Evening Star

Well, there are 21 parties registered for this election: http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?dir=par&document=index〈=e&section=pol I would be genuinely interested in seeing a debate that included the Communists and Libertarians, actually. I'm not sure how to make it manageable.

The thing is, I didn't feel this way about the Maclean's debate. I thought May brought a lot of value. (She was the strongest there imo.) The Globe debate was much more of a mess, with only three competitors on stage. To be clear, I don't even think the Greens have a case here. If Munk just wants to invite leaders of parties with 'official status', that is their prerogative afaic. I'm just interested in what people think of the criteria + I enjoy seeing May in debates!

Well, what is the criterion for determining who has a legitimate chance at becoming head of government? At the start of the 2011 campaign, some people were calling for 2-man Harper/Ignatieff debates, arguing that they were the only two who had a 'legitimate chance' - of course, the Liberals ended up a distant third and the NDP became Official Opposition. I'm fine with using 'holds a seat in the House' and could even understand 'official party status' as the criterion but 'has a legitimate chance' seems problematic.

This, and what I see as related issues pertaining to their general attitude towards academic freedom, are my biggest problems with the Conservatives. If anything could convince me that they are bad enough that voting strategically against them is justified, it would be this. (Cue apologists mentioning something the Liberals did 20 years ago as a defence + predicting what the NDP would do if they win). Edit: Ha, got in before me.

How would we do this?

I'm OK with making gradual process, and perhaps with using more nuclear power for some time (as ON already does), but it may well be the case that we will have to see a modest reduction in our standard of living for some time - greater egalitarianism would make this less painful for more people. When people (usually conservatives) argue that we need to choose between the environment and wealth/the economy, I don't see why the conclusion always seems to be that wealth has to come first.

The manifesto is pretty hokey but I'm pretty sure people were teaching and looking after children before they had figured out how to drill for oil.

OMG, I would not rather have been in the UK but, yes, your point is well taken: "actually, Mr. Speaker, Norway has a stronger economy with a higher rate of public savings, more robust welfare state, and lower crime. I'd much rather have lived there. Also, I hear the south of France has lovely weather and scenery, with stunning women. GOOD food too, not this Tim Horton's garbage. Who wouldn't want to live there...?"

He did this for 30s in 2001, yes. I agree that the two men's backgrounds are different this way, with Mulcair coming from a more ideologically mixed place, so I'm not sure how this will impact his governing style. He seems a little more controlling than Layton but I never really thought Layton gave that much free rein to his caucus either. In terms of state policy, though, the NDP seems relatively consistent. In 10/11, I mused on here that they may have well been to the right of the PET-era Liberals on some core economic issues.

On what issues do you see a left/right difference between Layton and Mulcair? The main differences I see are: a lower emphasis on green politics with a greater emphasis on economic issues now and a more definite pro-Israel stance. The Liberals have been doing this trick in election campaigns for a while where they basically campaign on a version of the NDP platform, even though they never really advocated for those causes in the House during the previous session. Happened in 2011 too. I have a hard time trusting them. They basically did this in 1993 and then governed on a version of the Reform platform. Trying to out-NDP the NDP is a new slant on it, I'll give you; their usual MO is to moderate the NDP platform but the NDP have been doing that on their own.

The thing is that, while I can maybe see a little bit of a shift with Mulcair, on basic economic policy, the NDP really hasn't shifted that much from the Layton years. I sometimes wonder what people thought they were voting for under Layton. Layton yammered about balanced budgets and cutting small business taxes all the time and did not advocate higher personal income taxes or nationalizations as far as I can remember. The basic planks are pretty consistent: slightly higher corporate taxes, closing loopholes, a more cautious approach to free trade, halting further privatizations and P3 projects, praise for the Prairie NDP governments while distancing themselves from Rae's legacy. Layton's NDP was definitely more centrist than the NDP of 20 years earlier but I don't think the shift came with Mulcair.

I can remember the Liberals running ads about a Tory hidden agenda but I can't remember the NDP ever doing that. And, even then, I can't remember the Liberals quoting statements by a non-aligned third-party organization as evidence for this. Edited for language: I would be the first to tell NDP supporters that they were being foolish if they did this.

That's the argument? "We think the other guys would probably do this (admittedly unfair) thing to our team in a hypothetical situation so they deserve a taste of their own hypothetical medicine"?

In the NDP's partial defence, they could have had no way of knowing what policy positions the Liberals would adopt until the election campaign began.

But the glossy marketing speak IS the Leap Manifesto! The document you link is a UNESCO/SCD report, which the Manifesto authors cite as the source for one statistic in their manifesto. The report does look a lot more substantial than the manifesto, so I'll read it when I have a moment.

The Waffle was actually a movement within the NDP membership. The connection between this manifesto and the NDP is so tenuous that I don't see how intelligent people can seriously believe it will impact the NDP vote.

This is at least more than what Springer is acknowledging. It seemed a little unfair to cite a physicist who is a sceptic, and then when someone challenges the appeal to authority on the basis of area of expertise, to then question the expertise of well-known activists whom no one on this thread had at that point cited as an expert, while making no reference to the actual literature in the field. The literature has nothing useful to say about what society should do in response to the identified risks because answering such questions requires an understanding of economics and energy production engineering. The relevant experts in economics are very divided on the topic and a large number of experts in energy production engineering believe that CO2 emissions cannot be meaningfully reduced with the currently available technology (assuming nuclear is not an option). Yes, I'm not surprised that climate scientists would refrain from making political recommendations. Economics is a notoriously soft 'science' and I would have to take any economic model with a grain of salt if it were making projections about something like this, where there are many variables and few precedents.

Yes. Most of the signatories are entertainers or activists.

Are we still talking about the Leap Manifesto? What was the team of experts??

Definitely. Who saw the endless campaigns in the US and thought "we need some of that"?

Well, what does the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the relevant fields say?

Agree with this. I'm not even sure I'd hold a 5-year-old tweet against a 40-year-old, if it's just a matter of heated language and colloquialism.

Yeah, that's fair. It was about flaws in forensic analysis that led to hundreds of wrongful convictions and, in some cases, death sentences. It's not about flaws in DNA testing but it still doesn't make me feel any better about the death penalty.

Who was discussing semantics? My first link is about hundreds of wrongful convictions because of flawed forensic/DNA analysis, many of which have lead to DEATHS of innocent people.

I've always been a fan of this speech: https://uranowski.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/pierre-elliott-trudeaus-speech-in-support-of-the-abolition-of-capital-punishment-house-of-commons-june-15th-1976/