Bonam

Yeah that data is the same as what I posted for the period of 1957 onward. The graph I posted shows the turnout stretched out on the vertical axis so you can see the trend more easily. Anyway, both sets of data agree that turnout has been falling from the 50s to today. You attribute the falling turnout from the 50s on people losing trust in government, I attribute it to people being content with the status quo. You posted a graph showing declining trust in government from 1958 onward. Here's one that shows rising standard of living over the same period (constant 2002 dollars): Here's life expectancy: To me, the data clearly shows that people's lives are getting better, and that has been true continuously since WWII under any and all parties that have been in power. Which party is in power has a minimal effect on most people's lives, and hence they don't bother to vote. This is based on objective facts, as opposed to surveys about "trust in government" which are based on people's subjective opinions and are influenced by baseless media hysteria.

It is of course a large demographic (the majority, in fact), and it is indeed courted to varying extents by male politicians, but it is not properly represented until a considerable fraction of the people in power are actually women. Just ask any feminist and they'll explain it to you, if you disagree And the same would be true for young people, except that by definition young people are still at the beginnings of their careers and have generally not yet amassed the experience and influence needed to get to those positions.

Canada's voter turnout since 1957: Trend of general decline. US voter turnout since the 1800s: Note the general trend of decline from the 50s until 2000 or so, and then increasing voter turnout in the post 9/11 unrest. I've already said I agree with this. That said, we've have threads on this before, and the consensus of the trogdolytes is that it's not "secure enough" to vote online. You are making a factual assertion, attributing causation of a certain phenomenon to something. Do you have any firm evidence to back this up?

This is incorrect. Representation depends not only on who votes, but on who gets elected/appointed to the most powerful positions. Governments and corporations are frequently criticized if they don't have enough "diversity" (women and minority groups) in their top ranks, and this is because people recognize that to truly represent these groups, you don't just need their votes but you need to have members of these groups in power. If every single elected official was male, would you assume that the government adequately represents women, just because half the people that voted for it were women? Remember that this was almost exactly the case just a few decades ago.

I disagree. Voter turnouts are typically very high in countries experiencing unrest, countries new to democracy, etc. These are the times when people are most likely to think that the system does not work for them or to doubt the government's claims of it being representative. And yet, these are the times when politics most affect people, and so they will do what they can to have some impact on it. In contrast, as standards of living in Western countries have risen since WWII and the political situation has increasingly become more stable and less likely to affect people's personal lives in any significant way, voter turnouts have steadily fallen. People aren't voting because the outcome doesn't really affect them enough for them to bother. Governments are institutionally incapable of representing young people, regardless of voting statistics. How many young people are in positions of real power?

And if people are forced to vote, then you have no idea how many would have actually voted if they weren't forced to do so. Therefore you would no longer be able to make any valid implication about the consent of the governed, since all votes would be coerced votes, regardless of which party they were for. Making voting into something that your government forces you to do perverts the very idea of voting, which is something that a free person does of their own free will to exercise a measure of control over their own government.

Of course life would go on. What kind of argument is that? The question isn't about whether life would go on, but whether we would be better off if voting was mandatory.

No, high voter turn out has no value in and of itself. I was born in the USSR. Do you know what the voter turnout was there? 100%. Every time. Nor does forcing your electorate to vote imply that the governing party has the consent of the governed, it only implies that the people that were forced (by definition, against their will) to vote, voted for the party that ended up in power. No, if people lose interest in large numbers it means they are fine with the status quo and don't really care about politics. And that can only mean that the political situation is stable enough and good enough that it does not concern most people.

Immigration does not take away the rights of Canadians, you are correct. But "multiculturalism" is not just immigration. Multiculturalism is the set of social policies designed to encourage all the different cultures to be "celebrated" as part of the "cultural mosaic". That all sounds good, until you look at what is involved in the implementation of multiculturalism. Specifically, consider things like the "human rights commissions". These extra-legal bodies are given the power to entangle people in lengthy and expensive and potentially life-ruining proceedings based on speech that is deemed offensive, but is not in contravention of any of Canada's actual laws. Therefore, the policies and entities that have been put in place to support the agenda of multiculturalism do most definitely infringe on the rights of Canadians, specifically free speech rights (which the HRC's say don't exist in Canada).

That might work if party platforms meant anything. All parties have a long history of almost completely ignoring their platforms once elected. Not to mention "forcing" someone to read something sounds like a remarkably futile endeavor.

Hmm... does anyone actually care which newspaper endorses which party? I mean, is anyone's own vote going to be affected by who a newspaper "endorses"?

In the years that I could vote in Canada, I read all the (major) party platforms. Many of the posters here have said they've voted for varying parties over the years. I certainly have, myself. Regardless of the people on this forum, the people that aren't bothering to vote under a system where it is not mandatory are not going to be adding any value to the democratic process if they are forced to vote. That said, I absolutely agree with you about online voting. That would probably increase turnouts significantly without making anything mandatory.

Welcome to the forum. Nice to have another sane sounding poster. You are right, the latest epidemic of stabbings of Jews by Palestinian terrorists in Israel is going severely under-reported in Western media. In fact, it was all but completely ignored until these latest murders were met with a harsh response. Frankly, I believe even the most virulent critic of Israel here would be calling for check points, walls, and harsh police action if there was a large portion of the population in the streets that might stab them or their families at any time simply because of their ethnicity/religion. It's easy to live in a place like Canada in total safety and security and criticize people on the other side of the world who live in a much different reality. But when faced with the constant threat of being murdered, things look very different. The people inciting the latest wave of stabbings and murders of innocent Israelis have no one but themselves to blame for any response Israel carries out.

No to mandatory voting. If someone isn't gonna bother to vote, then they clearly have no interest in and no knowledge of the political situation. If they are forced to vote, their vote will be an uninformed one. What we need is more people to WANT to vote, not people to be forced to vote.

That's an objectively false statement, not to mention arrogant as hell.

I think having more legitimate choices to pick from is certainly beneficial. A system where two parties are deeply entrenched and present the only two options for generation after generation is too prone to polarization, corruption, and party insider elitism. The Canadian system not only has more than two parties, but these parties evolve over time, some splitting apart, merging with others, etc.

I don't think there's any merit to maintaining the idea of "class" as strictly based on education. Just about anyone can go to college and get a degree. The real test is whether someone can develop a useful skill and retain gainful employment in a field that pays them well. That skill can be "rocket science" but it can also be plumbing, both pay about the same and allow one to live a similar middle class lifestyle. There are plenty of other college degrees which do little or nothing to help their graduates earn more than what a minimum wage job would offer. In fact, stats show that some degrees (once you take the 4 years of school instead of employment and the cost of tuition into account) have a net lifetime return that is negative compared to if someone just entered the workforce directly after high school. Wages are largely based on supply and demand and depending on economic conditions, some skills that take only minimal education can be just as (or more) valuable as ones that takes 4 (or even more) years of post-secondary education. And the only place all this really breaks down in is public unions, where salary is completely disconnected from the supply/demand of the skills needed for various jobs.

Well, I agree that reserving judgement is a valid response as well. But on the other hand, waiting to oppose it until after it is already passed is kind of useless. Presumably, pulling out of the treaty after the fact may have substantial costs and downsides. Any economic treaty that is likely to have substantial impact on a country's economy should have a chance to undergo vigorous debate by that country's public, even if the ultimate decision about whether or not to go ahead with the treaty still rests in the hands of the sitting government. And, given that that debate has not happened, opposing the treaty's ratification until such time as it its terms are made public seems like a reasonable principled stance to me. As for the conservatives... yes presumably the government knows the details of the treaty and they have been vested with a majority mandate to make these kinds of decisions on behalf of Canadians. That said, I still dislike deals done in secrecy except where a need for that secrecy can be clearly and unambiguously demonstrated, which it cannot in the case of the TPP in my opinion. Anyway, all this would probably be better placed in a separate thread regarding the TPP...

I'm not a fan of the NDP but I don't think that opposing a treaty which we do not know the contents of is necessarily a bad move. Frankly, I'm more suspicious of people who support the treaty without knowing what it contains... because that implies they are throwing their support behind something without actually knowing what it is, therefore they are accepting it not based on rational analysis but on ideology or partisanship. One can believe that trade agreements are beneficial in general but still not support a particular one without first being able to see what it contains. I think any responsible citizen should be highly suspicious of any treaty that is negotiated in secrecy and to which a government commits itself without first making the complete terms of the treaty public knowledge, (except perhaps treaties related to matters of national security during wartime).

Here's another good article article relevant to the topics in this thread: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ Long, but definitely would be a beneficial read for many here.

The whole strategic voting thing gets trotted out just about every election. And then is always promptly forgotten afterwards. Reality is it's a minor issue. For one, only a relatively small number of people end up voting "strategically" - many are committed to vote for one party or another, many others vote on their "principles" for the party they most believe in, and many others vote based on the local candidates in their riding. For another, election polls are somewhat reliable on a national scale where the sample sizes are large but have huge margins of error in individual ridings, making the information that people base their "strategic" votes on highly uncertain except in ridings where the outcome of the race is a foregone conclusion anyway, and the small % of strategic voters will make no difference. As for all the people decrying Harper for being "anti-democratic"... one would think that such people would realize the beneficial long-term effects on democracy of having 3-5 viable parties rather than just 2. The US system of two deeply entrenched parties with no possibility of another playing any significant role is deeply problematic and need not be emulated in Canada. "Vote splitting" has had adverse effects on both right-leaning and left-leaning parties over the decades and will continue to do so in the future, because Canada's political arena is dynamic enough for these things to change, and that is a very good thing.

I think the Canadian market will largely continue to follow the direction of the US market, with its strength relative to the US market mostly controlled by the price of oil. Canadian elections will play a minor, if any, role.

Transport ships should use nuclear reactors as has been very conclusively demonstrated by the navy as a safe and effective means of marine propulsion and energy production for over half a century now. As for aircraft... hydrogen fuel is honestly just too expensive. Some space launch vehicles use cryogenic hydrogen for fuel, and even in that application, people try to avoid its use due to the cost and complexity of the associated systems. Hydrogen turbopumps, cryogenic tankage, etc, are all really expensive and complex. Not only would hydrogen systems be more complex, more costly, and require more volume and mass in the tankage and plumbing, but they would impose additional levels of danger, which is unacceptable in commercial aviation. For recreational (propeller) aircraft, battery-electric solutions are not really far away from reality. But for jet airliners, hydrocarbon fuels are the only plausible solution until/unless some revolutionary technologies are introduced. There are a few plausible nuclear technologies that would be suitable for commercial aviation but they are unlikely to be met with public/political support. As for trains... they are riding on rails on fixed routes, and adding necessary electric infrastructure to the rail systems would be by far the simplest way to go if one was to try to reduce emissions from trains.

Tax burdens as a % of GDP have remained relatively constant over many decades in most Western countries. I think despite all the political hysterics between "small government conservatives" (who don't really exist) and big spending liberals, the long term public consensus is fairly stable in most Western countries.

Why do taxes need to go up?