Apolitical Staples

It says there is no federal election on the horizon.

You gotta hand it to Liberal support resilience, however: all that beating (incl the ads) over the last month, and they are still within the MOE!

I wonder what the regional breakdown looks like. SES will probably come out with similar numbers tomorrow.

I suspect SES will show something close to this picture. Man, do I ever want electoral reform in this country. The constant “search for a majority” is totally screwing up Canada, as the parties keep jockeying for the “knockout punch” to push them over the top (and by top, I mean getting 40% of voters on their side). How much more time to we have to waste on this distructive endevour before we see sense? And for the commenters to follow who will say, “We never heard this argument during the Liberal majority days”, well you weren’t listening to me. I have been boring my friends with rants about electoral reform for 30 years.

These numbers are really nice for the NDP, i saw one poll a few weeks ago that had the greens at 12 percent and the NDP at 13. Sometimes I wonder if the NDP need to change the direction they are going… They could very well loose everything in the next election

I think that one of the challenges of all the polls is that many “new” Canadians don’t understand the difference between Fedral and Provincial level MP’s… We also have a generation of the last 35 years that has never seen a truely Blue Conservative government.

In BC we have a Liberal Provincial Gov’t that’s really made up of many of the old Social Credit and Tory fedral staff as advisors …they are runing the province as tory’s would so they’re really “Blue” Liberals. In reality they should be labeled as Provincial Conservatives. This really messes the numbers out here and also screws the Fedral elections as we have people like Uzy Dejon jumping parties from the No Damn Plan party and bringing his ethnic vote with him to the Liberal Fedral party(who Buzz “Lightyear” Hargrove showed us last election are really both sucking on the tit of the unions for their votes) then we have a school board union that campaigned against the Liberals provincially that has a strangle hold on all BC teachers brining in compulsorary union dues from every teacher and using those funds to campaign in elections…nice to have deep pockets…

Lets hope recent events around Air India and the terror Laws (which the former Liberal Fedral gov’t introduced after 9/11) will show the Liberals to be the party of “no direction, no decissions, and above all no policy is our best policy”, “quick, Harper said something we can spin…lets run another poll!”

We can only hope the message gets across to these people that just because the counrty they may have come from forced you to vote for the existing party in power or you’d disappear in the night, you’re “free” to decide here. No one can tell you how to vote. Having said that Please wake up and vote either NDP or Conservative in the next Fedral election to decimate the liberals.

I’m confident once the auditor General has some teeth to bite into the “Think, Take funds!” err… I mean “Think Tank” funds that more Liberal party slush funds will be revealed.

Dion might have been the best Harper could have hoped for out of the Liberal “Leadership” race (is that an oxymoron?) as he truly is running the show like the “good ol’ days”

Watching Dion’s antics makes me both angry and actually adds some humor to each and every day… he’s more a dufus then Martin ever was.

No election on the horizen?

People seem to assume that all poll numbers are static. The most important aspect of any poll is the direction the numbers are headed in.

They all continue to show Liberal losses and CPC gains. Unanimity among polls.

More importantly, the fundamentals, the underlying factors, show the numbers will continue to get better for the CPC.

That there would be this much movement in a non-election period, where folks are not particularily focused on politics, is frankly startling.

Election periods heighten existing perceptions, which perceptions all appear to negavitely impact Dion and positively impact Harper.

Expect an election call around the budget, for sometime in early May. Also expect to see Dion’s numbers crash during the campaign, during which the CPC’s warchest will leverage an already existing negative perception of Dion.

““knockout punch” to push them over the top and by top, I mean getting 40% of voters on their side. How much more time do we have to waste on this destructive endevour before we see sense? “

Actually, trying to lead with only 40% is pretty tough.

Greg, you see it as destructive only because you have never had a chance of getting 40% and you never will. Therefore you want a system that will give you more power without the necessary compromises to get censenus and a mandate to lead and take action.

Compare that to a hybrid-capitalist model like China. Perversely, totalitarian rule allows them to make things happen quickly .. even with over a billion in population . . it’s staggering. Or the USA where you have to get 51% to lead. That‘s how those 2 leading world economies are structured. You don’t like those countires.. but they exist and we have to compete with them.

Instead you want to give us some Italian Parliament where they turnover the PM every few months. Italy is failing. We can’t do that and support progress. We need strong leadership with a mandate from the people to get some things done quickly in an incredibly competitive global economy. Talk to any business leader in Canada… we need political leadership fast.

nomdenet, that is a pretty cheeky response. I have to say that I regard it as undemocratic, rewards regional over national parties and is disfunctionally obsessed with false majorities. Aside from those, it is a wonderful system.

And by the way, spend a little time and study electoral reform, as it is being proposed in this country and not in some fantasyland of your own construction. No one is proposing a system like either Israel’s or Italy’s. Period. Take a look at New Zealand or Ireland, if you want to see the kinds of systems under consideration here.

Greg, dysfunction is in the eye of the beholder

IMO, the only regional dysfunctional part is the 75 seats guaranteed for Québec regardless of national population shifts and the fact that to date Québec has used those seats to break up the country. That dysfunctionalism is hopefully about to end with the March fiscal imbalance Budget and the results reflected in the Quebec election.

Next, the left (Dipper Liberal Greens) has to go through what the unite the right movement suffered its way through. It was a dry 13 years. Conservatives won’t support any monkeying with the system that lets the left of the hook of the painful compromises to unite itself.

You say I live in a fantasy. Ireland and New Zealand are tiny island populations , what works there won’t work in the second largest land mass in the world. Plus we have several distinct ecologies and 2 official languages. Ottawa has to de-centralize and the issues it’s left with (defense , sovereignty, foreign policy, democratization of Judicial appointments and the Senate ) can’t be lead anywhere without significant national support, well into the 40% range.

The libs are opposing anything that the Conservatives propose and find fault with everything that is Conservative.Its like saying that i hate my father and my mother because they want to feed and cloth me.They are so obsessed with power that they are not caring about the country ,only trying to regain power.Not one policy is put forward by the libs that is good for Canada.They put policy forward (or try to) that is good for the Liberals .The smear tactics dont work anymore because Canadians can see the good the Conservatives have done so far.You could never see anything the libs did for canada,only the brown envelopes under the table.They promised us everything for 13 years and delivered nothing for 13 years.When the Conservatives did something wrong (i dont remember what it was they did) ZAP 2 seats next election.When the libs just about robbed this country blind and we dont know what else they have done so far,they still elect 100 mp,s.????They should have been brought down to zero for what they did and they still get 100 seats.????The polls still try to keep the libs close most of the time to make them look like a party,but the Ndp would be a better opposition until the libs completely clean up the old gang of power hungry thugs.