Apolitical Staples

Australia has the advantage of being an outdoorsy place. It’s self-sufficient, and its frontier attitude thrives. It doesn’t suffer from the mega-city paternalism that attracts our left. Mega-city people work for big companies with big manuals that tell them what to do with their in and out baskets. Politically correct Mega-city people don’t have a built in fear of elitist central planners and that’s why they vote left.

Australia is like our West and the opposite of downtown Toronto. Let’s hope our ex-urbia city and the West grow faster than the core of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Australia is like our West and the opposite of downtown Toronto. Let’s hope our ex-urbia city and the West grow faster than the core of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Ya! It’s not like they are real Canadians anyway! I don’t even know why we even let them vote!

Greg, what is your view on why they all seem to vote the way they do?

You really should go Greg, Australia is great. Imagine a tropical or desert country that works!

They’ve got good children’s fantasy authors….

nomdenet,

One, they all don’t vote the way they seem to do. The Conservatives netted about 25% of the vote.

Two, they face pressures that the areas of this country blessed with material wealth do not, and yet they subsidize a lot of the country outside of Alberta. And their choice has been either to prop up a tired, corrupt but centrist government, a party that would raise their taxes, and a party that doesn’t understand their needs. It’s a bit of a dilemma, but given that, how does how they vote speak to their character or make them any less Canadian — an implication that you haven’t yet tried to refute.

James, I didn’t feel I needed to refute what I didn’t imply. But OK, I will refute it anyway. It’s interesting that Liberals continually throw in the face of Conservatives the notion that policies we like are US-style, ergo un-Canadian. I don’t like that and therefore try not to use un-Canadian arguments on other people.

Do I think that people with more of a frontier, self-sufficient outlook is superior to one that requires lots of socialist programs? Yes I do.

Yet, as a Torontonian I agree with you that we bear too much cost for immigration and the relating assimilation costs. Your arguement is something the CPC should chew on.

I (mistakenly it turns out) voted for Belinda as leader of the CPC because I wanted to send a message to the West, as you say, “that they don’t understand our needs”. In my Belinda vote it was a signal regarding a mega-city population where many of us have gay friends and therefore let’s loosen up on the so-con stuff.

But I’m still fascinated by what makes red states and blue states etc. As I’ve said, I think established mega-cities like Manhattan and Toronto become less enterprising. Large parts of the population are robotic office staff. It doesn’t make them bad people, it doesn’t make the “un-Canadian; but they aren’t the kind of entrepreneurial stuff that built the country.

The thing is, it’s not red or blue so much as purple. Have a look at that county-by-county assessment of the United States presidential vote in 2004. When the Democrats and Republicans lost, they rarely had less than 40% of the vote.

Our political system emphasizes the differences, in my opinion, portraying Alberta as bright blue and Toronto as bright red when they’re really not.

But James, 65% voted CPC in Alberta. 75% didn’t vote CPC in Toronto. No grey area there , pretty decisive don’t you think?

Also your point about the US raises the relevance of the 2 party system down there. You’re right, the US is pretty well split down the middle and therefore very contentious, loud, scrappy etc. Nevertheless, the red/blue painting of the states is fairly predictable in elections.

I’m beginning to wonder (OK, I actually hope) that the Liberal/Dippers go off into the wilderness for 13 years and merge. Then we’ll have what ought to be similar dynamics of a 2 party system up here instead of a pizza Parliament which has lead to failure in Europe.

Probably left/right doesn’t work anymore as a discussion. Maybe it’s more like fridge magnets. Each magnet is a policy or special interest group that tend to pull together and you end up with 2 clusters.

Nouveau-capitalist- entrepreneurs, protestant church goers, ex-urbans …. tend to vote CPC.

Old-establishment-money, academics, media people, union members, mega-core- city- dwellers ….tend to vote Liberal/Dipper.

I can understand why most of this happens, except for the mega-city part. It can’t be as simple as my earlier comment re the office workers, which I’m surprised you let slide … ;>)

There is a grey area in two ways. In Alberta, according to your numbers, 7 out of every 20 individuals who voted picked candidates other than Conservative. 5 out of 20 individuals in Toronto who voted voted Conservative. Don’t these people deserve some representation?

And the other grey area is the false dichotomy between left and right or Conservative and non-Conservative. There are numerous ways to approach numerous issues, and I oppose suggestions for a Liberal-NDP merger because the two aren’t the same animal. What about the centrist voters, a large number of whom were turned off enough by Liberal corruption that the government finally met its overdue end?

For both reasons, I believe we need proportional representation. A pizza parliament may not give us a clear picture of who runs the country, but it is a more accurate representation of its makeup in my opinion. And no voices — not Conservative, NDP, centrist/Liberal or centrist/Green gets to be silent. If you want something done, you have to talk to the other players to get things done.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel many places in this world. Australia hasn’t been on of those places - yet - but Aussies love to travel. At any one time, 800,000 Aussies are out of the country. That said, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and travel with many Australians and have loved all of them. Aussies and Canucks are so similar in so many ways.

Aussies are like Canadians without all the political correctness. I love it!