Evening Star

I wondered about that too tbh.

It does matter if one wants to understand federal politics, considering how well-represented Quebec is in the House. It is also just a matter that is curious to me and that makes a difference to how I view the Bloc, as a voter in the ROC. These would more or less fall into what I would categorize as "spite". When has the Bloc even does these things though?

Wait, I'm not sure I follow. Presumably, some of the visible minorities and aboriginals are women too, right? So this wouldn't necessarily add up to over 50% of hires?

If anything, it would make more sense to me to say that the govt imposing the scrapping of the mandatory long-form census or restricting what scientists can tell the press are more undemocratic actions.

Yeah, fair enough. I don't think a majority vote in favour of the long-gun registry is quite the same though. It was a perfectly fair and legitimate example of our system of parliamentary democracy functioning as it is meant to, constitutionally.

Majority rule certainly is democracy.

Or even of Mulroney's day, let alone Joe Clark's!

The Bloc is weird for me. I tend to agree with them on nearly every issue that doesn't relate to Quebec's place in Confederation. They are good advocates for the environment, left-leaning economic policies, human rights, culture, and immigrants' rights and are possibly more effective than the NDP, owing to their greater number of MPs and Duceppe's articulateness. As such, I was actually somewhat enthusiastic about the idea of a three-party coalition in 2008. That said, I'm not totally sure what their goals and priorities even are anymore. They have been dominating Quebec's federal representation for 15 years or so now without achieving anything at all for the cause of separatism or even sovereignty. Does anyone still see them as a viable and effective separatist party? Are Quebecers voting for them simply because they like their leanings on other issues and think that they are strong advocates for Quebec's interests within Canada? If so, why do they not just run as a progressive/social democratic party interested in a 'renewed federalism' that affords QC some more autonomy or funding in key areas? (I would still probably oppose the second part of that but could at least understand the point of such a party.) I'm honestly not sure what the point of a separatist federal party even is, beyond spite: Only a provincial government in QC can call a referendum on separatism, right? (And that does not appear to be on the agenda of QC's provincial leaders.)

I was until now! (Never thought he was rural but I really thought he'd grown up in Calgary.)

Baird's talk about urban 'Toronto elites' never even makes sense to me, coming from someone who grew up in and represents a well-off suburb of Ottawa. He's not exactly a down home country boy himself.

Yeah, I always wonder when people bring this up. What does anyone think that Rene Levesque might have agreed to?

(FWIW, I totally loathe the decentralism of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords and think they would have been disastrous. So I also give Trudeau credit for opposing them so strongly.)

It was both, actually, but I'll freely admit that they are probably much less important to people who didn't grow up in Ottawa. Multiculturalism and abolition of the death penalty were major accomplishments in my eyes and... Bill C-150 was introduced in 1967, yes, but it was passed in 1969 (when PET was PM): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_C-150 It was undoubtedly the product of Trudeau's own vision in any case. I'm not sure what you mean by "the usual reform of the Criminal Code". I'm inclined to agree with Turner that it was "the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country". What the hell has Harper done that compares? Clearly we disagree about the 1976 policy. (The Green Paper was probably ill-conceived.) Still, it's hard to deny that fundamental changes were made to Canadian immigration policy under Trudeau. The CRTC has had a huge impact on Canadian culture, as has been discussed on other threads. Heh, that's less than half the number of people who were arrested during the G20 demonstrations. Seriously, though, I'm not totally sure on what grounds Trudeau is being compared to Kerry or Obama here. The FLQ had been active as a seriously violent domestic terrorist organization for years prior to the October Crisis. There were other violent separatist groups as well. The kidnapping of major government officials in this context could have suggested a genuine threat of insurrection. What situations were Kerry or even Obama dealing with that are comparable? Having said this, I actually think that the handling of the situation was excessive - and certainly the RCMP's continued covert investigation and harrassment of separatists afterwards was shameful. However, it is also true that since the October Crisis, the separatist movement has been a peaceful and democratic movement! (I was admittedly mostly just trying to make the point that it's a bit silly to speculate on what the separatist movement 'might have been' had various federal policies gone one way or the other. I don't necessarily think that this was Trudeau's proudest moment.) Speaking of which, the decisive victory over separatism in the 1980 Referendum has to be at least partly credited to Trudeau - and it was by many leading PQ members. Yeah, no doubt about this. I may as well admit that I actually like at least the principles behind Trudeau's more social democratic and even protectionist economic policies, although I'm not an economist by any stretch. I tend to feel that more public control over natural resources could be a good thing. I give Mulroney plenty of credit for his environmental and foreign policies, by the way.

Official bilingualism, official multiculturalism, abolition of the death penalty, huge expansion of immigration to Canada (especially non-white immigration), the CRTC, CIDA, decriminalization of homosexuality and abortion, recognition of China (before Nixon), major reductions in Canada's nuclear arsenal, the current home of the National Gallery. The claim that the PQ would be moribund if Meech Lake had passed is speculation. One could just as easily argue that separatism might still be a violent terrorist movement if not for Trudeau.

That said, it's probably easier to tell your constituents "I had to vote along party lines for the good of (conservatism, parliament, being able to continue representing you as a Tory MP)" than to explain "I could vote any way I wanted and I chose to vote against your wishes".

I think they were in trouble anyway tbh.

I mean, what alternative would a potential swing voter prefer in the event that the Liberals and NDP were willing to work together but neither party could conscientiously support the Conservatives, even if the Conservatives won more seats in a minority parliament? For one opposition party to hold its nose and back the Cons? Endless elections until we arrived at a more decisive result?

Yes, I fully understand the idea. This is what happened in Ontario in 1985: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Rae#1985_election_and_the_Liberal-NDP_Accord The PCs won the most seats but the NDP backed the Liberals instead and David Peterson became premier. Like I said, that accord was successful and popular so it does make sense to me as a precedent. It is not a lawyer's trick to seize control over the will of the majority. It is an expression of the will of the majority if two parties who together have majority support can work together and accommodate the interests of each others' constituencies.

No, they probably wouldn't resist, you're right, and imo they shouldn't. You may be right about public opinion. I don't know why the Canadian public should oppose such a move (and favour a minority government that won maybe 30-35% of the popular vote) but a number of people do seem to think it's wrong for some reason. People rarely seem to mention the Liberal-NDP Accord in 1980s Ontario. That seems like an obvious precedent to me and wasn't even a full coalition! Anyway, it was popular and successful.

Would you be in favour of a reformed gun registry that was more comparable to vehicle registration then?

Oh, I'd be a little sceptical about a coalition involving the Bloc as well. I was responding to Alta4ever's comment, which seemed to refer the possibility of a Liberal-NDP coalition.

Mind you, I've always thought Ignatieff to be far closer to Harper than Layton, ideologically, so I'm not sure if he actually would form a coalition with the NDP. It's certainly not unthinkable though.

Yeah, I'm not sure I get what that means either. Political parties have the right to form coalitions in parliamentary democracy, which everyone should be aware of. This is not a secret. Being able to win the support of a majority of elected MPs is what it means to win an election in our political system. Why would anyone doubt that opposition parties might try to form a coalition in the event of a hung parliament or minority government?

According to this article, even CBC's and CTV's all-news channels will no longer be protected by must-carry licences next year: http://www.hilltimes.com/page/view/foxtv-06-28-2010 I certainly don't think it's in a public broadcaster's mandate that it should compete 'on a level field' with commercial broadcasters in a free market, btw, though I would be happy to see less commercials on CBC.

Since I am not personally involved with the issue, I am going by available evidence. The findings of the RCMP Report seem fairly persuasive to me. If someone could point to some sort of empirical evidence that suggest that the majority of police officers do in fact find the registry unhelpful or ineffective, that might sway me a little. Anecdotal evidence does not, however.