[kenmore]

Kjorteo wrote:

And yet you people are still excited about the coalition, even though the Bloc will be the critical keystone of it? Remember, Liberals + NDP - Bloc is still less than Conservatives.

How is that.. if they didnt out number the torys they couldnt do it..

[ShepherdsDog]

kenmore wrote:

RUEZ wrote:

Donny_Brasco wrote:

The Torys recived less votes and got less seats then needed to form a majority government.

The GG has the right to appoint a prime minister from a coalition of political parties with the most seats in the House of Commons.

The left in Canada sold their souls to the seperatists for power. I hope you guys can live with that.

Wow you are really out there. asshole harper would and tried to do the same thing..
you kill be with the separatist propaganda... the sky is falling ! the sky is falling! the only separatist you should worry about is harper. He is the one who would break the country up.

Now this message brought to you in video and full Kenmore surround sound:



Thanks for this wonderful find mtbr!!

[ShepherdsDog]

kenmore wrote:

Kjorteo wrote:

And yet you people are still excited about the coalition, even though the Bloc will be the critical keystone of it? Remember, Liberals + NDP - Bloc is still less than Conservatives.

How is that.. if they didnt out number the torys they couldnt do it..

Look at the numbers. If there is ever a vote in the House and even 10 MPs are missing from all the other parties the CPC can bring them down. The Libs and the NDP have to do anything and everything the BQ tells them to or they are gone.

[Donny_Brasco]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

kenmore wrote:

Kjorteo wrote:

And yet you people are still excited about the coalition, even though the Bloc will be the critical keystone of it? Remember, Liberals + NDP - Bloc is still less than Conservatives.

How is that.. if they didnt out number the torys they couldnt do it..

Look at the numbers. If there is ever a vote in the House and even 10 MPs are missing from all the other parties the CPC can bring them down. The Libs and the NDP have to do anything and everything the BQ tells them to or they are gone.

It goes both ways, the cons can't even pass gas right now in the house...the NDP and the Libs need the Bloc's support just as much as the Bloc need their support if they ever want their voices heard in Parliament.

Checks and ballances - 18 months of stability, sounds like a good idea to me.

[ShepherdsDog]

stability??? Parliament held hostage by the BQ is your idea of stability?

[Donny_Brasco]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

stability??? Parliament held hostage by the BQ is your idea of stability?

They need each other to survive. The bloc are as likely to push crazy motions into Parliament as the NDP and Libs are to support it.

The only group of the four parties stupid enough to not realize they need each other to survive are the Torys, and that is why you are angry today.

Be angry at Harper for being a shitty leader, don;t be angry at the three leaders willing to step up and fill the void.

[ShepherdsDog]

pfffft...none of these pricks are in government for altruistic reasons.

[OntarioJeremy]

JJ wrote:

OntarioJeremy wrote:

The Green Party also support the proposed coalition.

Popular vote in the last election:
Conservative: 37.65%
Liberal+NDP: 44.44%
Liberal+NDP+Green: 51.22%
Liberal+NDP+Bloc: 54.42%
Liberal+NDP+Green+Bloc: 61.20%

You're welcome.

Again, it is a dangerous business when the government of our country is determined not according to the stable, predictable rules we have all agreed to be governed by, but rather new, arbitrary standards of "justice" dreamed up on the spot by party leaders and governor generals.

By this logic, I could argue that a military coup against Prime Minister Chretien would have been justified, since he never won a majority of the popular vote. And we should take Trudeau's portrait down from parliament hill, too, since the majority of Canadians didn't vote for his party, either.

Our system of government does not operate according to the principle that the national popular vote matters. We do not live in Italy or Israel or any other country with some sort of "proportional representation" electoral system. We live in Canada, a representative democracy in which winning the largest amount of seats in the House of Commons entitles a political party to form the government.

Dion, Layton, Duceppe, and Madame Jean have no right to arbitrarily change the rules in the middle of an elected prime minister's tenure, and decree that "this is how things will be done from now on."

Fine.

The election of 2008 returned 308 members of parliament. As has been established for over 400 years, these MPs are responsible for choosing the Prime Minister. Of these, 143 were of the opinion that Mr. Harper would be best suited for the office, 77 supported Mr. Dion, 37 supported Mr. Layton, 49 were in general agreement with the policies of Mr. Duceppe, and 2 members remained neutral. As of now, 163 elected members of Parliament, chosen by the people in accordance with the Elections Act, are in agreement with the general principle that Mr. Dion should obtain the office of Prime Minister, and 145 do not.

Correct my errors.

[Scape]

OntarioJeremy wrote:

As of now, 163 elected members of Parliament, chosen by the people in accordance with the Elections Act, are in agreement with the general principle that Mr. Dion should obtain the office of Prime Minister, and 145 do not.

And everything else is just politics.

[Mendvil]

So what if we get a coalition to govern us? The majority of the people did not vote for the Conservative Party, but may I remind you that by voting, you elect a representative at the Chamber of Commons, and not a government? The government is formed by the representatives and is supposed to be formed by those who have the acceptancy of most of the Chamber, not necessarily by the party that has the most representatives. The Canadian Government works with an English system, and when I voted, nobody told me that I chose the Prime Minister, because I *don't*.

And, ShepherdsDog, if you think the best way to treat separatists is to exclude them, why don't you just give them their land and shut up? May I also remind you that the Bloc Québécois works in the interest of Quebec and it's inhabitants, not against Canada. It just happens that most of quebecers have left-wing tendencies and they are opposed to your conservative views.

Finally, JJ, your first post let think that the system should work a certain way because people understand it that way. Unfortunately, this is not how things work. I may understand gravity as God's hand pulling me towards the ground, but, shucks, that's not it.

[Jorgeregula]

I'm new and it's 4 a.m. here so please forgive typos.

So wait I'm new here and not as familiar with Canadian politics as I should be, but if the people of Canada wanted a Liberal Party Leader as their PM shouldn't they have voted for their Liberal MP's? I mean Canadian's do know that by voting for conservative MP's they were voting for Harper to remain PM. If the left side were so unhappy with him why didn't they just vote for the most popular party on that side of the fence. Which was the Libs.

Also someone mentioned earlier Canada doesn't have a two party system. Doesn't this coalition kind of make that no longer true?

[Biblesmasher]

Jorgeregula wrote:

I'm new and it's 4 a.m. here so please forgive typos.

So wait I'm new here and not as familiar with Canadian politics as I should be, but if the people of Canada wanted a Liberal Party Leader as their PM shouldn't they have voted for their Liberal MP's? I mean Canadian's do know that by voting for conservative MP's they were voting for Harper to remain PM. If the left side were so unhappy with him why didn't they just vote for the most popular party on that side of the fence. Which was the Libs.

Also someone mentioned earlier Canada doesn't have a two party system. Doesn't this coalition kind of make that no longer true?

You say "canadians" as if its some homogenous mass that determined the percentages in the house in some neat little packaged way. "Okay I think Ill sprinkle in a little con, a little Lib and some bloc..." As has been said on this thread ad nauseam, an MP is selected from an area, and that MP is empowered to sit in the house of commons and take whatever steps(within the law and the rules) he feels will best benefit Canada. Now you might not like what they currently have decided is best(that harper shouldnt be prime minister), but that is the system as it sits.

"the left side" is comprised of all kinds of people and a range of political views. So there are two parties to better accomodate that. My wish would be to also have the progressive conservatives and extremist right wingers that together comprise the current conservative party, split, in the interest of fairness and more choices(and so I could again contemplate voting conservative). But I have no power to force that to happen nor to I even wish I did. It is what it is.

In the end if enough Canadians are offended by this maneuvering they can all vote en mass for the conservatives(as we are free to do in response to ANY move our MPs make). All this talk about the end of democracy is hilarious.

[Psudo]

I'm glad to see all the first-time posters this issue has brought to the forum. Welcome, all!

Shablabar wrote:

Consider that party financing was never even brought up during the last election, or in the Throne Speech. It came out of left field;

Consider that coalition government was never even brought up during the last election, or in response to the Throne Speech. It came out of left field. How is it any more legitimate?

What better time is there for Harper to suspect he has the public's support than immediately following an election? Further, if he'd pushed through the financing changes just before the election it'd have been using government institutions to swing the election. He should have announced his intents before the election and let them be voted upon, but the same is true of this coalition plan. Why does the coalition escape your criticism?

Shablabar wrote:

Still, I have a hard time believing that Harper, normally an astute tactician, would not have seen this coming. The first thing that I thought was that he was trying to engineer a constitutional crisis in order to galvanize people behind his pet project from the Reform years: constitutional reform (specifically Senate reform). Who knows...

That would be interesting. That would be a brilliant move, if it works. But if that were the intent, it seems more likely to cause backlash at this point and postpone any constitutional reforms.

Biblesmasher wrote:

You say "canadians" as if its some homogenous mass that determined the percentages in the house in some neat little packaged way. "Okay I think Ill sprinkle in a little con, a little Lib and some bloc..." As has been said on this thread ad nauseam, an MP is selected from an area, and that MP is empowered to sit in the house of commons and take whatever steps(within the law and the rules) he feels will best benefit Canada.

People are capable of predicting to some extent the indirect causes of their actions. A vote for a Liberal MP is not directly a vote for a PM, but it it pushes toward the election of a Liberal MP who is likely nearly to the point of certainty to place his vote for the Liberal PM. A voter can see these dominoes lined up and tip the first one with the intent of falling the last. It can and does happen in great frequency.

Your argument seems to be that the individual voter not only doesn't but shouldn't have any influence over the choice of PM. Is it a betrayal of the design and intent of the system to expect the voters' intent to influence the selection of the highest office in Canadian elected government? If so, how and why? If not, what is your criticism of the common public practice of voting for the party and it's choice for PM?

[Jorgeregula]

Well technically, the MP's the left side elected are the ones who decided to pull this political maneuver and voters did vote for those MP's I just think if they had an understanding of what exactly they were voting for they might have chosen differently. As they say though hindsight is 20/20 and if it turns out the voters didn't want it they'll get a chance to kick them out..... They will get a chance right you guys have elections every 5 years whether there's a no confidence vote or not right?

[ridenrain]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

Now this message brought to you in video and full Kenmore surround sound:



Thanks for this wonderful find mtbr!!

Brilliant. That's perfect.
Now instead of ignoring him, I'll post in that clip instead.