Not to say that internal politics and whatnot aren't worthy of discussion and addressing, but having watched the bullshit down south, I am not eager to repeat both letting their pot stirring affect an outcome, nor failing to act in an appropriate preventative fashion.
For all the pride we might take in being all the positive things that come with the Canadian label, we also know there are pockets of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and more, all present within our provinces and cities.
How we identify it, how we handle it, how we handle our friends and family members posting bullshit on social media and trying to drum up the same vitriol, are going to be things we have to assess and address.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
So uh. Where the hell are the Ontario NDP?
I'd sooner drink bleach than vote Conservative but I really don't want to reward Liberal fuckery either.
This would be a perfect time for the NDP to do literally anything but they seem content to pretend they don't exist. I haven't heard jack about them in forever.
We share a maritime border with Russia in the Arctic. People forget about it because they can't see it on a map and they don't visualize the earth as a globe. And they forget that the arctic is melting, opening up precious transportation lanes and natural resources. All of which Russia definitely wants to take away from us. Nothing would make them happier than sending us on a Trumpian downward spiral of internal feuding while they pull a Crimea on our northern holdings.
It's still a "big deal" in that obviously the voting system we use effects how elections play out in this country.
It's not a "big deal" in that I have seen little to indicate most voters will be making a decision based on it.
I'm not terribly convinced that proportional (or similar) representation ultimately leads to significant differences in policy outcomes. Depending on how its constructed, it just incentivizes organizing what are now factions in individual parties into parties themselves, which then have to cooperate in a single government, in any case.
There's probably a lot of research done on the topic that I'm not aware of, but that's my impression.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
We share a maritime border with Russia in the Arctic. People forget about it because they can't see it on a map and they don't visualize the earth as a globe. And they forget that the arctic is melting, opening up precious transportation lanes and natural resources. All of which Russia definitely wants to take away from us. Nothing would make them happier than sending us on a Trumpian downward spiral of internal feuding while they pull a Crimea on our northern holdings.
Where exactly? I'm just curious. Because I'm looking at a globe, and the only Canada-Russia connection I can see is at virtually the north pole. Greenland gets in the way of everything else.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
I dunno... I think if anything the liberals have been trying too hard not to slam edicts down people's throats, honestly.
When they set up the body to take a look at changing FPTP, they specifically made it so that they didn't have a majority, and tried to figure it out democratically instead of just deciding on whatever they thought would work best for them and ramming it through the way the Conservatives would have.
That ended up being an issue because it turns out that there is no clear favorite among Canadians polled or amongst the political parties, so changes didn't go anywhere. I am actually having a hard time figuring out how I would have wanted the Liberals to act- just change things however they wanted because they have a mandate, against the wishes of the minority? But I definitely don't think they've gone the slamming edict route, unless you have some good examples?
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
We share a maritime border with Russia in the Arctic. People forget about it because they can't see it on a map and they don't visualize the earth as a globe. And they forget that the arctic is melting, opening up precious transportation lanes and natural resources. All of which Russia definitely wants to take away from us. Nothing would make them happier than sending us on a Trumpian downward spiral of internal feuding while they pull a Crimea on our northern holdings.
Where exactly? I'm just curious. Because I'm looking at a globe, and the only Canada-Russia connection I can see is at virtually the north pole. Greenland gets in the way of everything else.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
That becomes an existential problem then. If the Liberals and the NDP hold basically the same positions, why not merge and absolutely clobber the Conservatives at the ballot box?
Of course, there's no guarantee that the next Liberal leader will be as progressive as Trudeau, though he *is* setting the stage for that by giving opportunities to younger and more progressive MPs in his cabinet.
It's a tough place for the NDP right now. I'd personally appreciate Singh taking a seat in Parliament and using his position to keep the Liberals honest on the progressive promises they've made. At the same time, I totally understand that he has greater ambitions than that.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
I don't think they really have a chance of being much more than that unless they do change. We have a split left and a unified right. You can only really cut the pie so many ways.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
I wasn't arguing for my solution. You sandbagged my point without anything useful to counter.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
I don't think they really have a chance of being much more than that unless they do change. We have a split left and a unified right. You can only really cut the pie so many ways.
That seems to be the primary issue with left leaning governments.
If the NDP all of a sudden vanished, I would think that we would inexplicably split the total vote roughly 50-50 between the Liberals and Conservatives. I very much doubt that the Liberals would inherit most of the split left vote
Okay but why would any NDP voter ever vote conservative. Is that what you are arguing? Or do you think some previously liberal voters would vote conservative?
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
I'm guessing they meant that a lot of the NDP voters just wouldn't vote? I doubt that the Liberals would change their platform to move further left which would make them lose centrist-right voters if the far left party all of a sudden disappeared.
Okay but why would any NDP voter ever vote conservative. Is that what you are arguing? Or do you think some previously liberal voters would vote conservative?
You would probably get some NDP switching even though it would make little to no sense, but probably a lot more Liberal voters that would switch to maintain some “balance”. It might not be exactly 50-50, but it would be closer to that than to the 66-33 split it would logically be.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
I wasn't arguing for my solution. You sandbagged my point without anything useful to counter.
What are you even talking about? What's with the attitude?
You advocated for a specific style of solution, I pointed out this is not really all that great a type of governance. My "counter" was my original point about the problems of a governmental system that requires multi-party consensus to function. That is the "anything useful" here.
I think in general multi-party coalitions make it difficult for voters to figure out wtf they are even gonna get when they vote and governments that require concensus to act tend to just not or craft poor policy based on strange trades and payoffs.
I find the Liberals have been eating the NDP's lunch since Trudeau came on board. THey really should pivot hard back to being a workers rights/unions/socialist party to just differentiate themselves from the central Liberals.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
I don't think they really have a chance of being much more than that unless they do change. We have a split left and a unified right. You can only really cut the pie so many ways.
That seems to be the primary issue with left leaning governments.
Left-wing politics tends strongly towards stabbing the people easiest to reach and maybe getting to the people all the way over there on the other side of the spectrum later in my experience.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
PSN: Canadian_llama
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
I think the goal of moving to a system other than FPTP should be to get more people out voting and more people who feel that they have representatives in government, it shouldn't be to suppress one party or another no matter what your political leanings are. If your goal is to put left wing parties in power then you need some kind of dictatorship or only have one party running.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
What does "working together more openly" actually entail though?
Like coalition governments aren't more open. They are less open in many ways since rather then having an actual platform voters can make a decision on and vote for, you vote for a platform you want and then some number of these platforms get smashed together in a backroom deal and now, post-voters getting any say, the government's actual platform is unveiled.
eg - You voted for Party A based on lowering the cost of post-secondary education. Party A cuts a deal with Party Y, who don't support that initiative, to form a government. As part of that deal, the plan to lower post-secondary education costs is removed. What did you actually vote for then?
The idea that you will find a party that really agrees with you is a fallacy. It doesn't exist unless there is a party for each individual person. Organized politics is all about compromise because people need to agree to common goals and that means everyone loses something. Everyone has to hold their nose at some point.
It's not that coalition governments don't work it's that they don't work how you seem to think they do.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
I think the goal of moving to a system other than FPTP should be to get more people out voting and more people who feel that they have representatives in government, it shouldn't be to suppress one party or another no matter what your political leanings are. If your goal is to put left wing parties in power then you need some kind of dictatorship or only have one party running.
NO doubt but I was talking about our current FPTP system. The way our parties are split up right now it favors whatever side is more "unified".
I can't wait to move away from FTPT to a preferential system.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
I think the goal of moving to a system other than FPTP should be to get more people out voting and more people who feel that they have representatives in government, it shouldn't be to suppress one party or another no matter what your political leanings are. If your goal is to put left wing parties in power then you need some kind of dictatorship or only have one party running.
NO doubt but I was talking about our current FPTP system. The way our parties are split up right now it favors whatever side is more "unified".
I can't wait to move away from FTPT to a preferential system.
I agree, but give Shryke a minute to come in and shit on our discussion again.
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
What does "working together more openly" actually entail though?
Like coalition governments aren't more open. They are less open in many ways since rather then having an actual platform voters can make a decision on and vote for, you vote for a platform you want and then some number of these platforms get smashed together in a backroom deal and now, post-voters getting any say, the government's actual platform is unveiled.
eg - You voted for Party A based on lowering the cost of post-secondary education. Party A cuts a deal with Party Y, who don't support that initiative, to form a government. As part of that deal, the plan to lower post-secondary education costs is removed. What did you actually vote for then?
The idea that you will find a party that really agrees with you is a fallacy. It doesn't exist unless there is a party for each individual person. Organized politics is all about compromise because people need to agree to common goals and that means everyone loses something. Everyone has to hold their nose at some point.
It's not that coalition governments don't work it's that they don't work how you seem to think they do.
Uh, is that really necessary, telling me how I think?
Other than the negative framing you are trying to give it, your description of hashing out deals to put two at first separate platforms together into one that forms the governing body is what I think would happen and what I would want to happen, that's real politik that is inclusive, rather than just a frame work of being the Official Opposition. I am not opposed to MPs or MLAs switching parties, and within the context of being able to negotiate themselves into a place in governance in a proportionally represented seating, that would suit me just fine in representing cooperation in politics among our representatives.
It would be open in that our representatives would no longer have to unite behind a single banner (see: Conservatives), but instead have hyphenated banners (see: NDP-Green BC Government). I think it would have been more open to have the Conservatives call themselves the Reform-Progressive Conservative Coalition or the BC Liberals called the BC Conservative-Liberal Coalition. It would be a more honest label, lead to a whole lot less confusion, and better represents that politics is more nuanced than the bullshit pedaled years ago that a coalition is undemocratic.
I want to stop having to "strategic vote" and vote against a particular platform, rather I want to vote for something ranked - the proportional representation would just be doing what we do as voters, negotiate and compromise so we can be as one, Canadian. I'm done with politics that says we vote together as the biggest block and anyone who doesn't isn't really holding Canadian values. I want to share my Canadian value with others, see where it matches up, and we can come to a cooperative agreement on which priorities we will tackle first and with the greatest vigor, while ignoring far fewer than is currently possible under FPTP. It would be codifying what we already aspire to be as Canadians, civil and caring of views other than our own.
So, as surprising as it may be given the tone of your post, I agree with you that's how coalition governments work but I don't think FPTP is the path by which our Canadian Parliamentary Democracy leads to agreeing on common goals. Even the Conservative Party agrees with me on this, their leadership convention? Uses a Ranked Ballot. Yet for some reason that's not good enough for all Canadian voters, hmm...
I'm a big fan of anything that forces parties to actually work together to govern rather than slamming edicts down everyone's throat. The CPC and Liberals have both pissed me off in that area, though admittedly the CPC were far worse.
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
I think the goal of moving to a system other than FPTP should be to get more people out voting and more people who feel that they have representatives in government, it shouldn't be to suppress one party or another no matter what your political leanings are. If your goal is to put left wing parties in power then you need some kind of dictatorship or only have one party running.
NO doubt but I was talking about our current FPTP system. The way our parties are split up right now it favors whatever side is more "unified".
I can't wait to move away from FTPT to a preferential system.
I agree, but give Shryke a minute to come in and shit on our discussion again.
This is far below the level of discourse expected in this thread.
I get what Shryke is saying in that coalition governments are more vulnerable to compromise than a single "majority" government and that there can be unintended consequences. If I vote for a party that wants to allow ridesharing but by necessity they merge with a party that doesn't allow that I may be Pissed off when that gets dropped. However if no coalition happens I can be reasonably confident that a policy I voted for will be implemented (with the huge caveat that campaign promises don't always come to be).
That said, I still think it's a more inclusive way to govern and would be in support of something like STV. It would be messier than FPTP but it would also be a death knell to social conservative (regressive) parties. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on one's perspective.
Tldr; non-FPTP systems have their own challenges and its a judgement call for whether or not you think those problems are worse than the ones we have today.
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Not to say that internal politics and whatnot aren't worthy of discussion and addressing, but having watched the bullshit down south, I am not eager to repeat both letting their pot stirring affect an outcome, nor failing to act in an appropriate preventative fashion.
For all the pride we might take in being all the positive things that come with the Canadian label, we also know there are pockets of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and more, all present within our provinces and cities.
How we identify it, how we handle it, how we handle our friends and family members posting bullshit on social media and trying to drum up the same vitriol, are going to be things we have to assess and address.
I'd sooner drink bleach than vote Conservative but I really don't want to reward Liberal fuckery either.
This would be a perfect time for the NDP to do literally anything but they seem content to pretend they don't exist. I haven't heard jack about them in forever.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
They're doin' stuff.
We share a maritime border with Russia in the Arctic. People forget about it because they can't see it on a map and they don't visualize the earth as a globe. And they forget that the arctic is melting, opening up precious transportation lanes and natural resources. All of which Russia definitely wants to take away from us. Nothing would make them happier than sending us on a Trumpian downward spiral of internal feuding while they pull a Crimea on our northern holdings.
I'm not terribly convinced that proportional (or similar) representation ultimately leads to significant differences in policy outcomes. Depending on how its constructed, it just incentivizes organizing what are now factions in individual parties into parties themselves, which then have to cooperate in a single government, in any case.
There's probably a lot of research done on the topic that I'm not aware of, but that's my impression.
Where exactly? I'm just curious. Because I'm looking at a globe, and the only Canada-Russia connection I can see is at virtually the north pole. Greenland gets in the way of everything else.
I dunno... I think if anything the liberals have been trying too hard not to slam edicts down people's throats, honestly.
When they set up the body to take a look at changing FPTP, they specifically made it so that they didn't have a majority, and tried to figure it out democratically instead of just deciding on whatever they thought would work best for them and ramming it through the way the Conservatives would have.
That ended up being an issue because it turns out that there is no clear favorite among Canadians polled or amongst the political parties, so changes didn't go anywhere. I am actually having a hard time figuring out how I would have wanted the Liberals to act- just change things however they wanted because they have a mandate, against the wishes of the minority? But I definitely don't think they've gone the slamming edict route, unless you have some good examples?
Why?
Like, to take some topical examples, neither the coalition governments in the UK or Israel have shown this to be a well of great policy because of cooperation.
This is the first link I could find. It's a blog, but it seems like a good one. They map it out this way:
So what's your better solution then?
This is not an argument for your system. You haven't even covered why it would be better then the current one. Coalition governments don't tend to work the way people think they do was my point.
And systems that do work that way, requiring parties to work together to get shit done, exist to. Look down south, that's what the US is and it's not lacking for dysfunction.
The problem is then they end up back at square one as the perennial 3rd party. The whole reason they moved away from that position was to try and be one of the parties that actually gets to govern.
That becomes an existential problem then. If the Liberals and the NDP hold basically the same positions, why not merge and absolutely clobber the Conservatives at the ballot box?
Of course, there's no guarantee that the next Liberal leader will be as progressive as Trudeau, though he *is* setting the stage for that by giving opportunities to younger and more progressive MPs in his cabinet.
It's a tough place for the NDP right now. I'd personally appreciate Singh taking a seat in Parliament and using his position to keep the Liberals honest on the progressive promises they've made. At the same time, I totally understand that he has greater ambitions than that.
I don't think they really have a chance of being much more than that unless they do change. We have a split left and a unified right. You can only really cut the pie so many ways.
I wasn't arguing for my solution. You sandbagged my point without anything useful to counter.
That seems to be the primary issue with left leaning governments.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
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You would probably get some NDP switching even though it would make little to no sense, but probably a lot more Liberal voters that would switch to maintain some “balance”. It might not be exactly 50-50, but it would be closer to that than to the 66-33 split it would logically be.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
What are you even talking about? What's with the attitude?
You advocated for a specific style of solution, I pointed out this is not really all that great a type of governance. My "counter" was my original point about the problems of a governmental system that requires multi-party consensus to function. That is the "anything useful" here.
I think in general multi-party coalitions make it difficult for voters to figure out wtf they are even gonna get when they vote and governments that require concensus to act tend to just not or craft poor policy based on strange trades and payoffs.
Left-wing politics tends strongly towards stabbing the people easiest to reach and maybe getting to the people all the way over there on the other side of the spectrum later in my experience.
Shitty neo liberals and even shittier ones
Thatd be real fun
And sometimes they do work functionally, like we have a Canadian current example to go by right here in BC. It would work better with proportional representation because more voters would have a clearer route to a equitable share of the representation in Legislature and Parliament.
We also already have less obvious forms of coalitions in Canada, they are just hidden under "mergers", like what happened with the Reform and the PC years ago. That's basicly what people are proposing when they say have the NDP merge with the Liberals to form a second Big Tent party, like in the US, thanks FPTP.
We deserve more nuanced choices on the ballot that reflects our multi-cultural Canada, not less. Inclusive choices meant to have to work together openly, not exclusivity where you are either a part of Club A or Club B and damned if you find yourself unable to agree with either and are forced to hold your nose every time you vote or not vote at all.
While I agree in principle this leads to conservatives in power way more often then they should.
Hey we're finally making some progress here, both for workers and for women and-
-oh no....
It's not like it's a surprise that he's a misogynistic, racist, idiotic asshole. He wears it with pride.
I think the goal of moving to a system other than FPTP should be to get more people out voting and more people who feel that they have representatives in government, it shouldn't be to suppress one party or another no matter what your political leanings are. If your goal is to put left wing parties in power then you need some kind of dictatorship or only have one party running.
What does "working together more openly" actually entail though?
Like coalition governments aren't more open. They are less open in many ways since rather then having an actual platform voters can make a decision on and vote for, you vote for a platform you want and then some number of these platforms get smashed together in a backroom deal and now, post-voters getting any say, the government's actual platform is unveiled.
eg - You voted for Party A based on lowering the cost of post-secondary education. Party A cuts a deal with Party Y, who don't support that initiative, to form a government. As part of that deal, the plan to lower post-secondary education costs is removed. What did you actually vote for then?
The idea that you will find a party that really agrees with you is a fallacy. It doesn't exist unless there is a party for each individual person. Organized politics is all about compromise because people need to agree to common goals and that means everyone loses something. Everyone has to hold their nose at some point.
It's not that coalition governments don't work it's that they don't work how you seem to think they do.
NO doubt but I was talking about our current FPTP system. The way our parties are split up right now it favors whatever side is more "unified".
I can't wait to move away from FTPT to a preferential system.
I agree, but give Shryke a minute to come in and shit on our discussion again.
To be fair, he was well ahead of his time in selling drugs ages ago and the feds are just catching up with him now on that one!
Uh, is that really necessary, telling me how I think?
Other than the negative framing you are trying to give it, your description of hashing out deals to put two at first separate platforms together into one that forms the governing body is what I think would happen and what I would want to happen, that's real politik that is inclusive, rather than just a frame work of being the Official Opposition. I am not opposed to MPs or MLAs switching parties, and within the context of being able to negotiate themselves into a place in governance in a proportionally represented seating, that would suit me just fine in representing cooperation in politics among our representatives.
It would be open in that our representatives would no longer have to unite behind a single banner (see: Conservatives), but instead have hyphenated banners (see: NDP-Green BC Government). I think it would have been more open to have the Conservatives call themselves the Reform-Progressive Conservative Coalition or the BC Liberals called the BC Conservative-Liberal Coalition. It would be a more honest label, lead to a whole lot less confusion, and better represents that politics is more nuanced than the bullshit pedaled years ago that a coalition is undemocratic.
I want to stop having to "strategic vote" and vote against a particular platform, rather I want to vote for something ranked - the proportional representation would just be doing what we do as voters, negotiate and compromise so we can be as one, Canadian. I'm done with politics that says we vote together as the biggest block and anyone who doesn't isn't really holding Canadian values. I want to share my Canadian value with others, see where it matches up, and we can come to a cooperative agreement on which priorities we will tackle first and with the greatest vigor, while ignoring far fewer than is currently possible under FPTP. It would be codifying what we already aspire to be as Canadians, civil and caring of views other than our own.
So, as surprising as it may be given the tone of your post, I agree with you that's how coalition governments work but I don't think FPTP is the path by which our Canadian Parliamentary Democracy leads to agreeing on common goals. Even the Conservative Party agrees with me on this, their leadership convention? Uses a Ranked Ballot. Yet for some reason that's not good enough for all Canadian voters, hmm...
This is far below the level of discourse expected in this thread.
That said, I still think it's a more inclusive way to govern and would be in support of something like STV. It would be messier than FPTP but it would also be a death knell to social conservative (regressive) parties. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on one's perspective.
Tldr; non-FPTP systems have their own challenges and its a judgement call for whether or not you think those problems are worse than the ones we have today.