Apologies to all SDA readers for this posting being prematurely published. Personal events got in the way of it being properly completed. Those issues are now resolved and here is the full posting, as intended.
2011: Stephen Harper’s Tories win majority government with 39.62% of popular vote –
The reaction to this victory was a resounding refrain that 60% of Canadians don’t support Harper and what an unfair & undemocratic process the current Canadian voting system is:
2015: Justin Trudeau’s Liberals win majority government with 39.47% of popular vote – The reaction to this victory “mysteriously” was absent of the fact that 60% of Canadians didn’t vote for Trudeau and the Liberals:
- Justin Trudeau and Liberal Party Prevail With Stunning Rout in Canada
- Justin Trudeau’s emphasis on evidence-based policies paved the way to Liberal victory
- Canada to return to its honest broker role under Trudeau
It is quite astounding how the so-called principles and convictions of some people change depending on which team loses.
Now that the bogeyman of Stephen Harper is gone, Rex Murphy asks some important questions about who the Left in Canada will now focus their barbs of hate on. While Leftists across the nation insist that they don’t want “American style” politics in Canada, the rampant HDS evidence of the past 9 years strongly suggests that they LOVE, and even NEED, a figurehead to hate upon. Here’s what Murphy had to say:
Speaking of Mr. Harper — now that he is, effectively, no longer prime minister, who or what shall fill the void? He was the lightning rod of our every discontent. He was a monster bent on destroying our democracy, a fascist who worked on a secret agenda for a full nine years in office and of which even now, with his leaving office, we remain still in darkness, innocent of its terrors. For you see it was far more important to keep it secret than to execute it.
He was, variously Machiavelli, Mussolini, Mao and Hitler. Harper Canada’s image in the forums of the world, and purged all our “Canadian values” here at home. He was the Sauron of Mount Doom-on-the-Rideau waving his terrible arms from the towers of fear and hate. He was tepid on global warming and down on selfies. He liked hockey.
Well, who can fill that vital role? Who can be the magnet of our great discontent now that he is going and soon to be gone? Can we abide a country that is now all sunshine and butterflies, all summer holidays and hootenanys? I predict a Canada invective-deprived, all honey and harmony. Post-Harper, all is calm, all is bright. Can we live with that? Can Twitter survive? Will Raffi hang up the mandolin?
It’s different when “progressives” do it.
Media fellating of the trudeaupian second coming begin in 5, 4 ,3, …….
If Harper had pulled the CBC subsidy when he got elected the last time he would have won this time.
Over 60% of Canadians voted for centre-left parties, in 2011 and in 2015.
Harper united the right. You oppose proportional representation. So live with the consequences.
Centre-left?
Thank you; I needed a good laugh at the end of the night shift.
Funny thing about the election though when you look at the popular vote.
In 2011, the Tories garnered just over 39 percent of that vote, the NDP roughly 31 percent and the Libs around 19 percent.
In this election, the Libs garnered just over 39 percent, the Tories roughly 31 percent and the NDP around 19 percent.
Yes, the Liberals certainly won handily, but in truth it was not the Tories who were swamped by a red tide.
It was the NDP.
Yes it is. The Tories won their majority honestly.
The Grits? Put it this way—there’s a reason proof of Canadian citizenship isn’t required to register to vote. Once they figured out how to raise money again, they could resume bribing non-citizens to vote illegally again.
Justin outbid Mulcair for the imam’s support, so it was for Justin that the brotherhood voted 15 or 20 times each with fake photo ID.
“You oppose proportional representation”
Damn right.
From the G&M article linked: “A bumbling Stephen Harper wouldn’t be of much concern to left-of-centre voters.”
Well that follows, doesn’t it? A bumbling Trudeau Jr. evidently isn’t any concern to them, either.
My condolences to our Canadian cousins north of the border. However, unlike your past experience with the late Trudeau you now have the hindsight to blunt the ego and greed of the new Trudeau 2.0 because the apple rarely falls far from the tree.
What ended the reign of incompetence of the first Trudeau?
My warning to the Canadian right. Trudeau 2.0 may borrow some bad ideas from Obama and one of those bad ideas may be usurpation of the law. If and when he attempts to bowl over the opposition to get his agenda into law, you may have to do the unCanadian act of legal warfare in the Courts to fight tooth and nail. Are you up to it?
My condolences to our Canadian cousins north of the border. However, unlike your past experience with the late Trudeau you now have the hindsight to blunt the ego and greed of the new Trudeau 2.0 because the apple rarely falls far from the tree.
What ended the reign of incompetence of the first Trudeau?
My warning to the Canadian right. Trudeau 2.0 may borrow some bad ideas from Obama and one of those bad ideas may be usurpation of the law. If and when he attempts to bowl over the opposition to get his agenda into law, you may have to do the very unCanadian act of legal warfare in the Courts to fight tooth and nail. Are you up to it?
dscott >
“Are you up to it?”
Up to it, the average Canadian would march their whole family to the gulags scolding them if they stumbled. Canadians police and tattle tale on each other as a matter of course, much less stand up to BIG Brother. Don’t worry there.
Also worth noting the identical percentage of popular vote translated into the exact strength of seats in parliament. Both Conservatives and libs won 54% of the available seats for their majorities.
Yet of course according to the media trudeau received a mandate from Canadians while Harper did not.
And trudeau needed the unions the media, team Obama, radical Islam, and the foreign money backed environmentalist movement to get his 39%
Harpers was made up of average citizen voters.
“Yes, the Liberals certainly won handily, but in truth it was not the Tories who were swamped by a red tide. It was the NDP.”
And no wonder. I mean, could you have stomached voting for WeirdBeard? He’s a nut. Looks, talks and acts nutty. Some sort of bipolar issue possibly?
Also, I never met the man, but he looks like a guy that smells funny.
Has anyone any idea of what this next parliament would look like if “first past the post” was actually how we did things?
Make that NOT how we did things, of course. We need an edit feature.
“Up to it, the average Canadian would march their whole family to the gulags scolding them if they stumbled.”
This is my feeling too. The average dork out there is perfectly happy having the cops reading his email and taking away all his rights and money, so long as those benefits and “free” healthcare keep rolling in.
That’s why I’m pleased to see Justine keeping his campaign promise to import Mooslimb radicals to Ontario. The average dork should get what he voted for, in my humble opinion. It’s only fair.
And hey, there’s an outside chance the average dork will wake the hell up after losing a few relatives in terror attacks, or after his car gets burnt for the third time in a year.
As to the headline of the piece regarding the popular vote, that sound of Conservative crickets you hear where there would be strident shouting of Liberals…
…That’s why we are losing.
Regarding proportional representation, a segment from Wikipedia:
“Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems by which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. If 30% of the electorate support a particular political party, then roughly 30% of seats will be won by that party. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result: not just a plurality, or a bare majority, of them. Proportional representation requires the use of multiple-member voting districts (also called super-districts); it is not possible using single-member districts alone.
There are two PR voting types: party list PR and the single transferable vote (STV). Mixed member proportional representation (MMP), a hybrid method that uses party list PR as its proportional component, is also usually considered a distinct PR method.
With party list PR, political parties define candidate lists and voters vote for a list. The relative vote for each list determines how many candidates from each list are actually elected. Lists can be ‘closed’ or ‘open’; open lists allow voters to indicate individual candidate preferences and vote for independent candidates. Voting districts can be as large as a province or an entire nation.
The single transferable vote uses smaller districts, with voters ranking individual candidates in order of preference. During the count, as candidates are elected or eliminated, surplus or discarded votes that would otherwise be wasted are transferred to other candidates according to the preferences. STV enables voters to vote across party lines and to elect independent candidates.
Mixed member proportional representation (MMP), also called the additional member system (AMS), is a hybrid, two-tier system combining a non-proportional single-winner election and a compensatory regional or national party list PR one.”
Multiple-member voting districts? STV? MMP? AMS? Closed and open lists? How about “hybrid, two-tier system combining a non-proportional single-winner election and a compensatory regional or national party list PR one”?
Got that? Clear as crystal?
Now trying explaining all that to the poor voters who just want to cast their vote for the candidate of their choice.
I don’t think so. Perhaps you missed all of those “I vote CBC signs”. Toomany people think it is sacrosanct. Gradual reduction of it’s $ was a better approach. But not enough time in the end to do that effectively. The left is very attached to its symbols.
There is no wah-wah-ing here about the working of the first-past-the-post system. It has generally served Canada, the UK, and other countries well, on balance, for many years. And there are defects to the various P.R. schemes as well (viz. Italy, Israel, etc.).
The point, if you actually care about the point, is the media portrayal of the two very similar results.
The problem is I also get the government the average dork deserves.
It might be worth noting that your readers list seems to be growing Kate by the new commentators that are signing in. Congratulations. While were on the Juxy theme it was interesting to wake up this morning and hear that the RCMP are now concerned that there are a significant number of fire-arms, in their opinion, that can easily be converted from semi to automatic fire, It hasn’t taken the Liberals and their colleagues in cahoots, the RCMP, to begin the inroads towards confiscation. We need a bumper sticker, “Remember High River, well we told you so!”
Oct.19th the evening of the election I was looking for the popular vote totals. They wern’t prominent like last election. Google didn’t have them. In fact their banner was ‘Liberals win 54% of the seats’.
“The average dork out there is perfectly happy having the cops reading his email …”
Just as the average Conservative voted for Bill C-51.
C-51 received 183 votes from Conservatives and Liberals. 96 MPs from NDP etc. voted against.
Ward:
“And trudeau needed the unions the media, team Obama, radical Islam, and the foreign money backed environmentalist movement to get his 39%”
It was my understanding going into the campaign that the LPC was bereft of funds, yet they swamped the airwaves with JT adds in the closing days. Where did all this revenue come from? I trust EC will do a complete and thorough audit of their election expenses, and that the media will assist in their own investigation of any any suspicious fund sources.
I shouldn’t hold my breath, Why not?
Print out a copy of C-51 and keep it for posterity because when JT and his boys re-write it you;ll have even less privacy than what you had under the original.
“Justin outbid Mulcair for the imam’s support, so it was for Justin that the brotherhood voted 15 or 20 times each with fake photo ID.”
Citation, s’il vous plait.
You’re exactly right. But not just pull the CBC subsidy. Harper should have sold CBC to Quebecor and ensured mandatory cable carriage of fair and balanced news, instead of the leftist blather we were treated to day after day after day.
What would the results be like under a different voting system? One answer:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/what-the-federal-election-would-have-looked-like-with-proportional-representation
“An election based on proportional representation in its broadest form would have spread the power more thinly among the parties: the Liberals would drop to 135 seats, while the Conservatives would inch up from 99 to 108 and the NDP would have a much higher profile with 68 seats instead of its current 44. (Numbers are based on preliminary results and rounded.)”
And a surprise at the CBC site, under the last map featured in the Oct. 21 article titled “Trudeau unlikely to change voting system, say political scientists
Experts say campaign trail promise for proportional representation at odds with reality of majority” where one can read this:
“Under first-past-the-post, the map shows Canada awash in a sea of red — even though more people voted against the Liberals than for them.”
Addendum: *surprise admission at the CBC site”
It indeed would be more efficient to have an “edit” function but knowing nothing about the technical aspect of blog maintenance, I’ll leave it to the experts.
It will be entertaining to watch the lengths the MSM will go to “stand on guard” for this LPC government.
However, watching CBC this AM, they let pass two easy opportunities to slag the Conservatives that they never would have passed up during the election.
I’m guessing they think their work is done for now.
Selling the CBC at the beginning of the last term in office would have set the tone. A smart, courageous conservative would have started there and kept going.
Trudeau received 54% of the seats with 40% (roughly) of the popular vote.
This means under PR, 47 seats the Grits won under our FPTP system would go to other parties. So 47 ridings where the voters agreed in plurality to have a Liberal MP get one from another party.
That’s wrong no matter which party benefits. You can reconcile FPTP thresholds for winning ridings with PR. Local representation is seriously compromised with members selected from “lists.” We would have to run a non-riding centric election of the popular vote, such as how the POTUS is elected, sort of.
Saying second place votes could be factored in causes even further disenfranchisement at the grass roots levels while enabling elitism in our parliament.
Is that why Trudeau supports PR? It’s one his hair brained ideas he came up when he was desperate for votes. I hope he does a Liberal and breaks that promise.
I would love to know where the money came from for all those “I vote CBC signs”. Certainly not from the Friends of the CBC because that astro-turf organization is one of the worst at wanting the taxpayer to foot the bill. And since the CBC never seems to comply with FOI requests, we will probably never find out if it came out of the CBC’s budget.
Whoa…
The hypocrisy of our media is breath taking.
As noted above, one thing we can rely on, none of the Media Party will ever investigate the money flows, that drove this last election.
Now this comparison is beautiful but others will follow.
Arctic Sovereignty, Harper was savagely mocked, now let us admire the tongue bath as the chosen one surrenders our north.
Budget deficits ?? Sign of doom when Harper did it, so what will the chorus sing when we run 4 consecutive deficits and a 0.45US $?
Civil Rights and C51?? I predict a sucking silence as this govt stomps all over the civil and property rights of Western Canada.
Now as I see it, Ontario is broke, their only hope to stave of exposure to their LIV’s is to receive from the Feds and have the canadian dollar fall to around 40cUS.
Otherwise what?
As Brad Wall said, let us in the west send our transfer payments by pipeline.
Also I doubt that I will be the only one reducing my taxable income.
Stephen calmed a lot of troubled hearts.
These are 3 examples.
The Canadian Government on behalf of the People of Canada apologised to the Chinese citizens for the Head Tax levied years ago.
The Canadian Government apologised to the Aboriginal Peoples for the residential schools.
The Canadian Government recognised Quebec as a Distinct Society within Canada.
(I remember watching a CBC commentator announcing this as it was happening.
He said right on camera, about Stephen Harper, “What a statesman!!”
After he said those words, his face froze, he was off script. Fear filled his eyes.
He had his job the next day. The CBC forgave him, this one slip.)
Let’s think about all the great things this Prime Minister did for us, personally and as a nation.
Maybe if he’d been less of a iron fist and actually governed like a small-c conservative this wouldn’t be an issue. Where are the property rights, gun rights, self-defense and/or castle doctrines? Why not amend the voting laws to require proof of citizenship? Why not close the borders to unqualified immigrants?
He died on the sword he fought with and Cuckservative Kenney is not the answer.
What happened Oct.19 was not unlike what happens in Canada on a regular basis. The country was fed up with Harper. Well not the entire country just the Maritimes, Quebek and ON. Remember when 99 out of 100 seats in ON voted for chretien? On more than one occasion.
Harper after 10 years ran out of gas. The CPC has almost 100 seats. This is not 1993. They retained a respectable % of the popular vote. They are well poised to seriously contest 4 years from now. The trick will be to not cannibalize the party as they chose a new leader.
Expectations of jr. are so high that he cannot possibly deliver. I predict his promise of PR will never see the light of day. He will be studying it forever…. If the world economy goes south and takes Canada with it jr. will be toast. A lot of things can happen over the next 4 years. They CPC needs to be ready.
We Conservatives had a pretty good run over the past 10 years. Sure we didn’t get everything we might have wanted but politics is the ‘art of the possible’ and not much more.
I read today the “justinfication” for the discrepancy. Harper may have had a higher % of the popular vote in 2011, but a million more people voted for Justin this time than for Harper last time. Remember, math is hard.
wah wah. nothing centre left about it. I have been saying for longer than a lot of people have been alive that 60% of Canadians will vote the socialist line and the rest will vote socialist lite, which the conservatives were.
percentages are percentages.
percentages are percentages.
Harris fills that role in Ontario and he has been out of power for 13 years. I am sure they can blame everything on Harper for at least a decade.
A word of advice.
The rabid voices on the left abhor a vacuum and will jump at any doubters as heretics where during the inquisition.
If I might suggest a strategy of highlighting and bringing attention to any journo, pundit, or liberal MP that expresses any doubt about justin’s ability to achieve his goals.
Its like this. We can point out the obvious about justin all we like, but it is just a waste of oxygen as they don’t see justin as human they see him as sacred idol. Realistically no matter how badly he screws up, the libs will always find an excuse.
So instead of fighting their religion, bring attention to the “heretics” then stand back as they destroy one of their own.
Remember he said he was ready, we know he isn’t, but any journo expressing doubt don’t suddenly assume they have become an ally. Let the liberals be the attack dogs
The principle of what you do when your enemy starts fighting among themselves applies.
One more thing
The line of interest groups looking to cash in their IOU’S has formed on the left and its about a hundred miles long. What are the odds a good percentage are going to go away empty handed?
Well, short of a full-scale armed rebellion where everyone associated with the government as well as their supporters (like teachers at all levels of schooling) are executed…this is what you have to live with. These articles merely incite the people who are too naive to think they can change things going through the “legal” process.
So, What we have now is a Liberal Executive (Cabinet), a Liberal Legislature (House of Commons), A Liberal Judiciary (Supreme Court), a Liberal Press (Freedom of Speech – not); and a Liberal Academia (Freedom of Speech – nada, not). And that, with the so called Laurentian Elite, equates to a “Family Compact” that we will be saddled with for many years to come – in my humble opinion.
Jaymo
Oh, and a soon to be Liberal Senate.
Jaymo
“Maybe if he’d been less of a iron fist”
And if he’d been more laid back he would have gotten roasted for that instead. I’m glad he kept the reigns tight, especially on the “public” “service”.
As for the Rex article, the progs hatred will fall on the Canadian version of the “bitter clingers”.
Canadians have elected a tit. A silly, infantile, tit.
It was all predicted:
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”
Well, you certainly got the last part right, Isaiah. I’m not so sure that the peace, flowers, and butterflies part will work out that well.