Federal Election

[Kor]

Re: Federal Election

Okay I am not posting anymore after this just so I stay friendly.

But I agree proportional representation would be nice. How to make that happen is a question without an answer.

[liquid]

Re: Federal Election

Kor, Is it my imagination that the Conservatives mentioned something about proportional representation last election?

For some reason that rings a bell, but perhaps I'm wrong.

[Smartiepants]

Re: Federal Election

Okay I am not posting anymore after this just so I stay friendly.

But I agree proportional representation would be nice. How to make that happen is a question without an answer.

I agree with a mixed system more than this. I think it is Sweden where this is in place, the problem with having proportional representation is the loss of regional representation. Sweden has something like 85% of the seats based on regional, with teh remaining 15% put into proportional.

The other problem with this is that we lose the individual representation, parties would be able to put whomever they liked into those proportional seats, and they would become even more of political favours.

My way of fixing the system we have now would be abolishing the Party Whip. I think people would be hesitant to do this however because it would encourage too much underhanded dealings.

[Kor]

Re: Federal Election

I promised I would not post, don't make me break my promise.

Doh.

NDP is actually the party who has in the past generated the most fuss about this. They were at one point promising a nationwide referendum on the issue.

Conservatives have said they would support discussion of the idea publicly.

There is already some discussion on this issue even in the house, sooo I am not sure that is such a big deal, kind of like saying "maybe" to your kids.

If you think about what it would mean, typically any winner of an election in canada will be against the idea, and the losers will be for the idea. This is why it is unlikely to actually change. NDP can hedge their bets since they have historically probably done about a billion times better in terms of proportion of voters versus seats won. This is not so true of the conservatives or liberals.

Edit: I think that in a proportional system you do not really need to have top-down assignment of seats, there can be a scheme in which the people also choose their individual representation to some degree. I am also not sure that a fixed ratio mixed system is the best answer, but I am not a political scientiest so don't know the arguments well enough to speak on the issue.

Abolishing the party whip might on the surface seem okay, but I think that things could degenerate very badly in practice. Since our politicians are already not exactly perfect, this might be iffy.

[kuhli]

Re: Federal Election

Anybody read the national post today? In the first 8 pages there was solid political coverage...well, not quite solid, all but two articles were liberal, the other two...well, does it matter?

[variable26]

Re: Federal Election

well... it's really sad that there is another election. Didn't we just go thru all this not too long ago... and now again they want me to go out and vote for one of these 3 non-leaders, in the middle of winter?!?

oh well... i really hate saying this... but this time i don't even see a reason to vote. likely it'll be minority liberals again... and the highly paid liberals, conservatives and ndp'ers we send to ottawa will dick around and call each other names and never let anyone finish a sentence while having the floor in the house of commons. and then once it's all said and done... someone will find another $40 million dollar scandal and make sure have a $500 million inquiry that will hire all of their friends who work in the law firms so that the chain is not broken.

yes, it's true it's a big cycle of BS gov't spending that will not change regardless of who's in office... it's all backroom business.

the good news is; canada is doing the best it has ever had in over 30 years. we have the lowest unemployment, the value of our dollar is not too low and not too high and is stable... our resources are strong, and other countries in the world do not hate us!

i :heart: the communist party