There are still two weeks remaining until the election. That means that any and all predictions and polls are subject to change. But, at the moment, it looks like Justin Trudeau will be the next Prime Minister of Canada. Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker still shows a slight seat advantage for the Conservatives. As of…
Democratic reform is needed but the solution is preferential balloting, not proportional representation
Tomorrow Canadian MPs will vote on a democratic reform bill from the NDP. The non-binding bill would endorse a system of ‘mixed member proportional representation’ at the federal level. Proportional representation is a system that bases the number of seats in Parliament on the percentage of the vote. A party that got 25% of the…
The NDP’s proportional representation petition and Canadian democracy
Canadian democracy is in a sad state, we are going to have to do some serious repair work on the government (the institution, not just the current one) before we can really fix much of anything else. Somehow I was still somewhat irritated by the NDP’s “Demand That Your Vote Count” petition. First I’ve begun…
Senate Reform: Thomas Mulcair Picks the Wrong Issue, at the Wrong Time, Probably for the Wrong Reason.
Thomas Mulcair is definitely not Jack Layton. With jobs, the economy, affordable housing and other fundamental issues weighing on the minds of Canadians, the NDP leader is taking to the road to rally support for an issue that is more important to Mulcair and his party than it is to most voters. To be sure…
The New Political Landscape : the NDP Plays a Dangerous Game
It was only two short years ago that the NDP, under the late, great Jack Layton made their best ever showing at the polls. The NDP received 30.6% of the popular vote, just 9 percentage points behind the majority Conservatives. That meant a gain of 67 seats and made the NDP the official opposition for…
The New Political Landscape : the NDP Plays a Dangerous Game
It was only two short years ago that the NDP, under the late, great Jack Layton made their best ever showing at the polls. The NDP received 30.6% of the popular vote, just 9 percentage points behind the majority Conservatives. That meant a gain of 67 seats and made the NDP the official opposition for…
Tory lead over Liberals all but evaporated, poll suggests
OTTAWA — Stephen Harper’s Conservatives hold only a slim lead over the Liberals, according to a new national poll that suggests the government’s decisive response to the earthquake in Haiti has not translated into big political dividends for the Tories. The poll, conducted exclusively for Canwest News Service and Global National, said the Conservatives would…
Beware the Wounded Animal
By turning their back on the CBC against the will of the public and then trying to kill the long gun registry against the wishes of Canada’s police forces the Harper government is showing all the signs of a group that knows they will soon lose power. Ever since Ignatieff replaced Dion as Liberal leader…
Why Canada Can’t Have an Obama, and Why I’ll Never Join Your Party
Barack Obama ran for President without the elders and power brokers of the Democratic Party behind him. He ran on the vague notion of hope and change and on a set of concrete ideas about health care, the economy, foreign policy, the environment, education etc., Canada cannot have it’s Barack Obama at the moment because…
Give Me What I Want, Not What I Say I Want
John Gushue likes to post interesting quotes on his website. Yesterday he posted one that seemed especially appropriate to what I’ve been thinking the last few days. Maragaret Mead once said “What people say, what people do and what they say they do are often entirely different things”. It occurs to me that the recent…