Canadian Election 2011

For general discussion, questions about the Canadian political sytem, and musings of the political kind.

I find it strange but savvy that the Liberal Party is advertising on youtube. When I go to see a video of Hitler and Darth Vader rap battling it's weird to see politcal advertising.

edited 4th Apr '11 1:45:29 PM by Erock

I guess the other thread died a horrible death.

So the liberal platform was released, how about we start the discussion off with that.

The "family-oriented" aspect of it is obviously aimed at... not my age group, but I suppose it is reasonable. He promises a bunch of stuff based on raising corporate income tax back up to 18% and cancelling the F-35 single-source purchase from Lockheed Martin (considering that Harper had an MP that was a lockheed martin lobbyist standing to gain millions on the purchase, that seems like a good reduction of corruption right there).

I do take issue with the change in his "green shift". We should have a carbon tax. Cap and trade does not work.

Ugh. Canada's big parties are all pretty terrible.

The Conservatives are fascists, what with their chest-beating, pro-war ranting, and advocacies of more prisons (not to mention their refusal to end the stupid drug war). They were actually great for a while, but not anymore.

The NDP are socialists, and they royally screwed up British Columbia during their short period of dominance over there. I wouldn't trust those clowns to run a shrimp stand, let alone the government.

The Liberals don't seem to have concrete views. They endorse whatever big government initiative is considered to be "trendy". At the very least they aren't Conservatives.

Probably going to go for the Liberals. Back in the 70s and 80s, the Libertarians were looking great, and then in the 80s and 90s the Libertarians had seemingly co-opted the conservative parties. Too bad that didn't last. Now the survivors of that would seem to have gone into a political stasis or are stranded in the now Neoconservative Conservative party.

I'm seriously considering staying home for this vote; everyone seems to be a worse choice than everyone else. Harper is perfectly content to bar journalists from answering questions and to coast without answering for any indiscretions or boondoggles; Ignatieff is a pompous git who has nothing real to offer; Layton is a nice guy but many of his policies would ruin the country. Meh.

Well I think more people need to come out for this one.

Harper is now using the police to throw out anybody who disagrees with him at rallies, or is suspected of being affiliated with other political parties. He's attacking university students, veterans and what not. If we don't make him pay for these practices I'm not sure what he might do with his illegal police powers with a majority government.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/05/pol-fighter-jet-cost.html

I love this one.

So basically reaffirming that the Tory estimate for the F-35 purchase is at least 4x lower than even the lowest realistic estimate of cost. The best part is the US military analyst making a roundabout statement that the plane is total crap and not worth the cost at all.

Apparently 75 times 4 is 150 now? And calling it "underperforming" is lulzy. It's better than basically everything out there except the F-22 (which the US isn't exporting).

The question is, though, if they cancel the F-35, what're they gonna use instead?

edited 5th Apr '11 6:38:33 PM by NativeJovian

Don't even think we need them.

Tory estimate was 10 billion, while the PBO estimated that it was 40 billion. Remember that the majority of the cost is about maintenance not purchase price.

If we don't get the F-35, there's plenty of other choices. The point is to hold an open competition to study the difference planes out there. It is what the government did when we purchased the CF-18 fighterjet fleet. We should do the same for our next generation of fighterjets. It doesn't make sense to go with a sole-source contract, without a bidding process, on a plane which the Tories have party members that are lobbyists of Lockheed Martin.

• F-35 can't even fly across Canada
• F-35 has trouble in cold weather

Those sound like traits that might be a problem for a fighterjet defending Canadian air space?

The only reason the military is supporting the purchase is that they're hedging against getting nothing at all. Look at India...

• Rafale
• Eurofighter Typhoon
• Mig-35
• Su-33
• F-18 Super Hornet

And so on. How is F-35 the only choice?

EDIT: I separated Eurofighter Typhoon into two lines :D

edited 5th Apr '11 7:47:15 PM by breadloaf

Eurofighter Typhoon is one plane...

Well, the Greens are cool. They want to legalize weed.

Not that they don't suck on pretty much everything else... Still, if you're gonna bring in some statist authoritarians anyway, at least bring in the ones that let ya get stoned in peace.

edited 6th Apr '11 12:43:52 AM by SavageHeathen

Conservative policy is not always the best, but at least it works.

Isn't weed already legal in Canada?

No, the conservatives screwed that up.

It's a popular misconception.

We were going to decriminalise but the tories shelved the legislation. It's legal for medicinal purposes.

Savage, I think you might be mistaken about Green policy on weed. They want decriminalisation as far as I know, not legalisation.

My survey results indicate that I lean mostly Green, so my vote is a toss up between the NDP and the Greens in my riding.

The main problem I have with the Tories is that they are attacking the institutions of democracy in Canada and blatantly disregard due process.

They've shot down legislation voted through the house by stacking the senate, which is unheardof in all of Canada's history.

He's also the first Prime Minister in history to use prorogation to prevent his government from collapsing after he had lost the confidence of the house.

He's using police to throw people out of public areas to give himself a better photo op at rallies, which breaches separation of powers (he should not have control over police forces). I stopped caring about his non-existent policies, and promises of tax cuts in 5 years, when he's so busy attacking Canada.

He has had his offices raided by the RCMP for Election fraud, via a money laundering scheme worth between a million and ten million dollars.

He attempted to overrule the Canada Nuclear Safety Commission and even fired the head after she raised concerns over safety problems at the Chalk River Nuclear power plant. Now the plant is shutdown because it started leaking radioactive heavy water, which was exactly the problem the CNSC wanted to fix. On top of this, he wants to end Canada's involved in medical radioisotopes, used to cure cancer, when we produce 1/3 of the world's supply. Apparently we should give this up.

He offered a million dollar bribe to MP Cadman for his vote in order to take down Paul Martin when he was prime minister. Too bad the investigation into that got snuffed out.

He covered up war crimes committed in Afghanistan and then shut down the inquiry into the allegations.

And one last thing is his public intention to end the publicly-funded elections. What's going to replace that money? Is he going to un-ban corporate donations? He already has lobbyists running as MP candidates this election. One is from Lockheed Martin pushing Canada to buy the F-35s. Why are politicians deciding what military hardware we need? Shouldn't the Canadian generals figure that out and put out recommendations to our M Ps? It's backwards.

: What do you mean they are still in office and not in jail?!

^ My thoughts exactly.

(Link for this paragraph - http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/06/cv-election-liberal-whites.html ) It's not a question of whether I'm conservative, liberal, green, ndp or bloc, the tories are just straight up committing crimes and getting away with it. Look at the difference between the parties. Today there are allegations that one of the liberal MP candidates is racist against aboriginals/inuit, Ignatieff found out and then canned him immediately. You compare that to Harper, who even after being hounded by the media that his top advisor, Carson, is a past and still a currently active criminal, still threw up his hands going "not my problem, it's the media making up lies because of a liberal conspiracy!"

(Link for this paragraph - http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/06/cv-election-campaign-wallin-040611.html ) So while the Liberal leader took action and responsibility, Harper is still denying everything and allowing criminals to continue operating in our government. Then he has a conservative senator make a vague accusation that "Liberals also have criminals working for them" but can't name any names. Real mature.

—-

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/06/cv-election-day12.html

Harper promises to put some money into helping recognise foreign credentials. The number announced is somewhat meaningless without context though, since I'm not sure if the Tories are promising spending that is any different from previous budgets on helping immigrants retrain. However, they're correct that immigration levels have been high under their reign since I don't think they actually did much to control it one way or another (I have no issue with that).

I also see he's still up to his usual tactic of refusing to answer any questions. The problem with the Carson case is that he keeps blaming others, or the bureaucracy, or whatever but refuses to accept responsibility himself. He screwed up. He didn't know he hired a criminal. He can't just pretend that it is not their fault. Either he was maliciously culpable in hiring a criminal, or he had incompetently done so without prior knowledge. In both cases, Harper screwed up.

Weed might as well be legal here in Toronto. Ignatieff is actually my MP for my riding, so if he wins it'd be cool to make sure Etobicoke is represented. I like the new platform, the cut of the stupid purchases and the child care bonuses are good. Chld care is a massive issue here: it costs way too much to raise a kid soley because pof that. One of my teachers said it was more feasible for his wife not to work and raise kids tthen to work. That is not sound economics, Stephen Harper.

edited 6th Apr '11 5:59:51 PM by Erock

Actually to add to that (despite child care not affecting me yet) is that it costs roughly $600 per child per month for day care. Canada ranks near the last in OECD for child care slots (having only enough space for 20% of children). So basically, you're asking women to have a certain salary before they should take on a job and limiting the number of children.

I was more interested in his tuition fee subsidies (upwards to 1500 per student) which for the average university (not the one I went to sadly :P ), pays for a large portion of the tuition fees. Education is good toward improving human capital and increasing economic productivity, a category in which Canada has been lacking in. We've increased our GDP per capita mostly via working longer hours and adding a greater proportion of the population working (ie. having women work) and not through working better per hour.

I'd like to see some politicians tackle net neutrality and internet infrastructure. Canada moved from first to near the last in ranking for internet technology that we pioneered. It's sad to see our throne gone like that but I feel Canada can move back up to that position. Our main issue is that private monopolies have negative incentives for improving internet for people, increasing bandwidth capacity or improving internet speeds. It's much more profitable to let the infrastructure, paid for by taxpayers, to rot and just overcharge us for everything at 10 000% profit (which sadly isn't even a made up number). It costs them roughly between 1 cent and 3 cents to transfer a gigabyte of data over the internet land lines yet they charge over $2 per gigabyte.

$2 PER GIGABYTE?

Didn't y'all get a flat rate by now?

I have a Modest Proposal that could help both the US and Canada. We'll give you Alaska, including all mineral rights (maybe you could top off your daycare subsidies), in exchange for keeping Sarah Palin. Not only would you get a boost in revenue, she'll make Harper look like Pierre Trudeau! Win-win! Granted she might not understand parliamentary democracy at first, but I'll sure she'll jump at the chance of having a Maple Syrup Tea Party as a majority goverment.

Hmm we get money in exchange for taking care of Sarah Palin you say? We'll just put her in charge of Arctic defence and she can be the administrative leader of the Canadian Rangers. Harper already took away their guns.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/07/cv-election-day13.html

Greens put out their platform.

• family income splitting, even for single parent families (splitting it with an adult child)
• no income tax below 20k/year income
• a "toxic tax" based on the toxicity of emissions;
• cancellation of tax credits for logging and mineral exploration;
• legalization and taxation of marijuana;
• a reduction in military spending and a focus on peacekeeping.

I guess they are legalising marijuana unlike what I had thought previously which is a fairly bold move I'd say considering the tories are in power. She's also going to model anti-marijuana campaign after the anti-smoking campaign. That's very good in my opinion since Canada has the lowest smoking rate in the world thanks to a good anti-smoking campaign.

Did anyone actually vote for them?