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This is a NDP Party forum meant for like-minded discussion, if you want to flame or debate in open, please use the main Canadian Politics forum.

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CKA Super Elite
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:39 am
 


Motorcycleboy Motorcycleboy:
hurley_108 hurley_108:
So get out, motorcycletwerp. The fact of the matter remains, FPTP is designed to punish parties with low, widespread levels of support.

The NDP in the last election got 167% as many votes as the Bloc, but 57% as many seats. That's not democracy.


FPTP also has the advantage of providing strong governments with a clear mandate more frequently than proportional systems. That's important in a wide ranging, disparate federation of often bickering regions like Canada. If we'd had proportional rep over the last few decades here, we'd have an electoral system that looks like Italy, with new government's every year.

Proportional rep also has the disadvantage of allowing one issue nutjob groups to concentrate all their resources on a single riding, allowing them to send representatives to government who are narrowly focused and don't represent the views of most voters.

In Australia, which has FPTP we see it in the success of groups like "The Australians Against Further Immigration Party" or the "Shooter's Party."

Would you be eager to see groups like that represented in Ottawa?


A super elite with 2000+ posts should be able to understand forum rules. I reported your post to the admins.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:49 am
 


Rev_Blair Rev_Blair:

Do you mean like Harper's weak minority or Martin's?


No. More like Chretien, Mulroney, Trudeau.

I said "more frequently." Not always.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:52 am
 


hurley_108 hurley_108:

A super elite with 2000+ posts should be able to understand forum rules. I reported your post to the admins.


What exactly are you crying about?


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CKA Super Elite
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:00 pm
 


Read the rules, MCB.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:27 pm
 


Motorcycleboy Motorcycleboy:
hurley_108 hurley_108:

A super elite with 2000+ posts should be able to understand forum rules. I reported your post to the admins.


What exactly are you crying about?


This is a forum for NDP supporters to discuss NDP issues with like minded folk. This is not a forum for non-NDs to bash the NDP. I got called out on this in my first five posts in the conservative forum, apologised, and have kept my nose out of there since. Please leave this thread or I'll put in a ban request.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:15 pm
 


hurley_108 hurley_108:

This is a forum for NDP supporters to discuss NDP issues with like minded folk. This is not a forum for non-NDs to bash the NDP. I got called out on this in my first five posts in the conservative forum, apologised, and have kept my nose out of there since. Please leave this thread or I'll put in a ban request.


I didn't know it worked like that. Fair enough. I'll leave you two to pat one another on the back, rub each other's feet and take warm showers for the rest of the weekend. Wouldn't want to see you have to actually support your argument or anything.

Have fun.


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 3:36 am
 


Yeah, that's right: Piss off, MCB! :lol:

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

Anyhow, I spotted this not long ago - thought it was interesting that a high profile NDPer like Lorne Calvert is talking about the idea....



$1:
Is it time for the left to unite?

Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert muses about a possible merger

JOHN GEDDES | Feb 15, 2007 | 3:34 pm EST

Uniting Canada's left-of-centre political parties has leapt from being a suitable subject for idle chat over cups of fair-trade coffee to a matter for serious discussion by a pillar of the New Democratic Party. Lorne Calvert, Saskatchewan's NDP premier, a guarded politician hardly given to rash speculation, sketched the case for bringing New Democrats and Liberals together in a wide-ranging conversation with Maclean's editors and writers. Asked about the strength of the NDP brand nationally, Calvert volunteered that Canadian politics might be evolving toward something closer to the two-party U.S. model. "If that is the case, where is the natural party to bring together the centre and left-of-centre?" he said. "I think an argument certainly can be made that the New Democrats may be the natural place for that coalescing to happen."

Calvert did not propose formal steps for bringing together New Democrats and Liberals under a single banner. "I don't know if I'm here to propose merger," he said. Still, he noted that the uniting of the right, when Stephen Harper orchestrated the marriage of the old Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties, changed Canadian politics. And the premier made the case that the NDP need not be viewed as a junior partner in any future move to join forces with the Liberals. He praised Jack Layton, the party's federal leader, for broadening the NDP's base. "So there may be an opportunity," Calvert said, "for the New Democratic Party to capture some of that which is left-of-centre and build on it."

That upbeat appraisal of the NDP's stature in a possible realignment on the left will strike most Liberals as eccentric. Recent polls show the federal NDP far behind. A Léger Marketing poll conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 4 gave the Tories 38 per cent support nationally, the Liberals 31 per cent and the NDP 14 per cent. As well, the NDP's claim to being a mainstream voice of the centre-left has been challenged in recent years by significant defections. Former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae joined the Liberal party to run in its leadership race last year, calling for "progressives" to unite by voting Liberal, and denouncing the NDP for ascribing to a simplistic "private sector is bad, public sector is good" instinct. Although Rae lost, Stéphane Dion, the new Liberal leader, is widely thought to have considerable appeal with left-leaning voters, especially with his emphasis on environmental policy.

Calvert's comments come as a new book by a former top NDP strategist is stirring up debate among the party faithful about its future. Jamey Heath left Layton's staff after last year's election to write Dead Centre: Hope, Possibility, and Unity for Canadian Progressives. But the unity his subtitle holds out hope for wouldn't come under what he calls the "corroded, directionless hulk of the Liberal party." He argues the Liberals have not only abandoned core convictions, they've lost their key electoral bastion -- failing to win a majority of Quebec seats in any election since 1980. His conclusion is that the NDP is better positioned to form the core of a left-of-centre coalition.

Liberals won't be buying that, of course. But the key thing about Heath's book, and Calvert's comments, is not their point about who should lead a uniting of the left. It's the fact that they see it coming. "These are interesting times," Calvert said, "to be a federal New Democrat." Or a Liberal, or even a Green, if the feeling that they need to find a way to unite continues to spread.



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