Harper Is Going To Call An Election, or, The Official Canadian Election Thread (NO AMERICANS ALLOWED)

So, it looks like Harper is going to call an election. I've heard he may even go next week and ask the GG to go ahead and dissolve the government.

Thoughts? Rants?

Me, I hate Harper, but I hate Dion even more, and the opposition parties are just there for a laugh, so it really does come down to who the public hates more. And I'm thinking they hate Dion more. I'm predicting another minority conservative government.

AHHH! fuck partisan politics. It could come as early as tomorrow, i've heard. I think your call on a minority gov't might pan out...Canadians are looking for something who has balls, and Dion has been casterated. They don't want another Francaphone PM, either. The entire back and forth, lawsuit, accusation, election threat, accusation, cycle is tiresome.I feel nothing for either side, so let the chips fall where they may. I'm more concerened about provincial politics anyway.
Which way do you vote arollo?

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of partisan politics myself. And I am pretty impressed at Canada and the fact that the parties do sue each other every hour on the hour. I can't imagine what would happen in the US if the parties started suing each other.

However, I can't vote yet. "Permanent residents" can't vote, which is total bullshit by the way. You should write your MP about that. I would, but he's in the "immigrants are all criminals" camp as far as I can tell. It makes me feel special.

If I could vote, I'd vote NDP. Though I do hate Layton so very, very much, and think the NDP are a parody of what the NDP ought to be. I'm still generally a socialist, and when it comes time to vote in American elections, I usually vote Socialist when I can. Though I usually vote Libertarian too, since the Socialist party never really fields that many candidates.

My wife supports the green party, but votes NDP because she knows the Green party is going to die as soon as the Liberals start to be "green". Ugh.

That's right. Two people who live in Alberta and support the NDP. The pigs have flown.

HAHAH yeah really...shouldnt you been on the torrie train, soakin up that oil??? SO , where are you from, if not a canadian citizen? And, why are you in Alberta?

Count on a Harper majority.

The CPC is polling higher than the anyone in Quebec, even higher than the Bloc; the Libs are third. The Liberals are also on the verge of bankruptcy. The reason the election is being called early is because the Liberals get their next quarterly payout from Elections Canada at the end of October, so if you hold the election before that, they will have to seek major loans to finance a campaign and they just aren't good for that money. Harper is the only one that deserve to win anyways, the others all come across as political hacks who are bumbling about without a clue of what they are supposed to be doing.

i can't stand politicians in general. i wish we had a system more like switzerland where we could vote them out so they could actually be held accountable! however we don't and the powers that be will never allow such a thing... personally i tend to vote liberal because i hate the right wing and jack is a flaming bag of douche. not that dion isn't, but he has a better chance of winning against the conservatives. plus ralph goodale is my riding anyway and i don't mind him

Zed...you've got some insight on canadian politics...do you think the election's money stink that the CPC is being investigated for will hurt them at all.?

godisdead wrote:

Zed...you've got some insight on canadian politics...do you think the election's money stink that the CPC is being investigated for will hurt them at all.?

No, I don't think it'll hurt them at all. We're not as enlightened as we like to think we are. Dion's accent an tendency to get flustered will hurt him far more than the (serious) allegations against the Conservatives.

In reality, the Conservatives haven't done anything illegal. The thing about tax and finance laws is that legally, the philosophy of the law takes precedence over the word of the law - this is the opposite of typical laws, like criminal ones for example. For example, in Canada, lottery winnings are not taxable, but CCRA will still sue people for income taxes if they are professional gamblers because it is now their job. So what the CPC did wasn't illegal, it was simply a very clever way to circumvent the philosophy of the law, and now they're being called out on it. I think that it will not hurt them that much because, frankly, it was a legal and clever thing that they did.

lol im canadian!

i cant vote yet though

D: I wish I was in Canada. Then I could vote! I'm 18 now, but unfortunately I'm not a resident anymore. :S

I hate Harper (I feel like he's trying to make us the 51st state...), but I don't really know any of the other people running...

Harper speaks better French than Dion does English, that's for sure!

Alright where is our resident canadian political junkie zedeff. Arollo? any canadians care to share their thoughts on the election at this point? The green party is growing on people around here. How about the Liberal green shift? LETS TALK ABOUT IT.

I think the green shift if ridiculous. I like Harper's diesel fuel cut. Since I just bought a house, I also like his tax break for first time home buyers. I also open to Elizabeth May's proposal to tax marijuana, but I think the medical literature is still a few years away from making this law a reality. Dion is campaigning very poorly, and Layton is too big for his britches (campaigning to be PM? A waste.).

Layton is talking a huge game right now, agreed. He's throwing reform ideas that would cost a fuck load of money, and the fact that he doesnt really stand a chance in the first place makes his campagin obsolete, only adding to the clutter. No one seems to be worried about him. Dion was hurtin' in the CP polls last week, too. Not a popular guy.

What do you hate about the greenshif, zed? It's pretty vague, but the gist of it is a tax shift, from income to carbon and fuel emmisions. They are appealing to mid-low income families and are saying within four years the results will shine through.

For the record, I'm not a fan of the liberal party.

As sad as it is, I know next to nothing about Canadian politics but I know about American politics. I don't even know for sure who the PM is. I guess it doesn't matter as much to me right now though, as I can't vote until next year anyway.

But my dad hates the Liberals.

godisdead wrote:

What do you hate about the greenshif, zed? It's pretty vague, but the gist of it is a tax shift, from income to carbon and fuel emmisions. They are appealing to mid-low income families and are saying within four years the results will shine through.

The green shift accomplishes nothing but increasing the tax base and making everything you buy more expensive.

If we added a tax to everything that pollutes, what would happen? In the entire green shift document, there isn't a single policy that would decrease the amout of polution in the atmosphere. What there is, is lots of policies that add revenue to the government. So really then, what's the point of the green shift if it doesn't actually cut pollution?

So consider two things. The goal of the green shift is to modify peoples' behaviors so that they act the way Stephane wants them to act. Does this ever work? Not really. When tobacco taxes go up, the government ends up with more money, not less smokers. Small incremental taxes don't chang behavior. And even if they did, is that really the job of the government? Show me where in the constitution it say that the government is to act as a social engineer and use taxes and advetising to change YOUR decisions? It's not in there. Even the green shift in theory is a huge overstepping of the government's role.

The reality of environmental policy is that we don't need it. It is the role of the government to listen to the will of the public, not the to dictate to the public what their will should be. There is NOTHING right now that prevents people from being as environmentally efficient as they'd like. I can already go buy efficient light bulbs without being forced to, I can drink tap water instead of bottled, I can recycle and I can buy local. If people WANTED environmental protectionism, they'd already be living it. Since we aren't, we must not want it. It is not the job of the government to spend my money telling me what to want; it is their job to listen to my wants and respond to them.

So then, what's the net result of the green shift? It's a small tax, so no change in consumer actions, meaning no environmental protection. No change in consumer action means a net increase in taxes to the government, because the green shift calculates its revenue neutrality by assuming people will shop more wisely (but they won't, because the taxes are REALLY small). But most importantly, ask anyone running a business how they calculate retail prices. You add up your costs, add a fixed PERCENTAGE, and then sell it for that price. So if the cost of everything goes up by a dollar, the consumer's final price goes up by several dollars because at each step of the way - added costs of resource harvesting, shipping, production, distribution, marketting - you have an additional percentage added. So if the farmer's price goes up by a dollar, and the fuel prices go up by a dollar, then the manufacturer ups the prices by more than a dollar, who the distributes it at an even higher cost to stores who sell it at an even higher cost yet. The net result isn't a two dollar increase, but several dollars, because of compounding.

The green shift does nothing for the environment, makes you life more expensive, and gives more of your money to the government.

haha. The PM is Stephen Harper and he is a conservative. The opposition is the liberal party, led by a goof, another Stephen, Stephane Dion. He's french. Other leaders running are Gilles Ducepe from Le Bloc Quebecois(guess what language they speak), Elizabeth May from the Green Party(guess what their platform is) and The social democratic NDP led by Jack Layton, who rides a bike around a lot (for publicity? you decide). Harper seems the most suitable leader, well spoken in both languages. Dion stumbles over his english and looks out of place on the podium. I would say Layton is the next-best speaker, although his party are looked at like annoying kid brother.

Zedeff wrote:

godisdead wrote:

What do you hate about the greenshif, zed? It's pretty vague, but the gist of it is a tax shift, from income to carbon and fuel emmisions. They are appealing to mid-low income families and are saying within four years the results will shine through.

The green shift accomplishes nothing but increasing the tax base and making everything you buy more expensive.

If we added a tax to everything that pollutes, what would happen? In the entire green shift document, there isn't a single policy that would decrease the amout of polution in the atmosphere. What there is, is lots of policies that add revenue to the government. So really then, what's the point of the green shift if it doesn't actually cut pollution?

So consider two things. The goal of the green shift is to modify peoples' behaviors so that they act the way Stephane wants them to act. Does this ever work? Not really. When tobacco taxes go up, the government ends up with more money, not less smokers. Small incremental taxes don't chang behavior. And even if they did, is that really the job of the government? Show me where in the constitution it say that the government is to act as a social engineer and use taxes and advetising to change YOUR decisions? It's not in there. Even the green shift in theory is a huge overstepping of the government's role.

The reality of environmental policy is that we don't need it. It is the role of the government to listen to the will of the public, not the to dictate to the public what their will should be. There is NOTHING right now that prevents people from being as environmentally efficient as they'd like. I can already go buy efficient light bulbs without being forced to, I can drink tap water instead of bottled, I can recycle and I can buy local. If people WANTED environmental protectionism, they'd already be living it. Since we aren't, we must not want it. It is not the job of the government to spend my money telling me what to want; it is their job to listen to my wants and respond to them.

So then, what's the net result of the green shift? It's a small tax, so no change in consumer actions, meaning no environmental protection. No change in consumer action means a net increase in taxes to the government, because the green shift calculates its revenue neutrality by assuming people will shop more wisely (but they won't, because the taxes are REALLY small). But most importantly, ask anyone running a business how they calculate retail prices. You add up your costs, add a fixed PERCENTAGE, and then sell it for that price. So if the cost of everything goes up by a dollar, the consumer's final price goes up by several dollars because at each step of the way - added costs of resource harvesting, shipping, production, distribution, marketting - you have an additional percentage added. So if the farmer's price goes up by a dollar, and the fuel prices go up by a dollar, then the manufacturer ups the prices by more than a dollar, who the distributes it at an even higher cost to stores who sell it at an even higher cost yet. The net result isn't a two dollar increase, but several dollars, because of compounding.

The green shift does nothing for the environment, makes you life more expensive, and gives more of your money to the government.

Man this shit is better than school. How do you feel abou the NDP's idea to cap big business' emmisons, punishing them for overuse, and giving them incentive to be pruden?

IF - and for me, it's a big "if" - IF we need the government to get involved in environmentalism, then I like a cap and trade system kind of like the NDP's. A cap system provides just that: a cap. You cannot emit more than X amount of pollution, period, end discussion. That means less pollution. A green shift, by contrast, allows as much pollution as you want to put out as long as you can pay for it.

That's actually another problem with the green shift. Go down to a grocery store or big box store one day and look at the prices of the environmentally friendly products. Green clothes detergent is INSANELY expensive, green dish soap is really expensive too. Biodegradable baby diapers are expensive, organic produce is crazy at most stores, and all the food, whether "green" or not, is shipped. We don't have farms in the city. So even if the organic and green products were reasonably priced - which they aren't - the cost of regular products and food goes up.

Who can afford green soaps and biodegradable diapers and organic produce? It's not working class people. Stephane Dion can, but families making $35,000/year can't. So their taxes go up making their life harder while the rich people can feel smug for protecting the Earth.

Edit: The Conservaties also have a cap and trade system.

i'm not a fan of any of the party leaders. i feel like i shouldn't vote but a friend told me that if i don't vote i can't bitch because i didn't participate. so i might vote green because they have the smallest chance of winning and just to spite the other parties

On the subject of environmentally friendly products, I've noticed that even clothing that claims to be "organic" is also incredibly expensive.

So no talk on the election front? Harper leading the polls, Dion up slightly from where he was....pc's say they are going to cut 40 million from the federal arts budget, but they've enhanced sporting or 'culture' budgets for the olympics in Vancouver. A small piece of the pie considering a federal budget is hundreds of billions of dollars, but how do you feel about it anyone? Artists vs. the Harper. Big deal, or small potatoes? Zedeff? arollo, canadians on this board?