Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘federal election’

The Conservative minority government will live to fight another day. Michael Ignatieff announced that the Liberals would support the Tory budget, slightly amended, to avoid the collapse of the government for the time being. Maybe this means they can quit squabbling like kindergarteners and actually, you know, govern for a little while?

People in Quebec seem to like Iggy: The Liberals are up to 31% here, according to the latest CROP poll. That’s double the Conservative support and only three points behind the Bloc. Definitely a good sign.

If Ignatieff can manage to consolidate the Liberal party base and make some key gains in the west, the next election might not be such a wash. Harper needs to tread very carefully.

The inevitable result of the petty political squabbling has occurred: Parliament has been shut down to stave off a no-confidence vote that would have been scheduled for Monday, where the opposition was trying to take over the country in what essentially would amount to a bloodless coup.

Looks, it’s quite simple: You don’t have to like who’s elected, but you have to respect the will of the electorate. A power grab “just cause we can” is the last thing that the country needs.

Dion, Layton and Duceppe need to back off from the brink, cool off, and find a way to at least give the Conservative minority government a chance to work. For the good of everyone. Because Harper may have been elected by a minority, but that’s more people than the zero who voted for the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition.

Now that Parliament has been suspended, maybe it’s time to lock all four of them in a room together and force them to work out their issues and get back to the task at hand: Running the country.

They’re calling for his head on a platter from all sides, but Stephane Dion won’t quit yet:

The Toronto Star had cited Liberal party insiders who said Dion would make the announcement on Thursday and then stay on as leader until a successor is chosen.

But a spokeswoman for Dion said the Liberal leader would make no such announcement on Thursday and that her office would inform the media when Dion is ready to speak.

[ . . . ]

The paper quoted one well-connected party member as suggesting that if Dion didn’t announce his departure promptly, the party should move the furniture out of his office.

“How do you do a putsch on a guy who doesn’t understand he’s being putsched?” the Globe quoted the unidentified Liberal as saying.

Erm… Milton?

Seriously, though, while I think that Dion knows all too well that his days as Liberal Party leader are over, I think it’s disgraceful how he’s being treated by the media and his own party. He led a bad campaign, was the victim of circumstance, and unfortunately has the charisma of a turnip, but I don’t think Dion is a bad guy.

Dion took on the party leadership at a difficult time and dared to lead an environment-based campaign in a time when people were voting with their pocketbook. I think Dion was an ineffective leader, but is overall a smart man, and deserves a lot better than what he got.

Even he knows his time is up, though. This stand is just for the media. I doubt he’ll keep it up for longer than a few days.

(Via Damian Penny).

Update 10/20: That didn’t take long. Dion has announced his resignation.

17.

That’s the number of seats where the Liberal-Green combined vote total was higher than the vote total for the winning candidate.

Of those 17 seats, 9 were won by the Conservatives. The remaining 8 went 5 to the Bloc and 3 to the NDP.

Of course, it’s illogical to assume that all or even a large portion of the Green Party’s votes would have gone to the Liberals. Despite both parties having run on “green shift” platforms, they are quite different, and many people who voted Green did so largely because they did not want to vote Liberal.

And yet… With all the discussions around vote-splitting, I can tell you that Stephane Dion is eyeing those 17 seats today and wondering whether his “friendship” with Elizabeth May was worth it.

As for May, she probably understands a bit better how Ralph Nader must have felt in 2000.

Is a Liberal-Green alliance really such an outlandish idea?

Another day, another Conservative minority. Stephen Harper can talk all he wants about it being a “strengthened” minority, but the fact is he called this election with the objective of securing a majority government. He failed. ‘

Stephane Dion led the Liberals to one of their worst results in history, and the pundits were calling for his head on a platter even before the votes were finished being counted. He, more than anyone, failed.

Gilles Duceppe set out to prevent a Conservative majority, and that worked. But the Bloc didn’t change its position much since 2006. At best, a neutral result for the Bloc.

Elizabeth May’s Party saw more popular vote breakthroughs, but failed to win a single seat – the stated objective for the Greens in this campaign. May will spin this campaign as a big success, but she, too, failed.

The big winner? Jack Layton and the NDP, who bolstered their support – not at the expense of the Conservatives, but at the expense of the Liberals. In Layton’s book, where power is everything and soundbytes run rampant, this result represents success.

The big loser? The Canadian public. This election cost taxpayers $300 million bucks. This in the midst of an economic crisis. And this, for an election in which only 59% of people voted – the lowest turnout in history.

To quote Don MacPherson in the Gazette:

This year’s campaign was the most negative ever, with the parties doing a much better job of explaining to voters why they should vote against their opponents than why they should vote for them.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if once again, the most popular choice yesterday was “none of the above.”

The Election Prediction Project is forecasting 125 seats for the Conservatives, 94 for the Liberals, 51 for the Bloc, 36 for the NDP, and 2 for Independent candidates. They’ve been pretty dead-on in past elections, so we’ll see if that trend continues this time.

Voting is our most fundamental right and privilege. Regardless of your politics, make sure to exercise that right today and vote. Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the results.

Well, it was lively and even funny at times. That’s all I can really say about the debate format that provided more of a chance for attack zingers than real reasoned debate. Still, I guess it made for good TV, since we were all glued to the screen for a couple of hours – the longest I’ve watched the CBC for in a while. My initial impressions:

• Stephen Harper seemed surprisingly nervous. Though his calm tone of voice contrasted well with the others, as it did two years ago, and he had the advantage of incumbancy, his positions lacked the moral clarity that they used to hold. He seemed almost wishy-washy, and he got backed into several embarrassing corners, namely on Iraq, on arts funding, and on a promise not to raise taxes that will surely come back to haunt him. He seemed rattled by May’s presence, and his showing was surprisingly poor, especially compared to expectations. I can respect someone whose views I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s hard to respect someone who doesn’t show the courage to have those views. He missed chances to take the stance of the right on issues such as foreign policy. But then, he also had a horribly biased moderator (I mean, what kind of question is “do you think Harper is a barbarian?”). And ultimately, he can be declared the winner if only because he won the portion on the #1 voting issue, that being the economy. The rest probably won’t matter much. Still, I was surprised to see him looking so shaky.

• Stephane Dion is obviously the worst debator of the group, and had the worst showing tonight by far. His debate style mirrors the problem plaguing his election campaign: He lacks charisma, leadership ability, and the confidence to get his ideas across. I did like that he talked about standing up for what it means to be Canadian, believing in our accomplishments, and regaining our place in the world. And I also believe that he has better ideas than his debate skills would seem to indicate. But there’s no doubt that he needed to do a whole lot better than he did in order to have any chance of picking up votes tonight. This was a missed opportunity for Dion.
• Jack Layton accomplished something I didn’t think possible: he managed to make me hate him even more than I already do. I will give him points for consistency, mind you. He consistently managed to take the exact views I disagree with each and every time. Quite the achievement. Seriously, though, he was the only candidate who actually managed to get across what he stood for, rather than just spending all of his time attacking the others, and he deserves some grudging praise for that. I still can’t stand his used car salesman smile, his annoying little moustache, and his habit of saying “Exxon” in every second breath.
• Gilles Duceppe had nothing to gain or lose in this debate. He didn’t make nearly as strong a showing as he did in the English debate in the last election, mind you. As expected, he talked a lot about the province’s rights, and issues important to Quebec. He also scored the most points on the arts funding issue and – surprisingly – did a better job of defending environmental rights than either Dion or May. He had one of the best lines of the debate, when asked what he would do first if elected Prime Minister, he glibly said that he won’t ever be PM… and neither will three other people at the table. But mostly, he seemed tacked on, since he didn’t really answer any of the questions with a real policy answer.
• Elizabeth May was impressive. Period. She’s obviously a skilled debator and, though her style seems vaguely reminiscent of our neighbours south of the border, she scored a lot of clear zingers. I disagree with her on a lot of issues, but she did the best in terms of being prepared with statistics, facts and researched answers. She scored a lot of points that way, and she rattled Harper’s cage more than once. Where I felt she missed an opportunity, though, was in getting her party’s message across. The Green Party platform is all about how every other issue is related to the environment and cleaner, healthier, better living. May’s debate style lended itself well to the format, but she scored more points on attack than on ideology. Since people voting Green are mostly doing it out of ideological reasons, I felt she could have been clearer on what she stood for. Still, I think a lot of heads were turned by her showing in this debate. And she certainly had a right to be there, probably even more of a right than Duceppe.

Overall, the debate won’t lead me to change my vote, but then, I wasn’t really on the fence. For undecided voters, I suspect that Dion will have lost ground, Layton might have gained some among people who actually agree with him (read: not moi), and May probably picked up some points. What this will mean for Harper’s chances at a majority, though, is anyone’s guess.

And no, I didn’t watch the US vice-presidential debate.

As I watch the US presidential campaign unfold, it’s easy to feel a bit smug. Our election issues are – on the whole – pretty boring, mostly because things are – on the whole – pretty good here. Not to discount the importance of Arctic sovereignty or softwood lumber tariffs or anything. But compared to some of the issues before Americans, our elections are downright tame.

Here are the top 5 issues being hotly debated south of the border that are thankfully not really on the radar screen in our election:

1. The war in Iraq. Because, well, we’re not actually fighting in it. The war in Afghanistan is, of course, an issue here, but it’s not nearly as divisive as Iraq is for Americans.
2. Terrorism and national security. Canadians are just plain less worried about this issue than Americans are, no matter what side of it they are on. Whether it’s because we’re more rational or more naive, the fact is that most Canadians don’t really believe that there is an imminent threat of terrorism, and the issue really isn’t showing up in our election discourse.
3. Gay marriage. It’s been legal nationwide since 2005. Since then, thousands of same-sex couples have tied the knot in Canada, our wedding industry has benefited from an influx of marriage “tourists” from the US, and everyone else basically yawned and went on with their lives. Even Stephen Harper isn’t bothering to rehash the issue in this campaign, recognizing the futility of beating a dead horse.
4. Abortion. Yeah, there have been a few rumbles, which have mostly consisted of scare-tactics by the Duceppe camp against Harper – who has stated that he has no plans to re-open the issue. As explosive as the issue is in the US election, here, it’s basically a non-issue, just as it has been in virtually every Canadian election campaign since the 1970s.
5. What our candidates look like. While Americans choose between their first-ever African-American president and their first-ever female VP, us Canadians have an election that’s about the candidates’ politics and not about their skin colour or background. Of course, that’s because they’re all a bunch of white guys (except for Elizabeth May). But I suspect that even if our PM candidates were a bit more representative of the country, we’d still manage to talk less about their skin colour or gender than the Americans do. Besides, Kim Campbell won’t exactly go down in history as a great Canadian leader, but I’d still rather have her than Sarah Palin any day.

The economy is, without a doubt, the #1 voting issue for both Americans and Canadians. As it should be. Polls have shown that the other top election issues for Canadians are healthcare, the environment and poverty. We can hopefully expect these issues to dominate tonight’s debate, and the above issues to hardly rate a mention.

Sometimes, it’s good to be Canadian.

The great debate isn’t between Obama and McCain, or between Biden and Palin, or between Harper, Dion, Layton, Duceppe and May. No, it’s over which debate to watch tonight on TV: the Canadian English PM debate, or the US vice-presidential debate.

The Canadian debate is obviously more relevant to us as Canadians. But for sheer entertainment value alone, the US VP debate is likely to be much more exciting. Start exercising that channel flipping thumb; you may need it.

In a very un-Conservative move, Stephen Harper made a campaign promise today to regulate businesses more, cracking down on such unfair business practices as price-fixing, deceptive marketing, and incoming text message fees.

While my usual philosophy is to tell government to stay out of business, in this case, I think Harper has the right idea. A free market is one thing; illegal business practices are another. The telecom companies are among the chief violators of fair competition, and they have long hid behind the CRTC to gouge consumers at every turn. This is not a big money issue for most Canadians, but it’s one that gets us up in arms pretty quickly, so it’s actually smart of Harper to latch onto the issue in his campaign.

I just wonder if it will be easier for me to sue Bell for charging me hundreds of dollars of bogus fees, after I cancelled my service with them? Yeah, I doubt it too.