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Post by ocelot on Jan 22, 2006 18:43:55 GMT -5
I'm confident on who I'm voting for (NDP). I don't think they will win the election, because they simply aren't expected to. I think they will make a bigger difference in influencing whoever wins the election, hopefully the Conservatives in a minority (it would scare me if they won in a majority). I'm voting for the NDP because I think it's really important to have solid social programs (that's part of what characterizes Canada), have a strong health care system, and put an investment into the future through protecting the environment. I'm not voting for the Liberals because they've lied and wasted our tax dollars too many times. I'm not voting for the Conservatives because I'm afraid that if they win that Canada will lose alot that's really characterizes my country for me. I find that the Liberals and Conservatives are very much in the now and next to no investment in the future, we need to invest in the future. I don't want the children of future generations to be left without the social programs, the support, and the country that I knew and love so very much. I'm very excited about tomorrow, it think it could be very interesting.
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 22, 2006 19:02:34 GMT -5
Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts about it all. Keep us informed as things happen if you can. I share your excitement about it.
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 23, 2006 18:49:48 GMT -5
Hey, I'm very excited about these elections! Keep us up to date!
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Post by ocelot on Jan 24, 2006 11:23:12 GMT -5
Conservatives celebrate minority government victory Last Updated Tue, 24 Jan 2006 03:05:29 EST CBC News Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Canada's next prime minister, pledged to work with all parties in the next Parliament after Canadians elected a Tory minority government Monday, ending a 12-year reign of Liberal rule.
"Tonight friends, our great country has voted for change. And Canadians have asked our party to take the lead in delivering that change," Harper told supporters in Calgary.
Harper acknowledged that Canadians have not given any one party a majority and have asked all parties to work together.
Earlier, Liberal Leader Paul Martin announced that he will step down as leader.
The Conservatives were elected in 124 ridings, the Liberals were elected in 102 (leading in one other), the Bloc was elected in 51 and the NDP was elected in 29. One Independent was elected, in Quebec.
"There will be another chance and there will be another time," Martin told a roomful of supporters in Montreal. He said he called Harper to congratulate him.
The Conservatives picked up more than 36 per cent of the popular vote, an increase of seven per cent from 2004. This compared to the Liberals with 30 per cent and the NDP with 17.5 per cent.
The NDP made major gains nationally, up 10 seats from the 2004 vote.
NDP Leader Jack Layton said that while Canadians voted for Harper to form a minority government, "they asked New Democrats to balance that government."
Layton was flanked by his wife, New Democrat Olivia Chow, who won her Toronto riding.
The Tories made significant gains in Ontario and Quebec, winning in least two dozen seats.
In Quebec, where they were shut out in 2004, the Tories made major inroads, getting elected in 10 ridings.
In vote-rich Ontario, the Liberals, who captured 75 seats in 2004, were elected in 54 ridings. But the Tories increased their support, elected in 40 ridings, a gain of 16. The NDP was elected in 12 ridings, up five.
The province, a Liberal stronghold, has 106 seats and is considered the key to victory.
Both Martin and Harper campaigned heavily in the strategic province.
In Quebec, the Bloc was elected in 51 of the province's 75 ridings, followed by the Liberals with 13 seats and the Tories with 10. In 2004, the Bloc received 54 seats, followed by the Liberals with 21. Independent candidate André Arthur, took the riding of Portneuf-Jacques Cartier from the Bloc.
While the Bloc ended up keeping most of its seats, it appeared it would do that with far fewer votes. Its share of the popular vote slipped to 42.4 per cent – a 6.5 percentage point drop from the 48.9 per cent it garnered in 2004.
Early in the campaign, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who appeared to set an electoral goal of 50 per cent of the popular vote, focused his attacks on Martin. With polls suggesting Conservative popularity soaring in the province, Duceppe began slamming Harper.
In the Atlantic provinces, the Liberals, who won 22 seats in the June 2004 election, were elected in 20 of the region's 32 ridings. The Conservatives, who were hoping to make bigger inroads in the region, were elected in nine ridings, a gain of two.
The Conservatives also took a hit in British Columbia, losing five of their 22 seats. The NDP gained five seats and the Liberals picked up one.
All four major party leaders held on to their ridings. Among the high profile Liberal political casualties were Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, Transport Minister Tony Valeri, Heritage Minister Liza Frulla and Liberal Treasury Board president Reg Alcock.
Liberal Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell was defeated in Ontario by Conservative Tony Clement, former provincial Ontario health minister, by 21 votes.
The Tories swept Alberta and tightened their hold on the Prairies by two seats. Many political observers have credited Harper for running a smooth campaign.
He regularly pumped out policy announcements throughout the unusually long 56-day campaign, leaving the Liberals mostly to react.
Martin campaigned on his record as finance minister and his implementation of eight consecutive balanced budgets. He also promised to lower personal income taxes, create a national child-care plan, ban handguns, subsidize post-secondary students and ban the federal use of the notwithstanding clause.
But he spent the last weeks of the campaign going after Harper. He accused him of having an extreme right-wing agenda that would threaten the rights of minorities and take away abortion rights.
Unlike the 2004 election, the Tories were also able to keep their so-called controversial MPs in check. Indeed, some reporters complained the party was purposely keeping some candidates away from the media spotlight.
In this campaign, it was the Liberals who were often in damage control mode.
In the early weeks of the campaign, Martin spokesman Scott Reid said parents would spend Harper's child-care subsidy on "beer and popcorn." Later, the Ontario vice-president of the party resigned after he compared NDP candidate Olivia Chow to a dog.
Martin was also questioned about a series of attack ads, in particular one that suggested Harper would post armed soldiers on the streets of Canadian cities.
And just last week, Martin again was on the defensive, having to declare Harper's patriotism after Canadian Auto Workers head Buzz Hargrove, who endorsed the Liberals, suggested the Tory leader was a separatist.
As Martin was forced to contend with the fallout of the sponsorship scandal, his party was hit with two RCMP probes, one into a possible government leak on income trusts and another into alleged illegal spending through the now-defunct unity lobby Option Canada. Opposition parties jumped on the investigations, claiming they were proof of what they called more corruption in the Liberal ranks.
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Post by ocelot on Jan 24, 2006 11:24:01 GMT -5
Although I wish that the NDP got more seats, I'm pretty happy with the way the election went.
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 24, 2006 20:09:29 GMT -5
Wow! Thank you for the very informative article! And it sounds as if things are moving in a positive direction from your viewpoint. I'm glad for you!
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 25, 2006 18:52:45 GMT -5
Leona, I have a question that you may not feel comfortable responding to, and if so that is okay. I'll understand. But in one of your posts you mentioned how important Canada's social tradition is to you. I think you also mentioned health care in there as well. The United States and Canada are definately different in a lot of ways. So what can you tell me about being socialist and why it is so important to you? And how is your National Health Care program working? I'm very interested to know whatever you are willing to tell. Oh, and what are your feelings about the United States form of government?
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Post by ocelot on Jan 26, 2006 19:45:37 GMT -5
The social issues I'm talking are things like Health Care (I really want there to be equal and "free" health services in Canada, that means that there's no private health care and all the money the government gives is to the public), Education ( I really feel that the public education system should be free and there should be support for Post-secondary education in terms of the government helping lower tuition and support students in loans), Childcare (this was a bring issue this past election, I feel there should be a government supported Child care system so that the poorer family can afford it), affordable housing (in Canada there is government supported housing where the government helps subsidize so that the housing is cheaper and I'd like to keep that), there are also social programs that prevent teen violence and etc and I want to keep those programs, and there are programs for protecting the environment. I'll try to get more specifics.
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Post by ocelot on Jan 26, 2006 19:50:04 GMT -5
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Post by ocelot on Jan 26, 2006 19:53:44 GMT -5
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 27, 2006 17:49:02 GMT -5
Thank you, Leona. In your opinion, is your health care system working? And what are your feelings about the United States' form of government? What do you like and dislike about the United States? I'm not so much looking for facts as much as I am your ideas about these things. And it's not to create an argument or anything, because I completely respect your opinion. I'm just hoping to learn a little from you. You seem to favor socialism, and I am a capitalist. I was just hoping to get your views about these matters because you seem to care about them and it might just do me good to learn from you.
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 27, 2006 19:38:50 GMT -5
Leona, again I am just wondering about your thoughts and observations here regarding this article!
Canadian Conservatives Ride Scandal to Power by John Gizzi Posted 01/27/06 12:28 PM At a time when Canada’s economy is booming and the country’s animosity toward America and particularly George W. Bush is especially intense, Canadian voters nonetheless turned out the Liberal Party after 13 years in power and replaced Bush-bashing Prime Minister Paul Martin with far more U.S.-friendly Conservative Stephen Harper.
Harper’s Conservative Party (a recent merger of the right-of-center Reform Party and the moderate Progressive-Conservatives) won Canada’s House of Commons elections last week and will thus form the new government. The Conservatives won 124 seats; the Liberals, 103; the exclusively from Quebec Bloc Quebecois, 51; and the far-left New Democratic Party, 29.
Soft-Spoken Leader
Although the 46-year-old Harper’s party will have many fewer seats than the 133 won by the Liberals in the last national elections two years ago, pundits are predicting the new Conservative regime will survive longer than Martin’s, partly because the Liberals go into opposition bitterly divided and leaderless.
With Martin stepping down as party leader, Canadian journalist David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute noted: "There is no orderliness of succession and there will be an ugly race for the Liberal leadership between supporters of Martin and those of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, whom the Martin faction blames for getting the party into the scandal."
"The scandal" was the nearly two-years-long investigation into charges that, while Chrétien was prime minister in the 1990s, more than $75 million in tax dollars was funneled through state offices (including the Mounties) to advertising agencies in Quebec with ties to the Liberal Party. Although Martin insisted he had no knowledge of the scandal while serving as Chrétien's finance minister, the probe and resulting publicity clearly tainted the Liberal Party.
Harper hit the corruption issue hard, making a tougher ethics-in-government "accountability" law for elected officials and civil servants a central plank of his campaign. The other priorities Harper set for a Conservative government were: a two-stage cut in the goods and services tax (GST) from 7% to 5%, transferring a larger share of federal tax revenues to the provinces (states), a tough "law and order" stand to combat the country’s rising crime and a voucher-like program to help parents pay for daycare. In sharp contrast to Martin, Harper also vowed a significant increase in Canadian spending on defense and intelligence and suggested he might revisit the Liberal rejection of taking part in the U.S. missile defense system.
During the campaign, Martin tried to link Harper to American conservatives and a hidden agenda. To his opponent's offhand comment that he felt judges were legislating from the bench, Martin charged, "We have a party that wants to take this country to the far, far right of the U.S. conservative movement." (In Canada, the prime minister makes more than 5,000 appointments to the civil service and judiciary, none of which require confirmation from parliament.) Martin also tried to tie Harper to Bush and U.S. conservatives by rehashing his opponent's support for the Iraq War and many pro-American statements.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Harper is a soft-spoken, studious conservative who “was often in a room full of persons and he was the smartest of them all,” according to Canadian political consultant Goldy Hyder, the new prime minister’s classmate at the University of Calgary. An avid fan of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "Firing Line," Harper once headed a conservative advocacy group known as the National Citizens Coalition in which he argued for more autonomy for the provinces against what he called a "hostile federal government."
Recalling the close relationship between Ronald Reagan and Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in the 1980s, David Frum observed: "You won’t have the President and Prime Minister singing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,’ but things will improve between Washington and Ottawa." John Gizzi is Political Editor of HUMAN EVENTS.
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Post by ocelot on Jan 27, 2006 20:56:07 GMT -5
I think the article is very good. It pretty much puts what happened out there in (what is my view) a non-biased way.
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Post by ocelot on Jan 27, 2006 21:05:30 GMT -5
In the way of the United States Government is I don't like it. There is not much there that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. That's what I like about Canada's social stance is that if you were born poor you still have the same level of health care as the rich, you still have a great education, there are lots of support for you to be (career-wise) whatever you want to be, and there is a way to make your way out of proverty if you wish it. I'm not saying that in the US you can't get out of proverty if you wish it but it's alot harder without those support systems that come from the goverment.
I think the Health Care system works well. The only negatives to me are that there are long wait times in certain parts of the country because of nurse/doctor shortages.
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Post by achebeautiful on Jan 27, 2006 21:37:14 GMT -5
Very interesting thoughts. Thank you for sharing. I'm curious to know why there is a nurse/doctor shortage in certain parts of the country. Can you tell us why?
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