The 2008 Canadian Election- Merged Thread

[sgf]

or until the polls indicate either party will do better than what is indicated now!!

 

[a_majoor]

The real race to watch is shaping up on the Left:

http://right-direction.blogspot.com/2008/02/jack-layton-becoming-irrelevant.html

Jack Layton becoming Irrelevant?

Is Jack Layton is becoming increasingly irrelevant? With the Green Party taking on more popularity, especially in the 18-24 age group--the area from where the NDP draw most of their votes--I wonder about the future of the party. I subscribe to all of the party's mailing lists. I like to hear what everyone is saying and get a full circle perspective. Jack Layton's Mantra is "corporate tax giveaways." It seems that York University Political Science department fails to require anyone to take an economics class. NDPers cry foul when there are layoffs and moan about jobs leaving our Canada, but don't see the connection with inflated union-wages and how it is unable to stimulating business growth, to create Canadian jobs, with tax incentives to keep a business in a province or our country. It appears, my own MP Dalton McGuinty doesn't understand this either.

 

[McG]

Parliament to resume with more Liberal threats
Updated Sun. Mar. 30 2008 5:13 PM ET
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The election guessing game resumes Monday with Stephane Dion continuing to hold out the possibility that he'll finally pull the plug on Stephen Harper's minority government.

The Liberal leader's threat rings increasingly hollow, coming in the wake of disappointing byelection results and a new round of internecine sniping among party militants in Dion's home province of Quebec.

Indeed, some top Liberals have urged Dion to cut the incessant sabre rattling and frankly admit the party is in no position to fight an election this spring. They fear that repeatedly threatening an election and backing down -- a pattern that Dion has followed throughout the fall and winter -- is only making him look indecisive and exposing the party to ridicule.

But Dion is determined to keep his options open as Parliament resumes after a two-week Easter break.

"It's unavoidable that it will be an issue, will we have an election or not ... It's part of life when you're in a minority situation,'' the Liberal leader said in an interview.

Dion said Liberals will take the plunge when he concludes the time is ripe "for us to replace this very bad government.''

"We'll choose our time, and we need to be ready at any time.''

He shrugged off suggestions that he's courting ridicule.

"I don't worry. I don't see anything ridiculous in what I have said. It's completely normal for a party to take into account timing issues. In politics, timing is a lot.''

Some top Liberals believe Dion's threat of a possible spring election is aimed primarily at imposing some discipline on unruly party members. Others privately suggest he may actually have to follow through on it to avoid an open rebellion over the summer.

He'll have plenty of opportunities to bring down the Harper government should he choose to do so.

Eight opposition days are scheduled before Parliament breaks for the summer, any one of which could be used to propose a motion of non-confidence in the government. Indeed, the spring sitting opens with three consecutive opposition days -- Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and NDP.

While neither the Liberals nor the Bloc intend to propose confidence motions this week, the NDP is weighing the pros and cons of proposing one on Wednesday.

Embarrassing the Grits

New Democrats are tempted to immediately embarrass the three new Liberal stars -- Bob Rae, Martha Hall Findlay and Joyce Murray -- who'll be sworn in on Monday. The trio won byelections on March 17 promising to stand up to the Tory government and would doubtless find it awkward to be forced to abstain on their first test.

"As you know, we've brought those kinds of motions before and certainly we don't rule them out. We'll assess each opportunity,'' NDP Leader Jack Layton said in an interview.

Aside from opposition days, the government will face a series of confidence votes throughout the spring on its budget implementation bill and spending estimates.

Liberal insiders say the budget bill -- which contains controversial provisions giving the government the power to pick and choose immigrants -- is the most likely to provoke an election. New Canadians are the bedrock of Liberal support, and Dion will be hard pressed to allow the changes to pass unchallenged.

However, he likely has a couple of months to decide since the bill must still be debated and sent to committee before returning to the Commons for a final vote.

On budget matters, both the NDP and Bloc have made it clear they'll vote against the government.

Layton said the fact that his party didn't fare well in the byelections -- ending up virtually tied with the upstart Green party in three of four ridings -- hasn't altered his determination to defeat the government.

"Look, all we're doing is saying we're voting against what we don't believe is right. That's what we're going to do. If it's a confidence motion . . . and the House falls, then voters will tell us whether they agreed that we should've stood up to the Conservatives or not.''

For his part, Conservative House leader Peter Van Loan evinced little concern that the government could fall over the next three months. He seemed more interested in the potential for leadership jockeying on the Liberal benches as Rae, onetime NDP premier of Ontario, grabs some of the spotlight from deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, his erstwhile college room mate and leadership rival.

"There will be a different tone now that you'll have at least two folks on the other side who are waiting to become leader of the Liberal party,'' Van Loan said.

Dion countered that Rae and the other two new MPs will showcase one of the big differences between himself and Harper.

"I have a much better team than him and I am much more collegial than him, much more as leader able to work with the others without (feeling)  threatened by them. The real strength of a leader is not to have a one-man show.''

Rae's arrival may end up highlighting another difference between the two parties: their prescriptions for curing Ontario's slumping economy.

Liberals intend to go on the war path against Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his recent charge that Ontario's high corporate taxes make it "the last place'' to invest. But Van Loan signalled that the Tories intend to counter any criticism by reminding voters of Rae's high-deficit, high-tax tenure as premier during a severe recession in the early 1990s.

"We remember his record on the economy very well, and if Liberals want to embrace those kinds of policies, which it seems they want to do, then that'll only reinforce the idea that the best economic managers in the country are the people who are in government right now in the Conservative party.''

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080330/parl_opens_080330/20080330?hub=Canada

 

[Fishbone Jones]

All I can say is "BRING IT ON!!!" ;D I'm ready to vote today.

 

[a_majoor]

So what are they really thinking?

http://phantomobserver.com/blog/?p=989

The Libranos Reach the Fifth Stage

There’s an interesting theme running across this week’s Hill Times, which focuses on the return of the House of Commons to work.

You first see a sign of it in Angelo Persichilli’s article, which suggests that more Liberal MPs are now ready to bring the government down. Hardly news, since Persichilli’s a Tory sympathizer who tends to see the Liberals losing in a general election. What is news here is this little nugget:

    One source told The Hill Times that the vast majority of the Liberal MPs, two out of three, are in favour of an early election, despite the advice they received in a recent caucus meeting from Liberal strategists. Most of them are very aware of the verdict coming from what they call “real polls,” meaning those done internally, and, according to sources, the results that Conservatives, and Liberals are getting, are the same: Conservative majority.

The next sign comes in Abbas Rana’s piece discussing Liberal strategy in the upcoming session, suggesting that there will be plenty of topics on which the Liberals could bring the government down:

    Senior Liberals, in not-for-attribution interviews, agree. “That strategy [abstention] has a life cycle. It’s not an infinite life cycle. They’re probably near the end where all of a sudden the benefits are outweighed by the negative consequences. At some point, you lose the moral authority to criticize the government if you were the ones that were keeping them in power. That’s a real issue because elections are very partisan. Elections are all about, ‘I’m better than them, don’t vote for them.’ How can you credibly engage in that, because the counter would be, ‘Well, if they were that bad, you should have thrown them out before.’ There’s that dilemma.”

    Another Liberal insider, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, told The Hill Times last week that the most significant impact of the abstentions may be on Liberal candidates, party workers, and volunteers, who may begin to feel demoralized in advance of an election campaign. They will start to feel that their party is without a champion and that it cannot stand up to bullying.

    The source added that the Liberal abstentions are not sustainable, comparing them to a boxer in the seventh round who feels that he’s not going to win the round, and “he kind of turtles a bit.” The source added: “But how many punches can you take for a minute and a half to get out of the round before you end up flat on the canvass?”

This suggests to me that the Liberal caucus has finally reached the political equivalent of Stage 5 of the Kubler-Ross model. First, they were in denial that the Tories could stay in power, which is one of the reasons why they were able to oppose their first budget. Then, they got angry about their situation, which is when the faux-scandals started popping up and their discrediting strategy began in earnest. Then, they began bargaining with their public image, which is what the 2006 leadership campaign was supposed to be about. And their recent “Abstention ‘07″ strategy could be seen as a symptom of depression: why bother showing up for a vote, if the end result is losing your seat?

The caucus has now reached the acceptance stage: that in spite of all their efforts, the “winning conditions” needed for a Liberal majority government are simply non-existent and will never appear. Until now, the party has always held to the strategy that you mustn’t force an election unless you are absolutely sure you can win it. All of that is now out the window.

Should be an interesting session, in so far as that “old Chinese curse” goes . . .

The two quotes seem at odds with each other, if the Liberal caucus wants to fight an election they must see the possibility of at least a minority in sight, but if their internal polls see a Conservative majority, would they willingly go to the slaughter (especially if that means their lucrative allowances will be on the line)?

 

[Reccesoldier]

So what are they really thinking?

http://phantomobserver.com/blog/?p=989

The two quotes seem at odds with each other, if the Liberal caucus wants to fight an election they must see the possibility of at least a minority in sight, but if their internal polls see a Conservative majority, would they willingly go to the slaughter (especially if that means their lucrative allowances will be on the line)?

But that slaughter would be the only sure way to replace Stephie De-yawn.

 

[RangerRay]

From another thread:

<a href="http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/72407.30/topicseen.html">LINK</a>

According to the latest CROP poll, the Tories and BQ are in a statistical tie in Quebec, and the Liberals and NDP are far behind.  Must be something to this putsch from the Quebec wing...

<a href="http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20080329/CPACTUALITES/803290815/6730/CPACTUALITES">Link to article</a>

If my translation is correct, here's the breakdown:

Overall
BQ - 30%
Conservatives - 29%
Liberals - 20%
NDP - 15%

Quebec City area
Conservatives - 41%
BQ - 25%
NDP - 17%
Liberals - 15%

Rest of Quebec
CPP - 34%
Bloc - 30%

Montreal
BQ - 32%
Liberals - 25%
Conservatives - 21%

Best PM
Harper - 35%
Layton - 24%
Dion - 16%

Satisfaction with Harper government...55%

From what I have heard, in Quebec there are two polling companies: CROP and the others.  I agree with Reccesoldier...these MP's want to pull the plug so they can ditch Citoyen Dion.  I would imagine that these MP's are also in ridings where a dog could run as a Liberal and still win, so they know they are safe...

 

[a_majoor]

Some thoughts for all party leaders and candidates to ponder:

http://kerplonka.blogspot.com/2008/04/leadership.html

Leadership

Exhibit 1:

I really believe my greatest service is in the many unwise steps I prevent.
-William Lyon MacKenzie King, tenth PM of Canada


Exhibit 2:

    Chrétien's proudest moments, Manley said, would surely be elminating chronic budget deficits; introducing the Clarity Act; and keeping Canada outside the Iraq War. But each of those decisions was a mark of prudence, not adventure. They were about getting out of trouble or making sure not to get into any. They don't amount to a defence of the proposition that government is a public good that can do good things for citizens. And it's on that terrain, Manley argued, that Liberals need to fight.

If we were smarter, we might see a lesson here. But learning from history is, like, so passé.

(And I say that as a Tory. It's certainly something all parties need to consider, particularly once they get in government. Reputation is one of those things that has to be earned and can only be lost. The Liberals, because of history generally but more recently because of the Chretien years, have been able to rely on an enormous reserve of public goodwill on the basis that on the whole they aren't total screwups when in government. The Tories are still defending the legacy of Brian Mulroney and Mike Harris, and if they're not careful they might end up defending more into the future.)

I'm sure that if you do the research there is plenty to applaud in the legacies of Brian Mulrouney and Mike Harris as well (if the overriding criterion is the same as Chretien; i.e. they weren't total screwups, then perhaps only Bob Rae has anything to fear.....)

 

[a_majoor]

This is interesting:

http://stevejanke.com/archives/259884.php?utm_medium=RSS

Has the Liberal Party leader finally appeared?
Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 10:46 AM

What will be different in two weeks?

The rumour is that the Liberals will bring down the Conservative government in time for an early June election.  Usually an election runs six weeks, so that would mean bringing down the government in about two weeks, near the end of April.

Why not now?  Why not two weeks ago?  Nothing suggests a massive shift in Liberal fortunes.

The only reason I can think of is that there has been in a shift in the balance of power in the caucus, and Stephane Dion has been issued new marching orders by the people he ostensibly leads.

Which leads to the question of who the real leader is.  Is it a coincidence that this rumour of a shift to an election fighting mode follows immediately after Bob Rae's by-election win?

Let's review the litany of Liberal Party woes:

    * miserable polling numbers
    * polling numbers for Stephane Dion in particular that are worse than miserable
    * no money
    * support concentrated in urban ridings only
    * safe seats are no longer safe
    * laughter from all sides aimed at Liberals
    * competing with the NDP and the Green Party for the same pool of votes
    * Quebec organization is a shambles

That was true two weeks ago.  It's true today.  It's not likely to change two weeks from now.

So why is it on Mike Duffy Live we are hearing that the Liberals are planning to bring down the government at the end of the month?

Part of the reason might be this -- a Liberal MP planning to vote against his party by voting against the government:

    The Harper government survived a potential election-triggering vote on its controversial immigration bill Wednesday after Liberals voted with the government. But at least one Liberal MP is threatening to break ranks unless the party takes a stand soon against the bill.

    Before the vote, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said his party is "adamantly against" the bill, but it's up to him to decide whether to bring down the government. "If they don't change it, we'll vote against it. And it's my decision to decide when the trigger will happen," Dion told reporters.

    But Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi, who represents the Ontario riding of Kitchener-Waterloo, said Wednesday he will vote against the bill when it comes up for third reading in the House of Commons, no matter what position his party takes.

One rogue MP might be a sign of an entire faction of the Liberal caucus having reached a breaking point.

It is interesting to note that Ontario MPs are likely the most secure MPs in the Liberal Party.  Is the Ontario faction fed up with other blocs of Liberal MPs hiding behind their desks for fear of losing their seats?

Each abstention or vote in support of a bill they publicly disagree with is hurting all Liberal MPs, including the Ontario ones.  They might feel that it is a dumb move for the party to sacrifice their seats in a doomed attempt to hold on to seats in other provinces.

They might have a point.

I wonder if that's a point Bob Rae is making.  He has just joined the Liberal caucus thanks to his solid by-election win last month.  And now rumours that the Liberals are finally going to fight an election.

Fight an election despite the fact that nothing is different now from any of the other times the Liberals decided not to fight an election.

Except that Bob Rae is on the scene.

Is Bob Rae leading the Ontario Liberals in an effort to force Stephane Dion to call an election?  Michael Ignatieff represents an Ontario riding, but his core support is in Quebec.  He knows his caucus supporters might not survive an election right now.  For Bob Rae, an election right now could severely weaken Michael Ignatieff, and force Stephane Dion out of a job.

The Liberals might be reduced to an Ontario rump, but it would be Bob Rae's rump.

Call it a rump in Bob Rae's road to 24 Sussex Drive.

Addendum: Andrew Telegdi was a Gerard Kennedy supporter, which means he likely switched to Stephane Dion during the leadership convention.  I wonder if he regrets that move.

If this is even close to the truth, it is more confirmation (as if we need any) that Liberal party members seem more devoted to self interest and power than the greater good; even the greater good of the party. I also wonder if Bob Rae and his supporters believe that Ontarians have forgotten about his term as premier? Of course Dalton McGuinty is recreating the Rae government in spirit and practice, so reminders will be there in everything we see and do here in Ontario.

 

[a_majoor]

How the future is shaping up. Demographics is a wonderful thing:

http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080430_67049_67049&page=1

The Tories are having better luck in reaching out to their young, post-boomer voters
PAUL WELLS | April 30, 2008 |

The Liberal opposition's favourite game, Retreat From Defeat (Step 1: Threaten to bring down the Harper government; Step 2: Change your mind; Step 3: Repeat) cannot last forever. It only feels that way. The good news is that by October of 2009 there will be a federal election whether Stéphane Dion wants one or not. And then it will matter which leader has done his homework in the interim, and which party's message finds a receptive audience.

Frank Graves does not pretend to know any better than you or I how the next election will end. Graves is the founder and president of Ekos Research Associates, one of Ottawa's more prominent polling firms. I did not visit him for predictions but for a look at longer-term trends that might have a bearing on the next few years in Canadian politics.

Graves identified two big trends emerging. One is a steady, marked shift in Canadians' political identification from liberal to conservative. That's obviously bad news for the federal Liberals. The other trend looks less menacing: the emergence of two broad cohorts of under-40 voters, one broadly left-leaning, the other more conservative. Since they're about the same size they should more or less balance out. Except both of these groups of younger voters have their own generational quirks, and so far Stephen Harper's Conservatives have had better luck reaching out to "their" young voters than the post-Paul Martin Liberals have to "theirs."

"It isn't just that Canadians are waiting around for the next Liberal government to come back and find its natural place," Graves says. "There have been — I don't know if you'd call them tectonic — but there have been fundamental changes going on in the political value orientations of Canadians."

These are easy enough to demonstrate. Graves periodically asks respondents of all ages whether they consider themselves small-l liberal, small-c conservative, or neither. Most people say they're neither, but among those who state a preference, Canadian respondents have tended to more frequently identify as liberal than conservative.

That's changing. In one round of polling in 2006, Graves measured 34 per cent who called themselves liberal and 23 per cent who called themselves conservative, while 39 per cent said they were neither. Earlier this year the number who identified with neither camp was up two points to 41 per cent, the conservative group was up five points to 28 per cent , and the liberal number down 10 points to 24 per cent.

"This is not a simple opinion blip but a clear trend line," Graves says. It's backed by other findings. Support for a robust international role for Canada's military is rising. Support for a single-payer public medicare system over private-sector alternatives has fallen from two-to-one to more like 50-50. And Graves is discovering other new attitudes among younger voters — attitudes that for the moment seem to favour the Conservatives.

"When we started segmenting Canadians into various groups, we found there were two groups that tended to capture post-boomer Canada," he says. He calls the first group Progressive Cosmopolitans. They're optimistic, global in outlook, no fans of George W. Bush, and basically left-of-centre in political orientation.

The problem for the Liberals is that this new under-40 group is hard to get a policy handle on. They're immune, for instance, to the siren song of an active federal government. "They would have grown up during the period of retrenchment and dismantling of many of the ingredients of state nationalism that would have propelled Trudeau to his popularity," Graves says. "There's a view that the social safety net has become a hammock and it's perpetuating the problems it was set up to solve."

The biggest surprise for Graves is the emergence of another group of conservative younger voters. He calls them the Continental Conservatives. "They're also optimistic, very comfortable economically, they feel things are going their way." So the Continental Conservatives and Progressive Cosmopolitans, taken together, are far less worried about the assorted security issues — crime, terrorism, illegal immigration — than are Canada's greying baby-boomer voters. But that is where the similarities between the two groups of younger voters end.

The Continental Conservatives, Graves says, "are people who are having young families. They're not allergic to things like immigration. And they're certainly not conservatives in the traditional Canadian sense, which would have still been fairly nationalistic, the Diefenbaker lineage. These guys, relatively speaking, are very receptive to things like a North American union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (the fledgling series of trilateral summits launched by George W. Bush with a succession of Mexican and Canadian leaders), those things would not be troubling to these guys at all. "And they like Stephen Harper."

The Prime Minister's inability to grow his appeal beyond the 36 per cent of the electorate he won when he was elected is a cliché in political Ottawa; what is less often noticed is that the Harper Conservative vote is as reluctant to shrink as to grow. There's a hard core to the Conservative vote that will make them very hard to beat.

In my 2006 book Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism, I chronicled the efforts of Patrick Muttart, a bright young Conservative strategist, to target the party's message at the gettable voter market, while ignoring those who would simply never consider voting Tory. Tellingly, much of Muttart's research was aimed at those under 40. He found that a couple with one or two children probably voted Liberal, but that a couple with three children was 50 per cent likelier to vote Conservative. The party's odds of attracting that voter's support get better with every child after the third.

Graves's right-leaning Continental Conservatives are actually a little younger, at the median, than his Progressive Cosmopolitans. So were Muttart's voter archetypes, imaginary characters he used to help Conservative strategists understand who they were trying to appeal to. Everyone in the Conservative war room knew "Zoe," the hypothetical single woman in her late 20s who lived in a Toronto condo. Graves would call her a Progressive Cosmopolitan. Similarly, Muttart invented "Mike and Theresa," who moved out of Toronto to suburban Oakville to raise their two children. Mike and Theresa are Continental Conservatives.

Young Ottawa today is visibly more like Mike and Theresa than it used to be. And it's not quite as fun a town if you're a Zoë. The bars don't rock until closing time with quite as many suit-clad political staffers on the make. Tory staffers — never, ever speaking on the record to journalists — admit there's a subtle in-group pressure to get married and start raising a proper brood of children. The poster boy for Generation Harper could well be Ken Boessenkool, who runs the Calgary office of the public-relations firm Hill and Knowlton Canada. Boessenkool played key roles in Harper's 2004 and 2006 campaigns. He and his wife home-school their four children.

Two years ago, Graves was inclined to regard Harper's election as a reaction to Paul Martin's spectacularly unlucky two years in office and, more broadly, to voter fatigue with 13 years of Liberal rule. Without some kind of impetus — probably a "security shock" like a new terrorist attack close to home — he wouldn't have rated Harper's chances of re-election very high. "But now we're seeing that the Conservative movement in Canada has its own demographic feeder group in post-boomer Canada, which I did not expect. Not this clearly."

Remember, none of this is a prediction. Polls tell us interesting things about the recent past and nothing conclusive about the future. But Graves's research identifies a series of challenges for the Liberals. For one thing, Canadians as a whole are simply in a pretty good mood these days. When asked whether their country is on the right track, Graves's Canadian respondents reply "Yes" by a margin of two to one; Americans reply "No" by the same margin. A lean economy might change that, but right-track numbers are generally a strong guide to a government's chances of re-election.

Then there's the novelty of the Progressive Cosmopolitans' preoccupations. A few time-worn avenues of Liberal appeal simply don't work on this crew. "In many respects, they're post-nationalistic," Graves says. "They're not particularly wedded to the old notion of state nationalism. The CBC or medicare aren't the things that make them feel all warm and fuzzy about Canada. They actually couldn't care less. It may be nice that health care was created for their parents and they might be interested in it 10 years down the road, but frankly they don't really believe it's going to survive anyway. They're not really at the stage where they're thinking about pensions yet. The CBC, yeah, okay, but it certainly doesn't have the iconic status that it had for their parents. The old kind of parental state that does things for you from cradle to grave, an ever-expanding range of things that help you out, I don't think that's what they're particularly interested in."

The odd thing is, if you wrote down the characteristics of a leader who could appeal to Progressive Cosmopolitans, the result you'd get would look a lot like Stéphane Dion. For much of his career he was much less interested in defending a Fortress Ottawa against the provinces than most of his cabinet colleagues. He's global in his outlook, identifies strongly with the environment — a winning issue with both of Graves's young voter groups — and he's younger than his erstwhile rivals Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. There's a voter pool out there for him, too, if he could only find some way to get its attention. But that's a hurdle Harper has already overcome. And the difference in the two leaders' ability to tap into emerging wellsprings of new voter support may make all the difference when this long phony war ends and their final confrontation begins.

 

[JesseWZ]

That was an extremely interesting read. As part of this new under 40 generation, I can actually assign my friends to either group in my head. A lot of them fit the mould. (sp?)
Very interesting.

 

[FascistLibertarian]

spring electton.
canada

 

[TCBF]

spring electton.
canada

Shift Key
For Capitals

 

[ModlrMike]

My guess is that if we don't go to the polls before the end of Sept, then we won't go until next year. I think the Liberals would like to attempt to unseat Mr Harper before he has a chance to cozy up to the new Democratic party president, and defuse the Liberal's GW Bush line of attack.

 

[a_majoor]

My guess is that if we don't go to the polls before the end of Sept, then we won't go until next year. I think the Liberals would like to attempt to unseat Mr Harper before he has a chance to cozy up to the new Democratic party president, and defuse the Liberal's GW Bush line of attack.

Quite an assumption there. How should the Government or the Opposition be prepared to respond to a McCain Administration then?

 

[stegner]

I think the Liberals would like to attempt to unseat Mr Harper before he has a chance to cozy up to the new Democratic party president, and defuse the Liberal's GW Bush line of attack.

Quite an assumption there. How should the Government or the Opposition be prepared to respond to a McCain Administration then?

Gee what a marvelous idea we decide who is our government on the basis of who the Americans elect.  NOT.  We are an independent country it should not matter who is in the White House.  What should matter is who has the most credibility in their vision of the nation not on how their relationship with the Americans would be.  Frankly,  Harper's relationship with Bush is no great shakes it is mediocre at best and certainly not light years ahead of Martin's relationship with Bush.  Personally, Bush and Chretien got along in social situations as they are far more alike then Bush with Harper-the two would frequently joke about A-Rod's salary.  And let's not forget that Chretien and Clinton had an amazing relationship for two terms.  Nevertheless, that should mean squat if they don't handle the domestic situation appropriately. 

 

[54/102 CEF]

How the future is shaping up. Demographics is a wonderful thing:

http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080430_67049_67049&page=1

A book for you on this same topic - how demographics affects what old time Big Government can't do for your by Mark Steyn - "America Alone"

Amazon link http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=america+alone+steyn

It tracks eerily close to to Macleans Article - families with kids will defend their future options - singles and no kids families head for Cancun and want their pension from their home at 4:30 Government Job

Among other things - Pension benefits system and government paybacks for high taxes are unsustainable because couples marry late and don't have 3 kids - makes the claim that depending on immigration for the fill up of workers to support the pensioned off is dead wrong.

About 200 pages - fast read - and non stop amazement

Enjoy! 

 

[SeaKingTacco]

We are an independent country it should not matter who is in the White House.  What should matter is who has the most credibility in their vision of the nation not on how their relationship with the Americans would be.

Stegner- That's nice theory, but in practice it does matter how we handle relations with the neighbours.  It frankly does form part of the vision one must have for Canada.  We simply cannot ignore the US.

 

[stegner]

Stegner- That's nice theory, but in practice it does matter how we handle relations with the neighbours.  It frankly does form part of the vision one must have for Canada.  We simply cannot ignore the US.

Frankly, changes in administrations in either country do not substantively change really much of anything.  The U.S relationship largely transcends politicians.  It does not matter if it is Obama, Clinton or McCain in the White House the relationship will change very little.  Or if it is Harper or Ignatieff in 24 Sussex.  Even with the MSM claiming bad blood between Chretien and Bush can you find any concrete example on how the relationship suffered terribly that may be measured in a quantitative fashion?  Did they stop buying oil and gas from Alberta and Saskatchewan or manufactured products from Ontario or Quebec? 

 

[aesop081]

But after Bush is gone, who will Canadians blame for eveything ?