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So apparantly Canada had an election recently.

It was my understanding that the Liberal party was the group that forced the elections, and yet, they had their worst showing ever, transforming the Conservatives from a coalition government to a majority government. Not only that, but the NDP picked up many of the Liberal seats, and pretty much knocked out the Bloc Quebecois.

Am I missing something, or did the Liberals basically get their posteriors handed to them? It also looks like they got played by the NDP.

Any hope for a return of the Liberals, or is Canada transitioning to a 2-party state?

biccat wrote:So apparantly Canada had an election recently.

It was my understanding that the Liberal party was the group that forced the elections, and yet, they had their worst showing ever, transforming the Conservatives from a coalition government to a majority government. Not only that, but the NDP picked up many of the Liberal seats, and pretty much knocked out the Bloc Quebecois.

Am I missing something, or did the Liberals basically get their posteriors handed to them? It also looks like they got played by the NDP.

Any hope for a return of the Liberals, or is Canada transitioning to a 2-party state?

I was hoping the leading party in Canada would be NDP or Liberal, I don't really like they ideology of conservatism.

They are learning from the USA. They voted on Corpate taxs breaks and a fear of being invaded by other cultures. Also (from what I hear) there was a lot of anti Quebec sentiment although I'm not sure what that has to do about anything. Patriotic nationalistic parties have been doing good as of late. Grats to them.

My question is why the switch, it seem Canada was coming along right nicely.

biccat wrote:So apparantly Canada had an election recently.

It was my understanding that the Liberal party was the group that forced the elections, and yet, they had their worst showing ever, transforming the Conservatives from a coalition government to a majority government. Not only that, but the NDP picked up many of the Liberal seats, and pretty much knocked out the Bloc Quebecois.

Am I missing something, or did the Liberals basically get their posteriors handed to them? It also looks like they got played by the NDP.

Any hope for a return of the Liberals, or is Canada transitioning to a 2-party state?

Huge Conservative bias in that article.

Cheesecat wrote:Huge Conservative bias in that article.

It was one of the first ones that came up on google news. There really wasn't a good "these are the election results".

Other top hits include:
Peter Worthington: Canada is the Lucky Country (National Post)
Big Election Up North, Eh? Canada Hits the Polls (The Atlantic)
Blue over the Tory win (National Post)
Mr. Harper, let's focus now on cutting ugly jobless rate (Globe and Mail)
John Moore: It's time for Harper to prove himself as PM (National Post)

None of which appeared to be even remotely balanced one way or the other.

edit: The Toronto Sun also gave me a chance to look at pretty girls, so it won out.

biccat wrote:So apparantly Canada had an election recently.

It was my understanding that the Liberal party was the group that forced the elections, and yet, they had their worst showing ever, transforming the Conservatives from a coalition government to a majority government. Not only that, but the NDP picked up many of the Liberal seats, and pretty much knocked out the Bloc Quebecois.

Am I missing something, or did the Liberals basically get their posteriors handed to them? It also looks like they got played by the NDP.

Any hope for a return of the Liberals, or is Canada transitioning to a 2-party state?

No thats the way of it.
Interesting tidbit: Canada has lower tax rates than the US at this point.

biccat wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:Huge Conservative bias in that article.

It was one of the first ones that came up on google news. There really wasn't a good "these are the election results".

Other top hits include:
Peter Worthington: Canada is the Lucky Country (National Post)
Big Election Up North, Eh? Canada Hits the Polls (The Atlantic)
Blue over the Tory win (National Post)
Mr. Harper, let's focus now on cutting ugly jobless rate (Globe and Mail)
John Moore: It's time for Harper to prove himself as PM (National Post)

None of which appeared to be even remotely balanced one way or the other.

edit: The Toronto Sun also gave me a chance to look at pretty girls, so it won out.

Yeah, Sunshine girl is pretty hot.

Canada has a very strong Conservative or what we prefer to call "right wing" slant because of horrible budgetary mismanagement. Don't forget this is Canada we still have health care etc. In fact according to polls health care was overwhelmingly the #1 issue that was _NOT_ covered in the previous election.

The big surprise of course are the NDP this is the second time now the NDP have had a strong showing in the last while, what one could call the "modern" era of Canadian politics say post-Trudeau and post the new constitution in 1982. Three if you count the horrible mismanagement of Ontario (largest province) that a provincial NDP government did in the 1990's.

NDP have a very strong Canadian leader, who is even a former political science professor, In fact, he may very well go down in the history books as being the guy who completely raped Quebec (second largest province) separatism.

---------------
I see what you are getting at, two party state. Canadian Conservatives vs Canadian "New Democrats". If we want to have a discussion, Canada is a bit different from the States. I could go on and on but to start, Quebec is tradtionally very, very, very left-wing. You know like France. In fact many Quebec laws are actually based on the French tradition rather than the American/ British tradition.

The other concern no one really likes the Conservatives but they are very, very strong in Alberta you see the big blue one near the left. So basically Alberta will always go Conservative, Quebec will always go "pinko" and you can call everything else in Canada "Ontario" which is basically centrist.

Honestly this past election people just didn't (I personally do) like the Liberal leader very much, and the Conservative leader has a long, long history in Canada of being a very strong leader even before he entered formal politics. In fact he was barely involved in university spending his time with Alberta's conservative movement.

The current Liberal leader is the leader because the previous Liberal supporters gave him his support. He has the support of the old Liberal guard, basically, Jean Chretien's supporters.

As for Canada going two-party it is something that could come about basically it would be what I call "politics of hate". Enough people would have to actually _HATE_ the current Conservative party, formerly an Alberta "fringe" party much like the New Democrats have always been a "fringe" party. So enough people actually _HATE_ the Conservative party I can see the Liberals and the New Democrats coming together. Now the New Democrats have always been a little iffy on things like the military things like that. They get a lot of yahoos. The current leader supports the armed forces.

Canadian politics have traditionally sort of gone through "phases" you had Grits vs Tories while Quebec, for lack of a better expression, squabbled. Then you had Trudeau, then you had we had to get the books in order. The Liberals were a very strong party but basically, for lack of a better expression, collapsed from in-fighting. This is Canada, it is not the States. Everyone is pals here.

Basically what we have now, the books are in order Canada is doing great, the only question is what we want the country to be. This does not mean we will see a two-party state any time soon because honestly I cannot see the Liberal party just "going away".

But yeah anyway you can see Quebec is all orange. Quebec are all pinkos just like France. The provincial Liberal government is very left-wing-ish and even the separatist party, newly defeated le Bloc Quebecois were (and are) very, very socialist. Dr. Trudeau himself was black-listed as a (suspected, or potential, or whatever) communist way back when.

My stupid country has a new flag... welcome to harperland

Tacobake wrote: Quebec are all pinkos just like France.

What does "pinkos" means?

M_Stress wrote:What does "pinkos" means?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinko

Tacobake wrote:Canada has a very strong Conservative or what we prefer to call "right wing" slant because of horrible budgetary mismanagement. Don't forget this is Canada we still have health care etc. In fact according to polls health care was overwhelmingly the #1 issue that was _NOT_ covered in the previous election.

The big surprise of course are the NDP this is the second time now the NDP have had a strong showing in the last while, what one could call the "modern" era of Canadian politics say post-Trudeau and post the new constitution in 1982. Three if you count the horrible mismanagement of Ontario (largest province) that a provincial NDP government did in the 1990's.

NDP have a very strong Canadian leader, who is even a former political science professor, In fact, he may very well go down in the history books as being the guy who completely raped Quebec (second largest province) separatism.

---------------
I see what you are getting at, two party state. Canadian Conservatives vs Canadian "New Democrats". If we want to have a discussion, Canada is a bit different from the States. I could go on and on but to start, Quebec is tradtionally very, very, very left-wing. You know like France. In fact many Quebec laws are actually based on the French tradition rather than the American/ British tradition.

The other concern no one really likes the Conservatives but they are very, very strong in Alberta you see the big blue one near the left. So basically Alberta will always go Conservative, Quebec will always go "pinko" and you can call everything else in Canada "Ontario" which is basically centrist.

Honestly this past election people just didn't (I personally do) like the Liberal leader very much, and the Conservative leader has a long, long history in Canada of being a very strong leader even before he entered formal politics. In fact he was barely involved in university spending his time with Alberta's conservative movement.

The current Liberal leader is the leader because the previous Liberal supporters gave him his support. He has the support of the old Liberal guard, basically, Jean Chretien's supporters.

As for Canada going two-party it is something that could come about basically it would be what I call "politics of hate". Enough people would have to actually _HATE_ the current Conservative party, formerly an Alberta "fringe" party much like the New Democrats have always been a "fringe" party. So enough people actually _HATE_ the Conservative party I can see the Liberals and the New Democrats coming together. Now the New Democrats have always been a little iffy on things like the military things like that. They get a lot of yahoos. The current leader supports the armed forces.

Canadian politics have traditionally sort of gone through "phases" you had Grits vs Tories while Quebec, for lack of a better expression, squabbled. Then you had Trudeau, then you had we had to get the books in order. The Liberals were a very strong party but basically, for lack of a better expression, collapsed from in-fighting. This is Canada, it is not the States. Everyone is pals here.

Basically what we have now, the books are in order Canada is doing great, the only question is what we want the country to be. This does not mean we will see a two-party state any time soon because honestly I cannot see the Liberal party just "going away".

But yeah anyway you can see Quebec is all orange. Quebec are all pinkos just like France. The provincial Liberal government is very left-wing-ish and even the separatist party, newly defeated le Bloc Quebecois were (and are) very, very socialist. Dr. Trudeau himself was black-listed as a (suspected, or potential, or whatever) communist way back when.

Liberals are sort of like the Montreal Canadians of politics, may not be the best team now but they have won the most times.

Crablezworth wrote:

I'm sewing this on my backpack.

The Conservatives are like Nickelback, I've never met anyone who actually likes them, but they seem to do well for themselves.

I'm genuinely worried for the future of Canadians. I'm sure Canada will be fine, but I really don't care about Canada, just Canadians.

feeder wrote:The Conservatives are like Nickelback, I've never met anyone who actually likes them, but they seem to do well for themselves.

I'm genuinely worried for the future of Canadians. I'm sure Canada will be fine, but I really don't care about Canada, just Canadians.

If I were you guys, I'd vote for these dudes. They'd get my vote if I lived a bit further north, hey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eah23WvLYsQ

I'm hugely dissapointed in my fellow Canadians. How the hell they managed to give Harper the majority is beyond me. I'm just hoping he doesn't run the country into the ground.

He's made a lot of stupid decisions with his minority government, but I'm just really hoping he doesn't revive bill C-32 in any way, shape, or form. The world needs copyright reform, but definetly not like that. That, and I'm hoping that he doesn't discard our civil rights like what happened at the G8/G20 again. That event made me disgusted to be a Canadian.

Also, I hate our electoral system. Being first past the post, since I live in Alberta, my vote essentially doesn't count unless I vote conservative, which I don't. If we used proportional representation, the Conservatives wouldn't have the majority they have now, and Layton might be able to help put a leash on Harper.

As it is now, I'm pretty dissapointed with how the electoral system we currently have essentially tells me that my voice in my own country's politics is essentially worthless.