[ridenrain]

They were the only national party that only ran candidates in one province.
Does that sound right to you?

[hurley_108]

Eisensapper wrote:

So basicly they have never been popular enough in one single area to matter.

No, basically our warped SMP electoral system punishes small parties with diffuse support, and disproportionately rewards parties with focused local support.

And now with the Conservatives chastising their own former potential candidates for running as independents and using the RCMP to block access to their candidates on the grounds that "there [is] no need for local candidates to be interviewed," this whole notion of MPs being for their constituents more than their parties is seeming less and less relevant.

[hurley_108]

ridenrain wrote:

They were the only national party that only ran candidates in one province.
Does that sound right to you?

Fine with me. Keeps them from being able to rip Canada in two.

[ridenrain]

Why did it get that far and who let that happen?

[hurley_108]

ridenrain wrote:

Why did it get that far and who let that happen?

What, the sovereigntist movement, or the shift of emphasis from constituency to party?

[hoshie]

If you think the Greens had it bad getting into the Leader's debates, you haven't seen nothing until you look at this year's US Presidential debates. To get in, you have to qualify under the US Constitution (see here for the text), be on enough US state ballots to get 270 electoral votes, and have at least 15% in five national polls the organizers choose. (See here for full details). Besides the fact that the US Constitution, the US Electoral College, and US ballot access laws don't apply in Canada and looking at the most recent polls, it appears that if the 15% rule was used for leader's debates, only the Conservatives, Liberals and the NDP would be on stage. Recent US third-party candidates, such as Ross Perot, and later Ralph Nader, had sued over these rules and lost.

Draw your own conclusions.

[JJ]

Green Party supporters have this odd way of arguing.

"Yes, well, the Greens may be politically unpopular according to the trivial benchmarks of the Canadian electoral system, but the Greens are doing FANTASTIC in theoretical fantasy Green Party utopian Canada with its entirely different political-electoral system."

Even if we had all the mixed-member-proportional whatever system the Greens want, they'd have like, what, five MPs at best?

The debate should be prime ministerial, because that's the only point of having one. We need to see the men who could be the potential leaders of this country debate each other face to face. Duceppe and May are both enormous wastes of time.

[fifeboy]

hurley_108 wrote:

ridenrain wrote:

Comaprisons with the Block are unfair because the block should never have been allowed to run as a federal party in the first place.

Who's the Block? There's no Block party. Did you mean Bloc?

Reminds me of that old RCAF joke about the Bloc Head

[hurley_108]

JJ wrote:

Green Party supporters have this odd way of arguing.

"Yes, well, the Greens may be politically unpopular according to the trivial benchmarks of the Canadian electoral system, but the Greens are doing FANTASTIC in theoretical fantasy Green Party utopian Canada with its entirely different political-electoral system."

Even if we had all the mixed-member-proportional whatever system the Greens want, they'd have like, what, five MPs at best?

The debate should be prime ministerial, because that's the only point of having one. We need to see the men who could be the potential leaders of this country debate each other face to face. Duceppe and May are both enormous wastes of time.

5% of 308 is more like 15 than 5, JJ. And I don't even know if the Greens want electoral reform. I'm not actually a supporter of them, I just believe in democracy.

The debate should only be prime ministerial if and when every Canadian has a ballot with all the leaders' names on it, and another with the list of contestants to be their MP. As it is there are strong reasons to allow all leaders in, whether or not they have a reasonable, if any, shot at becoming PM:

If they win their seat, whether they win or lose government, they will be present in the house of commons. Harper, Dion, Layton, and Duceppe will still be a part of our legislative system no matter who sits in the PM's chair. May very well may as well. In the US, the presidential race is winner-take-all. That's just not the case here. Most of them will win something. The question is: how much? We need to know where they stand so we can make decisions about whether or not to lend them the clout they'll have if we give them our MPs. How much influence will they have when it come time to vote on bills around the justice system? The environment? Other laws?

This is particularly important because a minority still can't be ruled out. These people will be deciding whether the bills pass or fail, and more importantly whether the government stands or falls.

In a majority situation, these questions become largely academic, but it would be arbitrary and capricious to go for one kind of debate when a majority seems likely and another when a minority seems likely and maybe even a third when you just can't tell. How and by whom will the decision be made which kind of debate to run?

Our debate format as it stands is inclusive of all posibilities, and allowing the leaders of parties with some shot at making at least one seat to speak is necessary and just fundamentally democratic.