Canada's non-voting idealists

It's better than a loya jirga corrupted by western world influences since the 1980s.

I agree with Gwyn. It makes little difference to the lives of Canadians whether the federal government is Libertory, Conservabral, vice versa, or any other combination of the two big business parties funded by Bay Street and the banks.

Because that's all Canadians have ever known.

NDPP wrote:

Your mob will be no different. You'll see...

That's like saying that because US Liberal Democrats and Republicans are very similar when in power, Ralph Nader's party would be no different in government based on the combined records of the elephant and donkey parties.

It makes no sense. You would be trying to judge a party that's never held federal power based on the sins of two political parties owned by big business, Wall Street, and thousands of private military contractors, and their records in power. It's not a valid comparison.

After only 160 years in a row non-stop worth of old line party rule without a break for democracy in between, your only concern is what a party that has never governed federally would do during its first four-year term in power yet to occur. 

Are two old line parties in hand worth a new democratic party that's never been elected to lead the country before? 

The two old line parties are only getting better with each successive decade worth of phony majority government, or propping-up the other in Ottawa, and in the mean time you'll stick with your diet Pepsi?

Are you fearful that the NDP might screw things up for our finely tuned colonial-extractive, debt-ridden, anti-Kyoto, rusting old world economy  if elected to federal power?

Why not be a spontaneous wild person and vote for the NDP in 2015? Come on!

gerrymc wrote:

That is the issue and it would be best to rephrase Churchill's comment and ask why our system has to be worse than almost all the rest of the countries that would call themselves democracies. Is it because we ought to be satisfied as Canadians with something manifestly inferior to all of the better alternatives that exist around us?

gerry

I don't know who you are talking to, but it is not addressing anything I have said. Yes, I would prefer if we had a proportional system more like Germany. 

The question here is whether to vote or not vote at all, which is a different matter.

And @ Fidel

Do governments sometimes make decisions which are against the will of the majority? 

Absolutely, and you can add banning capital punishment, ending slavery and legalizing same sex marriage to that list.

...oh, and giving French-speaking Canadians the same compensation as English-speaking ones for damage done to their homes in the 1837 rebellion (the people took action and burned parliament for that one).

But government is not that way in all things, especially at more local levels, and to the degree that it operates like that, we have to oppose it and work to reform it, just like other flaws in the electoral system. 

I would also add, it begs the question of what you would replace it with if you are not in favour of reform.