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Sorry, but basic income is anything but a step in the "right" direction. It would come at the cost of the existing "social wage" (the welfare state), and it would have the effect of driving down wages. It also fails to address anti-social attitudes that emerge with long-term unemployment. There is an anti-poverty alternative, but in the form of massive but flexible zero-unemployment program (flexible because it goes past the usual public works schemes).
Argentina tried a limited version of Minsky's program when it had its crash a decade ago. It worked.
Those homeless people could be given "gainful employment" (living wages and benefits, as you posted, but I also add favourable workweek hours) by cleaning streets, doing child care, etc. as part of a new government program for zero unemployment. They would have skills to gain from this, since this program is specifically meant to take people in as they are with their skills or lack thereof (per Minsky's papers).
Even the more well-off folks pulling off a career change could earn a living in the employer-of-last-resort program while searching for a new career.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the Greens do not take from the Conservatives in any significant number.
The Greens are a bizarre mixture. They have "green capitalists" in their ranks but also a "radical democrat" component as well.
What annoys me is their claim that they actually "transcend" left/right, when in reality they just take some positions that could be classified as left and others as right. On the whole I would put them to the right of the NDP and the left of the Liberals.
I find the "transcending" thing annoying as well. What I want to know, and what I press them on, is how far do their left-ish policies go? You can talk about inequality and poverty, a guaranteed income and tax reform, but at the end of the day we don't know how strong these policies are. Would they reduce inequality a little bit? A lot? That's the important issue. I suppose it depends how strong the left and right camps are in the party?
I have not been back to this thread for a bit --
As poetic as post 20 seems to be, it is far from stupid to say the left is small in Canada and the right is big.
You can come at this in several ways-- it is true if you define the Liberals as a left party you could start to make that case but you have to be very right wing to do that.
If you go by polls and parties: Let's agree, as I think we can that the Cons are right wing. They alone represent some 30%. Then how many Liberals do we add from their just under 30%? Do you think a third of that is too much? (Now we are at 40%) The environment is not an exclusively left concern. Of the 7% or so Greens ( whether they show up and vote or not), how many of them are right wing? Is 3% reasonable? How about the BQ, a daughter party of the Progressive Conservative Party, of its 10% how many are right wing? (Is someone saying you have to be left wing to be a nationalist?) Can we assume 3% there? How about a further one percent from the fringe crackpot parties? I think conservatively (pardon the pun) we get to the high 40s. Interestingly this is still below the high water mark for the old PC party.
Then we can assume spread through a number of parties a centre of perhaps 30% and a left of perhaps 20%.
I can still be out quite a bit before the left becomes as much as half the size of the right in Canada.
Then we can look at a number of other measures-- people's attitudes to labour and unions, capital, taxation and business. Indeed, when the left makes any progress in Canada it does so by convincing almost the entire centre to join them in one initiative. And then, barely 50% come on side.
I can, in spite of the over the top language from LTJ, see a point to his argument. This comes from the fact that there are no defined blocks of people here but a continuum that goes from one end to another. You can choose to draw the lines to some degree where you wish. My point, stupid to him but not by any means universally, is that you cannot draw that line neatly at the right edge of the Liberals, and you cannot place a nationalist party and an environmental party in whole in one place without extremely selective and wishful analysis. Of course, my choices for drawing these lines seems to be further to the left than LTJ's.
LP- I agree with all of your post except the part where you find an average and place them on the left-right spectrum.
An average is not always an accurate measure of anything. By the same argument, if I take a far left socialist and a far right conservative together are they centre? Perhaps together they are incoherent except on the specific policy they find agreement. This is the problem with parties defined by one issue--
I think it is more accurate to absolutely refuse to place the party on the spectrum because the party is not defined by the spectrum. The cons, Liberals and NDP are in fact defined by their place on the spectrum while these other parties do not fit becasue they are not. Members of those parties could fit anywhere along it and an average is not relevant.
If either of those parties found themselves in government, they would then of course be forced over a short time in to finding a place on that spectrum but as long as they are in opposition their incoherence, or vagueness if you want to be more kind, in a left-right way can be preserved.