Lex Llewdor

A member since September 23, 2008 14:12

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Comment History

Nanos National Poll - Healthcare reclaims top issue of concern over economy (2009-11-24)

• I would argue that the economy comes first and both health and environment follow from that. Look at the world. Wealthier = Healthier. Those countries w...
• I would take that remark as a compliment, were I Stephen Harper. Renewable energy is a waste of money at this time. Really, if the Canadian government want...
• It would be unreasonable for anyone to draw a conclusion about this issue without reading the relevant documents first. This is a failure of our instituti...

The public opinion environment for Canadian-American relations (2009-11-19)

• No one's saying there has to be conflict. The question is, should Canada pursue her own interests regardless of the possibility of conflict? I strongly a...
• As both Pearson and Chrétien remarked (generally seen by Liberals as competent and respectable leaders), "The Americans are our best friends, whether we l...
• Ekos has abandoned their weekly schedule. They're switching to a biweekly schedule with bigger sample sizes. threehundredeight.com reported it last week.

Conservative lead continues, Harper widens best PM advantage: Nanos Poll (Completed November 10th) (2009-11-14)

• No one is going to attack us? Denmark already captured an island. The US doesn't recognise our waterways. Basically the entire world disagrees with our ...
• That undecided number is lower than it has been. As it shrinks, you need it to flood back into the Liberal party. But it isn't doing that. It's going ND...
• That's a really good question, Ronald. I might have to write a letter to the government about that.
• I want good government above all else. If democracy provides that, give me democracy. If democracy gets in the way, down with democracy. Good policy i...
• I don't think we can trust those Green numbers from any poll that prompts for them. Only Nik's polls have been close to correctly predicting Green support. ...

Nanos Policy Options Poll – Canadians overwhelmingly support universal health care; think Obama is on right track in United States (2009-11-06)

• I disagree that the Conservatives don't need to win any of the ridings to come out of them ahead. I think they definitely need to win the NS riding. It's a...
• The US system is a huge bureaucratic mess already, and they're not even trying to run it for everyone yet. I expect Obamacase to be the least efficient un...
• Paul Martin is the guy who underfunded the system in the first place. Prior to Chrétien's balanced budgets, the federal government paid 50% of provincial ...
• The two tier system exists in every OECD country that offers universal healthcare - except for this one. Only Canada insists on the single payer AND and sin...
• How would you ensure there were enough doctors? Explain that one.
• The Liberals fought one province - Alberta - for doing things they were already allowing other privinces - namely Quebec and BC - to do. The Cambie Clinic h...
• The Royals are paying for the trip. We are paying for security. I do like the idea of being a republic (governed by the constitution), but since that run...
• Well, let's see how the Liberals did compared to their 2008 results: 2008: 11% - 2009: 10% - New Westminster: Liberals Down 2008: 21% - 2009: 14% - Hoche...
• You'll need to pay quite a good salary to get the young people to seek the training. Being a doctor is hard.
• Because you've actually been to those countries (or some of them). Most Canadians who resist change do so because the only other healthcare system they've e...
• I can't believe I forgot about the cuts to military spending. There's a reason Denmark thinks they can take our islands.
• I did. What I don't know is what that's happening. Is it just that the leftist vote has to land somewhere? Probably not, because I would have expected D...
• Some of them do, though. It worked wonderfully for Ralph Klein. His first re-election campaign featured huge billboards that said only "He kept his word"...
• While there may well be some needless suffering in the world, do keep in mind that the optimal level of suffering is not zero. At some point, attempting t...
• New Nanos Poll Con: 38% (-1.8%) Lib: 28.8% (-1.2%) NDP: 17.9% (+1.3%) BQ: 9.3% (+0.4%) Grn: 5.9% (+1.3%) The value in parentheses is the change fro...

Nanos National Poll: Conservatives widen advantage over Grits: Nanos Poll (Completed October 18th) (2009-10-22)

• This poll (being the only other poll out this week) really highlights how the different methodologies of EKOS and Nanos produce different numbers for the Gre...
• I don't know if Nik calls Cell-only households, but I can't imagine he doesn't. They're such a fast-growing segment of the population, skipping them would b...
• The Liberals have time yet. As long as they don't look too silly for promising to vote down the government and then failing to do so (reminds me of Dion), t...
• It should have caught some of it. And the Ekos poll took place almost entirely after the news broke.
• If the cheque issue is going to hurt the CPC, you'd think we'd be starting to see that in polls. But we're not.
• Unemployment is a trailing indicator. It's one of the last things to move in response to economic growth. The economy is growing. The recession - such a...
• This is the first I'd heard of ThreeHundredEight. I following FiveThirtyEight during the US election, and their predictions were really incredible. But, ...
• I take that back. I've dug through their archives and found their methodology. It's a very conservative model, which probably makes it more accurate, but...
• The Reform Party/Canadian Alliance/Conservative Party has increased their seat total in every election they've contested. 1988: 0 seats 1993: 52 seats 1...
• Blame Trudeau for that. He had the opportunity to change how our seat distributions work when he wrote the constitution, but he didn't do it. PEI can nev...
• Stimulus doesn't create jobs. Thus you demonstrate your lack of understanding of macroeconomics.
• I'm sympathic to that position. I'm generally pretty happy with the current Senate, but I would choose to abolish it before I would choose to reform it.
• That's nonsense. Harper's Ottawa is hamstrung by being a minority government, and Albertans know it. The move toward the Wildrose Alliance in Alberta is ...
• Also, when you post empty conjecture like that, I can't even argue with you, because there's no substance to your remarks. It's so baseless that there's not...
• The US econopmy is in much worse shape than the Canadian economy. Canada has already seen the adjustment from decreased foreign demand, so we don't have any...
• You can think that all you want. The four most recent polls - completed from Oct 18-22 - show Liberal support at 30, 27, 26, and 25. And that's in order; t...
• He's instructed his MPs to say nothing about WR because he's afraid the rest of the country will think the WR is a bunch of right-wing carzies, and he doesn'...
• I didn't say that. My logic doesn't lead to that conclusion at all. I'm saying that their trend is upward, and it has always been. Suggesting that they'...
• For oil to go down to $50/bbl, the US dollar would need to be very strong. That's not the sort of thing that can happen overnight. We can't see huge swin...
• More elected officials will only lead to bigger government as they take steps to justify their existence. Reforming the office with only grant it greater le...
• The Angus Reid poll (to be released tomorrow) shows that 44% of Canadians think less of Michael Ignatieff than they did a month ago (while only 7% have impro...
• And now we see why the Liberals have failed to make up any ground in the polls. The press release for the newest Angus Reid poll (which continues to show ...
• The recession is over. Get used to it.
• Canadians living abroad still vote. That's what absentee ballots are for. Their votes count in the riding in which they last resided (even if they haven'...
• Really? We have enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire population. When we see the horror of the lack of vaccines on the US news, it will be clear how m...
• Chrétien disagreed with that, as well. He was quite open about how his only job was to win elections.
• Paul Martin also ran the very worst campaign that has ever been run, and got investigated by the RCMP during the writ period. That was a perfect storm of ...
• Stephen Harper was a pretty strong Christian conservative... ...but then he married an athiest. Laureen has moderated his views considerably.
• If you actually understood the projections at threehundredeight, you'd know that's not true. Many recent polls have shown the CPC is to be in majority ter...
• I agree entirely with elf on this.
• No, he can't operate as a majority. I'm confident that a majority government run by Stephen Harper would be very different from the one we've seen in Ottawa...
• This is not Joe Clark's party. Remember how hard Joe fought to prevent this party from existing in the first place.
• Yes. Because he's a fundamentalist Christian. He does not force his views on others. He's not Stockwell Day.
• The recession is now over. Get past it. Also, I fail to see what the CPC has done badly with regard to H1N1. We have a bunch of vaccine. There's a slig...
• What mismanagement? What has Harper managed badly? We're way ahead of other countries on the vaccine. Our recession is over. The defecit was unavoidabl...
• I would argue that the intended result of most government programs is to bloat the civil service. As soon as more than half of all voters rely on the gove...
• WR talked of a federal wing when it was the domain of rednecks and fundamentalists. I'm very close with some of the WR people. They have contingencies pl...
• Of course, China won't do that. What they'll probabl do is attach onerous conditions to their debt, conditions the Americans will have no choice but to me...
• Have you seen a tax increase? He certainly lied about the Income Trusts. I'm pretty upset about that. And promising no deficit was dumb. We do have...
• That's incredibly sloppy analysis. The government spends a ton of money on useless things. Simply cutting that spending solves the budget shortfall. I f...
• How are the Conservatives supposed to know the details of vaccine production when even the manufacturer is unaware of them?
• Harper's remarks about there being modest stimulus came before the coalition forced him to spend like a madman to satisfy them.
• It was a 10 year contract. The government can't just tear up valid contracts because it doesn't like them any more. They're bound by the contracts they sig...
• Passing Obamacare and cap-n-trade virtually guarantees the economy won't rebound sufficiently. The US might need Pinochet-style shock therapy by the time ...
• As Stephen Harper himself has said "I don't think there is such a thing as a good tax." Reducing corporate taxes is a good thing simply by virtue of it bein...
• Who's lying? We have a single vaccine supplier because the Liberal government, in 2001, rewarded Shire BioChem, who had just made a $57,000 donation to th...
• It was unscientific because people could vote repeatedly. Do you even know how polls work?
• He voted for the first two readings, so all he did was vote for more debate. Learn how parliament works before you try to ascribe intent to its members.
• I was replying to Syl there. I didn't think you needed lessons at all.

Nanos National Poll - Canadians don't want a fall election; Majority preferred but minority expected (Completed September 11) (2009-10-01)

• I'm not confident the electorate knows what a poison pill is.
• "I would forfeit efficiency for democracy." Just to be clear, you're choosing principles over results. You're willing to fail as long as you fail in way ...
• What? Can't Harper act as the voters wish in opposition to his own views? If he doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change (and he shouldn't), you'r...
• You assume all else is equal when you compare US and Canadian crime rates, when I would argue that their generally more violent culture, cimbined with their ...
• I disagree that requires a landslide. Chrétien managed three straight majorities even with regional bloc voting, and in his third he managed barely more sup...
• That's specious reasoning. That only happens if a majority of Canadians favour government by a particular party, and as you say that almost never happens. ...
• Did you just draw a conclusion based on the absence of evidence?
• Undoubtedly, the Conservative near-sweep in Manitoba was anomalous. Manitoba is not a traditional CPC stronghold. That said, the NDP is generally quite s...
• The HST isn't Harper's doing. He proposed a plan in 2006 to harmonise all the taxes, and nothing's changed on that front. If you want to hate him for the H...
• Layton's NDP is now running TV ads telling us we don't want an election, so I expect his numbers to turn around. He's basically parroting back at the people...
• Note that Norway is an anomaly in that respect when compared to other similarly governed nations (like Sweden), and that higher GDP per capita is almost exac...
• Yes, a benevolent dictator would obviously be ideal, and your opposition to the idea only demonstrates how irrationally you approach the issue. The proble...
• My argument had nothing at all to do with how often elections took place, so your response is nonsensical.
• Nothing about Harper's actions are a tax grab. Ontario's negotiated HST is revenue-neutral. The only reason BC's isn't is because Campbell was lazy and wan...
• Do you honestly have reason to believe that more funding would improve our healthcare system? Why not compare it to other universal systems in other countri...
• I didn't know Nik was running political ads in his blog now.
• There's no need to assume that. The evidence clearly supports that conclusion. Canadians just aren't that interested in democracy, else they would have dem...
• But why do you want full public service? As I pointed out, full public service is very unusual in the world. And by putting the doctors on salary, you're c...
• I'd like to point out that those Government of Canada ads haven't advocated a political position, and thus aren't political ads. I haven't seen a Conserva...
• But they haven't yet. By the time he actually does that these ads will be forgotten, but the goodwill they produced will linger. Politics is primarily ab...
• My complaint her is that you're trying to reach a conclusion without doing the work first. As Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scra...
• I am surprised it took Jack this long to try something like this. Last election he was tryig to a champion for the everyman, and while that is the tradition...
• I'm also hoping for a new Nanos poll, but those don't get released predictably enough for me to anticipate them.
• No, we don't all do that. Hopefully some of us withhold judgement until compelling evidence is found. You're allowed not to hold an opinion on issues you d...
• Actually, my belief that private servies provide better healthcare is based on studies of univeral healthcare systems in OECD countries. Single-provider pro...
• Theoretically the moon could be made of cheese. You're making a very small space in which to live with your equivocations.
• Hog the spotlight? What has Harper done to hog the spotlight recently? Okay, sure, he sang a song at the National Arts Centre. What else?
• A victory like the PCs had in 1984 has occured exactly once since WW2. It's not a reasonable standard.
• Theoretically.
• That's an incredibly simplistic analysis. To reach that conclusion you have to assume equal capital costs, equal labour costs, equal labour distribution, eq...
• Regarding hate speech, I'm not a fan either, but I am a fan of free speech. As such, I think we should denounce hate speech, not forbid it. Ezra Levant f...
• And there's our answer. The Green support returns at the expense of the Liberals. 25.7 - wow. The Liberals haven't polled that poorly since early Decemb...
• I don't see what the HRC does that courts couldn't do just as well is a more open and transparent way. If hate speech is as bad as you say, let's criminal...
• I don't really see this as a test of leadership. The Liberals current polling numbers are what they were before Ignatieff's selection. What we're seeing is...
• Hopefully one first makes some sort of effort to acquire information, especially given that we have this thing called the internet. I cited one study abov...
• The political cost of turfing Iggy whout him ever have seen an election would be staggering. The Liberals would be painting themselves as grossly incompeten...
• If you support freedom of speech in general, then you need to permit hate speech. Basic freedoms like that can tolerate only the smallest of exceptions (lik...
• We don't have competition in health care devliery. That's the problem. As such, it is bloated and inefficient. And it doesn't matter whether the public ...
• As for politics, we're discussing public policy. If that's not the basis for your political decisions, our positions aren't reconcilable.
• Okay, there you've demonstrated you don't know what competition does. Competition lowers costs.
• I didn't say you hadn't read a study. I said it appeared as though you hadn't, because you weren't citing any and wouldn't discuss any aspect of measuring t...
• There's our disagreement. I don't believe in natural law.
• Well that was an informative article. I appears Ignatieff has not learned the lesson Kim Campbell tried to teach everyone. You can make unpopular decisions...
• There's no shame in voting for Trudeau once. Ralph Klein once told me that he voted for Trudeau. In 1968 when he said "the government has no business in th...
• I support keeping the monarch as head of state, and I quite like how our system is currently structured. It would have been very interesting to see what M...
• Until Trudeau started to undermine the economy as if he were Chairman Mao, there was good reason to support Trudeau. That someone later adopts policies yo...
• Isn't Harper now bringing back a slightly altered court challenges programme? I also find it hard to believe that you oppose paying parents to help them w...
• But you're not the person the school system is designed to help. It would make more sense to ask if you could get your money back if you had kids and chos...
• No October 2 poll this month? You had polls out on September 2, and August 2 - I was hoping they'd be a monthly occurence. I find it useful to contrast y...
• I haven't been following the story, but didn't the Prime Minister acknowledge the mistake? There's no story here. Somebody screwed up, and the government...
• I suspect she will be renewed, though there is the risk that some will see that as reward for her having prorogued parliament in 2008. Regardless, it is t...
• Are you blaming the recession on the government? A government is to blame, but it's not ours. Canada didn't have a recession outside a 30% drop in foreig...
• What does our shiny image do for us? The last time our military did us any good was when we traded its services for monetary gain (the Auto-Pact) in the Su...
• It is too a right in the US. The second amendment says "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed." That's pretty unequivocal. A government should f...
• You say that now, but Gordon Brown's Labour is trailing badly to David Camerons Tories in Britain. And Obama's popularity is falling. He was less popular a...
• And healthcare isn't analogous, because any one of us might need health services in an unforeseen emergency. No one needs education on short notice.
• In the period when the Harris poll was being done, there was a Strategic Counsel poll, two EKOS polls, and an Ipsos poll. An Angus Reid poll has since been ...
• The Liberals did that while the US economty was strong. The Liberals' own proposals for stimulus spending is what caused this mess (recall that Harper didn'...
• Margaret Thatcher is almost single-handedly responsible for any properity Britain currently enjoys. Are you at all familiar with what Britain was like bef...
• The structure of Harper's government is such that he'd implicated in everything. Nothing happens in this government that wasn't his idea. This has been cle...
• It's a stretch to call a political party a private interest. It's not privately held in a legal sense.
• While in general I oppose the centralisation of power in the hands of the federal government, a national securities regulator would probably make it easier t...
• 41% is nothing. Remember last December when they were at 51%? These little peaks are just peaks. We can't reasonably expect an electoral result at 41% u...
• The ads worked on Dion partly because he released his platform so early. By the time the election came, he had no more annoucements to make, so he couldn't ...
• The "it was just one MP" defense was never going to work with this government.
• Of course, every government does this. When deciding where to spend money or where to build some project, they are not impartial. Note how the Chrétien g...
• Given that the current government does not believe in the mainstream global warming theory, and further given that openly questioning the accepted public pos...
• If you think the science is beyond debate, then you don't follow the science. Global warming skeptics aren't generally arguing that humans are having no e...
• Canada has almost no control over the planet's future. Even cutting our emissions to zero would have almost no marginal impact on the global climate. Any c...
• I agree that Afghanistan isn't winnable. I supported the initial invasion, as it was part of our NATO obligations (and NATO voted unanimously to support it)...
• What lies? Harper did make 3 out of 4 announcements in non-CPC ridings. That's not indicative of the broader pattern, but no one claimed it was.
• We don't know if it's sticking. We haven't seen a publicly released poll since October 14.
• I agree that it would damage the Liberals to leave that impression with voters. So of course I hope they do just that.
• "they are going to stick this time" Why would you say that? You have no reason to believe that's true. They might, sure, but let's wait until we see som...
• Do charities count as private interests? I've always thought that non-profit groups, which include charities and political parties, were their own little ...
• Assuming they're troubles. His MPs went and made spending announcements. Nothing wrong with that. They used big prop cheques. Nothing wrong with that...
• And yet, the overall wealth level in the UK is now much higher than it was before she took over. The changes she implemented were very difficult, yes, and t...
• Anyone who thinks the neds don't justify the means hasn't adequately described their desired ends. Say, for example, you want to capture some terrorists, ...
• I don't think it's possible to be dishonest without lying. And I don't see lies.
• I think Canada and the US would both be well served by trusting the other's drug approval process. It's horribly inefficient for both countries to have to a...
• I do agree with you on the usefulness of polls, but not on the predictivenes sof byelections. Governments tend to lose byelections. People who are happy ...
• Yes. We need to watch for that. As soon as we can't trust the FDA anymore, we need to be able to get away from the deal. And of course we should watch H...
• There was nothing misleading in Crown & Anchor's post. Further, your remarks about the Globe & Mail article don't tell us anything about whether those rid...
• Now that Nik's numbers are available (and they're slightly staler than the newest Ekos numbers), we can discuss them in the threads accompanying the new arti...
• To be fair, I come more from Ludwig von Mises. Reform just happened to be the first party in my life that came close to representing my views. Given the ...

Nanos National Poll - Canadians prefer controlled stimulus; Harper scores well on issue management (Completed September 11) (2009-09-24)

• The point of punishment is not to reduce recidivism. The point of punishment is to deter non-criminals from becoming criminals in the first place. Withou...
• Yes, the parties with the best fundraising systems benefit the most, but without it the parties with the wealthiest supporters would beneit the most. The ...
• Your no party idea is unenforceable, and your fixed party idea is dreadful. Presumably you think the Conservatives would go on the right and the NDP on the ...
• I do have to disagree with you, there. The Reform Party was born during the end of the Mulroney government. Western alienation arose from the west having p...
• Bernie's right. People don't think logically, will jump to conclusions, and then will cling to those conclusions even in the face of contrary evidence. Par...
• Except that 42% threshhold moves. If the NDP can gain support in areas of traditional Liberal strength, vote-splitting does the work. Recall that Chrétien...
• Turning off the pump will dramatically benefit Canada. Stimulus was and remains a terrible idea that benefits no one outside of bureaucrats who favour big g...
• If the CPC can choose the timing of the next election without appearing to have caused the election, they will win a majority. The penalty Canadians will le...
• "Canadians are largely in favour of further spending to stimulate the economy" Then Canadians are idiots. Spending only stimulates debt. Government spen...
• Not all aspects of the Canadian government need to be debated in the House. The government just isn't designed like that. Recall that Stockwell Day, as M...
• What pressure? The last month in which there were fewer than 5 publicly released federal political polls results was November 2008 (as it happens, the onl...
• Yes he will. Note that Harper is actively trying to avoid an election right now, just as the Canadian electorate wishes. The only party going against Canad...
• Then why not just allow private construction of dams? The spending you support is effectively corporate welfare for crown corporations. If the government b...
• Right. I support sensible government spending, but given the lead-time recqured to have any positive economic impact there's no reason for the governmet eve...
• Just as it was easy for him to look bad at the beginning of the recession. It's basically impossible for any government to have an immediate positive infl...
• I agree with your assessment of what would happen to stimulus with a Harper majority (though I suspect it would disappear somewhat less abruptly to avoid giv...
• Absolutely. Making the NDP look effective in parliament should be the CPC's primary goal, at this point. If the Libs abandon their refusenik stance, then t...
• Undoubtedly. The Conservatives need to make the next election someone else's fault. Ideally the Liberals (the Liberal demands for an election make it very ...
• I know the Liberals don't want an election. My point there is that they'vepublicly demanded one, so if one can somehow be manufactured they'd have difficult...
• Canada didn't have a problem occur. All we experienced was a drop in foreign demand. I would further argue that the corporations acted as they did in the...
• Saskatchewan doesn't need to come out at all. They didn't have a recession.

Harper widens leadership advantage over Ignatieff: Nanos Poll (Completed September 11th) (2009-09-14)

• The Ipsos polls do typically favour the Conservatives by a point or two compared to the other polls, but there's little suggest this 9 point gaps is all illu...
• That's always how I thought Canadians would respond to Harper. No one's ever going to find him likeable, but they should eventually grow to appreciate his c...
• That low voter turnout for the Liberals demonstrates the effectiveness of the Conservative attack ads. Attack ads drive down voter turnout. That's what t...
• That opinion only makes me wish you couldn't vote. Seriously? You're choosing a government because you happen to dislike a single man for reasons you can...
• The In and Out scheme was entirely legal. Read the statutes; the Conservatives exploited a loophole (much as the Bloc did in the last '90s when they paid su...
• As Chrétien demonstrated through three consecutive majority victories, outlining a plan before the election is bad politics.
• Often I critisize politicans for thinking for themselves and failing to listen to their advisors. With Ignatieff I think he'd be better off thinking for h...
• I was polled by EKOS last week. We're seeing a sample of about 1000 people with each poll (EKOS polls about 3000 at a time, but they use an automated syst...
• And, as expected, that gap looks a bit big. The Harris-Decima poll completed on the same day shows only a 4 point lead. The truth is likely something in be...
• Indeed. I average all the daily polls to increase the sample size, and right now we're looking at a 6.5 point lead for the Conservatives. It hasn't been th...
• Get used to disappointment. Canadians like calm leaders with actual ideas.
• That's a good point. It's hard not to look like a bully when your counterpart is so weak.
• How is that disgraceful or a manipulation of the democratic process? People who care enough to go vote go vote, and the party who garners enough of those vo...
• Angus Reid: Conservatives: 36 Liberals: 29
• Harper's not going to trigger an election. The public doesn't want an election. The Liberals are threatening one at every turn, despite strong public oppos...
• That's patently false. Of the people who votes last election, 36.27% voted for the Conservatives (just slightly below the 38.46% Chrétien got in 2000). Tha...
• But that majority is even more deeply split on who the right man for the job is. Of the men currently available, Harper seems (from Nik's most recent poll...
• If Harper had learned attack ads from Martin, then Harper's attack ads would be laughably ineffective.
• Stimulus packages never create jobs. Stimulus is a terrible idea. Harper knows this, which is why he wasn't going to present a stimulus package at all un...
• A plurality of Canadians is happy with Harper. That's really all that matters. The last PM to win a majority of support in an election was Mulroney.
• All stimulus packages are failures. Stimulus packages retard economic growth. They can have no other effect.
• Canadians have said time and time again they want the parties to work together, and they don't want an election. Which party isn't working with the others...
• Furthermore, the very people you think might abandon the Conservatives (their non-core supporters) have separatists and socialists as their other alternative...
• Ignatieff nailed Harper? By threatening an election Canadians don't want? A threat Harper bypassed by coopoerating with opposition parties, something Canad...
• No, but it does make it irrelevant. You could just as easily point out that Stephen Harper likes cheese. Measured against some arbitrary standard of popu...
• Given Bush's massive intervention in the US banking sector and his exacerbation of the credit crisis by relaxing lending laws, I don't think Harper would cal...
• And the two other polls completed the same day support your guess. The average gap when you put all three together is 6.67 points.
• Harper wants a majority because it's the better form of government. Majority governments can implement policy without worrying about short-term political co...
• Explain that to me. How does dissatisfaction from Tory supporters cause Harper to call an election?
• Yes, everything the polls tell us about the preferences of Canadians is wrong, and they'll behave in the way you would most like them to behave because you'r...
• That only makes sense if you ignore the stated preferences of the electorate and fill in those imaginary blanks from pure conjecture chosen not for its accur...
• Great week for Harper. His biggest opponent just threatened to do something the people didn't want (call an election) and Harper defeated him using tactics ...
• Solid because of both, as it happens. Just as it took both Democrats and Republicans (working over 70 years) to destroy the US banking sector, it took jus...
• Harper didn't want a stimulus package, as you'll recall. His economic update last fall didn't contain any. And so angry about that was the coalition that...
• Not quite 2 out of 3. And the 36.27% Harper got last year isn't so far from the 38.46% Chrétien got in 2000 - and he won a majority with that.
• That's not required at all. The Alberta Firewall strengthens confederation by enforcing limits on governmental power laid out within the constitution.
• Iggy got a bump just by becoming leader, and it's wearing off (predictably - fivethirtyeight.com does some good analysis of how these work).
• How does the child care allowance discourage day care? If anything it encourages day care by making it easier to afford.
• I shake my daughter's hand. She likes it. She's one. What's wrong with shaking hands? It's a normal behaviour and kids need to learn how to do it well ...
• In fact, when I was polled by EKOS they even asked me what sorts of phone I use. They presumably knew they'd called a land line, but they wanted to know if ...
• Nik calls 1000 people across the whole country. His regional samples are much smaller than the EKOS samples. People are so quick to talk about margin of ...
• Except that's exactly what's not happening. He's passing bills with the help of opposition parties, as he's been doing since 2006. How can anyone reasona...
• Building consensus is not the only way to work with others. Did you miss the part where the NDP supported the government's bill? That's working with the ...
• HC is absolutely correct. I have a young child. She's almost a year and a half old. She does not go to daycare, because her parents have chosen not to s...
• Staying at home isn't a luxury. It's a choice. I struggle to make ends meet, but I do it because I think it's best for my little girl. Could I send her to...
• Exactly correct. If there's a universal daycare program which I, as a parent, don't use, I want to receive the same benefits that parents who do use it rece...
• How many teenaged boys do you know who want to get a hug from their parents where their friends can see it? And since these kids' hugs are televised, thei...
• Have you ever been to Saskatchewan? Saskatchewan does not have a nice climate. Saskatchewan was described by early explorers as "too dry for agriculture"...
• I suspect their sample's cross-section is chosen to mirror the voting electorate (rather than the broader electorate).

Nanos National Poll - Election speculation fuels Tories (Completed September 2nd) (2009-09-09)

• What I would like to see is a poll done after the start of those new Liberal TV ads. For someone who doesn't follow politics, those ads might be the first s...
• Indeed. I found myself undecided in BC's recent provinicial election (there was literally no one worth voting for), and I only went out to vote to maintain ...
• What's the incentive not to tell the pollsters, though. If you want to hide your intentions, why not lie to the pollster? Say you're voting NDP.
• I agree. I think it's a terrible ad. That the Liberals were already losing ground (possibly, based on these numbers) before releasing it does not bode we...
• That remains to be seen. I do hope that when an election comes we'll finally see someone win a majority. Only in a majority can we fairly judge the quality...
• Actually, if I'm a Conservative I think I do want the NDP to do well. I don't imagine many people jump back and forth between the two (except in Alberta, wh...
• Any PM would have squandered the surplus in a minority parliament. There's no way to hold power in a minority without overspending. We need a majority.
• Why not wait to see what he does with it? If you agree with me, then you agree that we can't fairly judge any government based on its performance in a minor...
• It's nice to be missed. I get busy around then, and when things slowed down there wasn't much going on politically to warrant a return to these parts. ...
• Moreover, it's a country that was largely unaffected by the worst of the world's economic misery. Sure, foreign demand for our goods collapsed, but our bank...
• I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of undecideds from EKOS - their polling method almost encourages it. I got polled by EKOS yesterday. It's an automat...
• That's a change from the last election. I'm a father now. Nothing "Made in China" is allowed into our house.
• Show me a minority government that was good for the country. Minority and coalition governments lead to big government. Big government is bad government....
• That's probably a result of EKOS prompting people and Nik not. Remember that Nik asks you your preference but does not give you options from which to choose...
• But is that a reasonable standard of measurement? Would not the leader of any government (certainly any minority government) have a similar list?
• I don't see how the Conservatives can be said to have miscalculated on the economy. Their economic plan was thwarted by the coalition last winter. The Cons...
• Mike Harris didn't cause a mess. Mike Harris left Ontario's economy is very good shape when he left. Ernie Eves ruined Ontario's economy. This is exac...
• Harris's years are despised by Ontarians, but incorrectly. It was Eves who overspent and undid Harris's good work. Reducing the defict always involves cutt...
• I'll credit Dion's honesty, but not his intelligence. That green plan was a freakshow. What economic model do you think they were using? Harper's admitt...
• You think cuts to the arts are short-sighted? What good does public arts funding do anyone (aside from medicore artists)?
• I have to object regarding that Ontario comment. Flaherty was entirely correct about he attractiveness of Ontario to businesses. It's a terrible business c...
• No one's trying to change the tone. Parties use what works. Clearly the Conservatives feel that attack ads (which primarily serve to drive down your oppo...
• Funny, I would have expected a Reform Voter to support free enterprise and an unfettered market. If the Chinese want to create jobs here, let's let them d...
• His base is Canadians. Don't they count? I also don't see how we can deride Harper's "badmouthing" of Quebec (though I haven't seen any) while the mainst...
• All parties are socialist when necessary to fool Canadians. Socialism sells. That doesn't make it a good idea.
• Those social service cuts were only necessary because the federal governemt (Chrétien and Martin) slashed the Health and Social Transfer payments. That's ho...
• And yet, there are no allegations of theft toward the Conservatives. The RCMP isn't investigating the Conservatives for anything. There's no public inquiry...

New Nanos National Poll - Lib 34, CP 33, NDP 19, BQ 7, GP 7 (completed Jan 7) (2009-01-09)

• It is a bounce. How much of it is real we can't know. Bounces are entirely predictable. In the US election we saw the folks at fivethirtyeight.com predi...

Harper has "poisoned the well" in parliament - path forward is uncertain (2008-12-01)

• So in two weeks when this opposition puppet show has ended and Stephen Harper is still in power, his leadership will be stronger than ever?
• The Senate, actually, is what the opposition should have used to stop the campaign financing bill. The opposition could have complained, but let the bill ...
• I'll agree it was a high-risk move, but I think they should have stuck to their guns. Don't back down. Make the opposition topple you and watch what happ...
• There is no global economic collapse. There's a recession - a big one - and we're going to be one of the least affected nations (unless the opposition doe...
• I think you're partly right. Harper did misread the temper of the opposition. Had the correctly read the temper, I think he still should have proposed ex...
• I think in the last three elections the Canadian people have voted in exactly the government they wanted. In 2004, the Liberals were reduced to a minority...
• What backroom boys? That party is effectively Harper's to do with as he pleases. There is no cabal behind the scenes (like with Mulroney and Chrétien). ...
• No, he does not hav the power. Both the Senate and the office of Governor-General are defined by the constitution. He can't do anything about them. As f...
• I do think, Nik, that we won't kow to what extent Harper has 'poisoned the well' until this all plays out. It could well be this is all just a giant power...
• Argumentum ad vericundium and Argumentum as popularum at the same time. Impressive. First, that other leaders are doing it in their countries is not evid...
• How, exactly, does separatism hold back Canada?
• There is something that needs doing in many of those other countries, but not all, and certainly not always to the extent that those countries are doing it. ...
• "we must act now to preserve Canadian jobs." At what cost? How do we preserve those jobs when they don't do anything productive? What's killing both f...
• But Canadians don't vote like that. That's how the system works, but strategic voting means that's not how they vote. Canadians are very good at working ...
• Terrible idea. We would have consistently awful government with a proportional representation system. Have you even thought this through? Why do you pre...
• He didn't need to. He used the Liberals not voting to bolster his minority.
• I don't think it will happen at all. Michaëlle Jean is no Lord Byng.
• You're not helping.
• But, Harper has retracted the inflammatory parts of his proposal. All he's doing now is not handing out billions of dollars, and Canadians knew that when th...
• Nik's numbers were the first post-election poll. Just as in 2006, the newly elected government's numbers tanked in the first poll. This always happens. ...
• I agree. When Canadians voted in October, they couldn't have foreseen the total unwillingness of the opposition parties to work with the government at all. ...
• If that's all they are, then every province should have it's own party in parliament. In fact, why do we even need a central government at all? Just let ...
• The Conservative who recorded that call was invited to take part. It's not like it was a secret government wiretap.
• Answer me this. Why do you think that Canada's current economic position would be improved by stimulus? Whether other countries would be is irrelevant. ...
• Today's 10% drop in the TSX doesn't say a lot of good things about what the market thinks of this coalition idea. Socialism is bad for business. Business...
• I've seen pundits dsuggest that the best course of action for the Conservatives now would be for Harper to ask the Governor General to offer the office of Pr...
• Yes they can; They just can't introduce money bills. Everything has to pass the Senate. The Senate can defeat any bill.
• But it's true. Even the NDP admits they invited the guy (by accident) into the conversation. They say he should have done the right thing and left before h...
• What's wrong with futures? I sell you a commodity now with the promise to deliver it later. That happens all the time in the real world. Why not in the co...
• But that money we use to bailout the workers is money we got from the workers. Even at 100% we can't ever get ahead. Look at the job losses. What sector...
• If we just threw them to the wolves they'd recover faster. What made the depression worse was the collapse of the credit market, so no one could borrow mone...
• Really. 44% of Canadians wanted a Liberal-NDP coalition? Show me. Show me millions of Canadians who wanted a Liberal-NDP coalition.
• Minority governments constantly pander to the electorate for votes, and the best way to do that is to spend money. Minority governments are bigger governmen...
• "he doesn't have a majority in popular vote," This is an idiotic standard. Only once since Pearson has any government had over 50% of the popular vote, a...
• How does my complaining about it now make me a hypocrite? I've never collaborated with the Bloc. And note, I'm not objecting to anyone collaborating with...
• How do you get this 65% number? 26.2% Liberals 18.2% NDP 10.0% Bloc 54.4% total. That's not even close to 65%. I keep seeing this 65% number. Sh...
• More importantly, the intent of voters isn't known beyond how they actually voted. It can't be. We can't discern intent from an X on a piece of paper.
• This is especially true in this particular coalition. People point out that the Conservatives don't have a majority of seats in the House, but the Liberal...
• Harper can still save the country from the coalition's meddling in times of crisis, and he can do it in a way that isn't him clinging to power by any means n...
• Because banning the Bloc would violate the constitution, that's why. That's a terrible straw-man argument you made.
• You don't do any research at all, do you? Harper was President of the NCC before becoming leader of the CPC, yes. But before that, he was the Member of...
• He floated a trial balloon. It didn't go over well, so he took it back. PMs do this all the time. Why is this one suddenly worth getting rid of the guy?
• Remember the Firewall letter. The provinces can collect their own taxes and submit them to the government.
• The Senate can introduce legislation. They just don't. Jeez, what do they teach in schools these days?
• I do doubt he'll resign. But I think it's the best option for the country. I like Harper. I think he's a good PM, and ideally I'd like him to stay on fo...
• 22% of all eligible voters is a fair sight better than anyone else managed.
• Gohabs has just correctly identified the best possible course for the country. If Harper prorogues parliament and then resigns, we're all protected from t...
• I don't see how the GG could refuse Harper's request to prorogue. Only once before has any GG refused a request from the PM, and there were important differ...
• Elizabeth May doesn't need a seat anywhere to be in cabinet.
• Senators would be a poison pill. There are so many vacancies in the Senate right now that Harper could fill the place with Conservatives and paralyse the co...
• "Subsidies to political parties were introduced to the Canadian political system to reduce the influence of special interest groups contributing to political...
• I didn't dispute the "never had a real job" part of his assertion. Try to keep up.
• He should prorogue first, and then resign. There's always a chance the coalition would still try to take power after Harper resigned, and that can't be al...
• No one voted for a majority. People voted for candidates. 22% of eligible voters voted for Conservatives. 15.5% voted for Liberals. 10.7& votes for NDP...
• And my MP is a Liberal. I live in Vancouver.
• That 65% number is pure fiction. Show your math.
• Bush has been the least "Free Market" Republican in memory. He placed trade restrictions on steel, one of the commanding heights of the economy. He incre...
• Show me where you got that 65% number.
• Mulroney got 50% of the vote. Once.
• This opposition gambit can't possibly survive. The Liberals don't even have a majority of seats within their coalition.
• The people way well be able to understand a complex proposal that wasn't being spun or slandered, but such a thing won't happen. Faced with the option of ch...
• I wouldn't have cause to cherry pick if you'd only say things that made sense. You invite my attacks.
• As a HAVE province, though, BC is paying for those through personal and corporate taxes. HAVE provinces would come out ahead financially if they got no fe...
• 60%? How do you get that number? Are you just making up figures? Show me how you calculated any number in excess of 60%. You are just making up numbe...
• I don't trust people who "play well with others". I don't understand their agenda.
• Unless she really wants to end up in history textbooks, there's no reason for the GG to refuse the PM.
• Should they take power, the coalition would quickly undo the campaign financing reforms Chrétien brought in in 2003. Corporate and Union donations would be ...
• Comparison to Hitler. Classy.
• They raised that war chest under the same rules as everyone else. The other parties had exactly the same opportunities to raise money. The rules have alw...
• I agree. The current rules absolutely permit the Bloc to exist, and I think other parties would do well to follow their example. Gilles Duceppe is the fe...
• You're completely ignoring the possibility of strategic voting. I personally know people in Vancouver who voted NDP in order to defeat Liberals. They don...
• Again, where do you get that 65% number? Show me how you calculated that.
• And if it was illegal, why no charges? We know exactly who taped it.
• No they didn't. 54% of Canadians voted for the opposition parties. 38% of Canadians voted for the Conservatives. 8% of Canadians voted for fringe partie...
• They need to legalise their biggest industry - marijuana.
• The Greens are a fringe party with no representation in the House. How can the coalition that contains no Green representatives claim to represent Green vot...
• You're still not showing your math. You know why? Because you don't have any math that makes any sense. Here, I'll start for you. The Conservatives g...
• There's no point talking to you at all, is there? "what was the % of the conservatives MP's in the house of commons against the three opposition parties??...
• But they don't have a seat to donate, and thus they can't be represented by the coalition.
• They probably think those are good policies. The Liberals almost have to pass that one in order to survive (unless they start stealing public money again).
• You don't think the low taxes and good business climate have anything to do with it? Then explain the differing fortunes of Saskatchewan, that is sitting ...
• It's legal to tape a phone conversastion if you're part of it. And that CPC staffer was part of the conference call - he was invited.
• "The global economic crisis calls for leadership right now." Yes it does. And throwing money around willy-nilly is not leadership. It's pandering. Th...
• Don't be stupid. Alberta's oil and gas is delivered (almost universally) by pipeline to Chicago where it's sold on the continental market. Alberta could ...
• Given that the west and the east seem to have such different views about how Canada should be governed, doesn't that suggest that the two halves shouldn't ha...
• They've always been separatists. That hasn't changed. I don't see how them supporting Harper's budgets is relevant to whether they are separatists.
• No. Prorgation is good leadership. The coalition would destroy the Canadian economy in this time of crisis. Harper's steady invisible hand is what's nee...
• 163. The two independents aren't part of this coup-alition.
• How long has Harper been PM? He hasn't presented 16 budgets. You're an idiot.
• As long as he's making good decisions, I don't care if he's President-for-Life. Democracy, on its own, doesn't do anything for us.
• Why are we in it together? Why do we need to share a government when we so clearly disagree about the role of government?
• Scott Brison already left.
• What hidden expenditures? The Conservatives obeyed the campaign financing and spending laws just like everyone else.
• Martin's opposition was simply toppling the government to trigger an election, not seizing power. That's the difference.
• I'd certainly support him in Vancouver.
• Except he doesn't. He can delay it through prorogation.
• What attack on the legitimacy of parliamentary rules? The coalition insisting the PM has lost the confidence of the house only a week after supporting his...
• That agreement isn't binding. Nothing's stopping the Bloc from voting against any piece of coalition legislation if they don't like it. Every party in th...
• That was a different situation entirely. In 2004 the opposition simply wanted an election. They wanted to go back to Canadians to ask them for their votes....
• Why should he step down? Just as the coalition is following parliamentary rules, so is the Prime Minister. Show me what rules he's breaking.
• If you sign an agreement to govern with the separatists, you should expect (and be able to handle) a little name calling.
• That would be the best option for the CPC. But not the country. We can't allow this socialist coalition to damage our economy during a recession.
• His intentions with the separatists then were to go to the people in an election and seek a mandate to govern? If this coalition were seeking an election,...
• The west thinks they own their own wealth and resources. And they're right.
• Why has the Prime Minister lost the confidence of the House? What is the coalition's actual complaint with the Prime Minister? If they didn't think his g...
• Except the agreement doesn't bind the parties at all. It's not binding. There are no penality provisions for failing to comply. It has less teeth than t...
• But you've conceded my point. We can't know what people wanted aside from what they could reasonably have expected. Does the fact that this coalition is ...
• And close ridings vastly outnumber those ridings like Alberta's that were blowouts.
• 37.6% voted Conservative. Why do you insist on making up numbers?
• Except that proposal has been withdrawn. Governments float trial balloons like this all the time. He proposed cutting funding to political parties at a t...
• "You don’t believe it will work, because like the Harper Conservatives you see the world as a nasty brutish place, where everyone competes to win over anothe...
• 38% voted for Harper. 0% voted for a coalition. 26% voted Liberal, but that Liberal platform they supported was all based on a carbon tax they just pro...
• Decent? So why are they toppling a government who's throme speech they just supported? What actual piece of legislation have they presented to the house ...
• Is this even making the mainstream media in other countries? Nothing's happened yet.
• No he doesn't, actually. Prorogation is entirely within the parliamentary rules. And you didn't answer the question.
• Democracywave said: "the Quebec separatists voted for Harper on 16 budgets ?? what!! 16 budgets?" He said 16 budgets. So I asked about those 16 budget...
• His intent is irrelevant. What matters is what he's doing. And he's doing nothing more than what he said he would do in the throne speech. Therefore, si...
• If Harper "has to" then why do the rules of parliament allow for prorogation?
• How is that a scare tactic? That's a legitimate difference of economic opinion. Do you know anything about economics? Do you have any idea what the econ...
• Wait a sec - so we're supposed to preach democracy, but at the same time we're not allowed to choose to separate? What if we choose democratically to separa...
• The phone conversation was taped, yes. It was taped by someone who was invited to take part in the conference call. That's perfectly legal. What Bush di...
• We "work collectively"? Well, you just showed us all your communist roots. I'd like to direct your attention to the constitution, which clearly states th...
• He only needs permission from one of the invited participants. And he had that. He WAS one of the invited perticipants.
• Only 54% of voters selected one of the three coalition parties. Can you really not count to 100?
• How was this trial balloon different from any other floated by this government or previous governments? If anything it was more honest, because it was annou...
• I had to dig into the regional "Americas" news at bbc.co.uk in order to find any mention of it, and the British press is usually pretty keen to cover Canadia...
• What are you talking about?
• Unprecedented? Maybe. The government asked the House to vote, and one entire party failed to show up a lot. I suppose that was unprecedented, but it wasn'...
• And keep in mind I have a degree in Ethics. I know what's ethical and what's not a lot better than most people.
• Read the law. You're allowed to tape your own phone conversations. You can't just make up rules after the fact and claim they were broken.
• I wouldn't. The NDP was.
• Right, but the political welfare cut went away. It was proposed, and then retracted. So what reason do they now have to defeat the government aside from ...
• I hope so.
• The CPC isn't refusing to do anything. They're giving a sensible and measured response.
• Explain to me how the constitution has been ignored, here? The ultimate power has always rested with the crown, and the crown elected to prorogue parliament.
• He has never painted all Quebeckers as separatists. Show me one time where he said that. And, I'd like to point out, he didn't start this. The coalition...
• There was a PC mole in the Reform Party's national office around the 1997 election. That really sucked.
• I don't buy it. Stockwell Day could never have consorted with socialists. He's just that much of an extremist. Sure, he's not necessarily a great guy, a...
• I would not favour disadvantaging regional parties. With our first-past-the-post system, running regionally is the only way to get a new party started. Tha...
• No election for you. He couldn't say anything to save himself in that speech, though it's telling that the "people on the street" you see interviewed don'...
• The recession is caused only by a drop in foreign demand and a tightening of world crdit markets. The federal budget has had nothing at all to do with it. ...
• Don't they? Where did you read this in the rules of parliament? If there were a rule against it, the GG wouldn't do it (remember, prorogation is done by ...
• The US economy is in far worse shape than the Canadian economy. Far worse. Plus, you're assuming that everything he's doing is a good idea. Why are Cana...
• I never said they did. Accusing me of saying things I didn't say doesn't make your points any more convincing.
• I'm sure the sorts of blogs you frequent are all over it. Blogs have a vanishingly small penetration into society, especially outside North America.
• You're just ignoring me now, and spouting off on whatever topic strikes your fancy. I wish this forum had an ignore button.
• Right, and Jack Layton is necessarily aboslutely truthful about all things all of the time. Would you care to cite your source, here, or would you like me...
• I haven't seen any unethical behaviour at all. He routinely works within the rules laid out by society, and does it all out in the open so we can see what h...
• You keep saying banana republic. That would be quite the transformation, given that we're not a republic at all.
• You're certainly not.
• Those four words routinely lead to bad government. And the Chicago school has brought wealth to countries around the world, I might point out. Chile's cu...
• When did he lie? Show me where Harper lied and caused the coalition to turn against him? This coalition exists because it is angry. That is the sole rea...
• The alleged 2000 agreement was to defeat the throne speech and form a coalition (the throne speech being the peoper time to do that, not a week later in a fi...
• Actually, increase oil investment came after Wall took power because the oil industry is very sensitive to constistency in regulation (in the 1980s the devel...
• Why do you insist on counting every single vote for non-Conservatives? I voted for the Libertarian candidate in my riding. Does that mean I support this ...
• So where are the charges? There aren't any, because the Conservatives followed the rules. They found a loophole, and they exploited it. The rules were...
• 62% already includes the Green. The three parties with seats in the House total 54% only. And he didn't grab power by force. He won the election. And t...
• You're the guy who started throwing completely ficticious numbers around. I'm just trying to help you not sound like a lunatic.
• Your grasp of basic mathematics suggests you are mentally deficient. Sub-normals like you are why I don't support universal suffrage.
• And yet... we got prorogation.
• He didn't listen in mistakenly. HE WAS INVITED. He knew they'd invited him by accident, but they had invited him, so he listened. And recorded. All p...
• You could produce the same results as the system you propose with just one day of voting if you used a single-transferrable vote system. BC is voting on imp...
• In fact, if anyone were to try to assemble that 62.4% number from the totals won by actual parties, they'd need to include such parties as the Freedom Party,...
• Rampant spending would be worse than this uncertainty. This just slows growth now. Deficit spending slows growth for years to come.
• I haven't seen a lot of handouts in Canada. Any, really. Capitalists certainly would ask for government money if it were available. But doing so impedes...
• True. But this coalition, in order to form, had to discard a bunch of its members' campaign promises. This means that the MPs elected by the voters aren't ...
• I like regional independence parties. I actually tried to found one a few years ago after Belinda Stronach crossed the floor. Then Doug Christie beat me ...
• I worked with Stockwell Day. I sat in weekly meetings with the man. His convictions might sometimes be crazy (for example, he's a Young Earth Creationist...
• She did not call an election. No writ was dropped. And Tory times are tough times because we keep having to dig ourselves out of Liberal messes (though t...
• We voted against it last time. How many times is he going to ask?
• I called them liberals because their behaviour was anything but conservative. I don't care what party they're in (and the US crisis was started by FDR, a de...
• He didn't need to persuade anyone. He does have that right - those are the rules of parliament. If you didn't want him to have the opportunity to prorogu...
• How have the Conservatives ever gotten around the rules? The rules limit campaign spending. The rules limit all fundraising (so any money you spend outsi...
• So what happens to the party's assets if it is deregistered? Nothing. The organisation still exists - it just isn't a registered party. All that would d...
• He's not scared to face voters. He just doesn't want to spend $300 million on another election. And we just had an election. Which he won. It would loo...
• If themajority of votes want to form the government, then they need to defeat the sitting government first. Why haven't they? There was a throne speech. ...
• Explain to me how democracy was denied. We elected a house. The sitting PM elected to continue in government, and presented a throne speech to determine ...
• Our parliament has rules. If you want to defeat the Prime Minister's government, you need to do it in a vote. So do it. You've had one chance already (t...
• There are two possibilities. Either this is, as you say, a power grab, and the coalition arise simply because it could and not for any substantive reason ...
• Greed is a fundamental part of human behaviour. We're all greedy, all of the time. We go after what we want. Some of us want everyone around them to be ...
• This is why we need a stronger constitution that protects us from these games. Though, the fixed election date isn't really a good example. Harper never ...
• How would you define "better" as it relates to democracy? I'd look at what outcomes it produces, since the process isn't worth a damn if it still leaves a...
• Why would we want to advicse anyone on democracy? Since when is how other countries choose their governments any of our business?
• The whole world can think that if they want. As long as we get a better government out of it I'm happy.
• That's completely irrelevant to this discussion.
• He wasn't required to facethe vote. Our democracy has rules, you know. Seriously, you're just spamming, now. Is MSNBC (the most leftist biased news ag...
• Those remarks you mention all happened after the coalition was formed. You said his lies are what casued him to lose the confidence of the House. You do ...
• Should he manage to win the resounding majority the polls now say he would, I think he'd be respected just fine. Lauded, even.
• The circumstances of his request were unprecedented. The opposition was claiming he;'d lost the confidence of the House even though they'd just voted for hi...
• MSNBC was absolutely not the watched new media during the US election (though if it were, that would explain Obama's victory, given the hard leftist bent of ...
• Naïve? I don't think that word means what you think it means. And you misspelled it. There's an accent over the i.
• You think the economy needs help? Why do you think that? Surely there must have been some line of evidence that convinced you that Canada's economy is in...
• There you go again with your fuzzy math. The coalition represents only 54% of the electorate. To get to 64%, you have to count everyone who voted for a...
• It's non-binding on everyone. These agreements can't be binding because they don't contain penalty provisions.
• The EKOS and Ipsos-Reid polls from Dec 3 and Dec 4 are fairly encouraging, though. EKOS (Dec 3) CPC: 44 Libs: 24 NDP: 14.5 Bloc: 9 Grn: 10 Ipsos...
• Yes, they can. From parliament's point of view they would just be 160 independents, but they'd promptly defeat the throne speech and then ask the GG to na...
• The most money being the party with the greatest support among Canadians. With the donation limits as they are, any successful party needs support from a hu...
• I have a realistic opinion of my fellow man. And oddly enough, thinkers from Karl Marx to Thomas Hobbes agree with me. Why do people give to charity? Be...
• We are the Queen's subjects. We've always been the Queen's subjects. Do you not like that the viceroy controls the mechanisms of government? Then compla...
• We have no international responsibility. No country does.
• What? This is our constitution at work in ways most Canadians never see it. The constitution grants the crown alone the power to dismiss parliament. The...
• Recessions are contractions in GDP. But we're actually measuring the GDP, and it's getting bigger. Even zero growth wouldn't be a recession, and we have ...
• I disagree entirely. Sure, the polls looks great for the CPC, but polls also say that only 16% of Canadians want an election right now. If Harper were to c...
• No. We as Canadians shouldn't care.
• Actually, Canadian demand is pretty strong. The problem is foreign demand, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about that. That said, there are ways...
• Coward? How is he a coward? Faced with an unprecedented disruption of government business, he protected Canadians' interests by asking the GG for proroga...
• All of the other parties are funded similarly. Plus, the benefits donors receive from the government aren't controlled by the parties, so there's nothing th...
• Harper can't do that. You're spouting utter nonsense.
• I see no reason why he would, though. It looks like this crisis is great for the CPC. They should want Harper to stick around.
• If that's true, why would the GG have allowed prorogation? Assuming the coalition holds together, all prorogation does is delay defeat. The main benefit ...
• How would Manley's assistance be at all similar to David Emerson crossing the floor? Manley's a private citizen; he can do what he wants. Emerson was elect...
• The CBC always supports the party it thinks will win. They know what side their bread is buttered on. You can't trust government agencies for unbiased co...
• I would suggest that English Canada does include Bellevue and Grande Prairie. I have family in Grande Prairie (so I know the city well), and there are almos...
• I'm a bit frightened to have Jack Layton be the brains behind anything.
• If the coalition would be "the very best possible government" why didn't the parties merge before the election? Why were the Liberals (and the NDP) campaign...
• Time for Change? Just because Obama won you think that's a compelling argument? Change is not a tactic, and hope is not a strategy. Tell us what the coa...
• Lucky for you, this is a testable hypothesis. If Canadians really do think the House of Commons had been rendered impotent, they should stop voting. So, ...
• By force? What force? Is he threatening anyone? Using guns? Your overwrought histrionics reached the level of absurd some time ago, but they've now des...
• So using the rules of parliament to protect the people from bad government is somehow wrong, but it was (presumably) okay for Paul Martin to bribe Belinda St...
• And yet you still won't tell me what he did to start all this. Why does the coalition exist in the first place?
• So now you're even willing to fabricate reasons to dismiss evidence that disagrees with your preconceived notions? Congratulations. You're the first huma...
• What's different about this vote? Why didn't the opposition defeat the throne speech? They could have. That's how the opposition traditionally defeats t...
• Any chance they're all using the same source? AP, perhaps?
• Democracy is prevailing. The system is designed to work exactly as it is.
• So you don't have evidence then?
• Okay, so you understand the first part. The the elected members of parliament don't think the PM is doing his job, they hold a vote of confidence to defeat ...
• Did you not notice the recent confidence vote in the House? The government won. Then, with that confidence in hand, the PM went to the GG and asked for p...
• Campbell's a Liberal, but thanks for coming out. That he's a Liberal is the reason I never vote for him.
• With low donation limits like we have, fundraising is a pretty good proxy for popular support. It's not like a party can be funded by a small group of peopl...
• The United Way is a scam. I thought everyone knew that. I'm gainfully employed by a charity, but I'm not a fundraiser (so I don't belong to that associat...
• Where in the throne speech did the government promise immediate stimulus? I can't seem to find that part. Because it's NOT THERE. So, if immediate eco...
• You know, if you keep libelling the government you're liable to get in trouble.
• I highly doubt that. I don't think we'll see another leader drive a stake through the heart of his own party like Chrétien did for some time.
• But what of the voters who supported them? If I voted Liberal because I really felt strongly about the Green Shift, or if I voted NDP because I really wante...
• Do you see a contraction of Canadian demand? Could you point me to your source? The best way to deal with a loss of government revenue is to cut spending...
• "Too many consumers and not enough product drove prices through the roof." This part is exactly correct. But you missed on the cause. It wasn't greed th...
• By what standard do you claim Canada to be the best country in the world?
• This debacle could well end up hurting the Bloc more than those funding cuts ever could have.
• I suspect at least 2/3 of the party's funding comes from donors in AB, BC, and SK. Alberta's always been good to the party, and with a per capita GDP aron...
• The same methods? What were those? Pointing out how ill-prepared he was to be PM? Pointing what a bad idea his spolicy proposals were? Yes, I think H...
• The rules of parliament would requre that the house actually defeat the government first. They've declined to do that. The rules of parliament allow the ...
• You assume we give away money. Again, not all charities do. Many private schools, for example, operate as charities. I do not work for a school.
• Why were they expecting it? Had it been promised? The best thing the government could be doing right now is nothing, and that's exactly what they're doin...
• It may. But I don't see how spending money the government doesn't have makes that better.
• I meant the Liberals - not the Bloc. I mistyped.
• In large part, yes. There was very little of the free market in the Bush administration. Have you forgotten his steel tariffs? But, Bush didn't cause th...
• I'll see if I can find it. Does the search function work here? I would have referred repeatedly to the Federal Housing Administration in that piece.
• Not if your standard is "is most like Canada", no. Give me some objective measure and I'll check if any countries do better.
• I don't see why it would. First, oil won't stay weak for long. Second, Alberta's wealth is more than just oil (again, if it's just oil, then why has Saskat...
• I struggle in provincial elections here, yes, but you have unreasonably assumed that I vote for one of the two big parties. I think I voted for the Sex Pa...
• They could have voted against his throne speech. As I've said before, there's nothing substantive coming from the Harper government that wasn't in the thr...
• But they have almost as much oil. If Alberta's wealth was due entirely to oil, why wasn't Sasakatchewan wealthy at the same time? Because Alberta's wealt...
• Here we go. It's just farther up on this very page: --------- Do you have any idea what caused this credit crisis? Would you like me to tell you? Oka...
• There were no phone taps. Nothing illegal was done. A guy was invited into a conference call, and he recorded it. There was no secrecy involved.
• 62% of Canadians didn't vote for the Conservatives. I'm one of them. I voted Libertarian. That doesn't mean I support the coalition. Your reasoning i...
• You're aware the throne speech is followed by a vote, right? And that that vote is a confidence vote? And that that vote took place and it passed the house...
• Job losses are fairly mild, yet, and they're mostly limited to inefficient manufacturing jobs. Tell Saskatchewan there's an economic crisis. I'm sure the...
• Facts are facts. I applaud your command of tautology. The facts support Harper. He is following the rules of parliament.
• Yes, the opposition supported the throne speech. So what changed between now and then? Why were the opposition parties so eager to defeat Harper a week a...
• I don't know why, but I'm not basing my entire position on it. You are. You need to have an answer for your position to make any sense, even to you.
• I never claimed that was good behaviour. You're the one insisting the rules of parliament need to be followed. Was Martin following the rules of parliame...
• Nor can your histrionics make unrelated facts relevant.
• No rules have been changed. You clearly have no idea what the rules of government are.
• Only if the whole world is as bad at math as you.
• Why is it that "American style" politics are bad, but you're a big fan of "American style" bailouts?
• The Legislature used a lot more power and required more cleaning staff when it was in session. Not to mention the stationery costs.
• Be that as it may, the fact remains that the government doesn't have any money. As such, spending it now on stimulus would be a bad idea.
• Yes, either side could have fixed this. It would have been terribly unpopular, though, and that party would have suffered mightily for it. Still, as I've...
• I don't have any objective standard I could use to measure the countries against each other. Anything I would pick would necessarily be arbitrary. If it ...
• The royalty rates certainly have something to do with it. But more than Alberta just having low rates (and they're not low internationally when compared to ...
• I've never given the CPC money. I was going to, but then they backed down on the compaign financing change. I did give the Reform Party money for several...
• But without private donations, no new parties could ever form (because they'd have to have already won votes in order to have any income). I wouldn't obje...
• Provincial? What? Why would the behaviour of the federal party affect your opinion of the provincial parties at all?
• But even if he had, that would have been different in kind from Emerson's defection. Manley doesn't owe the Liberals anything, because he wasn't just elec...
• Doing nothing was and still is the best option. Doing nothing is good policy. Smaller government is good.
• You don't think Harper is good for the country? Well, let's ask you the same question CTV asked Dion? What would a "good" leader be doing differently fro...
• You think what the GG did was illegal? Why? What law did anyone break?
• I don't see how it's cowardice to avoid a conflict you know you will lose. If you know a bully is going to beat you up if you walk down the alley, avoidin...
• It's much easier to follow the conversations, I find, if you associate your username here with a GMail account. The way GMail organises unread messages from...
• I like Ignatieff. If we're going to have a Liberal PM, I would rather it be Ignatieff than any other leader they've had in my lifetime. Though I'd rather...
• Just because these subsidies exist in nearly all western nations doesn't make them a good idea. These subsidies serve primarily to give established parties ...
• That's not really a fair measure. During the election we had new discussion topics every day, so they didn't have time to grow this large.
• That's an idiotic thing for the NDP to say. How is it binding? What are the penalty provisions within the agreement should one side back out? There's ...
• He's committed The Prince to memory? That's great news. Machiavelli had some really good advice in there. What I find heartening is that our two major...
• I'm forced to wonder, if Ronald is such a big fan of government spending, why was he ever a Reformer?
• The difference between the CPC and the coalition is that the CPC actually has good ideas. So, generally speaking, I would hope the CPC would oppose coalitio...
• As much as I'd like to have a climate change debate here (because I'm a skeptic), there's an important piece in that very article that points out exactly why...
• I still fail to see where you're going to get this money to bail out jobs and workers without having to take it from jobs and workers again later. And dir...
• You know, I really should have foreseen this.
• And that's probably true. Having a Quebec campaign based in Quebec is more likely to be successful. But, if Harper doesn't plan on winning any seats in Q...
• But will knives from a forgotten province matter? If the party as a unit abandons Quebec to political oblivion (and give its unique demands and dwindling in...
• There's no "supposed to" in this at all. What you describe is how a minority typically does govern, but there's no rule that makes that mandatory. Harper's...
• I love this hidden agenda stuff. It's unfalsifiable. I could claim that Jack Layton has a hidden agenda, and all the evidence I'd need is that he hasn't ...
• Standard ISPs (like Shaw, or Bell, or Telus, or Rogers) force you to use ordinary mail clients (like Outlook, Thunderbird, or Eudora). But GMail's interface...
• Neither. Describing any tactics within the House as ethical or underhanded doesn't make any sense. Parliament has rules. Everyone agrees to follow those r...
• I don't see how you can possibly think that's his goal. But if it is, then I'd support it. Bringing the government closer to the people - making it more re...
• Okay, so you're not a Conservative supporter at all. You never were. This CPC has far more claim to being the new version of the Reform Party than it dos o...
• We can judge their talents based on their prior work. Ignatieff is an academic. There's a large body of his publications from which we can draw conclusions.
• I disagree entirely. I wholly opposed the war in Iraq. It was a sovereign nation, and the US has no business interfering in its internal affairs. I don'...
• Yes, that's generally how minority governments work, but compromise leads to bad government, so I'm pretty pleased to see Harper try something different. If...
• And, I'd like to add, you fell for the CPC's marketing. Yes, they were presented as a coalition of the old Reformers and the dying PCs, but that's never wha...
• Plus (I keep thinking of more to say) the damage done to the status quo is irreversible. Millions of Canadians who never before considered voting Conservati...
• The Angus Reid numbers are evidence that the damage to the Liberal brand isn't permanent. There's no reason yet to believe the numbers will move any further...
• If anything, the Alliance was ever a more extreme socially conservative entity than Reform was because it lacked Preston Manning's tempering influence. With...
• What? The US is punishing credit card companies? I'd love a citation for that one. Why would they do that? Creditors haven't done anything wrong.
• One data point isn't a trend, Ron. You know better than that. We won't know anything until we see more numbers, and even we acn't extrapolate beyond our ...
• "They are the ones that changed all the mortage rules in Canada 2 years ago that has gotten us into a mess which is costing us billions." What mess? The ...
• Those interest rates weren't a surprise. If you read the fine print when you sign up for a card it explains exactly how the interest works and when the rate...
• Plus, buying back those insured mortages didn't cost us anything. Since they were already insured, we were on the hook for them if they defaulted anyway. A...
• The lenders pay the government to insure those mortgages. That's how insurance works - you pay someone to protect you from risk. Without the insurance the ...
• Nor do we need to get rid of them. They're a profitable business like any other. Why would we want to shut them down? Making Canada a less attractive pl...
• "When I took out my mortgage,CMHC got paid up front to insure that mortgage. Did they pay an insurance company to assume the risk involved?" No. They'd a...
• "The problem I have is that the liquidity created by the government by buying these mortgages did not get passed on to borrowers." Yes it did. The bank t...
• There's nothing wrong with it because it didn't happen. Things that don't exist can't exhibit characteristics (I can't believe that metaphysics class eventu...
• Because inter-bank lending improves their balance sheet, and that was the entire point of the government assuming those mortgages. You keep looking at onl...
• Asking the government to stifle your competition hurts us all. Without competition, you now have no incentive to improve or innovate. You can just keep doi...
• No industries need help. If they can't survive without government intervention then they shouldn't survive. They're an inefficient use of capital. No so...
• If the Liberals were smart, they would currently be trying to do nothing but raise money. Running a PR campaign now is something they can't afford to do. ...
• I actually plotted a chart of all the poll numbers from the 2004 election to the 2006 election, and then again from the 2006 election to the 2008 election. ...
• Canadians have reason to be annoyed about the income trust flip-flop. I'm annoyed about that. His suggestion that it was a good time to buy stocks was co...
• Cutting taxes is an excellent idea. But that's not spending. Government spending now would be a bad idea. I also see no reason to run a deficit to do it. ...
• Though I still don't see how Canadian government action of any sort can help restore foreign demand, and collapsing foreign demand is what's causing all of o...
• I fully expect Harper will read the legislation before voting against it. But if it's legislation both the Liberals and NDP support, it's almost guaranteed ...
• I don't see how those are mutually exclusive. Harper was correct that there's no need for the government to do anything. Harper was correct that it was a g...
• It's not that kind of charity. Nothing hypocritical here. Though, hypocrisy doesn't invalidate anyone's arguments. Just because you hear "Don't do drugs...
• Whether we benefitted from the theft of $57 billion isn't relevant to whether it was a crime.
• 1. It's a good time to buy stocks because they've all gone down. That's when you buy stocks. Stocks are a long-term investment; you buy them when their pri...
• "BUT THE GENERAL STOCK MARKET IS WAY DOWN SINCE HARPER INVOKED HIS BUY ORDER. " THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Let's say you bought a bunch of stocks when Harper...
• “While the numbers suggest some resistance to how Mr. Ignatieff was installed, much of this resistance is among Conservatives, with NDP, Green and Bloc voter...
• Well, Conservative voters seem to think having open democracy within the parties is important. I think parties should be allowed to select their leaders h...
• First you complain that he acted as no one has before him, and now you complain that he's too much like all those who've come before him. Pick one. Your ...
• I think the government should have to refurd that money to the people. They took it under false pretenses (EI), and then misused it. They should have to ...
• Chrétien was good at maintainnig plausible deniability. Why isn't Alfonso Gagliano in jail? Even the FBI wanted to put him in jail.
• If he thinks going green will win him a majority, I'm sure that's exactly what he'll do. Like any minority government, all Harper does is designed to win ...
• I dispute that any rules were abused. The rules were used. And as long as there are rules, ethics don't enter into it. It's doesn't make sense to descri...
• No. If the money had been given to corporations that would have been bad, but the corporations just accepted a gift. They wouldn't be at fault. I think ...
• Who are you? Your ideological bent swings wildly from one side to the other. Now you're talking like Karl Marx.
• Because you stole it. That's all that matters. You stole my money, depriving me of the use of it, and spent it as you saw fit. Property rights matter.
• I don't forget that at all. I don't see how those conflict in the slightest. It was a good time to buy stocks (it still is), and the depression speech en...
• Ever heard of Marxism? That was him. How can anyone have an intelligent discussion about public policy without at least some knowledge of the history of ...
• Pearson ruined our military, Trudeau ruined our economy, Chrétien was an inveterate liar, and Turner could have said no. St. Laurent is the last Liberal l...
• You'll notice I was "within the parties". You're making an associative fallacy. But let's go with that. How has the Harper government been anything othe...
• No provinces ever lose seats. Geez. Read the laws before you start commenting on them. I'm just going to stop reading what you have to say, now.
• Jimmy Pattison and Carole Taylor are excellent choices. If only there were someone from the Fraser Institute there, too, then it would be perfect.
• It was MIC I was complaining about (and replying to). Larryl at least tries to make sense.
• I said he tried. I didn't say he succeeded.
• And if Mulroney or Harper had ever been Liberal leaders, that would make sense as a response. Can you try to be even a little relevant? Also, Mulroney's ...
• Turner claimed in the 1984 debates that there was nothing he could have done to stop Trudeau's patronage. As Mulroney pointed out, that was a laughable clai...
• We all know Harper's cabinet has effectively zero power. Never in Canadian history has the government been run so fully by one man. Nothing happens in this...
• What's wrong with the Bloc? Shouldn't Quebeckers be allowed to support whatever party they like? Or do you oppose democracy?
• If you think there's a conflict there, spell it out. Why do you think the advice to buy stocks was bad advice? Explain to me how having historically low ...
• It's in the constitution. Section 51.
• And, it took me about 3 minutes to find that out. Why don't you do any research at all before you post?
• This is simply wrong. Harper never said he wouldn't appoint senators. In fact, Harper specifically said he WOULD appoint senators if he couldn't get agre...
• And what makes you think the GG would have called an election? We'd just had an election. And election that cost $300 million. Forcing an election would...
• We all know that, do we? How do we know that? Show me the evidence that convinced you. Or me. Or anyone.
• Dion's gross mismanagement of his own campaign has probably killed any significant carbon tax in Canada for many years. It will be a political timebomb that...
• Do you even know what hypocrisy is? you throw the word around like it has weight, but you apply it to everything. You use hypocrisy like most people use ir...
• No. I see a new party that has finally broken through that psychological barrier many people had against voting for them. Their ceiling is now much highe...
• The mainstream media seem to think the coalition is dead. On the CBC last night their year-in-review At Issue panel clearly saw Ignatieff as leading the Lib...
• I probably will claim EI next year. I'm taking parental leave. And of course I'm willing to claim EI. If there's a government handout available, I'll ta...
• We're a peacekeeping nation that's respected all over the world to our own detriment. Trudeau held back the entire country's economy with his high taxes a...
• Except to do that we'd need to get the privinces to agree (I assume you're familiar with the amending formula), and those over-represented provinces would ne...
• I think Prime Minister Stubborn Hardcore is a decent nickname for him. But I also don't think those are bad traits in a PM.
• Harper did get all of his appointees to agree to resign after 8 years (his proposed term), and got Pamela Wallin to agree to resign should Saskatchewan ever ...
• If a government agency like Elections Canada errs in its application of the law, how are we ever to fix that without taking them to court? Your objection ...
• On all non-economic issues, I would describe Iggy as being further right than Harper is. I like socially leftist politicians; people who don't interfere i...
• Unless the companies ultimately fail, yes. The Canadian government will turn a profit on the backs of private enterprise. I wouldn't have offered the bai...
• Naturally, I hope for C, and that's what I think we'll get. If C, then Harper can offer tax cuts in the name of stimulus, but without going overboard on s...
• Chrétien did face the most fractured opposition possible. His popular vote totals for his majorities were terrible. I would never support special protect...
• The deficit will prove considerably smaller than the CPC is currently fearmongering. The bad news all at once - the good news little by little. It's clas...
• Harper is on record that he wants nothing to do with reopening the abortion debate. Yes, Canada has perhaps the world's most liberal abortion laws (in tha...
• I'd like to point out that many of us were predicting that back in November. The coalition will fall apart, we said. You don't get points for jumping o...
• Furthermore, you don't know if Harper could even get an election. He may well have already discussed this with the GG. Just because there is no election is...
• I would oppose any major government involvement in any high-speed rail line like the one you propose. If it's such a good idea, why not let the private se...
• Having the government actively stockpiling wealth doesn't strike you as at all dangerous, does it? Why do you trust the government so much?
• That's hardly news. I think Stockwell Day proved that to everyone back in 2000.
• I probably would have been had they asked me. There are upsides to government stockpiles. As I've said before, had Ralph stockpiled wealth after eliminat...
• I would be against the government building and operating it, yes. I would support the government making land available for such a line, and easing the regul...
• No, it shows that he knows the Liberals' actions in January will be dictated by public opinion at the time. All Harper has to do until then is not make the ...
• Then it has nothing to do with Harper's supposed risk-aversion. Your post pinned the blame for the inactivity firmly on Harper. Now you claim it's obviou...
• I think the government's motives are usually to increase the level of control they have over people's lives, and their every action is designed to further th...
• I'll agree to that. Any government renue not spent (and all spending should be included in the budget) should be used to pay down the debt. Once there is...
• He has no incentive to explain the macinations of government. No politician does. It would only give his opponents ammunition and risk confusion or alienat...
• There has been no appreciable warming over the last 10 years. Globally, 2008 was the coldest year this millennium. While we are seeing significant warm...
• Just enough showing up to let the CPC bills pass? That's effectively absention. DO you really think Canadians won't see through that?
• This is unfortunate. Running a deficit is what hurts Canadians and the economy - it just delays the pain.
• Why weren't developing countries required to reduce emissions under Kyoto then? Climate change is certainly happening. Why it is happening and what, if a...
• I think it's more that the people do understand how the British Parliamentary system works, but they do so without really understanding the rules that create...
• Yes, but before Trudeau they had to pay for it, and if they didn't offer fair market value you could sue them. Now you see things like the government of B...
• Good for you. Protect what's yours.
• Actually, Harris wanted the people who benefitted from those services to see how much they cost, and then they could decide whether they were worth it. Th...
• Of course Harper's numbers are down. Iggy's clearly better than Dion, and those supporters had to come from somewhere. If only 30% of Canadians liked Dio...
• He needs 12 seats. He gets more than halfway there with the addition of seats to Ontario, BC, and Alberta. Then all he needs is a slight weakening of the B...
• I wonder what the NDP thinks they could possibly get from this suit. No laws were broken. No falsehoods were disseminated. There's simply no basis for thi...
• Because they have been a minority government. Minority governments need to pander to everyone and buy votes in order to survive. This has always been true....
• Yes, most fathers would have lied there, but Stephen Harper told the truth.
• That you think we can only know whether laws were broken after a judge has said so is part of the problem. We can know with certainty whether laws were br...
• The IMF has long been a force for socialism. Government spending cuts are always good policy. Tax cuts are also always good policy. I fail to see how ...
• An interesting facet of those religion statistics is the distribution of people with no religious affiliation. They tend to live in the west. 26% of Yu...
• I don't really care whether public funding of political parties is popular. I think it's bad policy, regardless of how much Canadians like it.
• If Iggy really is focussing on raising money - the number one thing the Liberals should worry about for the next 3 years or more - then that's a good thing f...
• It's been clear for a couple of weeks now that the Liberals will pass the Conservative budget. The coalition is dead. The question now is what sort of bu...
• At current rates of growth, absolutely they will. Much of the growth appears to be the widening acceptance of agnisticism and atheism in Canada, so people...
• Cut public funding. This isn't hard. I think public funding is a bad idea, so I'd suggest it be stopped. I, frankly, don't care if it's unpopular. Of...

New Nanos National Poll - CP, 32%, LP 30%, NDP 20%, GP 10%, BQ 9% (2008-11-19)

• And campaign with what, exactly? Volunteers and year-old signs? No ads? They're flat broke. They're in slightly better financial shape than GM. How do...
• There could also be a pettern, here. Look at the 2006 results: CPC: 36.3 LPC: 30.2 NDP: 17.5 Three weeks later, Nik's poll found this: CPC: 33 L...
• When you budget for a $9 billion surplus, you have a lot of wiggle room when things turn bad.
• But then they get to compile it into a chart like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2008 So then...
• "i think conservative supporters just don't answer telephone polls" I certainly don't. I'm a busy guy. I screen my calls and only answer when I know who'...
• Look at history. These credit crises happen pretty regularly. Over the past 300 years (the period in which we've had major stock markets available to mea...
• The GST cuts were a purely political move. I like the GST. It's a great tax. It encourages saving (by discouraging spending), and it's a visible tax tha...
• That flat income tax is going to help keep them competitive for a while yet, but the Alberta government now backing down on some of their royalty demands onl...
• We have historical statistical evidence the post-election polls swing strongly toward to opposition, and you conveniently ignore that fact.
• I'd support just cutting the Department of Indian Affairs - that would prevent a deficit.
• Canada was also protected by the overall structure of our banking sector. Because we have a fairly uncompetitive banking sector (the big 5 are big enough an...
• This is another reason to discount these post-election polls. Many people want to vote Green (or for other fringe parties), but when they step into the box ...
• And he's right. We'll see growth again by Q2 2009.
• "Canadian housing bears little resemblance to the devastated U.S. market, where prices have fallen off a cliff and continue their downward trajectory." Th...
• Some data to support that 30-year Alberta cycle. 1905-1921 - Liberal government in Alberta 1921-1935 - United Farmers of Alberta run the province 1935-1...
• If you're willing to cdrop the GST to 2%, you'd be better off just eliminating it entirely. The reporting burden for businesses that collect GST is quite hi...
• What this does show is that when we start to see economic growth again (next year - before mid-summer), Canadian banks will be in an excellent position to bu...
• I agree. In fact, I think letting GM fail now will get us economic growth back sooner. Sure, the next 4 months will be awful in GM goes down, and liter...
• If they'd bought those houses in Saskatchewan they'd have made a killing.
• You're missing the point. If you hide the tax then people don't know they're paying it. I WANT people to know they're paying the tax, because I want peop...
• Highly developed economies have very small manufacturing sectors. Manufacturing is something we should let poor countries do.
• They were not. The proportion of the Canadian mortgage market that is subprime is far smaller than the corresponding proportion in the US market. I have st...
• I don't see it. Their fundamentals are strong. Panic is driving down stock prices now, but those companies that aren't actually weaker as a result of this ...
• Depending where they are it's sometimes more than half their money. http://www.fraserinstitute.org/tools/default.htm That's a personal Tax Freedom Day ...
• Alberta's boom is over. Those Ontarians will have to find work in Saskatchewan.
• You're buying the left-wing propoganga, Informed. This wasn't lack of regulation. This was over-regulation. This never would have happened if US banks h...
• That reasoning only flies if Foxer claimed that cutting taxes was a panacea. And he didn't. He's smarter than that. Cutting taxes encourages investment ...
• When did the Americans ever lie to anyone about Afghanistan?
• Since you're not going to get a global economic collapse, you're going to look pretty silly.
• Except Martin didn't cut any spending. He just cut transfers to the provinces, thus forcing them to cit spending (or run deficits). Federal program spend...
• Britain has a bigger hole to dig out of here because Brown's been intervening horribly. The UK's economic strength is going to be badly damaged by this cred...
• I think the bankers were acting reasonably. Given the choice between making a ton of money lending out the federal reserve's resources, or not doing that be...
• They didn't lie to us. We knew the terrorists were Saudis. We knew Osama bin Laden was a Saudi (we'd known that for years - he's the guy who bombed the WTC...
• Everything you say about Martin there is true. It's also completely beside the point. Martin's efforts to balance the budget were barely adequate. There...
• We've lost just over $30 trillion in worldwide assets so far. This is far from a collapse. We're especially vulnerable to global collapse ever since Nixo...
• Trickle down works fine by itself. There are measurable benefits to trickle down.
• Sure. That's what advertising is for. If there was already demand for every product that was ever produced, we'd never see any advertising beyond compari...
• The only thing the government should be doing to help with this credit crisis is lending money. At high interest. Bam - no more credit crisis. The wor...
• The NEP didn't cause the bubble to burst in Alberta, because it came too late. What the NEP did do was kill investment for years, though, forcing tens of th...
• And that was smart. As a retiree, you shouldn't be in the market. You're not able to ride out downturns (because you need the money sooner), so you're less...
• The complaints I'm reading about how the slowdown is hurting poor people is evidence that people generally believe in trickle-down - they just don't think th...
• I'm trying. Why do you think I'm here?
• Trade agreements will be hard, because most countries (including the US) tend to become more protectionist in hard times. Plus, we're in a better position...
• The CCPA has zero credibility. Read their studies. They're the folks who determined that the privatisation of liquor stores in Alberta led to lower price...
• I thought you said the parties were supposed to try to work together in a minority parliament. Which is it?
• Good for Gordon. He might manage to win re-election yet. I've been predicting his defeat for some time.
• We're kicking ass and taking names right now. Our job losses are looking to be something like 1% of US losses - that's something like 90% lower on a per cap...
• Trust Fund is still there. Though it should be much larger. When Ralph retired the debt, he had a chance to build a fund worth hundreds of billions of do...
• What they want and what they can have are different things. And only one of them matters.
• True, and that's why the central banks need to lend money right now - in huge quantities, and only to low-risk borrowers. But they shouldn't just give tha...
• The Reform Party was all about small government. Remember that Preston Manning promised to fire 30,000 civil servants if he became Prime Minister. And si...
• But if they get loans they can buy even more. Lending money to low-risk borrowers is a great way to kick-start the economy without actually spending any mon...
• Economic growth in Q2 2009. You heard it here.
• I've been calling for this for years, not because I wanted to kill the Liberals (this wouldn't have done that when Chrétien brought in the funding), but beca...
• My biggest complaint about the auto bailout is the lack of a decent business plan put forward by the automakers themselves. If they wanted to make a case, t...
• I disagree we should make the RRIF change. A sound investment strategy didn't have these seniors in high-risk investments this close to retirement. High-...
• Obama's plans will have some effect, absolutely. If he keeps bailing people out at this rate (over $7 trillion already spent), the US economy might have a...
• Those fake jobs we don't need is what kept the depression going for 10 years. It's also why the theatres and such built during that period have such great d...
• That's why were lucky we just had an election. The optics won't matter a whole lot in the immediate short term, and by the time they do Canadians will be ab...
• Even he couldn't have handled this as badly as the Americans are. They've doubled the size of their national debt in less than 3 months.
• I use an etymological definition of athiests. Agnostics would be a subset.
• What value do we get from being "Canadian" exactly? You rail against this threat of breaking up the country, but why? What difference does it ultimatly m...
• GICs. Government Bonds. Money Markets. All far lower risk than Mutual Funds, which is where almost all of their money is.
• I proposed such a plan when I worked there, but the party executive shot me down. They worried about the optics if such a plan were uncovered (even though i...
• It was a good plan. Since there was (anbd still is) a 75% tax credit for political donations under $100, this was my proposal: The party gives the dono...
• This is why they're looking for a bailout. GM, in particular, is done. Without government money, they won't see next summer, no matter what they do.
• How is this a coup d'état? Harper's proposing legislation in an elected parliament - a minority one at that, so he needs help to pass anything. Anything ...
• I'd rather see campaigns won and lost based on ideas, not splashy ads. This dramatic reduction of revenue for political parties will improve governance in...
• Yes, actually. The voters aren't that bright. I suspect many of them don't understand that $30 million is only a very small part of the federal budget. Th...
• A boom? After the oil crisis of the late '70s, the economy was terrible. And Trudeau's massive overspending and wage and price controls made it worse. ...
• I think there is a way out for the Libs. But I'm not going to say what it is in case they haven't thought of it yet.
• I haven't given the CPC money ever. I last contributed to the Alliance in 2001. But I might break out the chequebook for the CPC right about now.
• If they need government funding to survive, how strong are they really? All this demonstrates is that we can't have a strong opposition as long as it's th...
• But doesn't that undercut your claim that they were all Liberals? It was Mulroney's grand coalition of western libertarians and Quebec separatists that ma...
• This is true. In times of crisis Canadians have responded well to coalition governments. Didn't we have a coalition during WW1? But, and I know this i...
• Didn't you see the campaign ads? Jack will insist on being PM.
• Representing a majority of voters? Show me one voter who voted for a coalition.
• Let me quote someone else's response to this: "Bob Rae writes: 'The system ensures that new parties have a chance to grow if they speak for a sizeable con...
• I'm very disappointed. This was the perfect opportunity to make this change.
• If you need the money within 5 years, it's too late to build any more value. A zero return is pretty good if the alternative is a 30% loss.
• Incidentally, the CPC just lost that donation I was going to make.
• The "worst recession in living memory"? Scott Brison certainly has a way with hyperbole, doesn't he?
• How could it be more level than no funding for anyone? What would you propose as an alternative that would be more level than paying everyone exactly noth...
• Our recession is proving to be quite mild, and will last less than a year.
• I was talking about the death of the Liberals and the NDP becoming the only party of the left.
• This is why we need stronger constitutional limits on government power - to to protect us from our leaders.
• Oh sure, you CAN build value in those last 5 years, but building value carries with it risk, and risk isn't something you can tolerate if you need the mony s...
• We had thousands of volunteers. I figured we'd just pay them (totally legal) and then have them make donations (totally legal). If you're giving them mon...
• It's about the same size now.
• Though, people routinely blame the results of Ernie Eves's lunacy on Mike Harris.
• If Canada were to engage in massive stimulus, we'd be paying the price for decades. The entire world is making bad decisions. If, amidst that, we can mak...
• Where did I mention North American union? We were taking about the country falling into smaller pieces, not joining a bigger piece. Try to keep up. I'...
• "The views of Canadians can and are manipulated by the party with the most money as we saw 6 weeks ago." Isn't that as good as reason as any to ensure tha...
• Check an Andex Chart. Canada was in recession for nearly two years during Trudeau's last stint in office. We didn't return to recession until the first Bus...
• Not that I'm aware. The fund sat at about $15 billion the entire time Getty was Premier, and then Ralph didn't do much with it. You're right - it shoul...
• You honestly think the Americans would take the territory by force?
• They're asking me to change the rules because they happened to take an unreasonable risk and get caught. What about people who didn't take that risk - wha...
• Learn to use Google. An Andex Chart is an invaluable tool in discussions like this one, because it brings together all the relevant information. Stock ma...
• You know the value of the deductions gets smaller the bigger the donation is, right? And that donations are capped at $1100 per person per year? The weal...
• You have no evidence to support this.
• Things aren't that bad here. They're vastly worse in the US, and countries like Iceland that unstable banking sectors this credit contraction has been catas...
• You're aware Trudeau built that last deficit, right? Mulroney just left it there.
• Explain to me how this subsidy helps new parties. Say I want to start a new party. Okay, I've done that. Where's my money? I don't get any. To get g...
• The Globe is perhaps the second most leftist major English-language paper in the country (after the Toronto Star).
• And this is why you don't bring anything to these discussions. When you have something inflammatory to say, you say it. You'll dodge issues to attack, an...
• This is a different kind of recession. This recession is caused by a sudden drop in the value of US assets, the kind held by banks all around the world. ...
• If they bought it, that means we willingly sold it. So what's the problem, exactly? And you still haven't told be what being Canadian actually does for...
• I like that the system punishes dumb people.
• Any. you haven't provided a single piece of evidence that they'd govern somehow differently were they in a majority position. Sure, okay, they'd pander t...
• Those insured mortgages (and since they were insured, they don't cost us anything) gave some more certainty to the banks in terms of cash flow. Do you e...
• When companies can vote, I'll let them donate. When unions can vote, I'll let them donate. Nothing's stopping unions and companies from collecting indi...
• Plus, when Harper worked for the PCs there were no other alternatives on the right. But he joined Reform as soon as it was founded. He's still there (with ...
• You have the most severe confirmation bias I have ever seen.
• Informed is right. The Conservative listener was invited. He didn't do anything wrong.
• So what makes us great? If we're the greatest country on Earth, what characteristics do we have that makes that true? You're not answering the question. ...
• Because we're not created equal. The cream rises to the top. You seem to want us all to be held down to a level achieveable by everyone.
• He didn't break a single rule in the in/out scam - he just found a loophole. And I believe the oath is to the Queen, not the country.
• Those huge bank profits are what's protecting us from this global meltdown. Everywhere else the banks are failing because they operate on really fine margin...
• If I'm invited to take part in a conference call, I think I'm allowed to think I've been invited to take part in that conference call.
• No, they won't. That's already true or not - the RCMP can't change what happened after the fact.
• Spreading the wealth around creates a lot of perverse incentives. Plus, Bill Gates (and others like him) have created tremendous amounts of wealth for oth...
• But if I'm 71, up against the same deadline as these folks, and I DID play it safe, taking my investments out of the stock and mutual fund markets 5 years ag...
• You ignore the possibility that taking action now will make it worse. Government intervention retards growth.
• Because it wouldn't save jobs, net. The money the government spends needs to come from somewhere. Either we raise taxes to do it, or we run a deficit. I...
• You want rampant inflation? That's what devaluing the currency does for us. You seriously think we can finance anything just by printing money? What abo...
• It wasn't the low dollar that aided that growth, it was the falling dollar. That the dollar was a little lower each year was what did it. But that wasn't...
• This mess was orchestrated by US government's intervention in the housing market. And yes, it did prop up our manufacturing, because it kept the price of ...
• Investors. Entrepreneurs. And yes, Speculators. Printing more money will devalue the currency directly proportionally to how much money we print. As su...
• I'm saying that your plan to devalue the currency has exactly the same impact as raising taxes. It would be a massive transfer of wealth from the people and...
• Of, check the opinion polls section of the Wikipedia article "41st Canadian federal election". Wikipedia's a good source for this sort of thing.

On the Harper election win (Nanos Sun Column) (2008-11-04)

• They could if they included in the bill the explicit permission for provincial governments to establish their own gun control rules. That could get the Bloc...
• But you're wrong. You don't need to register your pets unless you live in a municipality that requires it. You don't need to register your car unless you w...
• It really is all about packaging. If I had a device I'd invented, and I said that my device could grant wealth (say $10,000 each) to one thousand voluntee...
• We can check that. Elections Canada has voter turnout numbers riding by riding.
• Goodale would be a much better choice than Dosanjh. No BC politician is popular enough at home to run a national party for any length of time, and no succes...
• The easy solution to that is simply to eliminate public funding of poltical parties. If you want to campaign, raise the money yourself.
• I don't see why lower voter turnout is a bad thing. Those people who don't vote clearly don't really care. And if they don't care, they're not likely to ...
• When did the winning party in a Canadian federal election last get a majority of the votes? 2008: 37.63% - Minority 2006: 36.27% - Minority 2004: 36.73%...
• Also, free speech is something I value. Apparently you don't.
• What spending violations? There are no limits on political advertising outside the writ period. You're fabricating scandal. Juts because you think the r...
• Just as Ralph Klein intentionally lost seats in Edmonton in his final election. He didn't like having the moderate Edmonton MLAs in his caucus, so he got ri...
• My girlfriend (who is from BC) refers to Alberta as "back east".
• That's a good point. If this parliament will implement the riding changes made necessary by the most recent census, that will make up much of the distance b...
• Actually, they can't even have fewer than 75 seats. To formula prevents any province from losing seats; their current total is always the minimum. They a...
• Please ignore him. Therightside brings nothing useful to this conversation (though I'll happily keep taking his votes).
• Why have it? Alberta should drastically lower its taxes. Raise the personal exemption to $50,000. Eliminate corporate income taxes. Opt out of the CPP ...
• Do you have even one piece of evidence that Harper has a secret agenda? If so, share it. And if not, why do you think he has one?
• Freezing funding to privinces will force the provinces to grow more efficient. I see it more as a message to Ontario than anything else. Ontario has the ...
• He Green Shift CLAIMED to be revenue neutral, but it was going to cost middle class Canadians tremendous amounts of money. The math just didn't add up (as L...
• This is more a Reform government than a PC government. Looking at Mulroney's record and thinking it's at all relavent to Harper's behaviour is absurd.
• Nobody loses seats. Your seat total can never go down.
• I can't seem to find it, anyway.
• Though, Mulroney did do one good thing with taxes. He gave us the GST.
• I remember when Preston Manning declared that he, were he Prime Minister, would fire 30,000 civil servants. That was a great day.
• Yes. And the masses need controlling. The average person is not nearly qualified to make informed decisions about governance issues.
• Did you really just say that? "it is very difficult to imagine that Harper will leave same legacy as Trudeau and Chrétien in which all Canadians point to ...
• Weren't you just complaining about the tax policy of PC governments? That traditional PC supporters don't know how Reform the CPC is would then be a good ...
• Well, you're half right. I'd cut corporate taxes, too, since corporate taxes inhibit investment in the same way that income taxes inhibit earnings. Sales...
• Their spending is still inefficient. Compare the wages of hospital workers to hotel workers. Aside from the medical staff, they do the same jobs, but someh...
• I had lunch with the man when he was head of the National Citizens Coalition. But the NCC and the CPC have different objectives, and neither one is a one-...
• Free trade creates wealth.
• It's a false dichotomy. Given that the thrust of the CPC advertising was to characterise the Green Shift as a terrible idea, I would count votes against t...
• Because they insist on using voting machines and electronic ballots and the like, they have many fewer polling stations per voter. So they get lines. We ...
• We don't need nearly as much government as we have. They regulate all sorts of things we don't need regulated (like marriage), and they administer things ab...
• And I think the Reform Party paid. They were my employer at the time.
• Organisations like the NCC take extreme positions and try to make them sound reasonable in an attempt to move the margins of public opinion. If they can tak...
• "If the CPC had there way corporations would pay nothing and the lazy welfare recipients would starve." I'd support that. Lazy people don't warrant my ch...
• Again, why should those pre-election expenses be counted? They're explicitly excluded from the election spending limits. There is no legal reason at all fo...
• I know you think Trudeau was great. That's kind of my point. But you claimed that "all Canadians" point to Trudeau's legacy with pride. Those are your w...
• That's why we should pay elected officials more.
• Not all provinces would pass those little mistakes. And since we wouldn't let the feds fund the provinces much (provincial funding transfers need to stop)...
• And that's why you lose. People who oppose gun control vote based on that issue. People who support gun control vote based on other issues. As such, pol...
• But since the CPC campaign was mostly just to assert that the Liberal plan was dumb, then people who voted against it were doing the CPC's bidding. I don'...
• I support short-term EI. If you're in a bad spot, we'll help you out long enough for you to get things sorted. Almost any poor person could rise up and b...
• The In-Out scheme is as good a reason as any not to give tax credits for political donations. That would prevent it from ahppening (and the scheme was avail...
• And we might attract a better quality leader. There's a reason top business executives earn millions. It's because they're just that valuable, and busine...
• Liberals lose $250,000 in deposits as 36 Liberal candidates fail to garner at least 10% of the vote. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/06/liberal-cau...
• High ranking floor crossers do better, I think, and it really depends how the annoucement is made. I think Iggy could credible cross the floor if he paire...
• Obama's a pretty radical liberal by US standards, but that puts him right in line with the Canadian centre. I think he and Harper will get along just fine a...
• GM's announcment today that they'll run completely out of cash in Q1 2009 is a huge blow for the industry, and for Ontario. If GM is forced into bankruptcy,...
• Ford can, I think, be a world-class car company, alongside the giants such as Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and Renault. But they've been coddled by having o...
• I think Harper ran a pretty good campaign. I also don't think Dion's campaign was as bad, all things considered, as Martin's campaign was. Dion's greatest ...
• This right/left dichotomy is illusory. Canada is, I think, moving more toward a free society, one that is on the traditional left on social issues (permissi...
• I'm inclined to let provinces govern themselves badly if they want to. I just don't want to pay for it.
• I couldn't disagree more. The optimal level of accidental gun deaths is not zero. Because we can't get to zero without spending way more money than its w...
• No, free speech means you can. There's no obligation there.
• There's no reason why I couldn't pick a name that looks real but isn't, as well. And I have no reason to believe you haven't done that. As Foxer says, th...
• Ethics has nothing at all to do with the law.
• Again, they didn't violate any funding or spending rules. They just applied them more creatively than you would like. You seem to think they violated the s...
• And that remark was correct. The Progressive Conservatives never recovered, and ceased to exist several years ago.
• The PCs were destroyed. They were never again a relevant party, and they ceased to exist several years ago.
• I want the Liberals to hold their convention in BC. It will cost them more money that way.
• With Washington state in talks with Alberta and BC to join TILMA, we might see economic integration before the national governments even get involved.
• The only hardcore Reform idea there is the defanging of the Human Rights Commission, and that's long overdue. The HRC has been terrorising free speech for...
• I'd support this if we kept the prohibition on corporate and union funding, and kept the individual contributions capped at $1100. Somehow I suspect Steph...
• False and useless? Afghanistan was part of our NATO obligations.
• Why do you think the Conservative message was "not what nearly 80% of Canadians wanted to hear"? Sure, nearly 80% of eligible voters failed to vote for th...
• I see the Conservative Party as being much more the modern form of the Reform Party. I don't see much in common with the Clark/Mulroney Conservatives.
• And this is the time to do that. We won't have another election for at least 2 years; the economy has time to create new jobs for those factory workers befo...
• But that's not insurmountable. The Canadian Alliance laid-off several staff in early 2001 following Stockwell Day's less than stellar electoral showing. Wh...
• Financial services are integral to our economy, regardless of what shape our economy takes going forward. Manufacturing is not. In the US right now, th...
• Losing 100K jobs is a pretty small price to pay given the total meltdown happen in the US. Adjusting for population, an equivalent number of jobs for them w...
• PR is a terrible idea overall and I hope no part of Canada ever adopts it. I think the narrow referendum defeat PR saw in BC is the closest you'll ever come.
• I see the Clark/Mulroney Conservatives as a far less fiscally conservative party. Mulroney's government, in particular, was almost a centre-left party on fi...
• They're a minority government. All they can do - all any minority government can do - is pander to Canadians for votes. Good government only comes from m...
• The autopact had nothing to do with NAFTA. It was a concession wrested from them at the point of a gun (they agreed contingent on our patrolling the Suez Ca...
• Canadian oil is profitable as long as the price stays above $20/bbl. Below that and we can't make money on tar sands. We'll see growth in the second quar...
• The Autopact was an example of us leveraging our military might for economic gain. We can't do that anymore because we don't have any military might.
• Except that didn't cost us anything. That bank aid was simply removing some uncertainty from the banks' balance sheets. Since the debt we assumed was alrea...
• Because Liberal values are big government, and pandering always leads to big government.
• Good thing he sold it. We don't want the government holding valuable assets. That's dangerous. Governments should not accumilate wealth. Leave that t...
• Everyone does this in a minority. This isn't news. This is why we need majority governments, and this is why our single-vote plurality system (first-past...
• We'll see growth as soon as the second quater of 2009. http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/537459 These things happen predictably. There's no need ...
• This is the biggest and best change the CPC made when becoming the CPC. The members can't make binding changes to the party's platform. And that's a good...
• I can't wait to see if the new parliament passes new campagin financing laws prohibiting borrowing. That would be so incredibly funny.
• I would argue that those leaders representing 85% of the world's GDP are wrong, though. Running deficits is really only a good idea in time of war, and it's...
• Except, a labour shortage encourages innovation. Japan's labour shortage in the decades following WW2 lead to massive automation of industry, especially man...
• You just made a great argument for ending socialised medicine. Since the employers don't pay those health costs, they don't care about creating them. As ...
• So, only those less intelligent and less capable workers are forced to do that. Isn't that the best use of them?
• Good of you to mention the S&L crisis of 1987. What we're seeing now is almost exactly the same size as that.

Conservative Victory Propelled by Ontario Voters (2008-10-15)

• To be fair to the opposition, Harper has a significant empathy and social skills deficit. He's really not good at cooperation, accomodation, and compromise,...
• Who wins is not determined by how many votes anyone gets. Its determined by how many votes they get relative to each other. And by that measure - the one...
• No. Edward Blake lost the 1882 and 1887 elections and was never PM. Dion is the second Liberal leader not to become PM.
• Well, Chrétien sabotaged the party when he left. Dion could well do the same.
• I see your numbers. I don't see how they're relevant. The point of negative advertising is to reduce the voter turnout of your opponent. Harper's negati...
• He also foolishly announced his Green Shift well in advance of the election. That both allowed the media to examine it in great detail in a slower new perio...
• We shall see. The record of donations to the Liberal party are publicly available - so in April we'll be able to look back at 2008 and see how much money th...
• I wanted to congratulate you, Foxer. Watching the returns last night, all I could think was "Man, Foxer really nailed that prediction!"
• Bankruptcy would be political suicide. I read somewhere (though I dont have a credible citation) that they borrowed $9 million for this campaign. I don...
• That's just it. The Liberals appear to be in a death spiral, but too many people have been wrong counting out the Liberals in the past for me to do it so ca...
• BHarper will stay. Who would remove him? All of the reports of his character are that he's a control freak. Harper runs that party with an iron fist, an...
• I think we get better government from majorities, regardless of party. Majorities don't pander as much.
• I'd rather put their parents in prison. For criminals under 16, penalise their parents as if they'd done it themselves. That'll improve discipline at home.
• The Liberals finished second in 124 ridings - 16 within 5%. The Conservatives finished second in 95 ridings - 14 within 5%. The New Democrats finished ...
• I think the wonks are the people with vision. They're just really bad at implementing that vision. You need a wonk behid a figurehead to really get stuff d...
• Something needs to deter these kids. We just need to find the proper incentive.
• Foxer's right. While much of the swing was just Liberals not voting, if you look at riding by riding numbers you'll see that some significant portion of the...
• You always get that splintering when you merge. Look at the Progressive Canadian Party. Those splinters almost never go anywhere.
• This is something a lot of people don't seen to get. Because the Canadian dollar moves up and down with the price of oil, Canadian oil production revenues a...
• Decentralisation is an excellent idea. Let's make it happen. So why did you support centralist parties?
• The NDP has the least opportunity for growth compared to the Cons and Libs. The NDP finished a close second far less often than the other parties did (withi...
• Chrétien built a team around him. Public figures with personality and presence of their own, that established the Liberals as a group of expert leaders. Wi...
• I wish I knew where to find you in two years. Stephen Harper is more like Ralph Klein than he is like Brian Mulroney. We'll see savage cuts to programs b...
• If you're going to complain about racism, do so on its merits. Don't resort just to name-calling.
• American politicians have figured this out. Support in the US for gun control is actually quite high. The majority of Americans support gun control. B...
• It's a good trade for the Liberals. Paying Dion's debts is cheaper than holding a second convention. Though, it's arguably bribery.
• Harper would be smart enough to see how fragile that coalition would be and form the govenrment anyway (as sitting PM, he gets the first crack at it - read t...
• The Conservatives don't have a party brass. Harper has made sure of that. He's the only leader that party has ever had, and he rules it with an iron fist...
• Chrétien faced the most severe vote splitting in Canadian history. His majorities were won with popular vote numbers very similar to what Harper's getting now.
• McKenna. Any successful politician in New Brunswick needs to be fully bilingual, so he has that covered. He has name recognition, he managed to get through...
• BC used to have one. It was called the Asiatic Exclusion League. There's a whole room devoted to it at the Royal Museum in Victoria.
• Expert Fundraiser That's their #1 criterion for a new leader. They don't need a guy who can lead them into an election - any political relevance for the ...
• Two failed NDP premiers running the country. Holy crap that would be a disaster.
• Based on his rhetoric, he's clearly in a heavily populated urban area that traditionally votes strongly Liberal. So Montreal or Toronto.
• Or, we could have freedom of speech. Either we're free to disseminate information or we're not. Pick one. If you want us only to be told what the govern...
• The Liberals have, since Pearson, approached Canadian elections as if we have a two party system. Like the United States. And there have been times when ...
• This should be a significant boost for manufacturing in wealthier countries. China's wealth is largely derived from their ability to manufacture goods at ex...
• I think what's more important is what this means for the federal treasury. Equalisation payments to the have-not provinces are capped at the level of weal...
• I knew the Liberals were doing poorly, but I had no idea they were doing that poorly (behind the NDP - wow), and I didn't realise quite how FREAKING HUGE the...
• Those Vancouver seats are winnable seats. I'm not nearly that confident about Toronto, but Vancouver seats should now at least be able to fall the Tories'...
• They have three cities, and they just barely held on to one of them.
• Rod Love - Ralph Klein's campaign director. I'd been wondering where he'd gone.
• Except that he didn't. He still won't run a deficit this year.
• If only we could get one party to support economic freedom at the same time as defending civil liberties and tolerating diverse lifestyles. I would, howev...
• I would count running a large business (as a farm is) as far better governance experiene that working as a bureaucrat and politician. One of them deals wi...
• In fact, it has more than two. There's a very good economics school to be found at the University of Lethbridge, as well. A top Fraser Institute economist ...
• I'll agree with that. The Alberta government grew staggeringly large under Loughhed and then Getty. They governed much the same way Mulroney governed, and ...
• You wonder why the Heritage Front infiltrated the Reform Party? How about because CSIS paid them to do it? There's a book about that.
• Trudeau wasn't a Marxist. He was a Maoist.
• $44 billion isn't that big on the entire federal budget. Alberta alone is running an $8 billion surplus this year.
• Both Calgary and Vancouver have light-rail systems, but neither could be properly described as a subway. Calgary's is on surface (because the city is so s...
• The Alberta Conservatives chose their new leader poorly, amking the same mistake the Liberals did in selecting Dion. They picked the compromise candidate....
• A poll prior to Alberta's most recent election found that a majority of Albertans disagreed with "virtually everything" Ed had done since becoming premier. ...
• The opportunity to invest billions was only there because Ralph retired the entire provincial debt, and the lack of debt-servicing costs is the main reason A...
• Tax cuts aren't welfare (though subsidies are). There were no bailouts. The assumption of those mortgages didn't cost us anything because they were alrea...
• If Trudeau became Prime Minister I'm confident some westerners would tie him up and throw him in a Saskatchewan uranium mine.
• "People are not that naïve" Apparently the Liberals are.
• The Cons can make that up by losing two staffers. The NDP can make that up by doing one fewer mass mailing per year. The Liberals lost 100 times as muc...
• Do they? I totally didn't know that. I knew they had an electric bus system (unlike Calgary, which only uses diesel busses). I suppose it figures I wo...
• Some of them are proudly rednecks. My father, for example, but retired men who live in the woods away from modern conveniences are a small minority. And ...
• The CHUM/City building?
• No, they make you wait UNTIL you are sick. The waiting lists are for non-emergent cases, and they're unacceptable. If, while on the list, you become emer...
• I would argue that each province should be permitted to determine how they spend their money, but that requires that they also have to raise that money. Oth...
• I wouldn't call it a conspiracy so much as open despotism.
• Right. They used to be at 99 Queen Street East, but they moved to 299 Queen Street West around 1990.

CPAC-Nanos Election Tracking CP 34.2, LP 26.7, NDP 21.4, BQ 9.5, GP 8.2 (ending October 12) (2008-10-13)

• That's a credible interpretation. Even this election seems to have been called primarily to cost the Liberals money. If Harper and Layton together can pa...
• Last I checked, Brian Tobin was a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/08/tobin-fraser.html
• I agree. This is why seat projections never work. Since individual seats can be flipped one way or the other by a small group of voters, the undecided ha...
• Hedge funds are wonderful things. They enforce the wisdom of the market by punishing those people who panic.
• Good. Finally we can pull ahead of them in economic growth and forge our own path. As long as they're the big economic dog in the neighbourhood, we can't...
• It does. The Prime Minister always gets the first chance to form government. In cases where the Prime Minister loses the election, he usually declines. ...
• Jobs are jobs. The US economy has lost jobs every month this year. We're gaining tens of thousands at a time. We should be happy about that. We haven't...
• I'll echo that comment. This site has been the first place I've visted every day for the past seven weeks.
• Have you seen the specific programs he was talking about? That probably was true. Harper wasn't talking about all arts funding - just those specific arts...
• I don't think so. Only if the Liberals suffer from some bad vote splitting and lose significant numbers of seats will their brand be broken. As long as the...
• That's why it's a good idea in a weak majority to vote only opposition members to the Speaker's chair. That buys an extra one vote gap.
• For the better. Live for yourself. There's no one else more worth living for. Begging hands and bleeding hearts will always cry out for more. ...
• You clearly don't understand the pro-life position. I'm pro-choice, but let me explain the pro-life position. Abortion is murder. The victims are help...
• Why will we have to adopt these quotas?
• That was the report from advance polls across the country. Especially high turnout for Conservative and NDP supporters. No idea why that is.
• 15 seats west of Ontario and in the north? Where? Let's say they keep Goodale's seat in Saskatchewan. Fine. Let's given them all three northern seats (...
• CPC: 36 Libs: 26 NDP: 21 Bloc: 10 Green: 7
• I'll ask this, too. How is strategic voting a subversion of democracy? We all know the rules of election, and we can apply them as we see fit. I think t...
• Minority governments are big governments. In order to wrestle for power, minority parliaments constantly try to buy votes. This is why majorities are goo...
• Enjoy what? Minority governments serve only to increase the size of government bureaucracies. No one benefits from that.
• The funny thing is, the best leader they've had since Chrétien was Bill Graham.
• There is no way he claimed he could stop a recession.
• The Liberals are millions of dollars in debt (this is a matter of public record). If there's an election soon, it will be because the Bloc and NDP want one ...
• I think eliminating public funding would help grassroots parties. Those parties that can attract large numbers of donors will succeed, and those that can't ...
• We need an American blogger with access to the Newfoundland CBC feed. We really should have set that up before this election.
• I don't see why we even want our population to grow. A labour shortage would encourage innovation - look what it did for Japan in the 1970s. They automated...
• Why do we have to proceed at all? Canada's emissions are so small compared to the bigger countries (like the USA and China) that whether we emit or not ha...
• I fully intend to teach the "me first" attitude to my children. They will out-compete their peers.
• I'll need to see that text before I'll believe that. I'll believe his remarks were intended to convey that belief, but that's a different thing entirely.
• I'll vote for my fourth choice if it produces the outcome I want. In my riding, there's a certain subset of candidates who have a realistic shot at winnin...
• Corporate donations to political parties are illegal in Canada. Chrétien passed that law. Try to keep up.
• I think you need to see significant losses in terms of seats before you'll break that psychological connection. Like the PCs in 1993.
• I agree with you on the issues, Larry. But your first question, "Why is the pro-life opinion more important than that of a woman who wants to for whatever r...
• I'll try to track it down. I'm convinced you misinterpreted him.
• $100,000. Great. The Liberals will need to average about $10 million per year over the next 4 to pull themselves out of their hole and compete on an even...
• I'm not opposed to unions - they've done great things. I'm opposed to governments giving unions more leverage than they would otherwise have. Look at Alb...
• I think the CPC could do it. It would offend the hell out of Ontario, but if they're forming a coalition with the Bloc clearly the CPC doesn't have much sup...
• The Liberals never had a funding base among individuals. That's the point. Check the Elections Canada records from the 1990s.
• Okay, that makes sense. Though I disagree the Greens look viable. They're still a fringe party, and they'll remain a fringe party until they start electi...
• Oh, a democratic argument. They're making a moral argument. Enforcing a prohibition on abortion across Canada would be equivalent (to them) to enforcing ...
• How many of the provincial parties are formally affiliated with the federal party? And are transfers between the two even legal? I know it's illegal in A...
• And I'm not saying they'll never be able to campaign again. I'm saying they have serious financial problems and no clear path to fixing them. They're not...
• And another thing. Harper's not a strong Prime Minister, and he's actually a pretty poor politician. The Liberals of old would have toppled his governmen...
• The promise is clear. Your reaction to the promise (and Harper's breaking of it) is clear. But you didn't ask a question. That would require an interrog...
• 50-100 seems big. When I worked for the Reform Party (1998-2000) our head office was about 20 people.
• See? You're not reading. I'm describing the pro-life position. I don't hold the pro-life position, but at least I know what it is.
• The Bloc elects people on a regular basis.

CPAC-Nanos Daily Election Tracking CP 33, LP 27, NDP 22, BQ 10, GP 8 (ending October 9) (2008-10-10)

• It appears to have had a significant effect already. Dion's competence numbers took a big hit in these newest data.
• Based on Nik's newest numbers, the CPC support in the west overall went down slightly.
• I'm sure it would have been a non-issue. The biggest complaint about Martin was that he was indecisive. Mr. Dithers, remember. If the new guy is just the ...
• You can think whatever you'd like. The data disagree.
• If Dion's stumble did anything, it probably drove down Liberal voter turnout. I don't see how Liberal voters would switch to another candidate this late in ...
• It's a rolling poll. Nothing corrects in one day. It's also within the margin of error. Arguing that the votes aren't real would be a more credible tack.
• It depends how their GOTV team does. They're still pretty sparse on the ground in Quebec particularly. That hampered them badly in 2006. In BC, ceratinl...
• They could if the Liberals suffer particularly badly from vote splitting, but that would also require that the Conservatives split that vote, which means Jac...
• Decima has some past ties to the Conservatives (Allan Gregg started the company, and he was Kim Campbell's strategist), but I've no idea who emlpys them now.
• To be fair, neither do I. But they weren't well organise last time, so they will have had to improve tremendously to have a genuinely good team on the groun...
• I was going to say the same thing. In my experience, people who move to Alberta looking for work tend to vote like an Albertan within 2 elections of havin...
• I wonder why the Liberals, rather than discuss the data, feel the need to make predictions all the time.
• Or, keeping our free market leader when the leaders in other countries are abandoning their free market principles might give us a leg up. Just because ev...
• Well played.
• It's not a bailout - those costs were already a CMHC liability. All this does is free the lenders from having to suffer through the default process - it's...
• He saved the banks some paperwork. This didn't cost us anything. This is entirely unlike the US bailout. Gods. Read about something before you complain...
• Reaganomics kick ass. Would you like me to explain how the trickle-down works again?
• What country do you think would suit him? The US just nationalised their financial sector. He wouldn't fit in there, at all. Jack Layton would.
• You have no evidence at all that he or his party has any intent of implementing fundamentalist ideas.
• Might I ask why you think Reaganomics doesn't work? You clearly have a strong opinion. Surely there must be some rational basis for that opinion.

CPAC-Nanos Daily Election Tracking CP 33, LP 29, NDP 20, BQ 10, GP 7 (ending October 8) (2008-10-09)

• I think the Bloc holding the balance of power wold be the best possible minority outcome. Decentralisation, here we come.
• The difference throughout the campaign has been that Nanos polls show much lower Green support - the reasons for that are obvious once you check out the diff...
• Freedom is freedom. If it's our ball, why can't we take it?
• And when that happens, we can deal with it. But as long as there's neither stick nor carrot, there's no reason to take action.
• Only if he holds power, which isn't going to happen. But he'd be a far more entertaining leader of the opposition than any Liberal, wouldn't he?
• "Moving up 9% in Alberta doesn't help us." It helps demonstrate the stark cultural divide, and it increases the chance that some opposition candidates won...
• That firewall would be good for Canadians. The regions and provinces should be left to govern themselves without all this interference from Ottawa.
• I think Michael's right. Harper is a very good economist. He's an indifferent politician, but he's a very good economist.
• I think a separatist coalition would make for a fine government. They'd have a very narrow range of issues on which they'd agree, so that would severely lim...
• There is one thing stopping them. Harper. As the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper is the one who will first be asked by the Governor General if he can form...
• If you'll do the same, sure.
• I do wish Harper were more like Mike Harris. And if Harper wins a majority and then starts messing with people's personal lives or getting all socially cons...
• Proportional representation leads to more minorities and bigger government. The Fraser Institute actually released a study on that - they looked at countrie...
• Do you realise you just assumed that everything the US does is "right-conservative" regardless of how interventionist and command economy they are? Moving...
• Sure. But I want back the federal taxes that funded equalisation. I'm not going to give back the benefits if I still have to shoulder the costs.
• Right. That's who they are. But who they are doesn't matter. What matters is what they do. Sure, Stockwell Day thinks the earth is 6,000 years old and ...
• They could. Ralph Klein used to do that. He'd give speeches where he'd say a bunch of nice things about NDP leader Raj Pannu. Why? Because he really disl...
• It's not a bombastic platform. It's a very modest platform. It's not the sort of platform that's going to catch public attention and take the country by st...
• I think the polarization is a good thing. It's yet more evidence that Canada is not well served by a strong central government. I don't want the country ...
• It's actually a bad strategy in the US, because the US population is very homogenous. There's very little policy difference between the two big parties down...
• And by Canada, there, I meant Canadians.
• Personally, I'd be helped tremendously by Dion's carbon tax. I don't own a car. I walk to work. I walk to the grocery store. I earn more than the avera...
• Unprepared? Who didn't see this election coming months away? If by unprepared you mean broke, then yes, but that wouldn't have changed by waiting for the...
• The hockey player. In a free market military service would always be voluntary (as it is in the US and Canada - any soldier either country currently has ser...
• The Liberals don't really need to favour corporate tax cuts. It's good policy, but it's not the good politics it used to be. Before Chrétien's campaign fin...
• In the "call for civility" thread, too. That's impressive.
• Two degrees. From a good economics school (I would say that Simon Fraser University is the best economics school in Canada, but Calgary is very good). Bu...
• Sure we pay the soldiers. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. But that doesn't change that it's voluntary service. Where am I blaming the homeless or the poo...
• No, I'm not insinuating that. I'm saying it outright.
• Wrong. The sitting Prime Minister gets the first crack. The leader with the most seats comes next. I really should look that up to be sure.
• Sure. If you want to separate, we'll give you yours back, too.
• The Canadian electorate is remarkably volatile. I honestly have no idea how the election's going to go. We're still more than a week out.
• I asked this further down, too. What do we really get out of being Canadian? Now. Not what we have received, but what do we get now? And, as I've also ...
• I haven't read any useful studies on the issue. In general, I want to pay them what it takes to get enough people to volunteer. I want to pay them enough s...
• What's the voter turnout in Alberta? Alberta used to have a cadre of separatist parties. The Alberta Independence Party. The Alberta First Party. These...
• If you don't think the threats are credible, don't pay the ransom.
• I also think those regions should be subdividable. Otherwise you'll just create the same problem again. 5 regions lumps together all 4 western provinces,...
• I don't pay hockey players at all. I pay the team to entertain me. How they go about doing that isn't any of my business.
• Right. Lost track of which weekend was coming up.
• It did. One of King's governments fell, and the government was offered to the opposition.
• Like that would sway them if they were offered more power.
• If we were hiring tens of thousands of grown men to shoot rubber discs into nets, then you'd be right. But we're only hiring those few hundred grown men wor...
• To kill people and blow stuff up.
• Why? Why should we pay them so much? And wouldn't that wound bonus encourage soldiers to get wounded just so they could cash in?
• I think that's the primary job of a soldier. If we have soldiers, the number one thing we should train and outfit them to do is kill people and blow stuff u...
• Okay - for the sake of argument, I'd start enlisted men $30,000/year, and start at $40,000 for officers. A career soldier should expect to see his annual sa...
• Compromise leads to bad government. I've been over this again and again.
• No, the market sets hockey player salaries (or it did until the collusive salary cap).
• Why would I pay more to be in combat? That's the soldier's job. Not being in combat would be a bonus.
• She should have picked a seat in BC.
• Why do we need national standards for meat inspection? Or health care? You can't just assert that we need national standards without some justification...
• Too Christian. The US is far too religious for my tastes. Canada's second largest "religious" group is non-religious people. Especially out west (more t...
• Your competitors, usually. If you want to hire a hockey player, but other people want to hire him too, then you'll need to pay more than they will in order ...
• I told you what I'd pay them.
• Which is why she should not have been allowed in the debate.
• Again, I ask you, what about McCain and Bush's ideas supports a free market right now? Bush just nationalised his financial sector, and McCain supported him...
• You're making stuff up again. You don't learn.
• This is a bad idea. They should absolutely not be doing this.
• The G&M was always very anti-Reform and anti-Alliance.
• That your baseless prediction turned out to be correct doesn't change that it was a baseless prediction. Results-based analysis like that would lead you t...
• It's his core plaform. If Dion doesn't fight tool & nail for that carbon tax, was exactly does he stand for?
• Thought the stock market hasn't caused that, so they're the same as they were before. Status Quo. There's no reason for them to be upset.
• The income trust thing was a broken promise. I'll certainly concede that.
• I generally make a mental adjustment of the Ekos numbers to correct for their over-representation of the Green vote. I think Nik's right about the Green vot...
• And while Dion's promising income tax cuts to offset the carbon tax, that doesn't help the poorest Canadians. He's making the same mistake Paul Martin did i...
• The Fraser Institute is economists. All they do is measure stuff. In the '80s they supported publicly funded abortions because unwanted children are bad fo...
• To be fair, if the US decided they wouldn't trade with us at all until we improved our emissions, that would really hurt. But we're their biggest trading ...
• Wouldn't decentralization be better? Then you couldn't tell us how to live, and we couldn't tell you how to live. Everyone's happy.
• The value of the soldier's job is determined by the price at which we can attract competent soldiers. We can just pull a number out of the air.
• Back? The Liberals never had contributions. The Liberals have no history of collecting large volumes of donations from individuals. It has never happened.