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Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia

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Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
"out east" is how prairie folk say Quebec/Ontario, nicely reminding those of us who are actually from "out east" just how little we matter to them.
 
So more opinions from someone who lives no where near ft Mac giving their "valuable"
input on what is wrong with the area.

Business as usual I guess from someone out east

Sorry, I completely forgot that global warming only impacts specific, isolated parts of the planet. You're right, though -- environmental impacts of destructive practices totally adhere to lines on maps, and it's foolish and politically divisive to suggest otherwise.
 

diaspora

Member
So more opinions from someone who lives no where near ft Mac giving their "valuable"
input on what is wrong with the area.

Business as usual I guess from someone out east

Are you asserting that climate change is unrelated to the intensity of forest fires in North America?
 

Tiktaalik

Member
When the Liberals ram through IRV I guess I'll vote #1 NDP and #2 Conservative and leave the rest blank.

(IRV ingrains even more complex strategic voting behaviour amongst other failings)
 

Sean C

Member
I tend to agree with people who think there should be a plebiscite before any changes are made to the electoral system (though at this point that would mean they couldn't hold the next election under that system).
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
When the Liberals ram through IRV I guess I'll vote #1 NDP and #2 Conservative and leave the rest blank.

(IRV ingrains even more complex strategic voting behaviour amongst other failings)

Because certainly once we have IRV, it'll be the Conservative Party of Canada that will make a fairer proportional system happen.
 

Tiktaalik

Member
I tend to agree with people who think there should be a plebiscite before any changes are made to the electoral system (though at this point that would mean they couldn't hold the next election under that system).

As a British Columbian that has experienced the negative process and outcomes of two terrible plebiscites I'm of the strong opinion that they're a terrible way to decide anything.

This is really an issue that should be decided mostly through data, expert input and analysis so I'm on board with the idea of a committee of MPs guiding the process and ultimately deciding. A proportional representation of said committee would have been more appropriate than the makeup that the Liberals decided on.

I'm more in favour of a plebiscite on retaining whatever system that we switch to after one or more elections where it is used. I believe this is what New Zealand did?
 
When the Liberals ram through IRV I guess I'll vote #1 NDP and #2 Conservative and leave the rest blank.

(IRV ingrains even more complex strategic voting behaviour amongst other failings)

20160511_trump_0.jpg
 

maharg

idspispopd
Because certainly once we have IRV, it'll be the Conservative Party of Canada that will make a fairer proportional system happen.

I wouldn't leave them off for fear of the CPC winning (but strategic voting would be gone, guys! Really!), but they'd go under protest parties and the green party for me. Anything but a proportional system will basically mean I will not vote liberal again in any meaningful way for a very long time (probably measured in decades). That's how important to me this is.

But, I mean, if we get reform and it sucks, we're not going to be revisiting it for a very very long time. The Liberals losing to the CPC would suck, but not because it would in some way stave off better reform. It's not like re-electing them after they do a bad job on this file is going to say to them "well, how 'bout we change that again?"
 

Tiktaalik

Member
Christ of course I'd put the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives on my ballot I'm being sarcastic. My point is that IRV is a garbage system that won't solve terrible strategic voting and vote splitting and it's barely an improvement over FPTP. If we go with IRV this whole thing will have been a waste of time that will sour people on changing the system in a way that would actually fix problems.
 

SRG01

Member
The Alberta PC's are still struggling a lot with their finances according to this article, but they did talk about their future at their recent annual general meeting.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-c...s-get-together-for-a-revival-or-was-it-a-wake

I wonder if they will get their financial issues fixed eventually because I don't want them to disappear in like a decade or so like some of the other Alberta parties in the past.

They'll 100% disappear. They have zero fundraising capabilities and lag behind the Wildrose in terms of popular support. The moderate wing won't sit well with a merger so the party will collapse by the next election.

Not only that, but the PCs can't honestly sell themselves as 'progressive' after the last two premiers. That vote has gone NDP, unless a centrist party like the Alberta party comes up the middle.

Then again, I also read -- either in iPol or EJ -- that some members were proposing to hijack another party to rebrand, and the Alberta party was tossed around as a possibility.
 

maharg

idspispopd
Then again, I also read -- either in iPol or EJ -- that some members were proposing to hijack another party to rebrand, and the Alberta party was tossed around as a possibility.

Wasn't that long ago the Alberta Liberals were talking about the same thing.

Honestly, I could see a merger of the PC and Alberta Parties working well for both. The Alberta Party is such a waste of legislative space with their "we have no policies policy". But it probably won't happen.

I don't think it's impossible they'll pull it out of the fire, but if they don't by next election they're probably done for.
 
Wasn't that long ago the Alberta Liberals were talking about the same thing.

Honestly, I could see a merger of the PC and Alberta Parties working well for both. The Alberta Party is such a waste of legislative space with their "we have no policies policy". But it probably won't happen.

I don't think it's impossible they'll pull it out of the fire, but if they don't by next election they're probably done for.

I think the problem for the Alberta right is that both parties feel like they have some bargaining power -- the PCs because they got more votes the last election, Wildrose because they got more seats. No one thinks they're the junior partner, so no one wants to give an inch. I'm not sure if last week's declaration by the Unite the Right people that they want to start a new party helps or hurts things. Theoretically, it makes a lot of sense, since it means they get to start afresh, without all the baggage and on even terms. Realistically, though, I imagine it'd just fragment them even further, with the third party competing alongside the PCs & Wildrose for votes (and they'd probably have a fate similar to the Alberta Party's, unless they can get some superstar leader to bring people in).

Though apparently Harper was trying to organize a provincial wing of the CPC before they lost, so I'd be curious to see what would happen if that ever came into being.

The National Post is begging for Government money. If the irony were any more rich it would be in the Panama Papers.

And not just any government money, they want the government to stop spending for online ads (funneling that money into newspaper ads instead) and to start giving them money out of the Heritage Canada Aid for Publishers fund, which is designed to help small businesses/publishers. The hypocrisy is strong!
 

maharg

idspispopd
And not just any government money, they want the government to stop spending for online ads (funneling that money into newspaper ads instead) and to start giving them money out of the Heritage Canada Aid for Publishers fund, which is designed to help small businesses/publishers. The hypocrisy is strong!

To be fair, at some point they will be a small business and small publisher. ;)

As for a third conservative party, well... That'd basically be giving the NDP 10 years to establish the kind of roots that held the PCs in power so long. Seems like a pretty terrible idea for them to me, though I can't say I'd mind it in the short term (in the long term I do not ever want a repeat of a 40 year dynasty, though).
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
bernier is not the worst person on their bench and deserves credit for being at the vanguard of the conservative push into quebec which was something the party needed (but which never happened after the promart cuts and general conservative fumbles, lol). he's also not going to win.
 
Speaking of leadership races, the NDP just announced they're picking their new leader Fall 2017. $30k registration fee, $1.5m spending cap, and the party will be taking a 25% cut of all donations as an administrative fee. The fee is pretty high (the CPC is only taking 10%), but it's probably because the party is currently more than $5m in debt. Nomination period begins July 2nd.
 
bernier is not the worst person on their bench and deserves credit for being at the vanguard of the conservative push into quebec which was something the party needed (but which never happened after the promart cuts and general conservative fumbles, lol). he's also not going to win.

I like him for the "comedy" and he always knows how to bring the laughs and the jingles
 

maharg

idspispopd
Speaking of leadership races, the NDP just announced they're picking their new leader Fall 2017. $30k registration fee, $1.5m spending cap, and the party will be taking a 25% cut of all donations as an administrative fee. The fee is pretty high (the CPC is only taking 10%), but it's probably because the party is currently more than $5m in debt. Nomination period begins July 2nd.

I suspect the party portion of the fundraising will look more equal in absolute numbers if you take into account the spending cap and registration fees for the conservatives, which would affect fundraising amounts and are a 3-5 times higher, iirc.
 
I suspect the party portion of the fundraising will look more equal in absolute numbers if you take into account the spending cap and registration fees for the conservatives, which would affect fundraising amounts and are a 3-5 times higher, iirc.

The CPC fee and cap are higher ($100k and $5m, respectively), but that has nothing to do with administrative fees. Donations to leadership contests are maxed at $1,525 per donor, according to the Elections Act. That applies to all parties, so it's not like the Conservatives will be processing larger donations than the NDP. More donations, absolutely, because they have a more active donor base and the higher cap means that leadership contestants will have to be much more aggressive about finding new donors, but they'll still be taking significantly less from each donation than the NDP will be. The CPC is basically charging leadership contestants up to $152.50 for each donation, versus up to $381.25 for the NDP.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
 

maharg

idspispopd
The CPC fee and cap are higher ($100k and $5m, respectively), but that has nothing to do with administrative fees. Donations to leadership contests are maxed at $1,525 per donor, according to the Elections Act. That applies to all parties, so it's not like the Conservatives will be processing larger donations than the NDP. More donations, absolutely, because they have a more active donor base and the higher cap means that leadership contestants will have to be much more aggressive about finding new donors, but they'll still be taking significantly less from each donation than the NDP will be. The CPC is basically charging leadership contestants up to $152.50 for each donation, versus up to $381.25 for the NDP.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

If there are 5 candidates and they each raise the spending cap from however many donors the total raised by the party is:

CPC:
Fundraising: 5*5m*10%=$2.5m
Fee: 5*100k=$500k
Total: $3m

NDP:
Fundraising5*1.5m*25%=$1.875m
Fee: 5*25k=$125k
Total: $2m

At any rate, I'd guess NDP members are more ok with giving a share of their leadership donation to the party than CPC members are.

Be really interesting to see historic numbers for all this for all parties in one place.
 
So this seems huge. Ontario's climate change plan, which has some real teeth to it, including phasing out natural gas for home heating, making massive increases in electric car use, and huge subsidies for building&industry efficiency improvements.

  • $3.8-billion for new grants, rebates and other subsidies to retrofit buildings, and move them off natural gas and onto geothermal, solar power or other forms of electric heat. Many of these programs will be administered by a new Green Bank, modelled on a similar agency in New York State, to provide financing for solar and geothermal projects.
  • New building code rules that will require all homes and small buildings built in 2030 or later to be heated without using fossil fuels, such as natural gas. This will be expanded to all buildings before 2050. Other building code changes will require major renovations to include energy-efficiency measures. All homes will also have to undergo an energy-efficiency audit before they are sold.
  • $285-million for electric vehicle incentives. These include a rebate of up to $14,000 for every electric vehicle purchased; up to $1,000 to install home charging; taking the provincial portion of the HST off electric vehicle sales; an extra subsidy program for low– and moderate-income households to get older cars off the road and replace them with electric; and free overnight electricity for charging electric vehicles. The province will also build more charging stations at government buildings, including LCBO outlets, and consider making electrical vehicle plug-ins mandatory on all new buildings. The plan sets targets of expanding electric vehicle sales to 5 per cent of all vehicles sold by 2020, up to 12 per cent by 2025, and aiming to get an electric or hybrid vehicle in every multivehicle driveway by 2024, a total of about 1.7 million cars.
  • New lower-carbon fuel standards would require all liquid transportation fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, to slash life-cycle carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. The plan will also provide $176-million in incentives to fuel retailers to sell more biodiesel and 85-per-cent ethanol blend. The government will also oblige natural gas to contain more renewable content, such as gas from agriculture and waste products.
  • $280-million to help school boards buy electric buses and trucking companies switch to lower-carbon trucks, including by building more liquid natural gas fuelling stations.
  • $354-million toward the GO regional rail network.
  • $200-million to build more cycling infrastructure, including curb-separated bike lanes and bike parking at GO stations.
  • $375-million for research and development into new clean technologies, including
  • $140-million for a Global Centre for Low-Carbon Mobility at an Ontario university or college to develop electric and other low-carbon vehicle technology.
  • $1.2-billion to help factories and other industrial businesses cut emissions, such as by buying more energy-efficient machines.
  • $174-million to make the government carbon neutral. This will include retrofitting buildings, allowing some bureaucrats to work from home and buying carbon offsets.

I'd like to see more money put in for cycling infrastructure and encouraging mixed-mode transportation but this still looks very ambitious.
 
So this seems huge. Ontario's climate change plan, which has some real teeth to it, including phasing out natural gas for home heating, making massive increases in electric car use, and huge subsidies for building&industry efficiency improvements.



I'd like to see more money put in for cycling infrastructure and encouraging mixed-mode transportation but this still looks very ambitious.

And when the Liberals are ousted, we will return to Square One square one.
 

Mr.Mike

Member
I don't like this style of subsidies and micromanagement. Broad pigouvian taxes would be much easier and more effective (you could make the new taxes revenue neutral if you didn't want to increase the overall tax burden). I do like the spending on infrastructure and research, and the ban on homes/buildings using fossil fuels.
 
I don't like this style of subsidies and micromanagement. Broad pigouvian taxes would be much easier and more effective (you could make the new taxes revenue neutral if you didn't want to increase the overall tax burden). I do like the spending on infrastructure and research, and the ban on homes/buildings using fossil fuels.

I like shifts in taxation as well but you can't make that the only thing. A lot of people won't change habits with just negative enforcement, you need positive approaches as well.
 
So this seems huge. Ontario's climate change plan, which has some real teeth to it, including phasing out natural gas for home heating, making massive increases in electric car use, and huge subsidies for building&industry efficiency improvements.



I'd like to see more money put in for cycling infrastructure and encouraging mixed-mode transportation but this still looks very ambitious.

As huge and needed as it sounds, in three years when the Ontario Progressive Conservatives win; all of these will be revoked so fast that even light itself wouldn't be able to keep up. Not to mention, with our runaway Hydro Prices the populace won't support this either because as it stands people are trying to use anything other than Hydro to heat and power their homes because it's way cheaper.
 
As huge and needed as it sounds, in three years when the Ontario Progressive Conservatives win; all of these will be revoked so fast that even light itself wouldn't be able to keep up. Not to mention, with our runaway Hydro Prices the populace won't support this either because as it stands people are trying to use anything other than Hydro to heat and power their homes because it's way cheaper.

I'm skeptical the PCs can pull off a win. All the polls for months/years before the last election had Hudak's team winning in a landslide, until he opened his mouth and they lost. It really wouldn't surprise me at all for Brown to do the exact same thing since he's even more extremist than Hudak.

Aside from that, the electricity price thing is going to be an issue. Prices need to go up in order to get people to conserve -- that's the best method available to improve conservation and it's proven to work in other jurisdictions. Especially industrial and detached-house-suburb residents (statistically the highest residential consumers per capita) are the biggest targets for these kind of consumption reduction. At the same time there needs to be better support for low income residents, so I hope the final details of their plan include more on that front.

For heating, it's not going to be just electricity. Natural gas is going to be a reality for quite a while (targeted at being phased out fully 44 years out), but new construction being moved away from it is a great step. There are some really fantastic methods of building that use very little energy for heating, even in very cold environments like Ontario. Buildings can have much better insulation and can be designed to soak up as much sun as possible to dramatically reduce the need for heating energy use. The house I live in now isn't even close to what's in that link but we get so much sun just by having a big southern exposure that our heating bill in the winter is tiny.

Older houses are going to be harder but we're going to have to either stuff way more insulation & build way better windows or just get serious about tearing down the most inefficient buildings because they really are just so wasteful of energy.
 

Layell

Member
As a fairly liberal person some of Wynne's privatization stuff has bothered me a ton, I'm not exactly pleased at what she has done. But I too cannot see any chance for a change in power. The Ontario PC just love stabbing themselves in the foot.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I have a good idea for the Ontario PCs, they should build their campaign along a policy of laying off hundreds of thousands of workers, and besides that focus on esoteric religious issues no one except their deep base cares about. Surely these plans will create a new permanent Mike Harris majority.
 
As a fairly liberal person some of Wynne's privatization stuff has bothered me a ton, I'm not exactly pleased at what she has done. But I too cannot see any chance for a change in power. The Ontario PC just love stabbing themselves in the foot.

I'm pretty much an NDP/Liberal supporter in terms of ideology myself, that said i'm honestly pretty conflicted about the OLP as it stands. It just feels like they are really beginning to outstay their welcome with some of their latest policy and privatization choices. That said, I do at least partially agree with some aspects of their spending around Green Energy and Transportation infrastructure, mainly because we have needed these things for awhile now and its good to see it finally happen since it will majorly benefit us going forward.

Now with that in mind, while the OPC does love stabbing itself in the foot, eventually they are going to miss and something is going to stick. Especially since support for the OLP continuously hits new record lows month over month. When that does happen it's not going to be a pretty sight, mainly because the OPC are going to be doing a hard jeer in the opposite direction from wherever we were going. Projects will be cancelled across the board, budgets will be slashed and burned, OPC will probably finish off Hydro One by selling the remaining 40%, maybe sell off another major asset to have a repeat of the Mike Harris years with the Common Sense Revolution and the cycle will continue.
 
Patrick Brown worries me. On the one hand, he holds some pretty extreme views. On the other, he's done a pretty good job of presenting himself as a reasonable moderate since winning. Whether he can do that during a campaign, especially once sex ed becomes an issue, remains to be seen, but for now, he seems like he could be a lot more competent than the last few OPC leaders.

If there are 5 candidates and they each raise the spending cap from however many donors the total raised by the party is:

CPC:
Fundraising: 5*5m*10%=$2.5m
Fee: 5*100k=$500k
Total: $3m

NDP:
Fundraising5*1.5m*25%=$1.875m
Fee: 5*25k=$125k
Total: $2m

At any rate, I'd guess NDP members are more ok with giving a share of their leadership donation to the party than CPC members are.

Be really interesting to see historic numbers for all this for all parties in one place.

Good luck finding that. Leadership contests pre-2004 had virtually no legislative oversight, so parties and candidates could do whatever they wanted, with whatever money they could get (which led to things like busloads of insta-members, and rumours that Harper received some pretty heavy funding from south of the border). Thankfully, Elections Canada now has a bigger role in the process, and you can find info from 2004 onwards on their site.

As far as administrative fees go...I think those are a relatively new invention. According to this story, the NDP set theirs at 15% in 2012. I can't find any similar stories from the last LPC contest; I know that the party ran donations through its headquarters for the first time, but I have no idea how much of that they took off the top.

On the topic of money, Eric Grenier has a short look at the fundraising prowess of some CPC/NDP possible candidates. Of the declared candidates on the Conservative side, Bernier and Leitch both have decent track records of getting money from a wide range of donors; Chong has not. For the NDP, it looks like pretty much every possibility not named Alexandre Boulerice is screwed.
 

Pedrito

Member
So what's the Libs' strategy on electoral reform? Deflecting all questions on a possible referendum for the next two years? Monsef's staff can only come up with so many deflections. The CPC will never shut up about it. Half the questions were on that in today's QP. Well, actually it was the same question being asked my multiple MPs over and over again.

What would be the political fallout of finally saying "No we won't have a referendum because the populace it too stupid to vote on that and because your pals at Postmedia will try to ruin the whole thing"? I bet they could stay over 40% in the polls.

Wouldn't it be great if politicians could just tell it like it is? Oh wait, #Trump2016
 

SRG01

Member
In related news, there's a possibility of another US rate hike later in June: http://business.financialpost.com/n...ve-targets-june-for-possible-second-rate-hike

It already send the markets plummeting this afternoon, but what does this mean for Canada specifically? Most likely a further devaluation of the Canadian dollar as the USD gets stronger.

I'm not particularly happy about this because world economies -- even the US -- are very much on the edge these days. The Fed knows that the market reads their minutes; they should know that even pointing towards June as a possibility will lead to financial turmoil.
 
So what's the Libs' strategy on electoral reform? Deflecting all questions on a possible referendum for the next two years? Monsef's staff can only come up with so many deflections. The CPC will never shut up about it. Half the questions were on that in today's QP. Well, actually it was the same question being asked my multiple MPs over and over again.

What would be the political fallout of finally saying "No we won't have a referendum because the populace it too stupid to vote on that and because your pals at Postmedia will try to ruin the whole thing"? I bet they could stay over 40% in the polls.

Wouldn't it be great if politicians could just tell it like it is? Oh wait, #Trump2016

Pretty sure their policy is to let the house committee come up with something and then put it to a debate/vote in the commons.

Conservatives will never shut up about it because any effort to make our elections more proportional will prevent them from ever winning again.
 
Pretty sure their policy is to let the house committee come up with something and then put it to a debate/vote in the commons.

Conservatives will never shut up about it because any effort to make our elections more proportional will prevent them from ever winning again.

This is in all likelihood going to be the strategy. I'm personally going to wait until the committee comes forward with a new system before I complain... who knows, the Liberals may come out of this with a Proportional system that benefit everyone.
 

maharg

idspispopd
Pretty sure their policy is to let the house committee come up with something and then put it to a debate/vote in the commons.

Conservatives will never shut up about it because any effort to make our elections more proportional will prevent them from ever winning again.

Eh. I think this runs more fundamental than that. Opposition to proportionality is almost an inherently conservative position in that it keeps the established power structures intact. Conservative parties actually do just fine in PR all over the world once it's instituted, I doubt Canada would be much different. *Harper* would not do well in PR, but that doesn't mean that other Conservatives wouldn't.

The real problem for the CPC is that it would end the trading back and forth of absolute power between two oligarchic power bases. This is also the problem with it for the Liberals, incidentally. From a power perspective, having absolute power half the time is better than having diluted power 20-30% of the time.

Meanwhile, the consequences of requiring federal appointment for all levels of the judiciary rear their ugly head (mostly thanks to Harper): http://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/...denied-as-alberta-begs-ottawa-for-more-judges
 
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