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Canada Poligaf - The Wrath of Harperland

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B

BladeWorker

Member
diaspora said:
To be fair, we don't have our own version of Citizens United and SuperPACs. The main thing that needs to be quelled right now are the Tories advertising their own government with the Economic Action Plan commercials.
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To be fair, Ontario has Working Families, and nationally, we have such organizations as the Fraser Institute, the Mowat Centre, Campaign Life Coalition, Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, etc.
 
D

diaspora

Member
BladeWorker said:
To be fair, Ontario has Working Families, and nationally, we have such organizations as the Fraser Institute, the Mowat Centre, Campaign Life Coalition, Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, etc.
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Which is why I've pointed it out as more of a provincial issue than a federal one, the tories pre-election advertising is far more egregious than anything those thinktanks or organizations have done.
 
B

BladeWorker

Member
diaspora said:
Which is why I've pointed it out as more of a provincial issue than a federal one, the tories pre-election advertising is far more egregious than anything those thinktanks or organizations have done.
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More pervasive? Absolutely. But I wouldn't necessarily agree that the third-party advertising passes the sniff test...
 
D

DasDamen

Member
diaspora said:
To be fair, we don't have our own version of Citizens United and SuperPACs. The main thing that needs to be quelled right now are the Tories advertising their own government with the Economic Action Plan commercials.
Click to expand...

Technically, advertising done by the government is not equal to advertising done by the Tories. After all, government is really just a configuration of MPs that have decided to form a coalition within the framework of Parliament.

Although unlikely, government could be comprised of MPs from all parties.
 
D

DasDamen

Member
gutter_trash said:
Gerrymandering
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Even though Ontario will still be under-represented with the additional seats. To keep the political lines where they are could also be construed as gerrymandering.

I hope I don't sound like a Conservative apologist after my last two responses in this thread.

Edit: It could only be considered gerrymandering if political lines were divided such that (typically) Conservative voting areas were to become over-represented. The political lines have been re-drawn simply because certain areas of the country have exploded in growth over the last 20 years, and these areas have become horribly under-represented (namely the suburbs of metropolitan areas).
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
gutter_trash said:
Gerrymandering
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Considering that these new ridings are not determined by parties but by independent commissions...no. If you want to see attempted gerrymandering, look at the CPC's efforts in Saskatchewan where they are opposing new urban ridings, as currently each urban area is countered by 60% of the riding population being rural in order to dilute the urban vote. The electoral commission decided this needs to change (since no one else in the country does that anymore) and the CPC is fighting hard against it since it means they will likely lose 3-4 seats to the NDP.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
RileyLewis said:
Considering that these new ridings are not determined by parties but by independent commissions...no. If you want to see attempted gerrymandering, look at the CPC's efforts in Saskatchewan where they are opposing new urban ridings, as currently each urban area is countered by 60% of the riding population being rural in order to dilute the urban vote. The electoral commission decided this needs to change (since no one else in the country does that anymore) and the CPC is fighting hard against it since it means they will likely lose 3-4 seats to the NDP.
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To be fair that's not gerrymandering either. It's just lobbying.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
RileyLewis said:
Yeah, I guess it's lobbying to keep previous gerrymandering in place.
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I wouldn't call it that either, really. For gerrymandering to be a thing, imo, the party has to have control over the process. If you look at the history of why it is the way it is and who has controlled the process since the current riding boundary system was set up, it's really more a case of it just being slow to react to change.

What's different this time isn't that the CPC is lobbying to keep the rurban ridings, it's that the opposition is actually lobbying to change them. They should have done a better job of that with the previous boundary commission (they let the proposal to change it get railroaded by not encouraging people to speak to the commission).

I don't give the CPC the benefit of the doubt often or easily, but in this case I really do believe the situation is a failure of the other parties (and the people in the urban slivers themselves).
 
Y

You Are Viewtiful

Member
A lot of the Ontario ridings, including mine, went from urban to rurban (Richmond Hill --> Richmond Hill-Oak Ridges-Aurora). I wrote an email but got an automated reply, and the plan's going through. I don't blame Harper though and I'm moving soon so I find it hard to care lol. I just wish Elections Canada did more than getting a map of Toronto and drawing lines. They fucked up York Region pretty badly.
 
K

Kifimbo

Member
So apparently the leader of the opposition is a conspiracy theorist. Mulcair is basically accusing the Supreme Court of a cover-up.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, whose party reached official Opposition status in the last federal election partly on the back of a strong showing in Quebec, said the Supreme Court's investigation and findings are not credible.

"You won't find something you don't ask for. Those documents were given to Mr. Bastien by the Canadian government ... and large elements were taken out. So the first thing that one would have expected the Supreme Court to do is to ask for the full version, read them, and start an investigation," he told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"Instead, what they seem to have said from this cryptic, one-paragraph statement, is: 'We looked in our filing cabinet and we don't have them.' ...

"It's a clear indication that the Supreme Court had no intention all along of ever dealing with this issue seriously. But unfortunately, it is an extremely serious issue."
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http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ca...tion-allegations-supreme-court-204905621.html
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
You Are Viewtiful said:
A lot of the Ontario ridings, including mine, went from urban to rurban (Richmond Hill --> Richmond Hill-Oak Ridges-Aurora). I wrote an email but got an automated reply, and the plan's going through. I don't blame Harper though and I'm moving soon so I find it hard to care lol. I just wish Elections Canada did more than getting a map of Toronto and drawing lines. They fucked up York Region pretty badly.
Click to expand...

There are at least two rounds of public hearings with an arms-length commission for every region.
 
B

BladeWorker

Member
You Are Viewtiful said:
A lot of the Ontario ridings, including mine, went from urban to rurban (Richmond Hill --> Richmond Hill-Oak Ridges-Aurora). I wrote an email but got an automated reply, and the plan's going through. I don't blame Harper though and I'm moving soon so I find it hard to care lol. I just wish Elections Canada did more than getting a map of Toronto and drawing lines. They fucked up York Region pretty badly.
Click to expand...

School will tell you that electoral boundary-drawing is at least a little bit political (and there is an element of that to it) but it makes much more sense from a more ...objective...perspective when you start looking at population drawings based on Census Subdivisions.

Ontario's ridings, for example, for a long time (generally) followed county boundary lines. (Some were merged, but the outside boundaries corresponded with other existing geographic lines).

If I find myself with a lot of time this summer I'll probably take the time to do some detailed mapping to see whether the population cuts are going to correspond with decisions made in the past. Of course, that means I'll need an updated FSA map, and since Canada Post updates their maps never that could be a rather trying experiment.

Nonetheless, it will remind me where places like Punkeydoodle's Corners and Swastika are on the map, again.
 
G

gabbo

Member
Kazerei said:
Nice. I love how he suggests the Canadian people don't necessarily agree with the Canadian government :)
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They'll smear this guy like they do everyone else that gets in the way of their goals.
I just don't know how much is going to stick since he's not just random lab goat #35453
 
D

diaspora

Member
While Canadians I do think know that climate change is real, I don't think they're willing to give up one iota of comfort to stop it.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
diaspora said:
While Canadians I do think know that climate change is real, I don't think they're willing to give up one iota of comfort to stop it.
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Well, it's like this Bangladesh factory collapse thing. No one's going to stop buying cheap clothes just because of that.
 
B

Boogie

Member
diaspora said:
Mulcair asserted that Obama doesn't actually have photos of Bin Laden's body, never mind the shit Libby Davies put forward.
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Tommy lost my vote when he went all-in defending a guy who shot a cop, just because he went to high school with the guy's Canadian wife....


okay, who am I kidding, the dippers never had a chance to win my vote. Best odds right now are that I'm spoiling my ballot in 2015. But I'm still going to show up in line to do so. :p
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
Tom Mulcair is on side with Quebec nationalists like the PQ and the Bloc on the question of the Repatration of the Constitution.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ndp-...onstitution-meddling-by-scc-mulcair-1.1237217

Remember how that worked wonders for Brian Mulroney when he recruited nationalists like Lucien Bouchard into his own Progressive Conservative party eesssh.

Mulcair pandering to the nationalist base pissing on Federalism. Just like Mulroney did by getting nationalists on board who then defected to create the Bloc.
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
gutter_trash said:
Tom Mulcair is on side with Quebec nationalists like the PQ and the Bloc on the question of the Repatration of the Constitution.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ndp-...onstitution-meddling-by-scc-mulcair-1.1237217

Remember how that worked wonders for Brian Mulroney when he recruited nationalists like Lucien Bouchard into his own Progressive Conservative party eesssh.

Mulcair pandering to the nationalist base pissing on Federalism. Just like Mulroney did by getting nationalists on board who then defected to create the Bloc.
Click to expand...


It does seem possible that if the Liberals resurge in Quebec that the Bloc will see a resurgence of their own shortly after, mainly from people leaving the NDP.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
RileyLewis said:
It does seem possible that if the Liberals resurge in Quebec that the Bloc will see a resurgence of their own shortly after, mainly from people leaving the NDP.
Click to expand...

the current Bloc leader is an unknown, nobody knows who Daniel Paillé is.

At least with the Liberals, you are guaranteed that your Federalist vote goes to an authentic Federalist party with no nationalists in it
 
G

Giard

Member
Ottawa loses track of $3.1-billion meant to fight terror

The Globe and Mail said:
Between 2001 and 2009, Ottawa awarded $12.9-billion to 35 departments and agencies charged with ensuring the safety of Canadians to use for public security and fighting terrorism. The money allocated through the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative was intended to pay for measures designed to keep terrorists out of Canada, to prosecute those found in the country, to support international initiatives, and to protect infrastructure.

But Auditor-General Michael Ferguson said only $9.8-billion of that money was identified in reports to the Treasury Board as having been spent specifically on anti-terrorism measures by the departments and agencies. The rest was not recorded as being used for that purpose. Some was moved to other priorities, and some lapsed without being spent, but the government has no full breakdown for the $3.1-billion.
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Damn.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
It sounds terrible (and it probably is terrible), but I wouldn't expect it to hang over the Conservatives next election...if the Liberals could win in 2000 just months after being hit with the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" (with an increased majority, no less), I have a hard time imagining that people will care in two years if they got dinged by the AG's report.

Now, if it turns out that $3 billion went somewhere interesting (So *that's* how they bought all those Not A Leader/Just Visiting/Over His Head ads!), then there might be a story...
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
Even though everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, I did see on CTV today (powerplay) one journalist say that actually they have some documents that can account where it went, it has to do with money used for DND overseas in Afghanistan if I remember correctly. So at first they had some bad PR and couldn't respond, but it looks like they can account for it now that the report is out and they know what to look for.

At least that's what I gathered.
 
Y

You Are Viewtiful

Member
matthewwhatever said:
It sounds terrible (and it probably is terrible), but I wouldn't expect it to hang over the Conservatives next election...if the Liberals could win in 2000 just months after being hit with the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" (with an increased majority, no less), I have a hard time imagining that people will care in two years if they got dinged by the AG's report.

Now, if it turns out that $3 billion went somewhere interesting (So *that's* how they bought all those Not A Leader/Just Visiting/Over His Head ads!), then there might be a story...
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It will be better to hinge it on to something else. It is the same reason no one cared about F35 jets. You have to go and say something like "Harper lost $3 billion and made up for it by making cuts to EI!" (example) $3 billion by itself just sounds like a random factoid.
 
F

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
G

gabbo

Member
RileyLewis said:
Even though everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, I did see on CTV today (powerplay) one journalist say that actually they have some documents that can account where it went, it has to do with money used for DND overseas in Afghanistan if I remember correctly. So at first they had some bad PR and couldn't respond, but it looks like they can account for it now that the report is out and they know what to look for.

At least that's what I gathered.
Click to expand...

I hadn't heard this. It's good if it's true, though it shouldn't have gotten to the point the AG can't track it down until after he reports it missing and people scramble to save face. Don't care what government is in power, the bureaucracy needs to have a paper trail for everything. whitneyshowmethereceipts.gif
 
B

BladeWorker

Member
gabbo said:
I hadn't heard this. It's good if it's true, though it shouldn't have gotten to the point the AG can't track it down until after he reports it missing and people scramble to save face. Don't care what government is in power, the bureaucracy needs to have a paper trail for everything. whitneyshowmethereceipts.gif
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Part of the problem is that the bureaucracy has paper trails in triplicate. And in each, the math is presented in a different way. The AG himself surmised that the reason he couldn't account for it was because it was reallocated (and accordingly would have been reported somewhere else).

No, it's not good that we can lose track of that much spending - even if it is an accumulation over 10 years - but I don't see this as one of the examples of Harperian obfuscation.

There are lots of regulatory issues in government (including record keeping and bookkeeping, as noted here) that should be fixed, though. And, Harper having now spent more than 6 years at the helm, should bear some of the responsibility for not doing more to clean it up.
 
G

gabbo

Member
BladeWorker said:
Part of the problem is that the bureaucracy has paper trails in triplicate. And in each, the math is presented in a different way. The AG himself surmised that the reason he couldn't account for it was because it was reallocated (and accordingly would have been reported somewhere else).

No, it's not good that we can lose track of that much spending - even if it is an accumulation over 10 years - but I don't see this as one of the examples of Harperian obfuscation.

There are lots of regulatory issues in government (including record keeping and bookkeeping, as noted here) that should be fixed, though. And, Harper having now spent more than 6 years at the helm, should bear some of the responsibility for not doing more to clean it up.
Click to expand...

Like I said, this is a problem beyond the current government, beyond any one party.
I only take issue with how the current Conservative government will likely (as their handling of past problems that include, but span beyond them; will attest) lay the blame everywhere else and not take responsibility, as you mentioned, for their current time in office where this just piled up.
 
E

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
So apparently the Conservatives got all government websites to change their color from red and white to blue...

http://www.canada.gc.ca/home.html

Requested to match the color of their party rather than the Liberals'.
 
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