Moonbox

Freedom of the press is great, but it's not really held accoutable for its editorial spin. Whether it's left or right leaning, a newspaper or whatever chooses what it wants to publish. It's not reporting the facts of parliamentary life. It's reporting what would look good on a headline and will make them money. Usually, that's bad news. Our MP's are effectively gagged for that reason. The less they give the media to report, the better. No news is good news for the government.

Guys, it's a funny news link. It's pretty sad to see how hard people will try to make it out to be more than it is. AC had it right. PP is a dumb sock puppet. End of story. Watch the interview. Laugh at it and shake your head at the type of morons Canadians elect (from any party). Albertans would vote a bowl of spaghetti into office if it was a blue bowl. The NDP has a bunch of children MPs. This is the state of our 'democracy'. The dumb being elected by the dumber. Hooray.

You're right. They're biased and unfair questions to begin with, but this moron didn't have the common sense to call the interviewer out on it, bail on the interview, or come up with an intelligent or non-canned response. It's funny either way.

If it came from the conservative party, why was it only in a couple of ridings, particularly ones like Guelph where it wasn't even close? Is it not more likely that this was just a couple of idiots acting on their own, despite the fact that you'd like to make it out as something far more based on your goofy suppositions?

Amen. He doesn't even have the sense to bail.

It is pretty funny. With interview skills like that he's going to be a back-bencher for life. What a dummy. It's actually hard to watch.

Nobody cares if some over-zealous moron went out on his own and tried to screw with the election. Clearly, this wasn't condoned by the CPC, likely not even on the local level. It was just a small group of idiots. Tell us who they were and voters people can make sure they're never trusted again. Your implication he is that we need to hold the whole party responsible, or Stephen Harper or something, but that's just typical Topaz bed wetting.

The conservatives have a much larger traditional base. Sure, they'll do better when the Liberals are really weak, but they've generally formed the government or lead the opposition with a weak or a strong Liberal Party. The NDP's needed that to even be relevant, and their success was as likely as not a blip on the radar and due to the total implosion of the Liberals.

This is simple police work. Force the company to reveal who paid for the robo calls. Trace that. Done. The person dumb enough to do this was unlikely smart enough to go through the steps needed to cover his tracks.

Frank Valeriote won by such a margin in Guelph it didn't even matter. Marty Burke got crushed and won't be running again. It's unlikely that anyone will really be held responsible. It's been over a year since the election and it's not as if this was a Byzantine conspiracy. Some turd in a small-beans city did something idioti. This would hardly be a difficult investigation or take years to unravel.

$8.60 for a block of plain 'ol cheddar at the grocery store here. That's insane, and there's no defending it. People complain about our telecom industry and how we're getting the broomstick up the butthole there, but the dairy industry is no better.

All of these points, however, ignore the fact that the NDP's success was at least partially owed to a poorly led and humbled Liberal Party and to Papa Jack's charisma. Jack's gone and the Liberals appear to be shaking things up. We'll see how things work out, but I sincerely doubt that moderate Canadians are going to warm up to Thomas Mulcair and it's almost certain that boy-Trudeau will rally the sheep behind him. Personally, I'd like to see Martha Hall Findlay upset Trudeau in the leadership campaign. From what little I know of her, she appears to be the smart, practical and tough-choice-making leader that could ACTUALLY change things up in Canada.

I don't really agree with Omnibus bills in theory, but with how parliament and the electorate work these days, it's understandable why they're there. It doesn't really matter what the government does (whether it be Liberal or Conservative), the opposition is always going to do everything it can to tear it apart, amend it, criticize it and natter about it in committees. There's very little honest discussion about the pros/cons of the legislation on either side and that's unfortunate for the state of our democracy. The voters need to start getting interested to see how poorly things are being run.

I don't need to see the guy talk. Voters are stupid enough to vote for him simply for his name. The fact that he's young and has an ounce of charisma (something Harper and Mulcair sorely lack) will get young people out and voting for him. His phoenix-like resurrection of the Liberal Party will be a compelling story, and will get past Liberal voters back in droves, remembering the good 'ol days of Papa Trudeau. punked, in an ideal world the things you mentioned would actually matter. Unfortunately, in our world, they don't. Gee, what a well-conceived and intelligent post...

Topaz what's the point you're trying to make here? Findlay is very clearly trying to explain how political pandering towards special interests is ultimately bad public policy. Sometimes you actually have to make difficult decisions and sometimes those decisions will be unpopular to specific groups. Dalton McGuinty, for example, finally started understanding this, but far far too late.

It's hard to say. I don't think so. The BQ was handed a pretty firm rejection last time. I think what's more likely is that the NDP will retain a presence in Quebec. How strong a presence is going to depend on what Trudeau does there. Outside of Quebec and Canada's armpits (Windsor/Hamilton etc), I'd be willing to bet the NDP gets nuked by Trudeau.

Right...Good one wyly. All that's happening is the NDP's fluke support in the last election is going to disappear and go back to the Liberals. The Tories may be mildly affected. That's all.

It's not really that polarized, and our politics have not shifted that drastically in the last 10 years. The polarization people seem to believe is happening in Canada is more the result of poorly managed Liberal Party more than anything else.

It's interesting to you because you don't like to think things through. Red tories will vote Conservative before they vote NDP. If the NDP are showing strong, these people will flock to the CPC to ensure the NDP doesn't have a chance to form the government. If, on the other hand, the Liberals can field a strong candidate, not only will some of these red Tories possibly go back to the Liberals, the left of centre vote likely rally behind him and oust the Conservatives. A strong Liberal Party would nuke the NDP back to it's 3rd party status and (given how long he's been running things) probably knock Harper out and the CPC back to a minority at best but more likely the Opposition.

Did you read the survey or the results? I'm guessing no. What the pollster said was that Harper had the lowest percentage of people who trust him "a lot". Considering that his comparison is the USA, which has zealous black or white politics, and crap holes like Mexico and South America, I'd question what that's worth. It's also interesting how little interest your showing in the rest of the results. You didn't read the survey, but you love the vapid conclusion that was presented. His rating was higher than Canada's political parties. What does that tell you? Think eyeball. Think. Perhaps Canadians, in general, are getting very cynical about their politicians? Because it was a stand-out fact that was easily compared to the rest of the Americas. Harper had the lowest percentage of people that 'trusted him a lot'. Compared to the rest of the Americas, this is a bit concerning, right? Compared to Canada's political parties, however, Harper looks pretty good, because only 10% place a lot of trust in them. What does that tell you?? Very good! Use that same logic with this!

I'm saying that you've once again failed to actually think about what's being discussed. The link in the OP said only 16% of Canadians place "a LOT of trust" in Stephen Harper. That doesn't mean that 84% of Canadians don't trust him. This is what the media is trying to present to us, and it's hilarious (and unsurprising) that you swallowed it up. If the question is given a scale of 1-7 indicating various levels of trust in the Prime Minister, you have to assume that people voted all over the place showing varying degrees of trust or distrust. You can't just pull out the numbers at the very end of the spectrum and say, "Only 16% of people trust him". Use your freaking head. If the Globe and Mail did an exit poll of people leaving a movie theatre, and they asked viewers to rate the movie 1-5 (5 being excellent), if only 25% of people said the movie was excellent, would that mean that 75% didn't like it!?! In your funny little world...maybe.

I'm judging more based on the fact that Denmark seems to be a successful state that has proportional representation. I make no claim as to whether PR makes it better or worse, simply that it doesn't appear to be a den of fools like other PR countries are like PIIGS.

Anyone with even a lick of common sense would be able to view this for the VERY simple survey that it is. On a scale of 1-7, you usually get a range of scaling yes/agree values, a range of scaling no/disagree values, and then a neutral number. Just to be clear eyeball, are you suggesting that they may have designed this survey to mean that numbers 1-6 signify varying degrees of "do not trust" and then 7 signifies "trusts very much" or something silly like that? Come on dude...

Nobody said anything even implying removing territories or provinces wyly. As for removing ridings, moving towards a PR system would suggest either removing ridings or at the very least reduce their importance in the House. Either way the strength of the federal system deteriorates in favour of a more central government with more central priorities. For a country as large and diverse as Canada, I'd say that's a bad idea. Our democracy is already inclusive. Everyone has a vote. Making sure that there's proportional representation of preferred parties, however, does a couple things. First, it waters down the importance of regional and municipal concerns, and second, it leads to a fractious parliament/house that as often as not decides things by committee. It works for some places, like Norway or Denmark, where geography and demographics are about as homogenous as they can be. In other places, however, it breeds dysfunction and paralysis, particularly in times of crisis. You need only look to Greece or Italy for simple examples, and these are places WITHOUT Canada's geographic and demographic diversity. Also, the fact that Canada, can support 3 major parties and (up until 2011) run 3 consecutive minorities, shows us that our system is hardly the dictatorship people like to proclaim it as. It's already unstable enough, and opening the legislature to whatever focused interest group wants to run and can organize itself would lead not only to political instability, but make it even harder for the government to make the hard and unpopular decisions that often need to be me made.

The point of federalism is to ensure that regions remain affiliated but mostly self-determining. This is why we have provinces and territories and this is why we have ridings. Without ridings, regional interests are nowhere near as relevant. The riding system ensures that member districts of the federation have a noticeable voice. Representation by population transfers that power away from electoral districts and instead it centralizes it instead, which is contrary to how federation is supposed to work. If you really need examples of how this would work I can give it to you, but hopefully not. I don't want to write another three paragraphs.