Michael Hardner

BD: This all sounds great, but similar arguments could be used to justify referrenda et al. We essentially have three main parties with the top two almost NEVER having 50% of the vote. When considering the Canadian political topology, PR would guarantee the NDP the balance of power almost every time. That's too much power for the NDP, given their support levels. It wouldn't, but it would give the NDP too much power, and quite likely result in NDP-Liberal coalition after NDP-Liberal coalition. PR works in a lot of countries that have many parties, but even then their governments are constantly building and losing coalitions. I'd rather have the vision of one leader followed through for a few years. As I said, the NDP-Liberal axis would dominate federal politics. If the Cons had a Francophone leader, and had dropped the social stuff, they would be in office now, with a majority IMO.

Now I'm being called a Con ! This is great. Uh. Sort of. First of all, I should point out that I'm not a 'Con'. Just because you're against PR, it doesn't make you conservative. What matters not is the aesthetic of any system change, but the end result. ( Remember how nice the Stock Day Alliance party made referrenda sound ? ) The end result of PR will be a virtual shut-out of any more conservative governments. Now, when's the last time I voted conservative. Hmmm ? How about... uh... never ? So why do I care whether Conservatives get to ever form government ? Because I believe in democracy, and I believe in the fact that whether or not I agree with the CPC, their existence makes Canada a better place to live. I thought left-of-centre people were supposed to be against the tyranny of the majority ! They resonate with 30% of Canadians, roughly. And you haven't yet explained how PR will solve any problems for Canada. Yes, PR sounds very democratic, as do referrenda or free votes, internet voting, mail-in voting and so forth... but in practice these things are all tools to get what the party leader proposing them wants. If the CPC is a bad, if it can't win an election, then it will have to evolve or die - but they should do it on their own terms, not because they were legislated out of existence by a prime minister who is on his last legs.

I have had this argument many times on these boards and others. I'm an Ontarian and I have never heard a single person here make a diparaging remark about westerners. You have a preconceived notion about preconceived notions. Or maybe it's just projection. I've read a couple of comments from westerners calling easterners sheep, lazy, etc. Ontario is mostly small towns and wilderness. And most Torontonians I know came from elsewhere. So what kind of sense would it make for someone from North Bay, living in Toronto to call a westerner a 'hick' ?

Well, if it weren't for the fearmongering, would we have ever known about Randy White's opinions ? What problems ? What will PR fix ? I think we need to make democracy more relevant and fix national unity. I don't think PR will achieve this. It will just make it harder for the CPC to gain a foothold. I mean, if they add 20 PR seats to parliament, how many will go to the right-of-centre party ? Unless they have a whopping majority, less than half of them. Even with the Bloc, they'll get less than half of any PR seats. This means that more than half of the PR seats will go to left-of-centre parties. Every 10 new PR seats will probably give 2-4 seat advantage to the NDP and Liberals.

Well, sure. And they all use the roads that are subsidized by the government, etc. etc. But really... I mean, is FreeDominion.ca subsidized by the government ? They're always crying poor, and saying they're going to shut down, etc. Aren't the two sites just mirror images of one another ? If any site should be funded, it's MapleLeafWeb... Hey... Wait a second...

I disagree. The CBC has a hard enough time being neutral, but Rabble ? I do like it, but it shouldn't be funded, simple as that. If the CPC was elected and started funding the Alberta Report, then I'd get pretty bloody angry... well, probably not but I'd harbour quiet resentment anyway...

I don't think the analogy is apt. A better question might be: would the shareholders of a corporation be upset if they found out that the president spent company money to finance a campaign to lobby the board of directors for his reinstatement ?

Maybe Paul Martin will call a free vote on this. It might be a moot point, though, if Harper is able to beat down the social conservatives enough to put anti-anti-Charter policies in the CPC's official platform.

Hear, hear. Although, to be fair, I doubt that Rabble costs more than a few thousand dollars to run every year. This is another one of the stories that the National Post would like to hear about, I'm sure.

Here's a link to Craig Read's website, by the way: Craig Read - ex MapleLeafWebber Craig claims that Toronto exports $20 B "to fund socialization and equalization programs which politicians use to buy votes." Which is weird, considering that the payers (Toronto) supported the Liberals a lot more than some of the payees (oh, let's say... Saskatchewan) did.

Hugo: I don't know about the most heavily-taxed part. But I see your point about having a party with strong socially conservative views. Unfortunately, without a presence in Quebec, Harper can't afford to alienate large blocks of people if he ever wants a majority. The CPC's economics, combined with Liberal ineptitude could give them a win, but they have to drop the social side of conservatism. You're correct here. There probably are some fringe parties at end of the spectrum, though. I think Ontario pays out as well. The Toronto separatists have figures that say Toronto definitely pays out more than it receives.

CIDA ?!? I question how supporting a partisan Canadian political web forum is part of their mandate. As for the unions, they can give money to whomever they want and Rabble.ca is a good site for people to gather and share information on helping organized labour in Canada.

I disagree. Harper could have done more to keep the social cons out, but he had to keep that element of his party happy. He could have made it CPC policy to leave the charter alone, and concentrated on the scandal and his economic vision. So, Harper has to bulletproof his party from that kind of attack. Or, I suppose he could give up. Really ? Were the Liberals also villified by the Bloc ? Or villifried ?

They're more inept then corrupt. And they seem to appeal to certain voters' desire for stability. I would advise the CPC to get more mainstream. Canada will elect them for lower taxes, but they have to cage up the social conservatives for good.

But the ads didn't attack the CPC based on their Western-ness. They attacked the CPC based on the Charter of Rights, Iraq, Abortion etc. The scare-mongering ads worked in Ontario because they appealed to Ontarian's fears of the unknown, and reminded them of their recent experiments with Harris and Rae. Can't the CPC just drop the social conservative stuff once and for all and move on ? That would probably boost their fortunes.

I think Harper has to jettison the only thing holding him back - the social conservatives. The new CPC needs to set policy that clearly sets itself apart from the Alliance on those issues. Free votes will still be allowed "on anything that isn't party policy", so he should set firm policies that state that the party supports the Charter as it is, and so forth. If he does this, and the Martin minority government falters, then he will be PM next time around. Hopefully Harper has done well enough to stay on and undo the social conservative influence in the party. Otherwise, they won't break through and the Liberals will sit for another four terms.

I wasn't talking about Martin, I was talking about us MapleLeafWebbers. And I don't ascribe to the idea that people's appearances and mannerisms inform us as to their personalities 100% of the time. Somebody even tried to convince me that Stephen Harper was evil because of his evil stare. Nobody was portrayed as a hick. The only Albertan that was vilified in part was Ralph Klein, and why not ? He arrogantly stated that he would be remodelling his province's health care irrespective of the law, didn't he ? This is the kind of thing Ontarians can't understand. They vote for PMs who come from other provinces in election after election. Why ? Because they identify themselves as Canadians first, not Ontarians. Not even Harris could have rustled up separatist feelings here. If you think the CPC's disappointment in Ontario was an anti-West message, maybe you're identifying the CPC with the west too much. Don't worry. Harper will do better in Ontario next time, I'm sure.

No.. Fearmongering works. Mudslinging is like when you try to say your opponent supports child porn.

That was the comment "I will represent EVERY region" that he made. He knows that he needs to do something different. But it's probably too late.

Gracious in victory... gracious in defeat... I think Martin will make a concerted pitch to mend fences with the west. Furthermore, I think it will include some real changes that the west have been calling for. And ... it will probably fail.

Well, Martin shouldn't get too comfortable. I don't think anyone is that thrilled with him, but he was viewed as the least worst choice. He will have to offer a substantial olive branch to the west, and soon. I hope Harper stays on as leader. If the CPC dumps him, then there will be no pressure on Martin to do anything. An interesting comment I heard was that the real split isn't east-west as much as it is urban rural. The Liberals did very well in cities.

PR at this point may happen, but if it does it's just gerrymandering. I hope they don't do it. The timing is wrong. For every ten seats they allocate to PR, the Libs and NDP give themselves another 2-4 combined seat lead over the CPC and that's not right.

The seat projections were not scientifically done, and they were out by a whole bunch. They should scrap that next time.

I don't think so. It isn't. You can draw correlations between silly things that have nothing to do with each other, like teddy bear ownership and liklihood to commit murder. You can't do anything with correlation. Oh. Well, I don't think those situations are analagous at all. I don't think they do welcome those movements as part of them. Anyway, I think that homosexuals can be as good as heterosexuality at parenting, but I don't think that's an argument that will go anywhere. I mainly wanted to make the point about the abuse of statistical science.

I agree... but I also think that people spent too much money, and that they sometimes take extra jobs to buy things that no family needs.