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Canadian General Election (OT) - #elxn42: October 19, 2015

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S

SRG01

Member
Don't give the telecom industry any more money. They have more than enough money to roll out better networks on their own.

I mean, Telus already has plans to roll out fiber in Alberta and they're using their own money to do it.
 
Prax

Prax

Member
SRG01 said:
Don't give the telecom industry any more money. They have more than enough money to roll out better networks on their own.

I mean, Telus already has plans to roll out fiber in Alberta and they're using their own money to do it.
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What if the government can give all canadians free internet access to at least gov't resources and public websites (news, library, charities..) though? :eek:
 
M

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
ksharp said:
I don't mind them taking from me - it just has to be spent in an efficient manner, which is not synonymous with how Government usually spends its (my) money.
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And even less so with a conservative government!

We already have a great country; we have universal health care, an amazing welfare net (probably too amazing in some way - I see lots of abuse), abundant natural resources (which we should have managed better, IMO, and built a sovereign wealth fund like Norway for instance), great and affordable education system, good pension system, etc.
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Okay...

I'm not being selfish. I started with nothing
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...................

Nothing? Except a universal health care system, a welfare net to protect you from risks, a great and affordable system that educated you, etc....

Holy shit, the myopia is unreal.


Azih said:
The assault on government science and the destruction of Revenue Canada as a premier data gathering organization through eliminating the long form census just completely destroys any counter argument about Harper's Cons providing any form of good governance.

You need data, information, statistics etc. to make good informed decision (the whole crux of good governance). How the hell was the Conservative crippling of Statistics Canada justifiable? Everybody in the private sector is now blathering on and on about 'Big Data' and Harper deliberately and maliciously destroyed the data gathering capability of the Canadian government.

Not even joking but I am still enraged about this.
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The worst part is the hypocrisy of it all. They claim it's for protecting the privacy of Canadians, but they engage in completely unchecked data mining with their CIMS. I was just reading a detailed article about that today in L'Actualité (couldn't find an electronic version, sadly). All the parties engage in it, but the CPC are particularly scummy and hypocritical about it.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
Heh.

CNhLyx1XAAA9hqg.jpg
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Seriously, though, how Harper has managed to convince anyone at all that he knows what he's doing when it comes to the economy boggles the mind.
 
J

jstripes

Banned
Morrigan Stark said:
The worst part is the hypocrisy of it all. They claim it's for protecting the privacy of Canadians, but they engage in completely unchecked data mining with their CIMS. I was just reading a detailed article about that today in L'Actualité (couldn't find an electronic version, sadly). All the parties engage in it, but the CPC are particularly scummy and hypocritical about it.
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It was never about privacy. They just wanted to stifle a source of facts that could contradict their non-fact-based decision making.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
SRG01 said:
If you guys want an alternative to the CBC's poll tracker or threehundredeight.com, I find Election Almanac to be much better at presenting poll data.

http://www.electionalmanac.com/ea/canada-election-polls/

They even compile a list of seat projection data from various sources too:

http://www.electionalmanac.com/ea/canada-seat-projections/
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Thanks man!! I found threehundredeight harder to navigate since it get gobbled up by CBC,
plus TooCloseToCall has not updated their projections in over two weeks
 
P

Popstar

Member
gutter_trash said:
19 seats for the Bloc? LOL, the Bloc would be lucky to get only 1 seat because all trends are putting them getting 0
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Maybe you'd prefer the simulation I got:
The lede

With a margin of 5 seats, The Liberal Party squeak out a victory and will attempt to form a minority government. Support for The Liberal Party is particularly strong in Ontario where they take 53 per cent of the seats. The Conservative Party will likely form the official opposition.
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EDIT: oh nos
BHuuyba.png
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
never mind, it refreshed to 3 seats now.

the page was probably loaded with an older poll, and by pressing buttons, the new figures added in

wait, if you press the New Simulation button several times, you get weird numbers
 
T

Tiktaalik

Member
gutter_trash said:
never mind, it refreshed to 3 seats now.

the page was probably loaded with an older poll, and by pressing buttons, the new figures added in

wait, if you press the New Simulation button several times, you get weird numbers
Click to expand...

Yeah it's fun. I mean sometimes you're going to roll the dice and it's going to happen across the absolute upper or lower limits of what a party could get in some ridings, and then the results are weird and surprising.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
Tiktaalik said:
Yeah it's fun. I mean sometimes you're going to roll the dice and it's going to happen across the absolute upper or lower limits of what a party could get in some ridings, and then the results are weird and surprising.
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hicups and fumbles during the campaign could create weird outcomes

I think that the French language debate will get really ugly with Gilles Duceppe in desperation mode going in with a full set of steak knives.
 
C

CitizenVectron

Member
I have a feeling the simulator doesn't even take into account riding-level info, only provincial. In SK it had the very safe Liberal seat (Ralph Goodale) going blue a few times, and another seat that is basically NDP-CPC at 45% (with LPC at 8%) going red a bunch.
 
T

Tiktaalik

Member
Beginning of some internal strife within the NDP?

Mulcair must tax corporations, super-rich to fund agenda, says socialist wing chair

Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats won’t have the money to finance their own promises in government unless they’re willing to realistically increase revenues and properly tax corporations and the “super-rich”, says a spokesman for the party’s left wing.

The comments came Friday from Barry Weisleder, chair of the NDP socialist caucus, a group formed within the party in the late 1990s to counter its drift to the right.

Weisleder told the Citizen in an interview that Mulcair is “cutting himself off at the knees” by not considering a greater revenue stream.

And he said that under Mulcair’s leadership, the party has been moving further to the right.

“I see a further evolution of the NDP towards the neo-liberal agenda,” he said.

“It’s a continuation of the movement towards conservative policies. It remains a party linked to working people and the working class organizations in the country. But its leadership and the policies of that leadership continue to embrace the capitalist order.”

Weisleder stressed he wants to see Mulcair win the Oct. 19 election, preferably with a majority government, but his group wants to “shape the agenda” and push the NDP to the left."

...
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Not too surprising to see some discord appear eventually given how strongly the NDP is moving to the centre.

At this point Mulcair's "balanced budget" promise is pretty unbelievable as well. I expect this promise will continue to come under more and more scrutiny.
 
T

Tiktaalik

Member
TheGreatPotato said:
I have a feeling the simulator doesn't even take into account riding-level info, only provincial. In SK it had the very safe Liberal seat (Ralph Goodale) going blue a few times, and another seat that is basically NDP-CPC at 45% (with LPC at 8%) going red a bunch.
Click to expand...

Yeah once upon a time the news rooms would have had people in every city and the resources to call on the local knowledge but at this point I'm even surprised they've had the resources to build this thing.

There's definitely lots of local peculiarities that will tilt ridings. For example Surrey in BC has four ridings and the extremely popular ex-Mayor is running in the South Surrey riding. That's a super safe seat that she's bound to win, but I would expect the halo effect of her running and campaigning throughout Surrey will help the Conservatives a bit in those ridings.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Tiktaalik said:
Yeah once upon a time the news rooms would have had people in every city and the resources to call on the local knowledge but at this point I'm even surprised they've had the resources to build this thing.

There's definitely lots of local peculiarities that will tilt ridings. For example Surrey in BC has four ridings and the extremely popular ex-Mayor is running in the South Surrey riding. That's a super safe seat that she's bound to win, but I would expect the halo effect of her running and campaigning throughout Surrey will help the Conservatives a bit in those ridings.
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I really doubt that local reporters ever really helped aggregate riding projections like this. Partly because this kind of riding projection seems like a relatively recent thing (what I remember of predictions before 538 from media was that they didn't bother until the end, and they were very vague predictions), but also because I don't think it would have helped much if they had.

The fact is the local campaign's effect on things seems to be relatively simple binary flags that are pretty easy to model. Incumbency and 'star candidate' status (which is fuzzy but not terribly difficult to define, and it probably still matters more if they're a star to the country than to the locals tbh), can be determined from a national perspective. At the very least, the number of ridings missed because of these factors being missed is probably statistical noise.

308 manages largely to get it right based on the regional breakdowns of the actual votes almost every time (which is basically taking the shitty polling in this country out of the picture of his methodology), and that's literally just Eric Grenier with a spreadsheet (or was until recently, at least).
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
Tiktaalik said:
At this point Mulcair's "balanced budget" promise is pretty unbelievable as well. I expect this promise will continue to come under more and more scrutiny.
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I don't think his flippant answer yesterday that they'd balance the budget by abolishing the Senate did him any favours.

One aggregator site that apparently is surprisingly accurate is the Sauder School (formerly UBC) Prediction Market. I'd be lying if I said I fully understood how it works, but I've read people who swear by its predictive power.
 
K

killer rin

Member
Walpurgis said:
Why are people so scared of deficits? I don't understand.
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Well there are many reasons, but the main one is that people hear the word deficit in terms of economy/money and they relate it to what their own experiences of deficits are, which usually ties into the same negative thoughts of hardship, irresponsibility and even bankruptcy. What people don't realize is that the seemingly simple term "Economy" is completely different compared to what you use as a base.

On a personal level it's one thing, On a business level it's another and on a national level is essentially some complex super set written in an alien language. Sure there may be some similar terms, but they all mean wildly different things, especially once you begin to factor in the different capabilities each tier has at its disposal to deal with with the supposed deficit.

It also doesn't help that the supposed people they look up to, to try and make sense of it, ie the Politicians, keep on saying "Deficits Bad" so that's what everyone just ends up coming to believe.

Its complicated.
 
M

massivekettle

Member
SRG01 said:
No they don't. You're confusing deficits with monetary policy.

Excessive debt hurts a country's ability to repay it, especially in periods of low growth.
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In the long-run, yes they do (look at Europe). But I agree in the immediate term, increase in borrowings will increase borrowing costs which will in turn hurt a government's flexibility to invest in its economy (as a higher % of receipts will have to be used to repay interest payments on debt).
 
S

SRG01

Member
ksharp said:
In the long-run, yes they do (look at Europe). But I agree in the immediate term, increase in borrowings will increase borrowing costs which will in turn hurt a government's flexibility to invest in its economy (as a higher % of receipts will have to be used to repay interest payments on debt).
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Europe is suffering not because of deficits. Europe is suffering because member states do not have their own monetary controls -- which is controlled by the ECB. That alone results in huge issues because of the disparate economies within the Union.

To add, Greece, as well as other states such as Spain and Ireland, got into trouble because they no longer had the government revenues needed to service their debt. Each of those countries have complex reasons as to their lack of revenue; simply saying 'deficits' is to blame is not enough.
 
A

Azih

Member
Europe is also suffering because of Austerity which is basically 'Deficits Bad' turned into a simplistic economic policy.
 
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