the secret of comedy

[jazzfish]

Just under six and a half years ago, I'd been quietly talking about fleeing to Canada if Bush won a second term. An acquaintance posted something to the effect of "hey, all you people talking about how you'd move to canada if bush won: put your money where your mouth is and shut up about it and just go do it."

"Fine," I thought (but didn't say), and started thinking more seriously about the idea.

It took some doing but in less than a month I will have pulled it off.

... just in time for the Conservative Party of Canada to have won a majority government after being found in contempt of Parliament, thanks to stupid awful first-past-the-post elections with one right-wing party running against three and a half left-wing ones.

The Liberal Party has lost more than half their seats, and the Bloc is essentially finished (down to three, I believe). Congratulations to the pinko commie socialist New Democratic Party on their amazing hundred-plus seats, and to Elizabeth May for winning one for the Green Party.

The trouble is, the collapse of the Liberals (and the Bloc) moves Canada much closer to being a two-party state. And coming as it does after a Conservative victory that appears much more decisive than it actually is (40% of the vote, 55% of the seats), I fully expect the NDP to tack more to the centre. They'll need to absorb the last of the Liberal supporters; in addition, well, where are the more left-wing voters going to go? In another twenty years Canada will look like the US with better health care.

(Of course, I'm very likely wrong on this. All I know is what I read on the internet. I'm just in a rather bad mood, and finding it difficult to see any silver lining at all.)

A Conservative majority also ensures that there will be no election for another five years. I suppose I might be able to vote in that one, at least. But really, what the hell do I do now?

Comments

[thanate]

enjoy the healthcare? (and avoid as many government sanctioned gropings as possible?)

That is upsetting; my sympathies to canada.

[jazzfish]

That /is/ a good point: there's (as yet) no equivalent of USan security theatre. Blessings where we find them, etc.

And, thanks. *sigh* It wouldn't be so bad except that it's guaranteed to be this bad for another 4-5 years. Which I suppose gives the NDP time to shape up and get their act together. And maybe pass some sort of voting reform. And maybe the social conservatives will split from the fiscal conservatives the way everyone keeps hoping it'll happen in the US. Or perhaps the horse will learn to sing.

[notmatt]

I've heard that the Conservative party in Canada is still somewhat to the left of the Democratic party in the US. I don't know if that's actually true; you'd know better than I would.

[jazzfish]

Slightly to the left, yes. I have an unpleasant suspicion that that's because they've never had free rein in government before. (The current CPC was formed in 2003 from the social-conservative Reform party and the fiscal-conservative Progressive party.) PM Stephen Harper certainly seems to have been taking lessons from the Republicans circa 2004.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the platform of the Canadian Conservatives, but I can't imagine it's as bad as the nutjobbery down here.

[jazzfish]

The CPC platform puts them roughly on par with the US Democrats: tax cuts, spending cuts, military buildup, and pander to the gun nuts and social troglodytes in Alberta, including drilling the heck out of the Albertan oil sands with slight regard for short- or long-term environmental concerns. I've heard rumblings that Harper plans to do unpleasant things to the health care system as well but I have no reliable source for this.

They're not as bad, in the sense that syphilis isn't as bad as AIDS; I fear it's not for lack of trying, though. From what I can tell having a majority government means that they have effectively no check from the opposition.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

tax cuts, spending cuts, military buildup, pander to the gun nuts and social troglodytes, drilling the heck out of the Albertan oil sands with slight regard for short- or long-term environmental concerns

That's a mostly US-Republican platform, right there--though I don't even know which US party is for tax cuts and/or spending cuts these days. Both claim to be, I'm sure.

[jazzfish]

Tax cuts, spending cuts, military buildup, and social-troglodyte pandering are bipartisan US activities these days; we're just haggling over the price. And there actually /is/ a significant amount of oil in Alberta (in tar sands), so it's not as pointless as Drill Baby Drill.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I disagree on the social-troglodyte pandering--that's decidedly part of the GOP's platform. :P

[jazzfish]

I'd like to believe that, but plenty of Democrats are ready to throw (womens' / gay / minority) rights away in any given negotiation...

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Examples? (I'm not being argumentative, I just don't recall seeing much of that trend--or at least, not within an order of magnitude of the GOP tendencies.)

[candle.livejournal.com]

One of the key statements I keep seeing from NDP supporters on the message boards that I've followed the election on is that for years they've asked the Liberal party for the types of voting reform that would have prevented the CPC from taking control of the country with a minority of the popular vote but were refused time and time again.

Maybe in five years, the Liberal Party and the NDP will unite with a platform of voting reform. I can't see either of them really becoming _the_ single liberal party in opposition to the CPC in the next decade - the NDP is too leftist (and consistently so) to get a majority (not to mention the fact that French Canadian politics are likely to increasingly affect the party's platform in ways that won't appeal to central and west coast moderates) and the Liberal Party demonstrated that a platform of "we're not Harper" wasn't enough to hold the votes. Perhaps I'm hearing disproportionately from NDP supporters, but many of the statements I've heard is that there wasn't enough difference when it came to governance between the Liberals and the CPC for them to be willing to vote for either.

At the very least, maybe they'll cooperate enough in some ridings where a single left wing candidate might hope to overcome a right wing but not two. I still think the great wasted opportunity of the 2000 election was that Nader didn't extract some very public and hard to go back on concessions from Gore in exchange for endorsing him. Maybe some quid pro quo endorsements and policy plank compromises will be possible between the NDP and the Liberals.

[jazzfish]

I genuinely don't know how voting reform ever gets passed anywhere. It'll only hurt the party in power, so naturally they're against it, and since they're in power it doesn't happen.

The nice thing about the complete collapse of the Liberals is that it proves conclusively that given a choice between Republicans and Republican-lites, people tend to prefer the real thing, and given a choice between Republican-lites and an actual left-wing party, there are an awful lot of votes for the left-wing.

The trouble with the "and then the left coalesces into one party" is that, short of voting reform, it's a *best-case* scenario. I could easily see the vote on the left remaining fragmented for another decade. And of course four years of Conservative government is going to move the national dialogue to the right, there's really no getting around that, so the NDP may end up being seen as even more Scary Socialists. bleh.

(If Ralph Fucking Nader had had any interest in moving the dialogue to the left in 2000, there were an awful lot of ways he could have gone about it. Instead he chose the path that did the best job of glorifying Ralph Fucking Nader.)

[candle.livejournal.com]

it proves conclusively that given a choice between Republicans and Republican-lites, people tend to prefer the real thing

Obviously there were other factors, but I think that was a significant factor in the 2010 election - sure the Republicans drove the country into the ditch, but at least you felt like there was someone behind the steering wheel. Despite having had Congress more or less handed to them on a platter in 2008, it felt like we were careening down the road without a driver.

The Canadian election really had some surreal moments that almost make the US look sane. Michelle Rempel's easy election despite having been replaced in a debate with a potted plant and a website that might as well have read "Lorem ipsum.." on the one side and Ruth Ellen Brousseau on the other.

The again, Montgomery county kicked out Boucher after a long and effective career of getting funding for the area in favor of someone who's platform seemed to consist of "I sure do hate that Obama fellow and the gays and love the unborn babies."

[jazzfish]

I blame the Democrats' utter refusal to play hardball in the Senate from the get-go. The House did alright in those two years, I thought. bleh. I could rant about this for hours, but I basically agree with you.

I was totally shocked to see Rick Boucher go. That was about the point where I realised that, no, the 2010 election was /seriously/ screwed up.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I particularly liked this video re cats and instant runoff voting, despite having watched it without sound.

[jazzfish]

It's even better with sound. (In terms of Canadian politics, the NDP is Cool Cat and the Liberals are Moderate Cat. I guess that makes the Bloc Quebecois into Distracted Cat.)