Erin O'Toole Wants Wealthy Canadians To “Pay Their Fair Share”

It looks as if O'Toole agrees with Pondering's analysis of the electoral future. In a speech Friday, according to this CBC article, he stated that the Cons are in a bind because their base is too narrow.

John Paul Tasker wrote:

During a 30-minute address to party delegates assembled for a three-day policy convention, O'Toole said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to enjoy support despite a series of scandals and a muddled response to the COVID-19 pandemic because too many Canadians don't feel they have a home in the Conservative Party.

"We have lost two elections in five and a half years. In that time, we have had four leaders. We must present new ideas, not make the same arguments hoping that maybe this time more Canadians will come around to our position," O'Toole said.

"We are never going to win over Canadians just by relying on Justin Trudeau to continue to disappoint. His scandals, as outrageous as they often are, will never be enough to defeat him," he said.

O'Toole said the party will be relegated to the opposition benches indefinitely if it continues to run up lopsided victories in Western Canada and rural areas while underperforming in the country's big cities.

The Montreal-born, Bowmanville, Ont.-raised O'Toole said Conservatives must embrace policies that will appeal to the suburban voters who have abandoned the party since the 2011 election that gave former prime minister Stephen Harper a majority government.

Yeah, under FPTP the Conservatives only need to get around 35% of the vote to regain power if the Liberals get around 30% of the vote.

I agree with Jerry 100%.  The progressive conservatives could win but they are long gone and not coming back.  The new conservative party has been pumping the culture war that only westerners think exists and riling up social conservatives and anti-imigrant sentiment. 

But efforts by the Campaign Life Coalition — a well-organized anti-abortion group that backed social conservatives like Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis in the last leadership race — failed to put at least one anti-abortion policy proposal before delegates.

Notably, an effort to dump an established Conservative policy pledge — that a future Tory-led government "will not support any legislation to regulate abortion" — did not make the final cut.

Socially conservative activists have made inroads in many EDAs in recent months. The boards of directors for some Toronto-area ridings left dormant after the last electoral defeat are now dominated by such activists, sources told CBC News.

As the Hill Times has reported, some high-profile Conservatives — 2015 election campaign manager Jenni Byrne, Ontario PC Party president Brian Patterson, former senator Irving Gerstein and investment banker Mark Mulroney — lost their bids to become convention delegates due to high social conservative turnout at riding-level delegate selection meetings, which are normally sparsely attended.

Groups like RightNow, an anti-abortion advocacy group, also briefed supporters on how to craft policy and get it through to the convention floor.

Despite those efforts, the individual riding association presidents — who voted on behalf of their local members and winnowed down the policy list that will go to the convention floor — avoided some of the more controversial social policy proposals.

One policy plank recommitting the party to opposing medical assistance in dying made the final cut....

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-policy-convention-abortion...

Social conservatives don't care if the Conservatives win in the general sense. To them the party is a vehicle for their values. 

The weakness of the new Conservative party which is not just the Progressive Conservatives under a new banner, means we could be stuck with the Liberals for another two election cycles. The greater threat is that as fiscal conservatives give up on the new Conservative party they will drive Liberal economic policy even farther to the right or entrench it. The NDP party is at risk of moving towards the centre leaving us with the Liberal/Conservatives against the Liberal/NDP. 

melovesproles wrote:

 

No doubt the Conservatives have structural problems but these aren't new. They've existed since the Mulroney coalition broke up. When Harper won a Minority Government, the Conservatives were on the wrong side of public opinion on virtually every issue. However, Canadians wanted to punish the Liberals for their arrogance and corruption. This isn't the end of history. That will happen again later or sooner.  

No they aren't new. The divisions led to the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance who would not rejoin the Progressive Conservative Party. The only way they would return is under a new banner with their leader in charge. They effectively destroyed the federal Progressive Conservatives. Canadians still don't realize this is a very new political party. Bloc Quebecois is an older party. Just because they named the new party "Conservative" doesn't make it so. It is still the Reform/Canadian Alliance Party. They can't turn it back into the PC party. That train has left the station for good. They can keep their base, or they can appeal to central Canada. They can't do both.

They know they are in huge trouble and so do Conservative commentators. They are begging social conservatives and climate change deniers to pipe down and support the party but social conservatives and climate change deniers are demanding that the party support them. They may not be able to control the party but they can be loud enough to prevent them from winning. They are not about to accept O-Toole becoming Mackay.

melovesproles wrote:

 

The NDP have their own structural issues. They don't have the massive media support, wealth and power that supports the Liberals and Conservative. They also have shown time and time again that they care more about the latest polls than the views of their membership which results in lacklustre fundraising and a stagnant unenergized base. That isn't a recipe for growth. I think the NDP will hold off Liberal and Green attempts to squeeze them out but am extremely skeptical that they are going to flip a significant number of Conservative ridings.  

I'm looking at the longterm, the next 3/4 elections. 

I don't expect the NDP to flip Conservative ridings nor do they need to. Liberals are far more likely to take Conservative seats (outside the west) as fixcal Conservatives give up on the Conservative Party winning federally.  The Liberal party is the defacto Conservative party of BC is it not? 

As the Liberal party becomes more Conservative the NDP will pick up Liberal seats. Right now the Liberal rank and file, including MPs, is pushing hard for minimum income.  Leadership doesn't seem interested. We have seen for ourselves the resistence to structural change. Over the next 5 to 10 years Liberals will drift to the NDP as their only alternative. 

Just as Conservatives joining the Liberals will pull or cement the Liberals turn to neoliberalism so too will Liberals joining the NDP drag them more towards the centre. 

I'm not saying the Conservative party will vanish. It will maintain a solid 28 to 30%. They just won't be able to win an election. Eventually, as in BC, voters will tire of endless Liberal governments. If the Conservatives can't win that leaves the NDP assuming they remain the other available choice. They are not that far behind the Conservatives even now. 

As O'Toole has pointed out, they haven't won an election since 2015 even against a scandal-ridden Trudeau government. They will lose the next election too no matter when it is held. They may remain the official opposition but that is the best they will do. They won't even get a minority. The pandemic has only accelerated what was already coming. 

Obviously I haven't got a crystal ball and anything is possible but I think the most likely outcome is that Trudeau will win another 4 years.  By 2025 Canada will have another 1.5  million immigrants. More iceburgs will have fallen into the oceans. If we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow the impacts would still increase for years to come.  In other words we ain't seen nothing yet. It will get worse and worse no matter what we do. These outcomes don't require a crystal ball to predict. 

Nor does it require a crystal ball to see the generational divides on these issues and others. 

By 2050 caucasians will be the largest minority. The philosophy of multi-culturalism will benefit us greatly as will the growing power of indigenous peoples and environmentalists. There have been failures but there have been radical successes as well. Many pipelines have been stopped and the general public does not perceive it to be radical. 

Politics is not on endless repeat for good or bad. If it were we wouldn't have a Constitution or medicare or EI or the GIS or environmental laws. The swing of the pendulum changes eventually. We are in an extended period of time during which the right has no answers for people. Taxes have been cut to the bone for the wealthy and services starved. There is no fat left to cut. All Conservatives have to offer is lower taxes and individual responsibility. Nobody wants that right now.

O'Toole plans to come out bleating about the deficit which will be enormous but it will not be top priority.  Nor will deregulation be a popular notion. O'Toole is pledged to run on reversing the cabon tax while proposing what he promises wlll be a credible plan on climate change. That will please nobody. Canadians are resigned to the carbon tax as a necessary evil. Any credible plan O'Toole offers will offend his base. There is nothing in the Conservative ideology toolbox for dealing with these times which demand major government intervention to keep the wheels turning. As noted by someone else the barbaric practices snitch line will not be soon forgotten but aside from that the element of the party that generated that comment and attitude remains within the party. The MP was not an "outlier". The Conservative party has some very distasteful elements that they are dependent on. 

Looking down south the writing is on the wall for the federal Republicans. There may still be more Republican states than Democratic states but that is changing. Eventually all the voter suppression and gerrymandering won't be enough to steal elections because demographics will win out in the end. 

melovesproles wrote:

  ​This makes me wonder how old you are. Because you are literally repeating Paul Martin’s campaign message in two elections. First when he lost a majority and then when he lost government. The merger was extremely public and Progressive Conservatives like Joe Clark and David Orchard were all over the media saying exactly what you are.  

Old enough and they were right. Harper managed to fool people and keep the social conservatives quiet because they thought he would step up when he had a majority, only he didn't. He betrayed them. That is why they are not willing to pipedown for Scheer or O'Toole or anyone else. They are trying to take over as many ridings as possible. 

melovesproles wrote:

  ​You have a very romantic view of the PC party. It had very little appeal to anyone which is why it had only a handful of MPs by the time of its demise.  

It had enough appeal to win a lot of elections for decades. It was left with a handful of seats because the Reform/CA took seats. 

melovesproles wrote:

  Again this isn’t new. Harper won when Social Conservatives in the party actually presented a real and present danger to Same Sex Marriage. They were literally obsessed with stopping people who loved each other from getting married. Repugnant, a clear threat to the rights of Canadians, and it was mainstream in the party and also the view of many of their MPs. They still won government with significant representation in central Canada.  

There was no danger to same sex marriage in Canada. Harper ran on not touching that law nor abortion law. Had he talked up those things he would have lost. He knew it and it is why he refused to move even after he won his majority. He had the power to get anti-abortion laws passed and didn't do it. This is why social conservatives are unwilling to be quiet so the Conservatives can win an election. 

melovesproles wrote:

   If you look at Canada’s Carbon Emissions under Conservative and Liberal governments you won’t be able to tell who was in power. Neither party has any real commitment to taking on the Oil industry. Best case scenario, they’ll wait until the US transitions and then both parties will follow the US’s lead. Most Canadians understand this. 

Regular people don't look at carbon emissions. They think, the Conservatives are climate change deniers and even when they begrudgingly admit it exists want to do the least amount possible. The Liberals are willing to act moderately balancing the economy and environmentalism. The NDP are better on the environment but might not be able to manage the economy. That's about as deep as most people get aside from having opinions on particular projects like pipelines. 

Liberals are the natural government party of Canada. Elections are theirs to lose. They gain power, they eventually sicken everyone with their corruption, then the Conservatives get a turn until the Liberals pull themselves together again.....only it isn't happening like that anymore. Canadians still haven't woken up to the realization that it isn't the PC party anymore but reform policies are preventing them from winning enough seats to form government. 

melovesproles wrote:

  The more longterm predictions are, the less accurate they usually are because new unforeseen variables will occur.  

That isn't true of trends. When I look at the 2 week weather forecast I can't count on a specific day being sunny, it could be the day before or after but there will be one. When a hurricane is coming in they know it will hit. It could be more or less strong, it's path could veer a few miles, but it will happen. This pandemic was predictable and we will have more of them more frequently in part due to climate change. Other types of natural disasters will also be increasing exponentially for decades to come even if we stopped burning fossil fuels cold today. 

In my view that is going to have a huge impact on politics. In Canada social conservatism has lost the war. Like separatism, nobody wants to talk about it. Conservatives had been hoping to use it with immigrants but the anti-immigrant cohorts in the party nixed that. 

pondering wrote:

  I don't expect the NDP to flip Conservative ridings nor do they need to. Liberals are far more likely to take Conservative seats (outside the west) as fixcal Conservatives give up on the Conservative Party winning federally.  The Liberal party is the defacto Conservative party of BC is it not?  

melovesproles wrote:

  No, definitely not. The Provincial and Federal dynamic in BC is extremely different. Provincially, there has historically been an anti-NDP vote which converged around a party, most recently the BC Liberals. Federally, the Liberals are not viable in most rural BC ridings and the right here hates them even more than the NDP. That cognitive dissonance is one of the major branding issues the BC Liberals are struggling with.  

I should have said "in the east". There is such a thing as a "red Tory". They move to the Liberal party federally when the Conservative party has no hope. I don't know much about BC politics but as far as I do know the Liberal Party of BC is more conservative than Liberal from posts on this board. 

The thing is the Federal Liberals don't need to win more seats. They just need to hold their ground. The Conservatives can't win without taking seats away from the Liberals in central and eastern Canada. That is out of reach because of the western centric positions they are forced to take. 

melovesproles wrote:

  I’d also say the fiscal conservatives in the Liberal Party are not happy right now since they have been put on the back bench. I don’t see them having a convincing case to make to “swing” Conservatives” in central Canada. You really think the Ford Tories in Ontario are going to be more attracted to Trudeau than O’Toole?

Fiscal conservatives in the Liberals are fine if not dancing. Whether they are happy or not makes no difference. They won't go radical. The Conservative party is fiscally radical. Governments across the world have used the traditional levers of economic management to keep the world economy going. Free market ideology is not conservative.  Voters are put into boxes they never endorsed. Ford won one election and he has lost popularity. They are not "Ford Tories" nor were they Liberals.  Swing voters aren't regularly being taken in by one philosophy or another. Most people are trying to pick best of three options they don't support. 

melovesproles wrote:

 I agree but it’s not just the right. The neoliberal consensus which has been as dominant in the Liberal party has no answers. We’ve been told that Free Trade would solve all our problems and that we didn’t need to develop our own industries. That’s been at the core of the Liberal Party of Canada throughout our history. That’s the reason we are so vulnerable when supply chains break down. That blind belief in the market is also why we have such ridiculous monopolization in key sectors and a complete disaster when it comes to housing our citizens. That has been as much due to Liberal governments as Conservative ones.  

I totally agree that the Liberals are as guilty as the Conservatives but they don't have a problem with big government. They want to privatize government services not do away with them. I hope that longterm Canadians will realize how badly both have failed us. 

The Liberals don't need to increase their support; they just need to maintain what they have. It is the Conservatives who must take seats away from the Liberals or the NDP. The Conservatives cannot use rhetoric as the Liberals have because social conservatives won't stand for it nor will the western allienation crowd. The Conservatives cultivated a radical base and now they are stuck with the monster they created. 

melovesproles wrote:

 Anyway, I suspect an election would deliver the same result. I don't see where the movement to flip ridings would happen unless Quebec shakes things up like it has been known to do. I think everyone got what they voted for and has no reason to change it up, unless Liberal arrogance and corruption reaches that high threshhold where even their voters can't hold their noses.  

Same result keeps the Liberals in power. Corruption has reached that high threshold and the Conservatives still couldn't win and they are still down in the polls. That is why they know they are in trouble. That is why O'Toole is desperately trying to convince the party to allow him to be more Peter MacKay.O'Toole himself says the party has to "change". 

"Change" means shutting up the malcontents in the west in order to win seats in the east. Not going to happen. 

melovesproles wrote:

Quote:

The Conservatives can't win without taking seats away from the Liberals in central and eastern Canada. That is out of reach because of the western centric positions they are forced to take. 

If their taxes go up, I'd expect a lot of suburban voters in Central Canada will have a new tolerance for a Conservative minority. The well-off care more about their pocketbooks than social issues, especially if O’Toole assures them he can control the SoCons.

I think many people see the 905 area as the biggest swing region in the country. I of course am not sure what "Western centric postions" means. I know my MP Gord Johns brings western eccentric concerns to parliament every week and I applaud him for it. I suspect that Pondering you don't count the people still protesting TMX as western centric, only the corporate tools who are supporting the oil and gas agenda? Calgary is not the fucking West just so you understand, no matter how much the Canadian MSM likes to talk like it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election_results_in_South...

kropotkin1951 wrote:

 I think many people see the 905 area as the biggest swing region in the country. I of course am not sure what "Western centric postions" means. I know my MP Gord Johns brings western eccentric concerns to parliament every week and I applaud him for it. I suspect that Pondering you don't count the people still protesting TMX as western centric, only the corporate tools who are supporting the oil and gas agenda? Calgary is not the fucking West just so you understand, no matter how much the Canadian MSM likes to talk like it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election_results_in_South...

The people protesting TMX, to my knowledge, are not Conservative supporters or members of the Conservative party. 

BC is not part of "the West" I speak of. BC is a region in its own right. I suppose I should say "the prairies". I am referring to primarily Alberta with Saskatchewan and Manitoba as hangers on. Alberta Conservatives dominate the federal party. They will not allow O'Toole to back down from cancelling the carbon tax. To most Canadians that is an extreme position. Canadians may express concern over the deficit but they will vote based on what the federal government is willing to deliver in benefits. Meanwhile Kenny is trying to cut services. The Conservative party has milked western alienation. There are a lot of Albertans who think their complaints are valid and are deluded enough to think threatening separation or having a referendum on equalization will put pressure on the RoC to negotiate. 

Not only do Conservatives within the party consider Peter MacKay too liberal , they consider O'Toole too liberal lite as well. 

Peter MacKay had an outside chance of bringing the Conservatives back to power federally. That the party rejects him as being too far left speaks volumes about their electoral chances. There is no set of policies that will please both Alberta Conservatives and central Canada. A major part of the Conservative base has become quite literally extremists a la Republicans. They may be a minority but they are a loud minority that is well-organized and strategic in getting representatives of their choice elected to ridings. The media loves to interview them. The leader, currently O'Toole, is then called upon to disavow them putting him into a catch-22.

Both Layton and Mulcair almost became Prime Ministers of Canada. Currently it looks like the NDP, not the Conservatives, are benefiting from disatisfaction with the Liberals. It is true the NDP are still behind the Conservatives by 5 points or so that is not an insurmountable obstacle if voters become disaffected enough with the Liberals. The NDP has more potential voters than Conservatives. 

Like it or not Alberta is the heartland of the Conservative Party. The Conservative party is Alberta centric in terms of their own supporters not Albertans in general, duh. They don't give a shit about opponents to TMX because few of them are Conservative Party supporters or could be converted into such. Doesn't even the NDP of Alberta support TMX? 

jerrym wrote:

Pondering wrote:

 

BC is not part of "the West" I speak of. BC is a region in its own right. I suppose I should say "the prairies".

BC is the West. Everybody on the other side of the Rockies is an Easterner. 

Um, Winnipeg is exactly halfway between the furthest west and east points in the country. So geographically, everyone west of Winnipeg is a westerner.

What's absurd is the idea propagated by the MSM that the prairies are 'west' but BC isn't, even though BC is literally further west than the prairies.

jerrym wrote:

Pondering wrote:

 

BC is not part of "the West" I speak of. BC is a region in its own right. I suppose I should say "the prairies".

BC is the West. Everybody on the other side of the Rockies is an Easterner. 

It is not called the Great Divide for nothing. BC's main oil fields are in the Northeast on the eastern side of the divide and most of the people support the Conservatives. The government of Saskatchewan is also controlled by the conservatives precisely because the oil and gas industry is dominant.

As far as I am concerned Vancouver Island is the oldest western region and politically and culturally separate from the Mainland, let alone the people on the other side of the Great Divide. I lived in the Rocky Mountain Trench area for seven years and the people in the Kootenay's know which side of the divide they are on.

melovesproles wrote:

  I’m not saying they weren’t right. I’m saying how did Canadians “not realize” it when it was the campaign narrative during two elections and constantly in the media. 

They accepted Harper's narrative that he was just a boring accountant type that would make the government more transparent but were it not for scandal Martin would have won that election. Even now I am sure that most Canaadians consider this the same old Conservative party and always will. 

melovesproles wrote:

   It seems to be a common trope for you that Canadians have an incredibly low understanding of very obvious political realities compared to yourself. Harper didn't fool anybody.    

I consider myself to be fairly uneducated politically in general which gives me an advantage over progressive activists. I am among the masses that ignored all but the headlines for most of my life. Most people I know pay no attention to politics between elections. The thing is I don't look down on that or consider such people to be ignorant. They're just busy with life and would prefer to use their down time doing something productive. 

melovesproles wrote:

  They needed a new reason to exist and the Republican ‘culture war’ was the model that has replaced a party that has no real differences in economic policy from the Liberals.  

There is a difference in that they pander to different segments of the corporate world and the Conservatives are more ideological. 

melovesproles wrote:

 Harper let a vote on it take place. There is far less danger O’Toole would do something similar if he had a minority government.   

No one is afraid that social conservatives could actually impact legislation. That ship has sailed. It is what such people say about the party as a whole that is repellent to most Canadians. Expelling Derek Sloan upset many conservatives and yet it won't be enough. 

The message that it's okay because the leader is pro-choice and will support gay rights is too little too late. Trudeau was right when he said all Liberal MPs had to be pro-choice. Conservatives have tried to defend it as a freedom of conscience issue but the bottom line is that there are Conservative MPs and commentators in mainstream news arguing for restrictions on abortion. 

There are major elements within the party stuck on western alienation and the non-existent culture war. The war is over. The left won. There will be no turning back the clock on trans-rights or the trend towards greater use of gender neutral pronouns. Abortion will continue to become more broadly available. Mass immigration will continue. 

melovesproles wrote:

  ​Fair but it’s good to keep the real world in perspective and the reality is we’re talking about a difference in rhetoric here. And if you asked most regular people, I’d bet that you would find they know that the only things the Liberals like more than paying lip service to the environment is missing their own stated environmental targets and international commitments, and of course spending billions of our tax dollars keeping leaky pipeline projects going. Canadians aren't as clueless as you think. So far voters just don't seem to care that much about the environment and are satisfied by empty plattitudes.  

Voters trust corporate leaders over politicians. Voters do care a lot about many of the issues they just don't feel that they have the power to change things, or even to know what the solutions are. Every 4 or so years, sometimes less, we are presented with 2 parties with an ever hopeful third vying to become the government. From a practical perspective my power is limited to casting my vote for one of three. There is usually very little I need to know to make a decision. I can definitely cover it all in the week before the election, if not the day of. 

Next election I will be presented with very limited choices. My riding will likely go Liberal no matter how I vote so that frees me to vote my conscience. For me that means looking at the local NDP and Green candidates. If the Green candidate seems like someone who Lascaris would support then I may vote Green depending on who the NDP candidate will be. I could probably decide my vote in less than an hour. 

Because of being on this site and having some limited interest in mainly Canadian poltics I have come to fully support PR and I more fully understand the folly of our military involvement around the world and our political machinations and failures. Even so I don't think I could persuade anyone else to my point of view. It makes no practical difference. It won't impact my vote. 

melovesproles wrote:

  We’re talking about 6 years. Losing a majority government after one term is an extremely poor showing historically for the Liberals and they also had a historically poor popular vote for a government.  

pondering wrote:

  The thing is the Federal Liberals don't need to win more seats. They just need to hold their ground.  

melovesproles wrote:

  I doubt that most Liberals would agree with you that they would be satisfied with minority governments long term. You already have fiscally conservative Liberals like John Manley whining publicly about spending, deficits and taxes. Don’t underestimate the unhappiness of fiscally conservative Liberals if they perpetually need the NDP to pass anything.  

They might want more seats but they don't need them to win. As long as they have the seats they currently have they remain in power and the NDP is powerless unless they are ready for an election. Harper taught the Liberals how to govern as if you have a majority even if you don't. 

melovesproles wrote:

  If their taxes go up, I'd expect a lot of suburban voters in Central Canada will have a new tolerance for a Conservative minority. The well-off care more about their pocketbooks than social issues, especially if O’Toole assures them he can control the SoCons.  

Taxes for the middle class are not going up except possibly provincial taxes in Alberta. It isn't a matter of controling the socons. Would you elect a party if 30% of their members were racist if the leader promised they could control them? Anti-gay and to a lesser extent anti-abortionists are becoming like racists. It speaks to character.  If 30% of a party's members and supporters are considered immoral the leader has to be spectacular to overcome it. 

melovesproles wrote:

  ​When the Conservatives have won provincially in Ontario, it’s been with the Rightwing Harris and Ford, not progressive conservatives. This is fact. I’m sorry that it doesn’t fit your narrative of a progressive Central Canada and a regressive Western Canada.  

It doesn't matter if Alberta is majority progressive unless those progressives are part of the Conservative party. 

pondering wrote:

 They want to privatize government services not do away with them.

melovesproles wrote:

 I don’t understand what you mean by this. 

The modern conservative philosophy is that the federal government should be minimized and restricted mostly to defence, law and order and foreign affairs. Charity should be left to churches. 

The Liberals are all about big government but not big civil service. They want to privatize the delivery of government services and investment. They want to fund affordable housing not social housing. 

The Liberal party is interventionist and pragmatic rather than ideological. They are bitterly criticized for this by both Conservatives and NDP but swing voters are fine with it; even prefer it. 

The pandemic arrived at the perfect time for "the left" or rather anything left of the Conservatives. However worried people might be about the deficit they are far more worried about the economy, climate change and the health care system. 

The Conservative party is not dominated by progressive westerners. I'm fine with it if you want to go ahead and get that done. Under those circumstances Conservative fortunes would rise dramatically. 

Counts against the Conservatives

• well-organized loud-mouth so-cons
• cutting taxes and funding has gone on for decades so there is no more room in that direction
• deregulation has gone about as far as it can go
• increasing inequality is a drag on the economies of developed nations
• the impacts of climate change are costly and increasingly requiring government intervention

In case there is any confusion over my opinion, the Liberal party owners are garbage. It is infuriating that they win by default not that the owners of the Conservative party and the NDP party are so much better. 

Left Turn wrote:

jerrym wrote:

Pondering wrote:

 

BC is not part of "the West" I speak of. BC is a region in its own right. I suppose I should say "the prairies".

BC is the West. Everybody on the other side of the Rockies is an Easterner. 

Um, Winnipeg is exactly halfway between the furthest west and east points in the country. So geographically, everyone west of Winnipeg is a westerner.

What's absurd is the idea propagated by the MSM that the prairies are 'west' but BC isn't, even though BC is literally further west than the prairies.

As someone who grew up in Oregon and now lives in Washington...both of which are states that are geographically to the west of most of "The West"-for some reason, Texas counts as West but we don't-  I can relate to this confusion.   The only time we're included in "The West" is when people are pretending to die of dysentary when playing the "Oregon Trail" retro video game.

Quote:

The Liberal party is interventionist and pragmatic rather than ideological.

The fact that you can’t see the ideology of the Liberal party says a lot about your own. Everyone thinks that they and the people who agree with them are not ideological. It’s just everyone else.

Quote:

The Conservative party is not dominated by progressive westerners.

Obviously, that isn’t our point of disagreement. Where we disagree is that you seem to think Central Canadian Conservatives are progressive.

Quote:

Would you elect a party if 30% of their members were racist if the leader promised they could control them? Anti-gay and to a lesser extent anti-abortionists are becoming like racists. It speaks to character.  If 30% of a party's members and supporters are considered immoral the leader has to be spectacular to overcome it. 

I wouldn’t but Canadians did just that not too long ago. I don’t think Harper was a spectacular leader, but he was competent. That’s really all it takes.

Quote:

The Liberals are all about big government but not big civil service. They want to privatize the delivery of government services and investment.

This is what I don’t understand. Privatizing is ‘doing away with services.’ How is that different than the Conservatives? You think the Conservatives want to privatize services and then go further somehow, using the state to prevent privatized services to exist? That makes no sense.

Quote:

They might want more seats but they don't need them to win. As long as they have the seats they currently have they remain in power and the NDP is powerless unless they are ready for an election. Harper taught the Liberals how to govern as if you have a majority even if you don't. 

I actually think there would be some key differences in how the Liberals would be governing right now if they had a majority. Since you admittedly don’t pay attention, you might not have noticed. For sure, even in a minority government, the governing party has a lot of power, but they are also hamstrung when it comes to budgets and can be embarrassed when it comes to parliamentary oversight. I also don’t think they would have spent billions of dollars on a leaky pipeline if they had been a minority government at the time. Those kinds of unpopular ideological moves are made by majority governments.

Quote:

Counts against the Conservatives

• well-organized loud-mouth so-cons
• cutting taxes and funding has gone on for decades so there is no more room in that direction
• deregulation has gone about as far as it can go
• increasing inequality is a drag on the economies of developed nations
• the impacts of climate change are costly and increasingly requiring government intervention

I don’t disagree with any of that. Since we seem to be talking past each other a lot, what I disagree with is the following:

• Conservatives in suburban Central Canada are so bothered by SoCons in Alberta that the Harper path to minority government is permanently closed.
• The Liberals aren’t ideological. The other parties are purely ideological.
• The Liberal party has no pressure on it to get a majority government.
• (Related to the above point) The Conservative Party is the only party with structural weaknesses.
• 6 years is a suitable amount of time to declare that the Cons are dead forever.

I’d love it if the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party disappeared but I think that’s wishful thinking.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

melovesproles wrote:

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The Liberal party is interventionist and pragmatic rather than ideological.

The fact that you can’t see the ideology of the Liberal party says a lot about your own. Everyone thinks that they and the people who agree with them are not ideological. It’s just everyone else.

Mark Fisher wrote a book, Capitalist Realism, that explores in detail the belief system Pondering exhibits here. It seems to be typical of most non-socialists, and even many of our supposed comrades today.

I love that book. It articulated and connected a lot of things I had felt and thought but never heard anyone say.

I don't remember if this was implicit in Capitalist Realism but one of the ways I feel very disconnected from a lot of Liberal-Left commentary is the triumph of intent over results. I was listening to a pop-philosophy show on the CBC the other day and the philosophy expert did a quick takedown on utilitarianism saying its big weakness was not taking into account the intent of actions, using the example that a bad person could do a good thing for a bad reason. This was a big problem for the expert and the host. For me, not so much. I'd agree that this wouldn't mean you should trust the bad person or give them the benefit of the doubt next time but I think the most important thing is the result.

It seems like it's the opposite for most Liberals. If the Republicans bomb a country, it's their warmongering ideology, if Democrats do the same, it's pragmatic realism. If Conservatives push a pipeline through, it's "western-centric ideology," if Liberals do it, it's pragmatic realism. The fact that the two results are the same is irrelevant. There is also the problem that we can't measure or truly know intent but have to infer it from the stories the actors tell, and how they match up to our own biases.

Over in (I think) the UK thread I said something about modern liberal ideology being that it's the brand of conservatism that matters. Vote for Democrat-brand conservatives and feel much better about yourself while policies remain unchanged!

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Competent was all it took after the sponsorship scandal during times of relative plenty. If competence was all it took then Trudeau would never have beaten Harper.

My reply was to your claim that a Conservative leader would have to be “spectacular” to get a party with racists and homophobes elected to government in Canada. I never said a competent Conservative leader would win every election, just that a spectacular leader isn’t necessary. Harper won elections despite being on the wrong side of public opinion on most issues because of our electoral system. Most Canadians wanted Harper gone but it was difficult to do because there was no consensus on who should replace him. Trudeau benefited from Mulclair just completely beefing it.

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LOL that's ridiculous. There is no such thing as a progressive conservative and never was. I'm sure Conservatives can continue to win all the conservatives. They can't win an election by getting all the conservatives. They need swing voters in central and eastern Canada. It is swing voters that will be repelled by multiple Conservative subgroups one of which is the so-cons. 

OK, we’re not getting anywhere are we. Call them whatever you want, you have a much higher opinion of the “swing voters” that elected Harris and Ford to government than I do. I don’t think they would balk at voting for O’Toole.

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They would still have bought the pipeline because they would have had the support of the Conservatives because they would not want to piss off Alberta that badly.

Why would they care about that when they had no potential for gaining seats in Alberta and it hurt them electorally in BC and Quebec? The answer is that they have a pro-business ideology which matters more to them than the votes they lost.

However, in a minority government, relying on the Conservatives to pass anti-environmental legislation would be an extremely risky move. You are the one who keeps saying this is the Conservative Party's achilles heel, and it's also the issue the NDP and Greens could easily cut into Liberal support on. I doubt we will see that kind of arrogance with this minority government and if we do, I expect it will be Trudeau's last election.

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It wasn't an ideological move it is part of the symbyotic relationship between government and the corporate world.  It is no more ideological than the mafia.

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I do not support the Liberal party. I recognize reality even if it is not a reality that I like. 

You really should check out the book Michael recommended above. It’s a fun read with lots of good pop culture analysis and it might make you wonder why you consider a political party being pro-labour as ideological whereas being pro-business is beyond ideology and an unassailable ‘reality’ that we all need to recognize and accept.

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It is that they are losing elections they should be winning.

No one was saying that going into the last election. Pundits and pollsters were overwhelmingly predicting a Liberal majority government.

Pondering wrote:

Scenario 2 is far-fetched. There is simply no way for him to keep his base happy while significantly increasing support in central and eastern Canada.

You don't seem to understand proportions. The largest block of seats for the Conservatives is in Ontario where they hold 36 seats. The highest concentration of voters is Alberta where they could lose 35% of their voters and still win 90% of the ridings in the province. If you think the Conservatives are going to cater to Alberta to try to win power you need to buy a calculator. They cannot win by improving their seats on the prairies and besides those are their safest seats. In 2011 Harper won 73 seats in Ontario so I suspect his war room is targeting that area way more than Bald Headed Prairie Alberta.