Canadian federal election 2019 part 3

Incumbency isn't as huge an issue here as in the US. Trudeau had few incumbent MPs in 2015, Layton had few in 2011. We're more prone to huge swings.

I think they can get 50-60, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do even better (it all depends on regional results). And this is coming from someone who criticized Singh ever since he became leader and thought he would crash the party, I've been proven wrong.

This is very subjective, but the mood at Boulerice's campaign headquarters is really more upbeat. Pietro I agree with you about incumbency; a Westminster and several other parliamentary models are very different from Presidential or semi-Presidential ones. There are more huge swings.

Incumbency doesn’t work that well when you are damaged goods like the Justin Trudeau Liberals are presently

Have you ever hear of the red scare? I would be very careful. The orange crush of 2012  turned into the orange crash of 2015 because of the red scare. Islamophobia = niqab scare.

There are eight days left. This has been a dirty campaign and it is not over. The apple dumpling gang are pretty quiet and that has me nervous.

The NDP have surged way too early and the other two parties are scared with one week left. 

People are disgusted and angry with Justin. They are not scared of him. The NDP does scare people. We are a threat. It is a threat based on ignorance but it is ingrained and we scare people.

The niqab issue was planted into the campaign four years ago to stoke fear into people and to stop the NDP. Conservatives and big business would rather have the Liberals in power if they cannot have the Conservatives in there.

How do you scare the electorate in one week?

Reconciliation, Indigenous engagement in question ahead of election

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/vancouversun.com/news/politics/election-2019/reconciliation-indigenous-engagement-in-question-ahead-of-election/amp

Ethics watchdog pushes for 'collusion' probe of Conservatives, oil lobby

By Carl Meyer in News, Energy, Politics | October 11th 2019

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/10/11/news/ethics-watchdog-pushes-collusion-probe-conservatives-oil-lobby

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.sootoday.com/amp/national-news/as-liberals-ndp-skirmish-scheer-sets-sights-on-prime-ministers-office-1747027

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/behind-until-proven-otherwise-liberals-facing-uphill-fight-in-winnipeg/amp

https://thetyee.ca/News/2019/10/14/Nanaimo-Ladysmith-Four-Way-Fight/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=141019

Misfit wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

One person one vote In Canada it’s not even close

https://www.thestar.com/politics/2019/10/13/one-person-one-vote-in-canada-its-not-even-close.html

This is pure garbage. 

<snip>

Selfish and self-centered, snivelling  Torontonians who drive six city blocks to go to the polls don’t understand this and they don’t care.

I find this subject an interesting and difficult one, which is worth a comment. First of all, suppose we were setting up a legislature for a hypothetical new country. Let's assume it is to be an fptp system similar to what we have in Canada. It seems to me that one of our main objectives would be to ensure that each MP represented the same number of voters, as far as reasonably possible. Simple fairness dictates this. In a territory with relatively uniform geography and demographics, this might be the one, ruling principle of our system.

However, other values would come into play if the geography and demographics were widely different in different parts of the territory. As Misfit points out, fairness would suggest ideas such as allowing isolated and sparsely populated areas to have representation which is greater than simple arithmetic would dictate. Otherwise, such regions would have no effective representation at all, being reduced to merely insignificant parts of regions quite unlike themselves, and with quite distinct interests.

As a city boy myself, who has a poll on election day one block from my home, but had to travel around 10 blocks to vote in the advance poll on Friday, I don't think all people in my situation are self-centred and snivelling. I suspect a good many of us understand and respect the point Misfit is making, just as a lot of us know where Saskatchewan is.

NorthReport wrote:

Either everyone's vote is equal or it is not.

Giving rural areas more value for their votes than urban areas is one of the resons the right-wing does as well as it does in elections. 

There should be equality in voting but it has to be balanced with access to your elected official. Nathan Cullen's riding is one where it is way harder for the same number of voters to walk into his constituency offices and get the help of their MP than in Burnaby South.

https://www.straight.com/news/1313511/liberal-candidate-harjit-sajjan-needs-retain-progressive-votes-hold-vancouver-south

https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/10/11/chasing-the-west-coast-vote-heres-what-the-major-parties-have-for-bc-in-their-platforms.html

We could increase the size of the House enough to leave rural ridings intact while providing adequate representation for urban areas.

I have also heard some talk about our Indigenous Peoples being allocated a certain number of seats in Parliament based on their population and they could contest those ridings amongst themselves and at first glance it sounds like a good idea.

Pondering wrote:

Okay well now I am completely confused yet again. I have to do stuff so I will reread tonight.

The only thing that PR guarantees is that every voter would get a vote that would count towards determining the makeup of the HoC. Under First Past the Post, votes that do not help to elect an MP in a riding have zero effect on the makeup of the HoC.

Versions of PR that still have ridings do NOT ensure that all votes are weighted equally. And all versions of PR that would be considered in Canada include ridings.

The number of voters per riding varies wildly between provinces. For Example, ridings in PEI have about a quarter of the population of ridings in Ontario, and other smaller provinces are overrepresented as well.

Back when the current elections act passed into law in the 80's, Quebec was also overrepresented in the HoC. In order to appease Quebec, the elections act stipulates that no province can have fewer ridings than what it had in 1985. PEI had four ridings in 1985, and it still has four ridings today. PR would not change this. In order for ridings in Ontario to have the same population as those in PEI, there would have to be four times as many ridings in Ontario. This would be as politically toxic as cutting the number of ridings in Quebec would be.

'

Constructive comments Sean. Thanks for them.

---------------------------------

You are doing one hell of a job Justin!

Emergency response at Trans Mountain’s Burnaby tank farm could take 6 hours: Report

https://globalnews.ca/news/6037056/emergency-response-at-trans-mountains-burnaby-tank-farm-could-take-6-hours-report/

Scheer Folly: Promised Coast-to-Coast Energy Corridor Makes No Sense

Conservatives want to make taxpayers pay for oil and gas industry’s mismanagement. And the bill could be huge.

Andrew Nikiforuk Today | TheTyee.ca

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for three decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous stories here.​

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has promised a big ‘energy corridor’ for Canada. Such big political dreams always turn into costly taxpayer nightmares. Photo via Shutterstock.

Guess what? Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer wants to build an energy corridor megaproject from coast to coast and make Canada great again.

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Scheer announced the huge project to much fanfare, despite the lack of details or any information on the cost.

He said that the colossal undertaking would “move oil, gas, hydro, telecommunications and accommodate other linear infrastructure.”

The transcontinental corridor would “generate economic and social benefits for the entire country,” Scheer said. “A national energy corridor will provide Quebec with new opportunities to export its hydroelectricity to new markets. It will provide rural communities the opportunity to connect to vital telecommunications infrastructure.”

And get this. “It will provide economic activity for Indigenous communities along the route,” Scheer said.

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That’s a bold and bizarre claim, given that the plan is based on pushing the corridor through First Nations’ traditional territories with or without their consent.

Scheer’s election promise contradicts just about every old school conservative principle — if such things still exist in the globe’s crazed new politics.

Scheer still says he believes in small government, but “energy corridors” are big, Soviet-style deals that suck money out of taxpayers’ pockets faster than a hospital parking lot. (China’s Communist party, for example, is very fond of energy corridors, and willing to expropriate land and force hundreds of thousands of people to move to clear the way for them.)

And megaprojects are bad news for taxpayers. Oxford University economist Bent Flyvbjerg has documented the common characteristics of these giant projects. He found they consistently go over budget, fail to meet construction schedules and rarely deliver any benefits.

Why? Because they are inherently risky, complex and, as in Scheer’s case, politically motivated. They start with a big political dream and end up as a costly taxpayer nightmare.

Scheer says Canada needs an energy corridor, because it is time to dream big.

Really? More than a decade ago, Newfoundland’s then premier Danny Williams had a big dream and promised another energy corridor. The Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project would produce power, he said, and undersea transmission lines would connect it to the North American energy grid. The project would provide revenues and let Newfoundland and Labrador “achieve self-reliance by becoming masters of our own house.”

But the energy project is at least a year behind schedule. The original $6.2-billion budget has almost doubled. The project’s $13-billion cost could bankrupt the province unless there is a major federal bailout.

British Columbia is now repeating Newfoundland’s nightmare with the Site C dam.

Despite Scheer’s naive daydreams, energy corridors don’t have a happy history in Canada.

Remember the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, which was supposed to create a natural gas corridor from north to south in the 1970s, and was revived with promises of prosperity in 2011?

Environmentalists and Indigenous people opposed the megaproject. But economics killed it.

The low price of natural gas made it impossible to recoup costs for the $16-billion behemoth, let alone maintain infrastructure built on melting permafrost.

Now Scheer thinks we should have something like a Mackenzie Valley pipeline running across the country.

It’s telling that nobody in Canada is actually sitting in coffee shops and asking for a transnational energy corridor. Unless, of course, it’s a coffee shop favoured by oil and gas industry lobbyists, or CEOs hoping to prop up their struggling industry.

Scheer, of course, promises his energy corridor megaproject will be profitable because it will be vetted by a “blue ribbon panel.”

In modern parlance, that means a bunch of industry lobbyists.

Consider the case of Alberta’s struggling natural gas industry. Companies across North America have flooded the market with fracked gas, which is expensive to produce, and driven down prices. Alberta companies are struggling.

Last year, Alberta’s energy minister invited an expert panel to come up with a solution.

The panel consisted of three pipeline activists: Hal Kvisle, the former CEO of TransCanada Pipelines; Brenda Kenny, the former director of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association; and Terrance Kutryk, the former CEO of Alliance Pipeline.

The blue-ribbon panel reached a reasonable assessment of the problem.

“Traditional markets for Alberta natural gas are oversupplied,” it reported. “Prices, and therefore industry and government revenues, are crushingly low.”

So, did the panel of pro-pipeline activists recommend a reduction in supply?

No way.

Instead it recommended that governments should intervene in an oversupplied market place and champion new energy export corridors and liquefied natural gas development. The report called for cuts to regulatory oversight and an examination of ways to cut taxes on the companies. All to increase production from cash-burning fracking outfits.

The report ignored some stunning economic realities. The shale gas industry is highly indebted and not making profits. Investors have soured on the sector. Rystad, a Norwegian energy consulting firm, has reported that 40 U.S. shale companies have been struggling with losses for almost a decade and are awash in debt. Nine out of 10 U.S. shale oil companies are losing money because fracking is costly and complex, Rystad reported in May.

Economists at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis described the bleak outlook for the sector in an August report.

“Until fracking companies can demonstrate that they can produce cash as well as hydrocarbons, cautious investors would be wise to view the fracking sector as a speculative enterprise with a weak outlook and an unproven business model.”

That’s the industry the Alberta government and Scheer are seeking to champion.

At one time, a good conservative used to understand the law of supply and demand.

But Scheer’s energy corridor is effectively a massive government subsidy for energy companies that can’t attract private investment because their business model is broken.

And it’s a subsidy for a sector facing even greater challenges as a result of volatile oil and gas prices.

Last year the International Energy Agency warned oil-exporting nations that price volatility will continue. Lower prices could cost exporters $7 trillion in revenue over the next decade, the report found.

Those losses, in turn, mean economic disruption, large debts and deep cuts to government spending.

Does Scheer really want to propose an energy megaproject in the face of that kind of economic chaos?

Real conservatives know that energy corridors don’t make jobs or support freedom.

When China built a pipeline to access natural gas in western Burma, there were reports of forced labour, relocated villages and corruption.

Those kinds of things are inherent in energy corridors, which enrich the powerful at the expense of the weak.

The great conservative writer Wendell Berry has noted that corridors reflect the general malaise in global economic thinking.

For too long, globalization has promoted the unaccountable idea that if our own economy isn’t meeting our needs, we can just reach out and tap to somewhere else around the globe.

“This is the most damaging idea that we’ve ever had,” Berry wrote. “It’s still with us, still current, and it still excuses local plunder and theft and enslavement. It’s an extreme fantasy or unreality, the idea that if we don’t have it here, we can get it somewhere else — if we use it up here, we can get it somewhere else. It’s the stuff of fantasy.”

It is also the stuff of Canadian conservative politics. 

Read more: Election 2019, Energy, Federal Politics

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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/10/16/Scheer-Energy-Corridor-Folly/

Like Obama knows Jagmeet Singh, eh!

Analysis: Could Scheer Lose His Own Seat to the NDP ?

Quote:

In 2015, Scheer won the partially urban, partially rural riding in large part due to a surge in Liberal Party votes.  Della Anaquod – a placeholder candidate – surged to over eighteen percent of the vote in the red wave that brought Liberals to a majority government.

With that wave crashing back in 2019, riding New Democrats and others on the centre-left are pressing hard to keep the vote behind the local New Democratic candidate, and deny the Tory leader his own seat in the House of Commons – a situation that would throw the already divided Conservative Party into chaos in a minority Parliament.  Higher voter turnout and a coalescence of support around the New Democratic candidate, and surging support for the People’s Party among right wing voters over the issue of Quebec equalization, could lead to the Tory leader losing in his own seat.

n/a

Oh come on now this is so obviously Fake News

https://buffalochronicle.com/2019/10/15/rcmp-source-says-security-risk-against-trudeau-was-contrived-by-pmo-staffers/

Left Turn wrote:

Analysis: Could Scheer Lose His Own Seat to the NDP ?

Quote:

In 2015, Scheer won the partially urban, partially rural riding in large part due to a surge in Liberal Party votes.  Della Anaquod – a placeholder candidate – surged to over eighteen percent of the vote in the red wave that brought Liberals to a majority government.

With that wave crashing back in 2019, riding New Democrats and others on the centre-left are pressing hard to keep the vote behind the local New Democratic candidate, and deny the Tory leader his own seat in the House of Commons – a situation that would throw the already divided Conservative Party into chaos in a minority Parliament.  Higher voter turnout and a coalescence of support around the New Democratic candidate, and surging support for the People’s Party among right wing voters over the issue of Quebec equalization, could lead to the Tory leader losing in his own seat.

Oh, that would taste SO sweet! 

Listening to Charles Adler this morning as he was telling Conservative voters to take their head out of their ass if they think Obama's endorsement would hurt Justin.