The decline of the federal Conservatives founded in 2003

Here's something about  your dimply faced 12 year old would be PM

https://globalnews.ca/news/6183388/dagenais-quits-conservative-senate-ca...

He's so bad that the rats are jumping ship already. And this is the leader and party you all would rather than Justin Trudeau.

If this SoCon motherfucking Howdy Doody puppet gets his way he'd ban both aboirtion and same sex marriage --- just for starters.

But hey. At least he's not a Liberal. Pffff.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

alan smithee wrote:

Here's something about  your dimply faced 12 year old would be PM

https://globalnews.ca/news/6183388/dagenais-quits-conservative-senate-ca...

He's so bad that the rats are jumping ship already. And this is the leader and party you all would rather than Justin Trudeau.

If this SoCon motherfudcking Howdy Doody puppet gets his way he'd ban both abortion and same sex marriage --- just for starters.

But hey. At least he's not a Liberal. Pffff.

Alan you need to pick insults for this asshole that are not misogynist.

Sorry. I don' t agree about my comment being misogynist but I know the rules here.

I made the appropriate adjustments.

There have only been two Majority governments since the Conservative parties merged. One of those was a Conservative government. Pretending the Conservatives are the only party that is having difficulties winning a majority has no basis in fact. 

Pondering wrote:

I really am worried about how Alberta and by extension Canada will do as the oil industry inevidably declines even if it takes decades. I don't believe Wexit is a serious threat but violence/terrorism is definitely a possibility. 

I just don't understand this fear except that Canadians have been bombarded with oiligarchy propaganda so long they don't get the actual facts.  Oil and gas is not a job producer compared to just about every other industry and it is being automated as fast as Suncor can.

While the fuel and electricity industry employs a large number of people by virtue of its size, especially in the oil and gas producing provinces, it is a capital intensive and technologically sophisticated industry and its share of employment is low compared to its share of GDP, especially for the upstream extraction and refining activities.  Compared to its 9.7% share of GDP, the energy sector generates only 2.6% of direct employment in the Canadian economy, or about 391,000 jobs in 2012.  For the fossil fuel-related industries, employment is heavily concentrated in the producing provinces (except for gas station employment, which is spread evenly throughout the country).  Employment in the electric power industry is also spread evenly throughout the country.

The travel and tourism industry is one of the largest in the world, it is also a dominant industry in Canada, where the contribution of tourism to the gross domestic product (GDP) totalled 35.37 billion Canadian dollars. The majority of this came from leisure travel spending which accounted for 62 percent of the direct contribution of travel and tourism to GDP in Canada. The industry is not only beneficial to the country's GDP but also the job market, in 2017, travel and tourism generated over 738,000 jobs across Canada.

Oil and gas jobs are not the only jobs in the economy and are no more important than jobs in other industries. Alberta's econmy is driven partly by oil and gas but employs only 140,300 people. BC's tourism industry which is based primarily on selling Supernatural BC to the world employs more than double the number of people.

Total employment (the total number of employees and self-employed people, 15 years and over) in 2017 was 3.3% higher than its level in 2016. Over the last 10 years, employment fell by 11,500 from 2007, an 8.2% decrease. There were 140,300 employed in the industry in 2017, of whom 96.8% were full time and 3.2% were part time.

British Columbia’s tourism industry ranks as one of the province’s largest economic sectors in terms of employment and revenue, with more than 302,700 jobs in the industry, and generating $18.4 billion in visitor revenues in 2017.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Pondering wrote:

I really am worried about how Alberta and by extension Canada will do as the oil industry inevidably declines even if it takes decades. I don't believe Wexit is a serious threat but violence/terrorism is definitely a possibility. 

I just don't understand this fear except that Canadians have been bombarded with oiligarchy propaganda so long they don't get the actual facts.  Oil and gas is not a job producer compared to just about every other industry and it is being automated as fast as Suncor can.

While the fuel and electricity industry employs a large number of people by virtue of its size, especially in the oil and gas producing provinces, it is a capital intensive and technologically sophisticated industry and its share of employment is low compared to its share of GDP, especially for the upstream extraction and refining activities.  Compared to its 9.7% share of GDP, the energy sector generates only 2.6% of direct employment in the Canadian economy, or about 391,000 jobs in 2012.  For the fossil fuel-related industries, employment is heavily concentrated in the producing provinces (except for gas station employment, which is spread evenly throughout the country).  Employment in the electric power industry is also spread evenly throughout the country.

The travel and tourism industry is one of the largest in the world, it is also a dominant industry in Canada, where the contribution of tourism to the gross domestic product (GDP) totalled 35.37 billion Canadian dollars. The majority of this came from leisure travel spending which accounted for 62 percent of the direct contribution of travel and tourism to GDP in Canada. The industry is not only beneficial to the country's GDP but also the job market, in 2017, travel and tourism generated over 738,000 jobs across Canada.

Oil and gas jobs are not the only jobs in the economy and are no more important than jobs in other industries. Alberta's econmy is driven partly by oil and gas but employs only 140,300 people. BC's tourism industry which is based primarily on selling Supernatural BC to the world employs more than double the number of people.

Total employment (the total number of employees and self-employed people, 15 years and over) in 2017 was 3.3% higher than its level in 2016. Over the last 10 years, employment fell by 11,500 from 2007, an 8.2% decrease. There were 140,300 employed in the industry in 2017, of whom 96.8% were full time and 3.2% were part time.

British Columbia’s tourism industry ranks as one of the province’s largest economic sectors in terms of employment and revenue, with more than 302,700 jobs in the industry, and generating $18.4 billion in visitor revenues in 2017.

 

Yes, oil and gas produces more wealth than jobs in this dysfunctional economy. The argument of its extreme importance is based on discredited trickle down theories.

It does create a number of well paying jobs in an economy that does not have enough of those. We need to face the fact that this paucity of well-paying jobs is a decision. Certainly changes can be made to the economy to replace these jobs and to value other employment better.

Yes losing the oil and gas income will be a negative for the economy if you consider this in a vacuum. However, if you assume any replacement at all -- including renewables -- then the loss is limited. 

There are many new and more promising technologies both for jobs and the economy. It would take some government incompetence to let those pass by but then we should blame incompetence and not the decision to reduce reliance on oil and gas.

..the conservatives appear to be transforming into disaster capitalism.

The long Conservative decline

quote:

Austerity regimes exemplify the resulting strategic malaise: very lucrative for the very rich, but as a response to crisis there is little historical evidence that such pro-cyclical fiscal contraction is an effective way of stimulating long-term growth. Lacking the ability to conceive of any viable and stable accumulation strategy, the Conservatives are instead blown between a series of wildly contradictory and purely tactical ideological positions: Cameron’s initial pledge to match Labour spending, following by years of insistence on the necessity of cuts; Theresa May’s doomed flirtation with a half-baked Christian Democratic ‘Red Tory’ authoritarianism, followed by Boris Johnson’s incoherent melange of One Nationism and disaster capital.

....

Albertans' retirement funds don't belong to Kenney gov't

quote:

In other words, the supposedly “free-market” UCP wants to create a government monopoly.

The thing that all of these changes have in common is power. The UCP wants to control the billions of dollars that millions of individual Albertans have been saving diligently for their own retirements.

In response to this blatant grab for money and control, we, the representatives of more than 300,000 working Albertans, have a three-part message for the premier and his government.

First, this isn’t your money. It belongs to the Albertans who saved it month after month. How can a party that styles itself as a champion of individual rights and property rights think it’s appropriate for government to essentially seize control of other people’s savings?

Second, you don’t have permission. You never mentioned sweeping changes to Alberta’s retirement system in the recent election so, you do not have a mandate for any of this.

Third, you don’t have the confidence of the people who this money really belongs to.

Working Albertans did not ask the UCP to interfere in the administration of their pensions, nor do they have confidence that they will run those plans in a fair or responsible way.

In fact, we’re worried that what you’re attempting to do is use other people’s money to create a huge slush fund to finance an agenda that has not yet been articulated to the public and which most people would not feel comfortable using their life savings to support.

....

Ontario’s healthcare spending lowest in Canada — but going lower

quote:

Even more damaging may be the Ford government’s embrace of further privatization, evident in recent legislation creating a health superagency with vast new privatization powers.

Let’s quickly clarify that there are no savings to be had from such privatization. Quite the contrary.

While government spending on the public portion of health care — doctors and hospitals — has held steady at about 4 per cent of GDP for the past 40 years, the costs of the private parts of the system — drugs, physiotherapy, dentistry, home care, etc. — have risen dramatically.

But Ford seems less concerned about controlling health costs than about pleasing business interests, which have long pushed to open our health care system to more privatization, so they can get in on the spectacular profits reaped in private health care south of the border.

Kory Teneycke:  “Being asked if you want to be Andrew Scheer’s chief of staff right now is probably like asking someone if they want to be the captain of the Titanic”

Video clip from Power & Politics:

https://twitter.com/PnPCBC/status/1199096858854989830

Pondering wrote:

Members will elect another social conservative because they have the most power not the moderates. Social Conservatives have been emboldened by the strength of the movement in the US. The Conservative Party has cultivated social conservative votes. They have MPs that are openly "pro-life" and anti-LBGTQ2. People who feel strongly on those issues are not going to give them up for other Conservative values just as people who are pro-choice will not give up their ideals for political expediency. Once Harper had his majority he still didn't allow any debate which was a betrayal of the social conservatives. Now they know being quiet will give them nothing. 

The thing is, though, the details of what constitutes social conservativism can vary with the times.

In the 1980s, SoCons opposed extending human-rights protection to gays and lesbians. But after that had been accomplished nationwide, they didn't continue to fight on that issue, because otherwise, yes, they would have become unelectable.

Instead, they switched to opposing same-sex marriage. And let's not forget, Harper was able to win several elections, including the one that gave him his majority, AFTER he had spoken out and even voted against same-sex marriage.

Now, if Harper in the early 2000s had been talking like a mid-1980s SoCon(eg. "Why should landlords have to rent an apartment to a bunch of raving queens?"), he likely would have been laughed out of the discussion. So, he switched to the slightly more respectable "I'm not telling anyone what to do in their bedroom, but marriage should still only be between a man and a woman."

And you can bet that when opposition to marriage-equality becomes a deal-breaker for most Canadians, the Conservatives will switch to some other still-respectable form of anti-gay policy, eg. private members' bills affirming the rights of churches and other religious groups to refuse to marry gay couples(even though that's not in dispute), and frame it as "just protecting everyone's religious freedoms". And I'd be willing to predict that a lot of the SoCons who had previously opposed SSM, but given up on that one as now unwinnable, will jump onto the "religious freedom" bandwagon as if it was exactly the same battle.

TL/DR: By abandoning issues that have made them unelectable, while picking up others that are still within the realm of respectability, SoCons can continue to maintain their basic political identity, and at the same time bring in whatever levels of support they'd previously been garnering.

Pondering wrote:

That was before the rise of the evangelicals and Harper's failure to do anything once he finally won a majority. While he had a minority he had an excuse. Once he had a majority evangelical voters expected more. They expect the pro-life MPs they elect to stand up for the protection of the unborn. That is why the party dare not silence them. 

That is why when this happened Scheer had to say it wasn't true. "In the interview, Rayes said Scheer has confirmed that he “would not let one of his members present an anti-abortion bill."

For evangelicals on abortion there is no other reason to elect Conservatives. They will elect an independent who can put member's bills forward or they won't vote at all. They are emboldened by the strength of the movement in the US. 

So sure, there are moderates in the party, but they don't get to choose the leader. Scheer was the moderate choice that evangelicals would accept, Bernier the extreme one. 

The media is counselling moderation as the only path forward for Conservatives to win. I agree, but I don't think the base will. 

The April leadership review will tell us which way the wind is blowing but if they dump Scheer we may have to wait for the new leader to be elected to see whether or not the social conservatives keep power. 

Indeed. It does look like parties are increasingly searching for ways to motivate a base while building more alienation towards all others.

I agree that this coming review will send signals about whether the party will moderate to seek power or move to a more extreme posture than they already have. I think the Conservatives are really in a similar place as the NDP now.

Supporters do not want to compromise as winning in a compromised position is not worth it.

The difference is that while Conservatives know they are not attractive to most, they expect that power will fall to them eventually even if they are nowhere near the people becuase eventually anger builds up at the party in power. This is the difference being the presumed alternative.

Due to the economics, I do not see the NDP supplanting the Conservatives for role of government in waiting. This means that we will likely have mostly Liberal governments and once in a while an extreme Conservative one.

The NDP has to find a better way.

Pondering wrote:

Liberals and Conservatives are not the only two choices. It is astonishing how close Singh is to Scheer. 

If the Conservatives go moderate, sure they can win at least a minority, but if they don't, and I don't think they will, they can't win. Once they can't win the alternative to the Liberals will be someone else. 

As the Liberals absorb the red tories progressives will reject them and move left. That is, the federal Liberals will become what the BC and Quebec Liberals already are. The Liberals will no longer be considered on the left by any but the most right wing. 

I think the Conservatives are going to pick a relatively popular person like Peter MacKay or Rona Ambrose and they will continue to be in at least a strong second place while the NDP will continue fighting just to stay in a distant fourth place position.

They say in politics as well as war that most fight the previous battles.

The idea that a single direction is the right one for a party (for the purpose of power - not principle) is incorrect. There is an oscilation of popularity of ideas including left-right/nationalism/ deficit fighting/job creation/immigration etc. Parties are slow learners and often screw up doubly by being wrong the first time and then learning that lesson and being wrong again while trying to be right for the last campaign.

Being consistently the same actualy gives a better chance of the people coming to you than trying to follow the people as you will keep being where they were instead of where they are.

Very often you see the NDP running picture perfect campaigns for the previous election and then not understanding why they failed.

In 2015 this was a classic example. The message of 2015 was the best one for 2011. The campaign for 2019 was actually what should ahve happened in 2015. It was not terrible for 2019 as we did not move as far from 2015 as 2015 had from 2011. Mulcair's campaign (when it comes to seats) might be closer to what could work in the next campaign than what was done just now.

The problem is this is less authentic coming from the NDP.

I do not advocate flopping around like this. I do advocate going with the principles of the party and trusting that if these are properly communicated over multiple elections, with the trust in them to continue, the time will come for the NDP and the people will believe the party. this flopping around means that even if the party managed to get the oscilation correct and land on the right message for the right election, the people might not believe them.

In my view the next election is going to be a retraction and shift right federally. This is a good time for the NDP to keep left. By doing so the party will suffer in the short term - perhaps. (They may not if the Liberals oportunistically shift right.) The short term suffering will earn the party trust and credibility when they remain left the following election when the people will start to come round to them and the one after that the party could win if they were left consistently over three elections.

By being left - I do not mean as far left as most here. You still have to meet the people part way. How you do this is by selecting the life changing key platform positions. You can still avoid painting yourself into a corner rhetorically where you would get lenlled extreme. You can reach out to the people in several ways while eraning the trust of consistently in others.

Singh is not rhetoricaly to the left but some of his positions are very good. This is a way of meeting the people part way. Avoid the BS rhetoric and show concrete examples.

BTW since this is the day after the UK election, I think some of what happened there illustrates this. Corbyn is seen as scary left by some in the UK who are centrists but this is not due to policies. It is due to unnecessary rhetoric more strident thean the policies. Know that the people are not as left as we are when it comes to rhetoric (despite the delusions we sometimes like to have). To win them over you show them concrete proposals grounded in practicality without excessive ideological wrapping. This way you can be more left than you sound while giving confidence.

Back to the Conservatives as this thread is about them. It is hard to know which way they will turn and if they will get the oscilation correct themselves. The NDP should not be overly concerned about this. This is a communications and strategy issue. The NDP due to money has limited bandwidth. I have long been a fan of the NDP (when running from third) not spending energy attacking the other parties except very strategically - on issues that point to NDP strengths and where a point needs to be made about the NDP position or where the same attack can be credibly used on both parties. As far as damage, the NDP can count on the wealthier parties to consume some energy beating each other up. The NDP can let them do this and spend NDP energy promoting the alternative. This is the kind of campaign that the NDP does best. This is not about taking the high road (although that is a byproduct) it is about better use of resources to not duplicate the others and to not help another major party by attacking their rival in a way that does not help the NDP. Put another way: the first two parties are the default winners in damage to the other. The third party has to be strategic to benefit from damage they do to either of the first two parties to make sure the benefit comes down to them. It is an example of doing what one party does is not always going to work for another.

Pondering wrote:

They did an internal poll and found out supporters were angry about it. 

I don't mind that you are talking about the NDP Sean. It's not like babble is good at staying on topic and it does relate. 

I think you are completely right about the NDP. Authenticity is important and getting more important. The NDP will gain credibility by staying the course on climate change and inequality. 

The Conservatives can't stay the course and can't be authentic. 

Indeed, every thread is about progressive politics since we are not Conservative-- it is always about our response. I like your synthisis about the NDP should stay the course which I had said -- and then adding that the Conservatives can't which I think it true.

I fear they are still a threat even when repugnant and that scares me. I cannot dare to hope for moderation as that brings them to power or extremism as that is no guarantee that they won't win anyway.

We are in new times where for the majority of voters truth is no longer relevant.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I found this old article about Scheer from 2017 very interesting. His bio says he was raised Catholic but he has been sending his kids to evangelic schools which are I thought were considered the devils work to an RC.

A quick check appears to indicate that there are no private Catholic elementary schools in Regina. Not surprising as Sk has a publicly funded Catholic system (like Ontario) and given the size of Regina there probably aren't enough extreme Catholics with deep pockets to support a private school. Also these days many exteme Catholics regard liberal members of their own church the enemy more than Protestants, and vice versa.

I think I read that his kids do go to a private Catholic school in Ottawa, although I'm not completely sure. Scheer himself attended publicly funded Catholic schools in Ottawa.

There are 100 or so safe Conservative ridings across Canada so the Conservatives are going to remain a top-two party for the foreseeable future. Getting rid of Scheer will improve the Conservatives chances of winning the next election. This thread is silly at best.

They are infinitely more united now because they are working with each other within one party instead of opposing each other within two parties. The social conservatives are going to back the Conservatives as they always have because they know that splitting the vote will just elect Liberals. They understand how FPTP works.

Misfit wrote:

Quote:

"There is so much anti-central Canada and anti-activist rhetoric in Alberta and Saskatchewan that referring to other Conservatives as GTA activists and insiders is really strong language."

Rex Murphy is not Alberts or Saskatchewan.  He is from Newfoundland. I know that you have this hate thing going against western Canada, but try to realize that pretty much all of Canada outside of southern Ontario and southern Quebec have deeply rooted issues against central Canada and Toronto especially.

Plus, the word "activist" is in such wide usage, with connotations usually shading between neutral and moderately negative(depending on who is using it), I really doubt that Day or Murphy was directing it specifically at western Canadians. To the extent that it would be used as a dog-whistle, it probably has as much appeal to Conservatives everywhere as to the ones in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Pondering:

Sorry, my post was somewhat unclear. I know he was talking about people in the GTA, not in the west. But you implied that the word "activist" was chosen because of all the anti-activist rhetoric in the west, or at the very least, the word becomes a lot stronger because of that rhetoric.

I'm saying that the word "activist" was likely used because it's long been in wide usage for describing a certain type of political actor, not because of any extra negativity now being attached to it in the west.