...There has never been a time, in any past federal election, in which the CCF or the NDP ever decided not to actually try to gain seats or not to try to do well enough to form a government.
Alexa McDonough's "keep the Liberals honest" strategy in 1997 and 2001 was not a "we won't fight to win" vow, it was simply a recognition that, in those years, the NDP was too weak to be able to make many gains. McDonough didn't see the continuation of Liberal Party rule as a greater good, and there was no possibility in either campaign of the more right-wing party actually winning.
J.S. Woodsworth, M.J. Coldwell, Tommy Douglas, Ed Broadbent and even the doomed Audrey McLaughlin in the "perfect storm" election of 1993 all fought to win. That is the only way a political party can ever fight an election. It's the only way any party ever does fight an election.
The NDP didn't cause the Conservative minority victory in 2006. As has been repeatedly proven, the no-confidence motion(which did nothing but move the election up by one month)would have passed by two votes even if the NDP had voted against. And moving the election up by one month didn't cause the Liberal defeat at the polls. The Liberals caused that by being a terrible government for eleven years. If Kelowna and the child care plan were such magically wonderful things, the Liberals would have been able to get re-elected simply by promising to approve them as soon as they were re-elected.
Stephen Harper did not get a majority in 2011 because of the Orange Crush. Harper was going to get 39% no matter what. At 39%, his party was certain to win a majority. Even if the NDP had done what Liberal apologists here demanded and said "in the name of 'the greater good', we won't try to gain seats this time-and we'll never try to gain seats until Harper is out of power", Harper was STILL certain to gain a majority because the Liberals had the worst leader in their history and no party anywhere ever gained seats with a terrible leader.
The NDP was never wrong to try to gain seats and win government. NDP gains never caused any of Harper's victories, and the Liberals were never, ever simply entitled to be the only alternative to the Conservatives as a party of government.
The arrogant bovine manure needs to stop, already.
Ken B, I agree with the first section of your post, but not the second.
You are correct that Liberal arrogance, infighting & weak leadership choices contributed to Harper being in power for as long as he was and for him being able to win a Majority.
Where your argument goes off track and devolves into the same partisanship the Liberals have been guilty of, is when you absolve the NDP of any responsibility for Harper's Majority Win in 2011.
The NDP played a role in that, too. They were the 4th party at the time and were obviously not in a position to win Government having never done so before. It was also apparent, as documented by Paul Adams in "Power Trap" from conversations with Brad Lavigne, that the real target was the Liberals, not the Conservatives. (eg. the desire to win over "Layton Liberals"). Most of the NDP seat targets were Liberal, not Conservative. It was Ignatieff that Layton took down in the debates, not Harper.
Layton even went so far as to say in April 2011 that, "You can vote NDP, and you don't have to worry about a Conservative Majority".
That was totally false. The NDP not only failed to beat Harper, it didn't even keep him to a Minority. It was only capable of beating the BQ (and the Liberals). It did not even come close to beating the Conservatives in that election.
As Chantal Hébert pointed out, many NDP voters were unhappy with the 2011 result. Yet the NDP MP's and the people in the NDP Leadership were joyously celebrating and didn't seem that bothered by the prospect of a Conservative Majority. As Hébert said last month on Election Night, the NDP ended up sacrificing the best talent of a generation to a war against the Liberals.
Both the Liberals & the NDP are responsible, in different ways, for Harper being in power and for Harper winning a Majority.
The other thing that is often forgotten is that Layton attempted to broker a compromise with the governing Liberals and the opposition. Layton secured a promise from the opposition to not have a non-confidence vote if the government would agree to commit to an election in a few months time, to allow time for passage of Kelowna and the child care agreements (see news of NDP motion at the time). Martin said no, go ahead and vote non-confidence now if you like (the plan being to vilify the NDP for this). So, it was done and the election occurred in December. If anything, Martin himself killed Kelowna and the child care agreements due to partisan gamesmanship.
Chantal Hebert says (who is a member of the best political panel on Canadian television) that NDP supporters will continue to vote Liberal to keep the Conservatives out of power, Not just federally, but provincially as well.
An EKOS poll published this week reveals that NDP voters are more satisfied with the outcome of the election that set the party back last month than they were with winning more than a hundred seats and the title of official Opposition in the previous campaign.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/14/ndp-loss-still-a-win-for-p...
So if NDP voters feel that the party cannot win power, they are willing to vote Liberal to keep the Conservatives out.
The vote was a two part deal between Harper and Layton. Harper didn't want to take the chance of the NDP not voting with him because he didn't want to take sole responsibility for the defeat. Layton had left Harper hanging the previous year by making a deal with Martin.
Layton and Harper decided on a two part deal. Layton would propose the earlier election date and if the Liberals didn't agree Layton would support Harper's motion to take down the government.
There would have been no non-confidence vote without Layton's deal with Harper. It was not an attempt to broker a compromise. It was an attempt to turn the screws on Martin. Layton even called the previous budget "the first NDP budget".
I don't know for sure one way or another if the February date would have allowed the passage of the Kelowna accord and daycare deals. Doesn't that sort of thing stop once an election has been called?
That's a ridiculous excuse. Obviously he wanted the date moved up because he didn't want the daycare proposal and Kelowna accord to pass. That would have helped the Liberals more than the possibility of saving a few bucks flying around on the taxpayers dime, Layton was fine with a Harper win as long as the NDP got more seats out of it.
So, to help stop it, you opened a thread?
Well done! I'm sure that'll do the trick!!
Except there was a Chrismas campaign because Layton promised to vote with Harper.
Unfortunately the This link is no longer active but it was all very well known at the time that Harper did not want to wear the defeat of the LIberal government alone. The NDP didn't want to take responsibility for takng the Liberals out either, so they came up with the two part deal.
Yeah, we're already seeing them begin to cluster here like flies to "bovine manure".
Here is another "trip down memory lane" of Layton and Harper working together:
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-trip-down-minority-government-m...
Conservatives had 99 seats at that time and the NDP had 19 seats. Layton was prepared to support Harper as leader in a "coalition". Did he imagine the NDP would have more sway on a Conservative government than a Liberal one?
Layton started the NDP on the track of making the Liberals enemy number one even if that meant putting the Conservatives in power. They succeeded in that goal for a decade. Now the Liberals are back in power with a majority and the NDP is no more progressive than the Liberals. The NDP has 44 seats instead of 19 seats. Hope you all think gaining 25 seats was worth having Harper in power for a decade.
If the Liberals fail to balance the budget in 2019 that is what the NDP will attack the Liberals on because the NDP is no longer left of the Liberals.
Whether or not the NDP keeps Mulcair as leader I wouldn't be at all surprised if they lose even more support in 2019 as the Liberals prove that in practice they actually are more progressive than the NDP.
Yes, this is a good point by Chantal Hébert:
Mulcair led the New Democrats to their second-best federal finish last month but that measure only looks good against the backdrop of more than half-a-century of defeats. A record for the most NDP seats lost in an election was also set on Oct. 19.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/14/ndp-loss-still-a-win-for-p...
None of this jibber-jabber matters anymore. The NDP and the Libs are no longer two opposition parties both seeking to replace the government. The Libs are the government. In four years we will have no shortage of evidence to confirm the assertions of folks like me who believe that the Liberals can't string a single sentence together without three or four lies in it (ample evidence of that above), or to confirm the wishful thinking of those who expect Justin to defy all well-earned expectations of Liberal mendacity and malfeasance (and believe me, nothing would make me happier than to be 100% wrong about him). When the time comes the Libs will rise or fall on their own merits. "I'm not Harper" won't be a selling point in 2019. Meanwhile, the change in the electorate is permanent, I believe. More people consider the NDP a viable voting option than ever before in the county's history, and they will still be a viable option if the people are feeling hoodwinked in four years. They will have to rise or fall on their own merits as well. The question about who is "responsible" for Harper (funny how the voters never get any credit in these discussions) might have had some relevance while Harper was running the country. In four years, it will have none at all.
I agree with what you say up to a point, Jacob.
We are now moving away from the Harper discussion.
It's true that as an incumbent government, the Liberals will now have to defend their own choices & the record that they accumulate.
But if you read the new piece posted by Chantal Hébert, she points out that many NDP voters may decide to stick with the Liberals if they remain the best alternative to keeping the Conservatives out.
Well said Debater:
Parties are partisan. Most voters are not.
Parties (and their most partisan, doctrinaire supporters... nudge, nudge) forget that.
No NDP voters think it would have been better for the NDP to intentionally stay in minor-party status in 2011. Harper was certain to win a majority that year even if the NDP vote stayed under 20%. And Ignatieff's rejection of the accord proves he would never have worked with the NDP no matter what, that he would have preferred to endlessly prop up another Harper minority(as he did over and over from 2008 to 2011.
The Liberals had no chance, at any point in the 2011 campaign, either to win the election(even in a weak minority) OR to gain seats from the Cons anywhere. At best, at absolute best, they might have held their ground from 2008, and that wouldn't have been anything. Harper would still have had a majority if the Liberals had outpolled the NDP.
It also goes without saying that no party other than the NDP could have taken seats from the Bloc in 2011. It's not humanly possible to change allegiance from the BQ to the LPC. Doing that would be likeswitching sides in a civil war. And without the wipeout of the Bloc the end of Harper wasn't possible.
No party anywhere has ever said "in the name of 'the greater good' we won't try to gain seats in this election. It just dosn't ever happen. And no party anywhere ever didn't celebrate major gains at the polls.
BTW, following the logic of the LPC argument here, those who bashed the NDP for gaining seats from the Liberals in 2011 SHOULD have been calling for the LPC, when ther NDP was leading early in the campaign, to not try to defeat any NDP incumbents(especially in Quebec, where there was no excuse, following that argument, for the LPC to try to take any seats from the Dippers). Yet none of the Liberal posters here ever made such a call. Funny thing, that.
And, for the record, I don't begrudge Justin his early popularity. It's up to him to do what he needs to do to keep it(i.e., to not govern in any way whatsoever as Chretien or Martin did).
And I'm not a partisan(I've called out the NDP on any number of issues and would welcome a genuine left alternative to it, which is much more likely to emerge if some form of electoral reform actually is passed). I just wanted to point out the total absurdity of the "the NDP had no right to try to gain seats until Harper was out" meme-which now seems to have been replaced by the "the NDP has no right to try to gain any seats in any future election until the Conservative Party ceases to exist" meme.
Ken Burch, you are engaging in a lot of supposition above, and some downright inaccurate statements as well.
1) I don't know how you can conclude that Harper was guaranteed to win a Majority in 2011. He was in Minority territory until the final part of the campaign when the NDP surge precipitated the Liberal collapse.
And the Liberals were actually poised to GAIN seats, particularly in Ontario, when the 2011 election began. I agree with you that the Liberals were in a weak position, but they were well ahead of the NDP at the beginning and would likely have made some minor gains had Layton not knocked out Ignatieff in the debate.
2) I also don't know how you can conclude that "It's not humanly possible to change allegiance from the BQ to the LPC."
Really? It happened throughout Jéan Chrétien's time in power when he gained BQ votes in 1997 & 2000, and Justin Trudeau just picked up BQ votes last month across Québec, including in Papineau.
You are correct that Ignatieff wasn't likely to make any major inroads with BQ voters at that point in time, but to say that the Liberals are incapable of winning over BQ voters when Chrétien & Trudeau have both done it, is inaccurate.
The Cons were ahead throughout the 2011 campaign, as they had been throughout Ignatieff's tenure as leader.. Inevitably, even if the Liberals had been second, the general tendency of FPTP to privilege the two existing leading parties and push the outcome towards a majority gov't would have guaranteed a Harper majority, even if Layton had done nothing but compliiment Ignatieff during the debate(or had gone bowling that night instead of debating), the Liberals were still going to collapse, just the same as in 1983. It wasn't Layton's fault that Ignatieff endorsed torture and(in an infamous article in Harper's just before becoming LPC leader)the revival of Western imperialism. It wasn't Layton's fault that Ignatieff had totally discredited himself with all progressives by making his party vote for every important piece of Harper legislation(something he was never going to be forgiven for during that campaign, since everyone knew he wasn't going to repeal all of that legislation as pm). Layton didn't knock out Ignatieff. Ignatieff knocked out Ignatieff. And the 2011 election wouldn't even have happened if only Ignatieff had done what he was supposed to do and formed an accord with the NDP and the BQ for the sole purpose of deposing Harper.
The Liberals don't have to do a whole lot to impress. Harper was horrible and he still won elections over and over again until he finally won a majority. With every horrible thing he did the Conservatives maintained 30% support or close to it.
I can't imagine what horrible things you think Trudeau will do that are so much worse than what the Conservatives did.
10 years is a long time. Many people grew up under Harper or spent a good part of their adulthood under his dour government.
I agree that it is permanent. The political preference people come of age with is a strong indicator of lifelong political direction. Trudeau attracted a lot of new voters who are likely to keep voting because their first vote elected their preference. Trudeau also stood up for minority rights and for immigrants and he is doubling family reunification and refugee acceptance. Trudeau senior won over immigrants with the same policies. Trudeau is going to signficantly improve the lives of indigenous peoples too. He is going to hold the inquiry for missing and murdered indigenous women and start implementing recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Report. Deliver clean water to all communities within 5 years. Harper was such a scrooge that it will seem like Christmas. There was an increase in voter turnout, and their vote will be directly responsible for improving conditions including simply being treated with basic respect.
It never had any revelance in terms of swaying anyone's vote. This is the first election I have paid close attention to and found it fascinating how few people were ever aware of anything that wasn't major headline news and even then they didn't know anything about it only that it happened. The people who decide the election are those who start paying attention no more than 3 or 4 weeks before the election and they make up their minds in the last week. Turns out when I wasn't paying any attention to politics I was in the majority. Even the impact of the Duffy trial faded almost right away. Harper's government was openly smarmy and dirty yet was still re-elected multiple times.
Kevin Page said the Liberal budget was good and included "wiggle room". Trudeau can afford to follow through on his election promises many of which are free or low cost and do lead to better more effective government. Much of what Harper did was ideological rather than practical. Things like building the memorial to victims of communism will be easy to cancel along with a ton of consultants Harper was using. There are a bunch of court challenges to cancel. Things like allowing injection sites to open will cost nothing and Marijuana legalization will generate taxes. The cities are ecstatic about receiving infrastructure help.
Even if Trudeau doesn't achieve everything he is promised voters will be satisfied with the promises he does keep, so much so that I expect he will not only get a second majority mandate, but that it will be bigger than this one.
NDP is down to 12%. People did not just vote against Harper they voted for Trudeau, and even more would vote for him now. This may be a honeymoon but he is going to be very difficult to beat in 2019 because it will be so easy to be way better than Harper.
The NDP dropping to 12% is not about a Trudeau honeymoon. That is a loss of core support. I doubt promising to hold the Liberals to their balanced budget promise for 2019 is going to win any NDP voters back.
The NDP is in a very bad spot right now. They would do better to bide their time and focus on reorienting the party now that the Liberal lite policy is a dead duck. It came very close to working but it's over as T&T would say.
The best hope for the NDP is that the Conservatives implode as the various factions fight over the leadership.
Chretien was very popular and Martin only lost because of the sponsorship scandal not because of his policies. Even with the sponsorship scandal there was a chance he would win until that letter about an investigation was leaked to the press.
thought you said above you didn't pay attention to politics before this election pondering!
Nailed it Quizzical!
How did this thread become one about what a scumbag Jack Layton was and how perefect the Liberals are? Boy the Libs on this board hate taking about FACTS! Well Pondering, Terrytowel, Debater, Pookie, Cody87 et al, once the Libs start acting like Libs, don't expect us to be any nicer than you've been. Dance on graves and gloat all you want. You'd better hope that Junior, isn't just more of the same, or, I, for one, will enjoy, IMMENSELY, rubbing your faces in it! I'm just sayin'.
I don't think it's going to be about keeping the Conservatives out anymore. Historically Canadians re-elect governments until there is a good reason not to. That is, governments defeat themselves. 2 to 3 mandates is the norm, 1 is very rare. Look how horrible Harper was yet he won election after election. It's true the Liberals had Dion and Ignatieff who were both duds but in that case you could say the Liberals are in power unless they defeat themselves. Trudeau has an excellent team to work with. I can't see any massive scandal happening in the next 4 years.
The NDP would have to prove they would do a better job than the Liberals after decades of running as Liberal lite. That they emphasized keeping the Liberals to the balanced budget promise show they have no intention of changing tracks. It looks like they might even keep Mulcair.
If the NDP moves authentically to the left under a new leader and focuses on climate change and income inequality they may win in 2023 but they are going to have to rebuild from the ground up.
I sure hope that supporters of the NDP find an alternative that will be viable. whatever that is -- be it a revitalized NDP or a new party.
I also hope it will not listen to advice from partisan Liberals like what we see here.
I am doing neither. I hope that the NDP does what it needs to to rebuild. Many NDP supporters have criticized the NDP for running in the centre and indeed blame that policy for losses in BC, Ontario, and now nationally.
I think the strategy came extremely close to winning this election. One more bum leader and the Liberals would have lost to either the Conservatives or the NDP but that was then and this is now. The Liberals went from 3rd to a majority during the campaign. They know what they are doing. They have a slate of highly accomplished intelligent and articulate MPs and Ministers and lots of institutional memory. They also have a civil service deeply relieved for having been freed from Harper.
Trudeau will certainly make mistakes over the next four years, break some promises even, but he will also earn lots of loyalty for the many steps he will take to reverse Harper's legacy as well as implementing items in his platform.
To your point Ken, while the NDP may have targetted more Liberal than Conservative seats overall, in every election since the right united, the NDP came out of an election seeing more seats move from the Conservative to the NDP column than the other way around, while the Liberals (and to a lesser extent, the Bloc) on balance lost seats to the Conservatives. That tells you something about how effective the NDP is in not only challenging Conservatives but defending marginal seats against them.
Spare me Pondeing, all you EVER do, is turn every thread into an attack on the NDP, and tell us how wonderful the Liberals. are. YOu are unbeieveably disingenuous. You really aren't here to debate or discuss, you're here to simply turn every thread into a NDP bashing fest and tell us all why the Liberals are always the ONLY choice. Do you actually read the stuff you write before you post it?
ETA: And by the way, I don't believe you've EVER voted ANYTHING other than Liberal. EVER!
The last time the NDP was at 12% in a national poll was in December 2010 when Jack Layton was leader and Michael Ignatieff was basking in the glory of having won the Winnipeg north by election...five mo the later in May 2011 guess what happened. The NDP also was as low as 12% nationally in January 2007 right after Stephane Dixon won the Liberal leadership and had a very brief honeymoon where people were entranced by how he had a backpack and a dog named Kyoto. Whatever happened to that.
Do you believe this situation is similar to those, that Trudeau will lose support as easily as Dion and Ignatieff, and do you believe that Mulcair is a good leader for 2019 or that the party is on the right track?
I agree that the party can rebound but I don't think it will be as easily done against Trudeau as it was against Dion and Ignatieff.
Trudeau has been PM for exactly two weeks and so far he has been grabbing low hanging fruit making easy announcements that play well to progressive voters. This too shall pass. Pierre Trudeau was wildly popular for the first year he was in power after winning in 1968... Four years later he came within in two seats of losing power and had to make a deal with a strengthened NDP under David Lewis. I think it's very early to speculate on what will happen in the 2019 election and what polls say one week after a new government is sworn in are less than irrelevant.
After the 2011 federal election the Liberals were described as "shell shocked zombies" wandering around and the expectation was that the Liberal party would die.
I also remember those salad days in late 2003 after Paul Martin was sworn in when Liberal support was up in the high 50s and the conventional wisdom was that the Liberal were guaranteed to win over 250 seats and that the NDP would lose official party status.
Canadian politics are like the weather, if you don't like it wait a few minutes and it will change. The only guarantee is that what happens over the next four years will surprise us in unpredictable ways.
Harper's Conservative governments spent 10's of millions of dollars on negative advertising campaigns to delegitimize both Dion and Ignatieff. So now the Liberals are saying that their government will legislate limits on the amount of money parties can spend between elections on negative advertising. With a huge financial advantage and with the advantage of incumbency, Harper's Conservative governments were able to badly damage both Ignatieff and Dion and that indirectly benefited the NDP. Now that they are incumbents the Liberals will be in a better position to thwart attacks from the Conservatives. The NDP would be wise to take this new reality into account.
If they are now better protected against Conservative attacks, that discredits any future use of the "progressives must only vote Liberal because Conservatives" argument.
"You can vote to stop the Conservatives. But you can't do that by voting NDP. That actually won't stop the Conservatoves"
-Kathleen Wynne during the 2014 Ontario Provincial Election
"Only the NDP can beat the Conservatives here in British Columbia," Mulcair said (one week before election day).
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. But the NDP has trouble making good sauce.
Look every party in every election is going to say everything it can to get people to vote for them. That's what election campaigns are for. If another party does a better job of it than the NDP, that's the NDP's fault. Other parties don't have an obligation to go easy on the NDP just because it runs lousy campaigns.
Sorry Arthur but I don't see the world the way you do. The facts I see in my reality are vastly different than the facts you see in yours.
And I said it before the election and I'll say it again. I'm not a Liberal. Every election I decide who to vote for based on who I think would do the best for the province/country (depending on what election it is). This is the first election I've voted Liberal at either level of government since 2008, and the NDP should pay attention to that.
You know what an actual nasty piece of work Liberal looks like?
http://rabble.ca/comment/1537594#comment-1537594
http://rabble.ca/comment/1537319#comment-1537319
Seriously, there aren't real Liberals on this board. Those you accuse of being Liberals are at best "small-l" liberals who want the NDP to remain competitive so that in the event that Trudeau needs to be given the boot in 2019, it can happen. If the NDP literally destroys itself by continuing the course it set during the campaign (which it appears likely to do), there will be no check on Trudeau's power for at least another decade.
And there's a good chance I won't be able to vote Trudeau in 2019, because if half of what I've heard about the TPP is true and he signs it he's pretty much lost my vote no matter what else he does.
And people said the same thing about C51 and look what happened there. For the majority of Candians the TPP is not an election issue.
Trudeau us already wooing labor such as CLC and its president Hassan Yussuff
Justin Trudeau Gets Rock Star Welcome At G20, Faces Questions on Canada's Role in ISIS Fight
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/g20-turkey-trudeau-1.3319803
"This is the best G20 I've ever been to,' Trudeau quipped at one point during a working lunch. He also met briefly with Obama and had a warm conversation with the US president, Trudeau's aides said.
According to the aides, when asked what he would do first as prime minister, Trudeau indicated he would cut middle class taxes - to which Obama responded laughing, saying that it sounded pretty good..."
Perhaps 'Rock Star Welcome' is a PR version of reality on the part of his aides largely intended for the rubes back home. The G20 group photo places him far from the center almost offstage.
You seriously want me to believe that these Lib sycophants on this board aren't Large L Liberals? I don't care if someone is a Libearl, as long as they stop trying to tell us they haven't always been Liberals. That's why I object to those assertions so much. Its about truth and honesty. I am so tired of the self-righteous, preachy, almost religous Trudeau cheer leading. Its sickening.
Yeah, the CBC in particular has been gobsmacked with boy wonder. Trudeau has for a long time put himself out there to people for selfies. That hardly equates to him being considered a significant world leader yet. Maybe in the future he will be, or maybe not. We'll see.
When I continued believing that the Liberals would win this election, even though my certainly was shaken somewhat in the end, it was not based entirely on polls it was based on my evaluation of Trudeau, his strategy and Canadian voters along with the polls.
We just had 10 years of Harper so it seems Canadian politics is not that erratic. Harper won mandate after mandate and had approval ratings higher than the number of votes he won.
The people predicting the demise of the Liberals were Conservatives and NDP both of whom dearly want the Liberals to vanish because the Liberals, and not each other, are the primary competition of both. It is common knowledge that Liberal infighting between the Chretien/Martin camps, the sponsorship scandal and a succession of weak leaders was behind Liberal losses not some radical change in the politics of the electorate. All the Liberals needed was generational change, getting rid of the tired old guard that had been in power for too long and was responsible for all the infighting.
Canadian governments defeat themselves. It is only the Conservative nastiness that defeated Harper. Had he been a little nicer, or a little less ideological, we would probably still be under a Conservative government. A new leader might have done the trick too. Trudeau might have been able to improve Liberal fortunes but he would not have won.
The election of 1972 still resulted in a minority win for the Liberals and there were reasons that they dropped so low that no longer exist. The seat count was 109 Liberal, 107 Conservative, and 31 NDP.
The Liberals almost defeated themselves in 1972 but they still won, even though they were dealing with inflation, separatism and a crappy campaign team. Two years later they won a majority and Stanfield was down to 16 seats.
1972 was Pierre Trudeau's second election, but the Liberals had been in power since 1963, almost a decade. In the end they held power from 1963 to 1974.
Justin Trudeau easily has four years of low-hanging fruit and an excellent campaign team and great MPs. You can bet they are already planning how best to roll out the platform to create maximum impact for 2019. At a guess I imagine a lot of infrastructure projects will be coming to fruition and tax money will be flowing in from marijuana legalization. Clean water projects will be coming online for indigenous communities among other improvements. Civil servants are going to go all out to help Trudeau deliver.
There will be many highs and lows over the next four years but I don't expect a radical change in voters political habits or behavior. Conservatives claimed that Canada was moving to the right and that Conservatives had won over the immigrant community because they are ideologically conservative. The centre of power was moving west and would continue to do as both the economy and population grows. TPP favors export sectors like beef and wheat which would further strengthen the west economically.
Now there is a temptation to say the country is moving left. To some extent it is true because each successive generation is a bit more socially conscious than the one before in large part due to the influence of educators. Conservatives have good reason to rail against "liberal" education. The shift still isn't radical and moving "left" on one issue does not imply moving "left" on all or most issues.
When judging where the election would be going I took polls into account, but with the proviso that 66% of the population didn't make up their minds until the last couple of weeks before the election and was only vaguely aware of what was going on politically even with issues that were in the news for a full month, even on sensational topics. Voters tuning in at the last minute are going to look at the leaders forming a more solid general impression of them. They get a general impression of the platforms, in particular what's in it for them, but there is a strongt tendency to go with the incumbent unless someone else looks significantly better. That gets easier to do the longer a party or leader is in power.
The big question, the one the election rode on, was always how Trudeau would perform during the election campaign. Trudeau's record in 2019 will be way better than Harper's ever was. He will have the same campaign team and that team will have lots to brag about.
It's possible that either the Conservatives or NDP will rally over the next four years and the Liberals will tank because of some catastrophic event. It's not likely. Trudeau's presentation improved tremendously since becoming Liberal leader. Since winning the election his confidence has only grown. He has an excellent slate of mps and ministers. Of course it is always possible he will lose in 2019, but the indicators tell me even if his support fluctuates as Harper's has come campaign time voters will give him another shot.
Speech at the G20
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/differences-should-be-a-source-of-strength-...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/g20-gets-taste-of-trudeaumania-1.3319923
The difference between Harper and Trudeau is so stark that it will contribute enormously to Trudeau's success for at least one more election. After that less so because memories will fade just as they did for adscam.
When I continued believing that the Liberals would win this election, even though my certainly was shaken somewhat in the end, it was not based entirely on polls it was based on my evaluation of Trudeau, his strategy and Canadian voters along with the polls.
We just had 10 years of Harper so it seems Canadian politics is not that erratic. Harper won mandate after mandate and had approval ratings higher than the number of votes he won.
The people predicting the demise of the Liberals were Conservatives and NDP both of whom dearly want the Liberals to vanish because the Liberals, and not each other, are the primary competition of both. It is common knowledge that Liberal infighting between the Chretien/Martin camps, the sponsorship scandal and a succession of weak leaders was behind Liberal losses not some radical change in the politics of the electorate. All the Liberals needed was generational change, getting rid of the tired old guard that had been in power for too long and was responsible for all the infighting.
Canadian governments defeat themselves. It is only the Conservative nastiness that defeated Harper. Had he been a little nicer, or a little less ideological, we would probably still be under a Conservative government. A new leader might have done the trick too. Trudeau might have been able to improve Liberal fortunes but he would not have won.
The election of 1972 still resulted in a minority win for the Liberals and there were reasons that they dropped so low that no longer exist. The seat count was 109 Liberal, 107 Conservative, and 31 NDP.
The Liberals almost defeated themselves in 1972 but they still won, even though they were dealing with inflation, separatism and a crappy campaign team. Two years later they won a majority and Stanfield was down to 16 seats.
1972 was Pierre Trudeau's second election, but the Liberals had been in power since 1963, almost a decade. In the end they held power from 1963 to 1974.
Justin Trudeau easily has four years of low-hanging fruit and an excellent campaign team and great MPs. You can bet they are already planning how best to roll out the platform to create maximum impact for 2019. At a guess I imagine a lot of infrastructure projects will be coming to fruition and tax money will be flowing in from marijuana legalization. Clean water projects will be coming online for indigenous communities among other improvements. Civil servants are going to go all out to help Trudeau deliver.
There will be many highs and lows over the next four years but I don't expect a radical change in voters political habits or behavior. Conservatives claimed that Canada was moving to the right and that Conservatives had won over the immigrant community because they are ideologically conservative. The centre of power was moving west and would continue to do as both the economy and population grows. TPP favors export sectors like beef and wheat which would further strengthen the west economically.
Now there is a temptation to say the country is moving left. To some extent it is true because each successive generation is a bit more socially conscious than the one before in large part due to the influence of educators. Conservatives have good reason to rail against "liberal" education. The shift still isn't radical and moving "left" on one issue does not imply moving "left" on all or most issues.
When judging where the election would be going I took polls into account, but with the proviso that 66% of the population didn't make up their minds until the last couple of weeks before the election and was only vaguely aware of what was going on politically even with issues that were in the news for a full month, even on sensational topics. Voters tuning in at the last minute are going to look at the leaders forming a more solid general impression of them. They get a general impression of the platforms, in particular what's in it for them, but there is a strongt tendency to go with the incumbent unless someone else looks significantly better. That gets easier to do the longer a party or leader is in power.
The big question, the one the election rode on, was always how Trudeau would perform during the election campaign. Trudeau's record in 2019 will be way better than Harper's ever was. He will have the same campaign team and that team will have lots to brag about.
It's possible that either the Conservatives or NDP will rally over the next four years and the Liberals will tank because of some catastrophic event. It's not likely. Trudeau's presentation improved tremendously since becoming Liberal leader. Since winning the election his confidence has only grown. He has an excellent slate of mps and ministers. Of course it is always possible he will lose in 2019, but the indicators tell me even if his support fluctuates as Harper's has come campaign time voters will give him another shot.
Speech at the G20
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/differences-should-be-a-source-of-strength-...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/g20-gets-taste-of-trudeaumania-1.3319923
The difference between Harper and Trudeau is so stark that it will contribute enormously to Trudeau's success for at least one more election. After that less so because memories will fade just as they did for adscam.
The Liberal party candidates received 2.7 million votes in 2011. The Liberal party candidates received 6.9 million votes in 2015. That means that for every voter who voted Liberal (sufficient to qualify someone as a Liberal in your books) - for every "Liberal" in 2011 there are 2.5 Liberals now in 2015. So, how is it hard to believe that some of the "Liberals" on this board were "New Democrats" in 2011? With 4.2 million new voters, it's nigh impossible that all of the "Liberals" have always been Liberals.
wow there's sure parity at the G20, 4 women, and whats with more than 20 nations being there?
and Trudeau already looks like he's one of them
Justin Trudeau's father, PET, ran a campaign opposing the Conservative proposed wage and price controls, and then upon winning, proceeded to implement wage and price controls (he basically raided Conservative policy, something Chretien also did after his 1993 win). If Justin Trudeau decides to raid NDP policy after running against it, then I will be impressed.
For instance, if he says the following, then I would support him:
https://www.facebook.com/everythingmtl/videos/1061443130541460
Just remember that the Liberals and Conservatives have a similar but different set of objectives. Liberals do not wna tthe NDP's self-destruction to take them down as well to benefit the Conservatives. The Conservatives would like the Liebrals to get a taste of that. Neither want the NDP to be viable as a threat to win.
Liberals may rightly be nervous of Mulcair but not becuase they think he can win but becuase they are nervous of the damage he may do that could help the Conservatives. Conservatives may want Mulcair to stay but not becuase they think Mulcair can take Trudeau out and replace him but because he may be able to weaken Trudeau enough that they can win.
To both of them Mulcair is the weapon rather than the solution and the prospect of him being deployed against the government is attractive or not depending on if you support the government. The NDP must be wary of how those interests come into what should be a fairly internal debate. You can see that the Liberals here are very eager to be involved in an NDP discussion. It is clear what their objectives are and they have a history of having no shame on this site. But those who want a left party to become government, replacing the Liberals and Conservatives, should not let partisans from other parties distort the conversation that must exist. And this place is one of few places where it can exist without being controlled by the leadership that brought the NDP to the position it is in now.
And that leadership may have its own objectives as well -- they may be motivated to not wear this lose as their own responsibility. They may want to protect the reputaitons and even careers of people who brought the NDP to its current position. And they are also lying to you pretending, for example, that this is the NDP's best showing in the House other than 2011.
I don't think anyone is saying that a Canadian PM who was only elected a few weeks ago is a "significant world leader".
How could he be?
He's barely had a chance to do anything yet.
Depends on what you call significant.
If you consider that in spite of recent damage Canada still has some stature ont he world's stage then the answer may be yes. If you consider that he has a majority mandate in a recent election the answer may be yes again, especially as that mandate was for significant change in terms of Canada's foreign policy. The fact that Canada's foreign, security and environmental policies were raised to considerable degree in the election does add significance to the leadership that emerged.
So Trudeau is a significant world leader upon being elected. He is untested and unaccomplished as a person who has just taken office, but nonetheless, he is significant and will be treated as such.
Well, I guess I'm trying not to overanalyze its impact too much.
There are also those here such as mark alfred who claim that Trudeau is being treated as 'boy wonder' whereas in reality Trudeau faces a very hostile and conservative media that are already going after him this weekend for not taking a stronger position in favouring of the bombing strikes.
I think some NDP partisans forget how anti-Liberal a lot of our media is and forget how conservative-dominated it is.
Because they continually used lines and rationalizations that only partisan Liberals would defend, like the lie that Layton was responsible for Harper's victory in 2006 or that he was responsible for the Conservative majority in 2011.
And when it comes to C51, we may now see a big change in public opinion again.
With the terrorist attacks in Paris, and with the conservative media already ramping up the war rhetoric, it may end up being to the Liberals benefit that they supported C51.
It may be the NDP that now appears to be offside on C51.
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