mentalfloss
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Ontario election fight gets dirty online
It may be all smiles for the cameras as Ontario political leaders fight their way toward the Oct. 6 election, but online the fight is nasty.
On Wednesday, the NDP launched a new website to counter social media attacks and rumours they claim are being spread by other parties.
The site, www.stopthesmears.ca, aims to dispel myths such as the NDP have a fleet of 20 orange SUVs on standby for the election and that leader Andrea Horwath is really the incarnation of Mike Harris.
People are tired of whisper campaigns and negative ads, said NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park). She claims the NDP website will “tackle the smears” and get the facts out.
Party leaders have vowed not to wage a dirty campaign before the Oct. 6 election.
But in the social media universe, the election is running a different course. Fake people espousing partisan views have proliferated on Twitter, there are YouTube videos making fun of certain party leaders, and websites have been created by the political parties to try to make sense of it all.
The Tories started www.truthabouttimhudak.com and within 24 hours they believe the Liberals, or their supporters, started up the parallel site www.thetruthabouttim.com. The later site does not advertise who created it but it notes Hudak would “cut $3 billion out of health care” and that he wants to scrap the Liberals’ Green Energy Act.
However, the social media noise distracts journalists from the real news and it can confuse voters, said Greg Elmer, a Ryerson University media professor.
At its worst, social media in campaigns is a “distraction factory” trying to divert attention from positive policy announcements coming from political opponents, said Elmer.
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Turmel vs. Lebel: their sovereigntist ties
How long were they members of a sovereigntist party?
Turmel held a Bloc membership for just over four years, from December 2006 until January 2011. She became an NDP candidate shortly afterward. It's unclear when Turmel became a member of Quebec Solidaire, but it only formed as a provincial political party in November 2006. Turmel did not give up her membership in the provincial party until it became controversial last week.
Lebel was a member of the Bloc for eight years, from July 1993 until April 2001. In the summer of 1993, the Bloc was fighting its first federal election campaign under leader Lucien Bouchard. (The party became the official Opposition that fall.) Lebel was still a Bloc member when he was elected mayor of Roberval in 2000.
Why were they members of a sovereigntist party?
Turmel says she took out a Bloc membership to "support a friend": then-BQ MP Carole Lavallée. She says she agrees with some of the Bloc's policies, but not its position on national unity. When Turmel served as the head of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the national federal civil servants' union endorsed Bloc Québécois candidates. Of Quebec Solidaire, Turmel told Rosemary Barton on Power & Politics that her support for the provincial party was based on the fact that "they work on issues for Quebec families." She says Quebec Solidaire spokesperson (the party does not have a leader in the traditional sense) Françoise David is also a friend of hers.
Lebel explains his Bloc membership as part of his political and community involvement more generally in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-John region of Quebec, a nationalist stronghold. He told Radio-Canada that he wanted to get closer to then-MP Michel Gauthier, who became the leader of the Bloc after Lucien Bouchard left to become premier of Quebec in 1996.
How active and committed were they to the sovereigntist cause?
Turmel says that despite her memberships and the small donations (totalling $235) she made in support of her friend Lavallée, she was never active in the sovereignty movement per se. Her past work as a national union leader did find her on common ground with the Bloc on other social and justice issues. She maintains that she is and always has been a federalist. Turmel has disclosed that she voted against separation in both of Quebec's sovereignty referendums.
Lebel says that despite his membership and small donations (a few hundred dollars), he never actively campaigned for the Bloc, although he did attend Bloc events and participated in partisan activities. A party organizer for the Bloc during that time period supports his claim not to have been a party activist or strong campaigner. Lebel told reporters in 2007 that he is a Quebec nationalist. Lebel has not disclosed how he voted in Quebec's sovereignty referendums.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/08/09/pol-lebel-bloc.html
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I would be on board with the conservative budget if it actually saved us money. The problem is that there is no way they can make these cuts and we'll be in debt as a result.
I just don't get how people are still dumb enough to keep falling for this same politrick of cutting taxes.
It never works out.
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Tories, Grits leave door open for NDP
Hudak leads in the polls, though it's surprising how narrow the gap is--only about 6%, according to an Ipsos Reid poll--considering McGuinty's popularity is lower than that of his his party. The PCs will offer tax cuts, follow the Liberals' policy on health care and education and send criminals to rake leaves.
Hudak has even offered to dock the Premier's $208,000 annual salary if he can't deliver tax relief (though he didn't say by how much). He'll remove the HST from home heating and hydro. He wants some broad tax cuts and he'll even take the debt retirement charge off home hydro bills, though since the debt is still there, funds will likely come out of provincial revenue.
Regardless, he's the anti-taxman. He thinks it's his strength.
He's banking on a taxpayer revolt at the polls, and he's pressing the point with his television advertisements, dubbing McGuinty "The Taxman." McGuinty's "sheer brilliance" at creating the health tax, and his "virtuoso move" at introducing the HST are the focus of the ads.
This would be a good sell if Hudak wasn't keeping the health premium and most of the HST in place. That's right, the very things at the centre of Hudak's assault on the Liberals, he's going to keep largely intact. So McGuinty takes the political fall and Hudak keeps the bounty.
That's the plan, anyway--one likely to be exposed as duplicitous during the campaign.
NDP leader Andrea Horwath is offering help for lower-income earners with some new ideas--relief from ambulance fees, a freeze on municipal transit fares and removing the HST from heating and hydro. But to date, the party is riding on its promise to regulate gas prices at the pumps--though there is no guarantee motorists will save money in the long run.
More is expected from the NDP during its pre-election convention this weekend.
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Yes it's a nice theory that has proven to be deeply flawed.
The theory isn't flawed.
It's that there's not enough bulletproofing in the existing system to make sure it works that way. There's no real gauge for true performance or reward for that performance. That's not a flaw, there's just no real metric for it.
What I'm deeply worried about is that we have not diluted the power of corporations yet.
Now that's a scary thing.
Socialism isn't scary, unless you're one of those people who believe Nazis were evil because they were socialists.
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Socialism.. it's so scary..
"..each worker in a socialist society receives wages and benefits according to the quantity and value of the labor that he or she contributed. This translates into workers of high productivity receiving more wages and benefits than workers of average productivity, and substantially more than workers of low productivity. An extension of this principle could also be made so that the more difficult one's job is—whether this difficulty is derived from greater training requirements, job intensity, safety hazards, etc.—the more one is rewarded for the labor contributed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution
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Possibly....but more likely it would appear that Canadians seem to be happy with the fact that the government has made it clear that they WILL be reducing the size of government.
This has always struck me as odd, as it's not the size of government that's the problem.. it's what that government does.
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Why? What benefit is there in universality?
Because the Rock said so?
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That's over $40K a year with full benefits and a pension. All that's required of a postal worker is diligence and a bit of pride in doing a job well. You don't need any special education nor is there a need to constantly learn and grow in your job. It's a worthy job but just about anyone can do it. For the regular "line" positions, there is no reason for a constant increase in pay other than keeping up with the cost of inflation. The job is the job. If the person doesn't want it, someone else will do it.
Please.
Paper pushers (myself included) make more within the first 5 years of employment.
Getting paid more to surf the forums 5 out of the 8 hours I'm here is pretty damn sweet. Reaching 40K after 35 years of dedicated employment is peanuts by comparison.
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Really? The Foreign Minister's first stop should be in Vancouver?
It was his attempt at being clever by committing to an equivocation fallacy.
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OP is such hyperbole.
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I also understand that the French used their military as well as security personnel, maybe next time Canada will do that, maybe we should've done it. Having said that, we know if Harper had authorized the use of military he would have been pilloried for 'soldiers on the streets' and all, even if it did save money.
The Toronto G8 police weren't soldiers on the streets?
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The Star sure does seem fair and balanced.
They lean a little to the left, so they're pretty rational about most things.
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They came, they won, they gloated: Tories gather in Ottawa for party convention
OTTAWA—Conservative Party members have descended on Ottawa for a three-day conference that began Thursday night with rounds of speeches poking fun at the opposition, the media and even the Senate page who interrupted the throne speech by striding onto the floor holding a sign demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper be stopped.
Minutes into former minister Stockwell Day’s address to the roughly 2,000 people gathered at the Ottawa Convention Centre, his wife Valerie strode onto the stage holding a red stop sign with the words “We Love Harper.”
The bit of political theatre showcased the party’s arrogantly victorious mood as it headed into a policy weekend just weeks after winning its coveted majority government, taking 166 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons.
The campaign catchphrase “strong stable Conservative majority government” made its way into every single speech, as did jibes at the new Opposition New Democrats. Master of ceremonies Stephen Blaney, who is the veterans’ affairs minister, joked that he was one of the only Quebec MPs who didn’t need a map to find his riding — a poke at all the fresh-faced New Democrat MPs, one of whom had never been to the riding in which they were elected.
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Actually no, I don't have any defence for all that money going into the Huntsville area. None at all. But I am really happy to see only a bit over 50% of the overal G8/20 budget used. There was half a BILLION dollars that was approved but not spent. When was the last time THAT was ever done in government?
We spent $600 million on our G8/G20.
The French spent $30 million on theirs.
Comparatively, we spent the same on gazebos as they did on the entire summit.
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More unions need to reward their members for campaigning against tories, lol
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Ummmm.. 'Stop Harper' from what? What exactly is he doing? (beside letting in even more immigrants than any other PM and spending more money than any other PM).
What exactly is the uneducated, dimwit, fear mongering left in Canada trying to 'stop' Harper from doing?
It's the build up to a different government in 4 years.
But she makes some pretty compelling points. The conservatives were held in parliamentary contempt and they got off scott free while a small girl holds up a sign and is promptly escorted out of the building.
That kind of double-standard isn't something that Canadians will stand for and we'll continue to see this youth movement push parliament in a much different direction by the next election.
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But this type of stunt, utterly lacking in decorum or even a modicum of respect for our system, will do nothing more than turn off the vast majority of Canadians. In essence her protest will have the opposite effect, as most will ignore and disregard any message she could have communicated.
Well then you're wrong.
It's actually re-ignited a lot of political debate over the jets, foreign affairs, and the voting system.
The twitters and bookfaces are going nuts over this and CBC is just piling it on.
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And reopen displaced persons' camps at Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Bergen-Belsen for the people removed by Israel's "backing down"? Or should they learn to swim the Meditteranean or the Gulf or Aqaba?
Clearly it's a two-state solution with 1967 borders.
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Calling for an Arab Spring and civil disobedience sounds like mobs in the street to me. No?
Not necessarily. It just means that there needs to be a constant awareness - a healthy skepticism of the government. She stated herself that the public needs to be creative in their protests. That doesn't mean they have to be violent.
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Conrad Black giving moral advice, lol. He's definitely going to be invited to high tea with Trump now.
Well at least now we know for sure that Israel is the one that needs to back down.
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The point is, this former page and her supporters feel that they are as noble and justified in calling for thousands of Canadians to take to the streets to bring down an elected government as those who in the Middle East called for thousands to take to the streets to bring down unelected governments so that they might have the kind of election we just had. Even more twisted are the PR proponents who've piggybacked on Ms. DePape's protest and try to argue that she's right because the present government was elected illigitimately, as though our system of government is the same as Egypt's and our elections are as much a joke as those that put Mubarak repeatedly into office. The thinking is impossible to take seriously.
I think it's great even if it is a partially fallacious equivocation. I would rather have the government under too much scrutiny than too little. She raised awareness of political dialogue that needs to be a constant reminder for people in order to hold our government accountable for its actions.
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And what will it cost her to be a dumb bitch?
Apparently, a new job with PSAC, lol
McGuinty and late fees
in Provincial Politics in Canada
Posted · Edited by mentalfloss
It's becoming very clear now that both the Liberals and Conservatives have some pretty gaping logical holes in their platform promises.