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The results of the 2011 federal election have sparked a flurry of responses, most of them marked by mixed emotion. Many of us on the left are celebrating the dramatic surge of the NDP and its historic win of 102 seats. But the NDP's success has been tempered, even overshadowed, by the election of a majority Conservative government.
So what does that mean for the left? Are we doomed for the next four years?
Far from it.
In fact, the prospects for the left are quite good, although not without many dangers. But it all depends on what we do in the days and weeks ahead. If the left can tap into the progressive sentiment that propelled the NDP from fourth place to Official Opposition, it has the potential to build deeper, stronger and more confident movements -- even under a Harper majority.
But first: let's look at the Tories' victory
Conservative support increased by less than two per cent -- about 633,000 votes, most of which came from the Liberals. Over 60 per cent of the popular vote was against the Tories. Voter turnout was only slightly up at 61.4 per cent. This means that Harper won a majority with just 24 per cent of the electorate -- hardly a shift to the right.
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Harper's success comes at the expense of the Liberals, who have lost roughly 850,000 votes in each of the last two elections. Their collapse is part of a broader trend. In the last five elections, the total combined vote for the Conservatives and the Liberals -- both corporate parties -- has steadily declined: from 78 per cent in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2011, a drop of almost 30 points.
These figures contradict the mainstream consensus that Canadians have become "more conservative." The opposite is true: more people than ever are rejecting the corporate parties.
That represents an opening for the left, not a setback -- despite the outcome of the election. Without a doubt, the Conservatives will govern as if they have a massive mandate, but their majority is not without contradictions. The left can take advantage of these.
For example, the incoming government is not a new one: just a slightly bigger version of the last one. That means it won't escape the scandals of the previous Parliament, the way a freshly elected government would. As more information becomes available, as it surely will after the election, Harper will face criticism over the Auditor General's report on G-20 spending, declassified documents on Afghan detainees, funding cuts to Planned Parenthood and the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF's case is still before the Federal Court) and skyrocketing costs for new F-35 fighter jets -- to name just a few.
It's true that the Conservatives have so far managed to deflect much of this criticism, but they no longer have the opposition parties and the minority Parliament to blame. As a majority government, the Tories should now prepare for the criticism to stick. The honeymoon, if there is one, will be short.
Who's on what base?
The Conservatives face another problem: holding on to their broader -- and less conservative -- base of support. Harper tried to pass himself off as a moderate throughout the election, in order to attract Liberal voters. He also generally succeeded in keeping a lid on the most extreme social conservatives in caucus during the last Parliament. They won't be as willing to stay silent, now that Harper has a majority. In fact, they're already telling him it's payback time.
As anti-choice and anti-gay Tories become more vocal, Harper's recently enlarged base will likely split again.
The timing of Harper's victory poses another problem for the Conservatives. The Canadian economy is now, not surprisingly, beginning to sputter. Canada's GDP contracted by 0.2 per cent in February, after a measly 0.5 per cent expansion in January. The American and European economies are in worse shape, threatening double-dip slumps that would affect the global economy, including Canada's.
Harper's boasting about "sound economic management," coupled with his promise to create jobs, will likely ring hollow as the economy worsens. After taking credit during the election for the economy's performance, Harper will have difficulty deflecting responsibility if it tanks.
None of this is to suggest that the Conservatives won't be even more vicious and mean spirited than last time. They surely will be. We need a sober reading of what the Tories have in store for workers, First Nations communities, women, immigrants and refugees, and the social movements. But it's equally important for the left to recognize the weaknesses and contradictions of Harper's victory -- mainly to avoid the sense of demoralization and helplessness that, in some quarters, the Conservative majority seems to have inspired.
The NDP
Next, let's look at the rise of the NDP. Its growth in the polls is far more significant than the Tories': an increase of over 12 per cent, or about two million more votes. It nearly tripled its number of seats, going from 36 to 102. For a party that started the campaign in fourth place, this is a dramatic shift.
Not everyone on the left is impressed by the NDP's gains. Some lament the party's relatively moderate platform, saying there is nothing "radical" about it. Others argue that elections are meaningless because real change can never come through Parliament.
There's some truth to these arguments, but they miss the point. What matters more than what's actually in the NDP platform is the much wider perception of what the party stands for. This is what inspired so many ordinary people to vote NDP. They wanted real change and believed the NDP could bring it.
For example, I didn't hear anyone cite the NDP's promise to maintain Tory levels of military spending or to keep corporate taxes lower than the U.S. as a reason to vote NDP (both are in the platform, if you didn't know). Instead, people cited the party's opposition to the war in Afghanistan and its commitment to cancel billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts.
These differences matter. The left needs to take seriously why so many people voted NDP, especially if it wants to involve them in the struggles that continue in between elections.
Similarly, the left must recognize that most people who vote in elections do so because they believe it will make a difference. Again, what matters more here is the desire for change, not how people attempt to make it. Likewise, we shouldn't interpret the act of voting as opposition to making change by other means -- like getting involved in the social movements. Voting and activism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can complement each other.
This is an important point for the NDP, especially if it wants to build on its current electoral success. The backdrop of its surge -- and of the steady decline of the overall corporate vote in federal politics -- is a decade of rising social movements. The mobilization against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001 laid the foundation for an unprecedented anti-war movement that followed years later, keeping the Chrétien Liberals from supporting the Iraq War.
The anti-war movement may be smaller today, but it nevertheless played a role in pushing the NDP to adopt a "troops out" policy on Afghanistan during its convention in Quebec City in 2006 -- a position that has helped distinguish the NDP from the Liberals, especially in Quebec. In turn, the NDP's official anti-war stance has helped the anti-war movement, legitimizing its demand to withdraw troops and helping to consolidate anti-war sentiment among the wider public, which is now well over 60 per cent.
While the social movements still have a long way to go -- especially organized labour -- they continue to mobilize in ways that express a growing desire for change. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and the Arab world are examples of this. So too are the mass demonstrations against austerity in Greece, Spain, Ireland and the U.K. Even the Wisconsin "uprising" that saw thousands occupy the state Capitol to defend collective bargaining is part of a wider mood to fight for a better world.
This is the context in which the "orange wave" emerged. And it's the secret to its ongoing success. The surge that boosted the NDP in Parliament has even more potential to boost the movements in the street-if the left can connect to it. Indeed, for the NDP to consolidate and build on its electoral gains, it will surely need the support of a mass movement.
The NDP is being attacked by its enemies
The NDP is already under attack, not even a week after the election, and long before a single MP has been sworn in. In the coming Parliament, there will be tremendous pressure on the party to move to the centre, abandon its "idealistic" policies (like its opposition to the war in Afghanistan) and act like a "respectable" Opposition -- in other words, more like the Liberals. If this happens, it will be a disaster.
The NDP attracted record support in this election because voters saw it as a clear alternative to the Liberals, even if their platforms weren't all that different (aside from the question of the war). It's the perception between the two that made all the difference. Worryingly, there are some who locate the party's success in its relatively moderate platform. This is a dangerous argument that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the NDP's becoming merely an orange version of the Liberals.
This is why the NDP needs the movements: first, to defend it against the right-wing attacks that have only just begun and that will escalate the closer it comes to forming government; and second (and more importantly), to hold its feet to the fire, to keep it close to its base, and to give it the confidence to express in Parliament the demands of the social movements and the needs of ordinary working people.
This is also why the movements need the NDP. The Official Opposition has a far greater reach and a much bigger platform than the movements do on their own. If the left can develop and cultivate a meaningful relationship with the NDP (this doesn't necessarily mean becoming a party member), it has the potential to draw new people into the day-to-day struggles that carry on in between elections, and that likewise shape the issues over which elections are fought.
The left is well poised to do this. Some of the best activists and organizers on the left are either NDP members or supporters. Indeed, many in the NDP caucus are activists themselves or long-standing supporters of the movements. Among Toronto MPs, Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) is a backer of the War Resisters Support Campaign; Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park) has been a fixture in the anti-war movement; and Rathika Sitsabaiesan (Scarborough-Rouge River) was a key organizer in the anti-prorogation movement.
The connection to the movement is also evident among the fresh crop of NDP MPs elected in Quebec: many of them are young women who have been involved in all kinds of local struggles. Some are even members of the left-wing political party Québec solidaire, a group that describes itself as "a party of the ballot box and the street." Both the NDP and the left in English Canada could learn a lot from the recent successes of left re-groupment in Quebec: those lessons could help build a bigger NDP in Parliament and bigger movements in the streets.
While we're on Quebec, the left must resist the argument that the NDP's near-sweep in the province is an endorsement of federalism and a rejection of Quebec's aspirations for self-determination. Judy Rebick's post-election analysis makes this point crystal clear. The left and the NDP alike must continue to build on the success of the party's Sherbrooke Declaration, instead of retreating from it to placate rigid federalists in English Canada.
First attack will be on the unions
The left will face these challenges sooner rather than later, especially on the labour front. Harper has been craving a majority in order to implement his own austerity agenda, which will include sustained attacks on public sector workers. Postal workers are first in the line of fire: Canada Post is trying to reduce wages for new hires by 30 per cent -- creating a two-tiered workforce -- while cutting benefits, sick leave and pensions.
In response, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have given their leadership its biggest strike mandate ever -- 94.5 per cent -- following the union's largest turnout ever. The union could strike as early as May 24.
There is now a line in the sand in this fight. And the left has an important role to play in it: generating support for postal workers among fellow trade unionists, in the social movements and among the wider public. That support will likewise be necessary to push the NDP to back postal workers in Parliament, and to resist the pressure from the Conservatives, the Liberals and the mainstream media to "be reasonable" (i.e. force concessions). The outcome of the battle between Harper and CUPW will affect every other struggle that will follow. And there are many more on the horizon.
The election of a Conservative majority government is nothing to celebrate, but neither is it reason to despair. The Tory victory is fraught with contradictions that actually represent opportunities for the left to reach a much bigger audience, and to convince more people to become involved in the social movements -- especially on the labour front. The NDP's rise to Official Opposition status could dramatically accelerate this process -- if the left seriously engages the NDP base and connects to the surge that sent a record number of NDP MPs to Ottawa.
The next four years don't have to be miserable. In fact, they could be quite exciting. But it depends on whether the left can move past the immediate sense of demoralization (that many of us are feeling in the wake of Harper's majority) and seize on the tremendous opportunities that exist to engage the growing desire for change.
That desire needs expression both in Parliament and in the streets. When it comes to stopping Harper, at least one campaign slogan still rings true: "Together, we can do this."
James Clark is an anti-war activist in Toronto. Although not an NDP member, he gladly volunteered for Peggy Nash on Election Day. You can follow him on Twitter at @2jamesclark.
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Mr. Clark, it is wrong to state: "Conservative support increased by less than two per cent
-- about 633,000 votes, most of which came from the Liberals." They were not big L Liberals,
they were small L swing voters. First of all, it's not like people who voted Conservative
wrote on their ballots, "Hi, I'm a Liberal" and then you or anyone else was able to
count those ballots to see how many Liberals had voted Conservative. Secondly,
the numbers show they were in fact swing voters who swung back to the Conservatives.
The so-called "soft 10%" between the Conservatives' base of 30% and their ceiling of 40%
is made up of swing voters who are between the Cons and Libs and swing back and forth
between the two camps. They are red tories and blue liberals. These small L blue liberals
are not to be confused with Liberals. They are not Liberals, they are swing voters. At the
beginning of the campaign, when the Cons were at 40%, the blue liberal swing voters were
going to vote for the Cons. Then during the campaign they were going to vote Liberal
which brought the Cons down to 35%, and the very end of the campaign they swung back
to the Cons, bringing them back up to 40%.
I'm a life-long NDP supporter, but I realize that a divided left can never win against a united right. That's why I am against falsely accusing Liberals of turning coat and voting for the Conservatives. We need to work with the Liberals to defeat Harper. I know many NDP supporters now believe the NDP can win on its own, but that is unlikely to happen. First of all, the NDP scares the swing voters back into the Con camp. Those right-of-centre voters can be persuaded to vote for the Liberals, but the NDP is too far to the left for them. If they get scared into voting Conservative, that gives Harper the 40% he needs to form a majority.
Secondly, you have to look realistically at where this upsurge in NDP support came from. It wasn't because a lot of Canadians shifted to the left. It was because a lot of Quebecers shifted to federalism. We Quebecers are more to the left than the rest of Canada. The NDP's platform is almost identical to the BQ's. When Duceppe paired up with the PQ to crow about imminent separatism just before the debates, Quebecers rejected the BQ and migrated en masse to the NDP, the federalist counterpart to the BQ. The Quebec surge sent ripples through the other provinces, and some people there jumped on the bandwagon. But the reality is that the NDP gained 58 seats in Quebec, and only 6 in the nine other provinces and territories. This was a Quebec phenomenon of rejecting separatism a great deal more than it was a Canadian phenomenon of embracing more left-wing politics.
So if we want to defeat Harper in 4-5 years, the NDP can't do it alone. We will need the Liberals. That's just reality.
I agree with Michele227. James Clark doesn't get it right at all. In fact, there is quite a lot of rose-colored-glasses bad commentary coming from some so-called "analysts", and rabble is publishing more than its share of off-the-wall opinion pieces. A number of very unusual circumstances came together to allow the New Democrats to finish a strong second -- the main occurrences being the collapse of the Bloc and thousands of soft Liberal supporters in English Canada, knowing that Iggy couldn't do the job, wrongly believing that the NDP might be able to defeat Harper. The accidental second-place finisher, Jack Layton, apparently thinks the NDP won all those votes on their own merrit, and now he will do everything possible durting the next four years to try to position the party for a run to defeat the Cons. (Meanwhile, because he thinks he might be able to become Number 1, Jack will not champion proportional representation.) He will do this by moving the NDP to very close to the centre of the political spectrum -- and then he may as well change the name of the party to the Liberals. Does Jack's behaviour remind anyone of Bob Rae when he tried to cozy up to the establishment in Ontario during his wasted one-term government in Ontartio?
The commenters here certainly have a better informed stance than the author, while I am anything but a life-long NDP supporter I think Michele227's analysis hit the nail on the head.
Information control like we have never seen before.
IF the naive swallow up the lies, expect a strong repressive government for years to come.
Indeed it will. But Clark doesn't mention whence this "tremendous pressure" will come to move to the centre. It will come, first and foremost, from the top echelons of the NDP. It is an axiom of leftist politics that a social-democratic opportunist, when presented with a sufficiently big opportunity, will move to the right in order to take advantage of it.
The NDP has been trying for years to replace the Liberals, and this election has opened up an unprecedented opportunity to do so. We can now expect the party to bury what's left of its leftist roots and pander to the remains of the Liberal Party base.
The NDP brass provided us with a recent glimpse of what is to come when they immediately went to DEFCON2 after Thomas Mulcair actually had the audacity to suggest that Barack Obama might not be telling the whole truth about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. We were promptly assured that the NDP has "no reason to doubt" the veracity of the U.S. government.
Blairism is about to come to Canada.
This is based on the assumption that the Liberal Party will revive. We will only come to know this as events unfold.
Personally, I think the Liberal Party has been destroyed forever caused by the scientific forces that drive the progress of history. One need only look at Western Europe for an example of this.
Simply put, this is the result of Harper's polarizing politics in Canada.
The Conservative Party has a clear set of core political values - it clearly stands for something.
The NDP has a clear set of core political vaules - it clearly stands for something.
The Liberal Party does not. It's the mushy middle. Since 2006, it sided with and propped up two Conservative minority governments. During this election, it was hard to tell the Liberal's social programs from the NDP's - the Liberals stole the NDP's platform in this area, the majority of Ignatieff's statements were (almost completely) verbatim from the NDP's platform. Yet voters looked at the Liberal's actions during the Conservative minority government years and saw they weren't offering anything significantly different from the Conservatives. The result? Voters who liked Conservative voted Conservative as there was no reason to vote Liberal to get more Conservative ("lite" perhaps) policy. Why vote for a substitute when you can get "the real thing"?
The way I see it, those who advocate for a revived Liberal Party are pro HarperCons who are alarmed at the rise of the NDP and want to do what they can to thwart the NDP by dividing the left by prolonging the life of the "undead" Liberal Party as long as possible.
Harper caused the polarization of politics in Canada.
If it comes back to hurt him and the Conservative Party to the gain of the NDP,
I will welcome this event with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.
Payback is a bitch, isn't it?
[Nick Fillmore on May 9, 2011 - 5:51pm.- Jack Layton, apparently thinks the NDP won all those votes on their own merrit, and now he will do everything possible durting the next four years to try to position the party for a run to defeat the Cons. (Meanwhile, because he thinks he might be able to become Number 1, Jack will not champion proportional representation.]
PR is a very big deal to me and I am essentially 'one of them' - Since 1978 I cast Liberal votes more often than NDP in Federal Elections. If Jack Layton could/would move a mountain or two to gain PR for Canadians he will have fully gained my trust before the next election.
You could call it happenstance or you could say my past Liberal votes were all 'party loyalty'. Neither would be true. The main reason I have historically voted Liberal more often has been because of candidates. I have lived my life championing one cause or another. Always so-called 'leftie' causes. Candidates are a big deal to me because they are who will be taking my concerns to Ottawa. They are the ones I am counting on for the names and contacts in Ottawa who can best help me further the causes I am working on. They are the ones I look to for information, advice and tips when it cames to all things Federal. I will always believe that candidates are a big deal because they can open or close doors in Ottawa. I am also not big on parachute candidates.
(Please don't misinterpret what I am saying re: parachuting...the Quebec situation is entirely different and I have high hopes for all the newly elected MPs there. It is not the newly elected Quebec MPs fault that Media couldn't find anything else to jabber about...the 'parachute' thing is a more of premeditated CON game play habit in my experience)
I have met and tried to work with a lot of useless wonder MPs post election. Cambridge ON's Right Wing Pat Sobeski was the worst. Cambridge ON 'Centrist' Lib Janko Peric was one of the best. For NDP help we have to switch to ancient history and provincial MPPs back when I still lived in Northern Ontario. An area so far from the 'power' good intentions were the best I could hope for.
I now live Guelph. ALL our left-leaning candidates were amazing. The main Candidate Debate here proved an actual 'LoveFest' since the CON candidate refused to attend. Had PR been an option I would have likely voted Stewart NDP with Lawson GRN as alternate...but still would have felt guilty for voting against the Lib incumbent who has worked hard and well for Guelph and earned re-election. We didn't have PR. I voted the incumbent based on his personal performance as LIB MP and because of strategic vote recommendations.
Strategic voting...it is still hard for me to believe that I was (I feel) forced to take that into consideration. I wanted Harper gone so badly I was reaching for anything and everything that might make that happen. I actually know better. It is important to vote FOR something. I was caught up...like many...in being against a Harper Majority. I know all too well what he can do IN parliament without asking anyone's by-your-leave. There is too much he can do that we will not be able to undo 'next time around'. The 'evil' Liberals know this all too well having had the dirty job of trying to salvage something of Canadian Values from the ashes of previous Right Wing Majorities. I fear that this lesson will be learned by Jack first hand if he should succeed in his dream to become No. 1 in the next election.
[That desire needs expression both in Parliament and in the streets. When it comes to stopping Harper, at least one campaign slogan still rings true: "Together, we can do this." - James Clark]
Someday Harper will be gone. It is the aftermath that will be hardest on all of us. You can cut down a hundred year oak tree and then turn around and plant a sapling...but how long before you can sit in its shade or have it protect you from the winds? It is less about 'together, we can' and more about 'together, we will have to'. I have spend my life salvaging and rebuilding. I am tired.
As of May 2, 2011... I no longer think in terms of party affiliation...I think PR. I have had enough of wild swings in majority gov'ts. No party will get my support without PR. PR is the carrot...the only carrot.
There is too much he [Harper] can do that we will not be able to undo 'next time around'. The 'evil' Liberals know this all too well having had the dirty job of trying to salvage something of Canadian Values from the ashes of previous Right Wing Majorities.
You mean the Liberals NOW know this.
The Liberals did not cooperate with the Conservatives as their attempt to salvage Canadian Values.
The Liberals cooperated with the Conservatives because Count Ignatieff was waaay to ideologically close to Herr Harper.
C'mon, in 2003 both Iggy (talk about a 'parachuted in' candidate) and Harpo supported the Iraq war.
Iggy is on record supporting torture. That puts him in such 'good' company with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, etc.
While Harpo has had the 'good' sense not to make public statements supporting torture, his actions betray his view on the subject: His treatment of Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazic, etc.
Iggy and Harpo were/are historic defenders of the Afghan war. In 2006 when Herr Harper sought his first war resolution to escalate Canada's military engagement in Afghanistan, Count Ignatieff and his Liberals supported the Conservatives, voted for and passed the war resolution. Herr Harper crossed the floor of the House and personally shook Count Ignatieff's hand. Iggy and the Liberals supported every war resolution Harpo offered the House to vote on - except this last - the ~950 Canadian troops who will stay in Afghanistan to "train" until 2014: That was a royal proclamation by King Stephen I.
Count Ignatieff blew it in 2008 when Herr Harper got his prorogue of Parliament and Jack Layton offered him the prospect of heading a coalition government. Iggy threw the offer into the gutter. We now see the ultimate result of that today.
To his credit, Jack Layton has stated that he is willing to work with the government.
Will Herr Harper agree to this offer and actually abide by this agreement?
Or based on previous actions, will Herr Harper for his part, also throw this offer into the gutter?
Absolutely, I do agree with you that given the current state of the Liberal Party (if it continues to exist as an official party) it will most likely support Fair Voting (or PR) along with the Bloc, the Greens, some Conservative MPs who have spoken in favor of PR(?) and the NDP which still officially supports PR.
[ Frmrsldr on May 11, 2011 - 9:26pm. You mean the Liberals NOW know this]
No, I DID mean 'Liberals know this'.
I am seriously going to ask you not to shoot me out of cyber-sky for saying so. Almost all Liberals (except maybe a few dozen power-players at the National Association level and maybe a few undeserving wannabe-power-players across the country) will freely admit we have held too many majorities. Particularly since Reform arrived on the scene. I am talking about the men and women who give up evenings and weekends, at the association level, to try and shape Party Policy that is fair and equitable for all Canadians. I am talking about the parliamentary assistants who are under fire day in and day out dealing with constituents...angry or otherwise, dealing with Special interest groups of all stripes...good or bad, dealing with Lobbyists, Advocates and Activists of all stripes...good and bad. I am talking about non-card-carrying Liberal leaning folks chatting over a beer or cofee....good or bad. I am even talking Liberal MPs still in office then and now. ALL agreed. It went on tooooo lonnngggg.
How did Dion and Ignatieff really get up there?? Nobody else wanted the job. Massive agreement that we had 'been there' too long. The deficit was gone. Debt ratio of 70% down to 30%. The cost of getting there?? Too high. It was time for a breathier....it was time for the grassroots to take over fully and rebuild FOR THE LEFT.
Immediately post 9/11 Canada had its much needed surplus via Martin. The program spending and policy shifts we had all hoped for were within reach. The bulk of that surplus was spent avoiding a made in North America recession in the 9/11 aftermath. More money then anyone wanted spent (bulk of surplus) went into beefing up Security and Immigration spending to avoid American Sanctions that would have catapulted us into a recession. A lot of Liberal grassroots members disagreed or were just plain willing to risk a recession. Donations and support stopped flowing to the Liberal Party. Harper's conservatives grabbed the ball and ran with it.
You want to blame us? Blame us. Blame us for not keeping Martin long enough to get the SECOND surplus $$ where they should have gone...health, childcare and programs to eliminate poverty. It all went to Harper so he could crow about our 'stable economy'....you know...the one with the record structural deficit? The one we acquired less than a decade after taking a decade to eliminate the last one?? Blame us for letting that jerk slither up the middle because us LEFT leaning liberals decided to take the high-road and teach the party a lesson. Whoopee....some of us gave the NDP $1.79 per vote instead of Martin and someof us stayed home. Harper laughed all the way to the bank.
How is that for true confession??
So do we keep playing the NeoConservative game via Harper by buying in to this Bash or Deify the Leaders game or do we try to build consensus at the grassroots and let history be history? If we keep playing Harper's game he will have earned the Permanent Election Win (see article with similar name) he is angling for by removing the per-vote allocation. As long as the left hate each other he keeps winning...cuz he is the one with the money.
I want PR. But we are a long, long way away from it. At the all candidates debate locally the only defined position for PR came from the incumbent (LIB). For PR. His preference was a modified PR based on New Zealand's. The other candidate went on record to agree ('what he said') both on PR and his preference (GRN, Communist, Marijuana and misc). The NDP candidate went on record to say that she didn't know anything about PR but promised to read up on it. She is an awesome person and I applaud her for speaking the truth...she just plain didn't know...just like a lot of Canadians. The CON candidate wasn't there. A lot of people understand very little about PR. I am for it and it can be difficult to understand let alone make a call on which model. Many people get their 'advice' from situations like the local debate here. What the candidates say or don't say.
I know Layton has spoken for PR. I think all candidates should have been both aware of it and informed enough personally to have an opinion. Like it or not...we do elect candidates as of present time. That is the system. Since with FPTP party power is the game....how much political will can there be behind really effecting electoral reform? Should we be shooting for more Independent Candidates??? If NDP/LIB keep hating each other we may have to.
To fix things average me and average you need to find even a little common ground...because somehow we need to build a strong and viable left voice AND figure out how to effect electoral reform sooner rather than later.
Could we be friends please? Or at the very least consider the concept of 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' ? Personally, I would rather not consider you my enemy ...
Hold a referendum that asks:
Fair Vote
Yes
or
No?
Offer a short explanation why Fair Voting is fair and why representation is proportional.
Offer a short explanation why FPTP is not fair and why representation is not proportional.
Once Fair Voting (hopefull/most likely) passes,
then let the parties' strategists figure out which form of Fair Voting is best and simplest to implement for Canada.
I fully expect the global financial fiasco to blow up in Mr. Harper's face. On the plus side he will get blamed for stuff even he can't control. On the down side, he's pretty slippery and will doubtless apply Shock Doctrine style opportunistic repression.
I agree the struggle is to keep the Street and the NDP as connected as possible. Let the Liberals rebuild, then form a post-election coalition. If Layton takes the NDP to the mushy middle they may suffer the same fate as the Liberals.