in foreign policy, economic policy at home (or was I just dreaming about Jim Flaherty's existence?) and he's managed to stop Quebec from advancing separatism movements (BQ won 2 seats a couple years ago) and managed to not alienate the Native Americans, something that none of his predecessors could do (especially Trudeau).

[Knight]

Wait what? Have you ever met any Native Americans? Cause all the ones I've met mostly hate Steven Harper, and you'd have to be not keeping up with Canadian news at all to not know about his comments on the "missing aboriginal women."

Edited October 20, 2015 by Knight

[Radiant head]

He's easily the best PM we've had since Diefenbaker.

Yeah maybe if you're an oil tycoon he is.

[I.M. Gei]

Yeah maybe if you're an oil tycoon he is.

gotta love how he skips over the dude who instituted canada's universal healthcare system lol

[Naughx]

gotta love how he skips over the dude who instituted canada's universal healthcare system lol

Also how the whole war in Iraq was great and all, now we are stuck with ISIL.

[Radiant head]

gotta love how he skips over the dude who instituted canada's universal healthcare system lol

who is the new pm's father, funny enough.

[I.M. Gei]

who is the new pm's father, funny enough.

justin is lester b. pearson (or tommy douglas)'s bastard son????

[Radiant head]

i was thinking pierre trudeau, but looks like i misread - it was implemented before him.

[Naughx]

who is the new pm's father, funny enough.

Hmmm... Pierre Elliott Trudeau didn't implement medicare on the federal level.

It was Louis St. Laurent and Lester B. Pearson. (Tommy Douglas did push for it as a provincial Premier)

Edited October 21, 2015 by Naughx

[Radiant head]

yeah i know now, you got ninja'd.

[I.M. Gei]

Hmmm... Pierre Elliott Trudeau didn't implement medicare on the federal level.

It was Louis St. Laurent and Lester B. Pearson. (Tommy Douglas did push for it as a provincial Premier)

from what i read, he basically spent all his political capital during his last term as premier to implement it in saskatchewan, overcoming a doctors' strike that sapped his popularity there (hence why he represented ridings in BC instead of saskatchewan when he sat as the first federal leader of the NDP)

[BBM]

I would have preferred a Liberal minority, but Harper has been terrible with a majority.

@Life- He's completely ruined Canada's international relationship; literally every single major international newspaper who spoke at all about the Canadian election called out both him and his campaign. Here's the NYT and here's Al-Jazeera; I can easily produce 10 more examples if you want. Your view is extremely Israel-centric; Harper's diehard Israel support under any and all circumstances no matter what their actions probably makes you happy, but it cost him points with a lot of Islamic countries. He pulled Canada out of the Kyoto accords and had literally no plan on tackling climate change (the opposite, he slashed environmental regulations). Then when the provinces cut emissions on their own, he boasted about how he was the first PM to grow the economy while reducing emissions at the same time. Canada failed to have a seat on the UN Security Council for the first time ever.

He ran on a platform of accountability and openness in 2006 when he was first elected, right after the Liberal sponsorship scandal. But his tenure as PM was one of the most secretive and closed-off ever. After refusing to provide information to the Parliament, his became the first Canadian government ever to be held in contempt by the Parliament. He limited the questions he would answer to the media to 5 a day. He told his MPs to avoid debates as much as possible. He used omnibus bills so that nobody knew all that he was proposing until it had already been passed.

His election campaign was absolutely fucking appalling; I disliked Harper prior to it and detested him after it. It was the most partisan campaign I've ever seen. He chose to spend millions of dollars fighting an unconstitutional case preventing a woman from wearing a niqab at her oath of citizenship. Only three!!! women have ever chosen to do so, yet he made it into a huge deal to pander to his Islamophobic base and steal the Islamophobes supporting the NDP in Quebec*. He talked out of his ass about how marijuana was way way worse than tobacco. This is a dumb stance in itself but hardly unique; then, in the dying days of the campaign, he got the Ford brothers to support his campaign and rally for him, so that he could get some Etobicoke ridings. You know, Rob Ford, the dude who did crack???

*This was what got the Liberals the majority. The Liberals' Quebec base wasn't against niqabs so they didn't care that Trudeau opposed Harper. But Mulcair's dropped significantly, and those votes went to the Conservatives and the BQ. This is why around 2 weeks prior to the election, the Conservatives were leading in polls and NDP had dropped to third. Then with around a week left and the 3-way tie finally broken, the Anybody-but-Harper vote solidified into Liberal support rather than being split between the Liberals and the NDP, which caused a Liberal surge and cost the NDP to drop further both in Quebec and outside.

Trudeau isn't perfect. He's probably going to make some dumb gaffes and I'm not entirely convinced of his policy understanding either. But at the least he seems interested in bridging gaps between people of different political, social, and racial leanings, rather than making them larger, and actually connecting with people around Canada. Can you see Harper doing bollywood? And yeah, maybe he'll break his promises wrt electoral reform and infrastructure funding and climate change and all the rest. But at least I'm depending on someone with a clean slate to keep his promises, as opposed to someone who's already broken them, and who has no interest in me anyways because I'm not part of his base.

[Radiant head]

@Life- He's completely ruined Canada's international relationship; literally every single major international newspaper who spoke at all about the Canadian election called out both him and his campaign. Here's the NYT and here's Al-Jazeera; I can easily produce 10 more examples if you want. Your view is extremely Israel-centric; Harper's diehard Israel support under any and all circumstances no matter what their actions probably makes you happy, but it cost him points with a lot of Islamic countries. He pulled Canada out of the Kyoto accords and had literally no plan on tackling climate change (the opposite, he slashed environmental regulations). Then when the provinces cut emissions on their own, he boasted about how he was the first PM to grow the economy while reducing emissions at the same time. Canada failed to have a seat on the UN Security Council for the first time ever.

He also ruined relations with the US with incessant foreign lobbying on that wretched keystone pipeline. From what I've heard Truedeau also unfortunately supports it (I guess oil is less of a partisan issue with Canada's economy so dependent on it), but wouldn't press it.