Is there anywhere in the world not run by assh*les?
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Gosh! Welcome back!!
I think the Beaverton nailed it with the headline: Voters send clear message of “ugh, fine, Trudeau again, I guess". Other than a few hardcore “OUR PARTY IS THE BEST FOREVER AND THEY’RE MY TEAM AND I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR ANYONE ELSE BECAUSE I TREAT ELECTIONS LIKE A SPORTING EVENT” party supporters, almost everyone I know struggled with who to vote for this time around.
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to vote for an independent candidate (Wilson-Raybould) who actually had a shot of winning and DID win and it was close enough that I feel l like my vote really mattered. A rare opportunity indeed.
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I’m so glad she won. This made my day.
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In very positive news, 25 year old Mumilaaq Qaqqaq won the Nunavut riding for the NDP.
I’m looking forward to reading about more enthusiastic, qualified young women being elected all over the world as the reactionary old guard fade away in the Anglosphere and beyond.
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Sigh - no news source, not here either, is remarking on a facet of the Canadian election that should be of great interest (and envy) to Americans: how split it was between more than two parties.
American elections have become this football game (with no passing, just fullbacks beating each other’s heads in) where Good and Evil slug it out and no dissension is allowed on either side: no anti-Trumpers may split the Right, no Democratic Socialists should split the Left, lest the Evil other side win.
But I just watched the post-mortem on a dozen elections in the middle of BC where the Conservatives won: and on all but two of them, the Conservative didn’t have 50%. The Left cheerfully split its votes between Liberal, NDP (labour, basically) and Green, all of them just shades of Leftism in American terms. They would collectively have 65%, and the Conservative would win the seat with 35%.
And nobody is screaming about it, because while Cory may find even the Liberals terrible, and the Conservatives worse, the Canadian public clearly does not see a Conservative win as some dystopian hellscape: we’re all inside each other’s Overton Window, if you will. Whereas some real Trump-haters in the US voted for him because Hillary was The Very Devil Herself.
It’s not just that Canada is significantly to the left of the USA right now, on so many issues; it’s that our politics seem to have dodged the (often literal) bullet of turning into a Gondor-vs-Mordor death struggle. And I think it’s our embrace of many political parties that is key to it.
Alberta is famously Conservative, but when we tired of them, we leaped right over Liberalism and put in an NDP pro-labour government for four years. While they were voted out again months ago, with some extreme rhetoric, clearly Albertans themselves see the NDP as left-wing Canadians, not as Commie Traitors. And if Albertans can think that, believe me, anybody in Canada can.
I was just goggling at the extreme opinions casually voice by Florida Republicans the other day:
…and its quite a contrast.
One I’m proud of.
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I doubt that the Liberals will go so far as to form a formal coalition with the NDP. (There’s never been an actual Canadian coalition government, not even during WWI.)
I also doubt that Jagmeet Singh would want a minister position. That would tie him to the Trudeau government and any blame. It would also suck up a lot of his time as leader of the NDP during a time when they need to do a lot of rebuilding, especially financially.
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Those are solid perspectives – thanks. I’m looking at the election very much from the outside and my knowledge of the inner workings of the government comes pretty much from what The Guardian reports.
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The three parties with the most seats
Some would argue that “parties” is the start of the problem. Our city councils seem to work just fine without them, better even, when the Fords aren’t there.
I want a representative of my riding in government, not a government rep in my riding.
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Who are these “public” that you speak of? I think most people would be willing to give ranked ballot a try. There are so many serious problems with proportional representation that it would be a hard sell once explained, and really should go to a referendum first.
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and really should go to a referendum first
Oooh, you mean like Brexit, or the Charlottetown/Meech Lake Accords? 
Referendums aren’t really part of our parliamentary system, as our fog-bound cousins to the east have discovered. I’m also not sure ballot reform wouldn’t prompt a constitutional conference of some sort, which would be an unholy can tank of soul-eating worms to open.
I wouldn’t expect that the Liberals would need a firm commitment of support for at least a year.
- The Conservatives might be having a leadership challenge in the spring, if Scheer doesn’t step down sooner. (Let’s see how that settles out over the next week or two.)
- The Bloc have exactly what they want right now. Another election would risk that without the chance of significant gains.
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On Sunday, the day before tge election, I saw an endorsement by Chief Phillips i, who is Syilx and and long a leader. He endorsed the NDP, though that might be because his wife ran as an NDP candidate.
I was thinking he was someone who coukd speak for me, so it was nice to see that he endorsed a party I’d decided to vote for. Actually, it was Jagmeet Singh, because of what he said after tge blackface photos of Trudeau showed up. Having a Sikh prime minister might make some people rethink their views, especially here in Quebec.
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Switching to proportional representation should require dealing with a can of worms first, as practice.
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I have no illusions that a parliamentary system would be some kind of utopian cure-all for American problems… but in the entrenched 2 party winner-take-all nightmare that the billionaire class currently enjoys, I kind of wish there was a baked-in way to force politicians to cross the aisle.
Small changes can have subtle effects on party power.
First thing to remember is that there is no mention of political parties in the laws governing most Westminster-style parliaments. (It’s all in the traditions, as a shortcut so that they don’t have to figure out where to sit every morning.)
It used to be that the party leaders were selected by the elected members of each party, rather than the party membership as a whole. The change to the membership as a whole was probably billed as being more democratic and giving every party member a voice, but it strengthened the power of the party vs the elected MPs. A backbencher revolt became more unlikely rather than basically how they start every new session of parliament.
Ranked ballots could have strange effects over time. Along with the recognized party candidates, you could have a several indies in a riding who declare an affiliation for a party. i.e. if elected, they’d seek to join that party’s caucus. People could vote for them and backstop it with the official candidate without as much risk of splitting votes. That might shift the power balance towards the MPs, and make it easier for someone to cross the floor without (probably) committing political suicide.
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BC had a referendum to make changes to proportional representation (at the provincial level) and it failed. Too bad, seemed like a good idea.
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I am trying, and not quite succeeding, in reconciling the picture, which I quite liked, with your previous comment:
Much as I dislike the Conservatives, calling them “actual Nazis” does a disservice to those who have fought, or do fight actual Nazism.
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I’m not so certain a non-party system would work well. I suspect you might get something where each elected representatives are evaluated by voters exclusively on the basis of the amount of money they bring home to their constituents.
The BQ is closer to this in that it’s concentrating solely on what is good for Quebecers. I don’t think we’d be better off bringing this down to single ridings.
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If you think American-style jingoism isn’t creeping into Canadian politics, you need to talk to my Albertan dad. He talks about Trudeau, the NDP, and brown people the same way Trumpkins talk about their various reprehensible ideas. I blame Facebook. My dad was a nice guy capable of nuanced views on things before he found that site. Now he’s a nice guy prone to angry rants that I have to steer away from many topics at the dinner table.
Also keep in mind some of the greatest heroes of the current vile American right (e.g. Steven Crowder) are Canadian. Not the time to rest on our laurels and get too smug about being immune to Trumpness.
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