mulcair is backpedaling on the corporate tax rate this afternoon. the truth is that there's never been a left-wing ndp government elected anywhere, ever. they consistently end up further right than the liberals once they actually get in power.

more change in canadian politics happens through the court system than the political system. the three parties are almost exactly the same, with the liberals coming out furthest left on some social issues. activists need to focus on protests and legal challenges. the best message voters can send is low turnout. if we can get turnout to 30%, it might change the spectrum a little.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/22/what-would-tommy-douglas-say-liberals-target-ndps-left-flank/15:13

Jh
Ignorant or Stupid? Roy Romanow, Saskatchewan. Bob Rae Ontario, Rachel Notley, Alberta. That's just off the top of my head. None of these premiers ever went as right as the Liberals have although they certainly have made compromises as governments. Too early to say for Rachel. Liberals copy NDP ideas and pretend that they are theirs. Trudeau senior with national healthcare is a classic example. Its time we reward the people with the real new ideas and make Canada a better place.

deathtokoalas
neither: informed. much more than you are. romanow & rae are two of the most right-wing premiers that the country has ever seen and both of them managed to completely destroy the party's base in their respective provinces.

to this day, in ontario, you will not find a major union that supports the ndp. every single one of them supports the liberals. such is the extent of the catastrophe to the left that was bob rae.

and, romanow is often cited by the fraser institute as an example of good conservative governance.

Dw
Citations, please?

deathtokoalas
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fraser+institute+roy+romanow

jh
Unions are like businesses and vote and fund their interests and many are not what I'd call ' left.' The Fraser institute is not what I'd call a credible organization. Honestly I don't care if they are right or left so long as they have good policy ideas for the public and a party apparatus that will implement those ideas. The Liberals historically have been far more willing to preach principle and practice the opposite than the NDP.

deathtokoalas
see, i think that's the question that is up for debate. the stuff in the 90s is sort of complicated (they had to cut things temporarily to prevent the imf from cutting the credit rating, which is the only meaningful consequence of budget deficits, and they brought spending back when they could. blame the imf. it's fun. but the liberals have taken the bulk of the blame for having to make difficult choices to fix mulroney's mess.), but if you take the bc liberals (and maybe the quebec liberals) out, because they're not really liberals, i think the opposite is more true. the liberals have to walk a line in the centre that restricts them from cracking down on labour too hard, whereas the ndp consistently take the labour vote for granted and then poke sticks in their eyes and make faces at them, while they kick them in the shins. it's just the historical reality of it.

when bob rae took over in ontario, he set up mandatory unpaid days off called "rae days" in order to "fight the deficit". only the ndp could have done something so absurd to get to the conservative aim of a balanced budget. it would have led to a general strike if the liberals tried something like that. and, this sort of thing is true of ndp governments across the country.

i'm broadly happy with the liberal government in ontario. they've taken concrete steps on carbon emissions. they've made positive structural changes on income inequality - they're modest, but they'll be felt. i'd like to see them re-nationalize the grid, but not even the ndp are talking about that. really, the ndp are just pushing tax cuts and yelling about corruption. again: they sound like conservatives. and, they have to - because they simply can't get unionized workers to vote for them anymore. all they've got left is the "tim horton's vote".

it's not a clear-cut issue, or anything. but i think that a careful, objective analysis will demonstrate that the liberals have generally stayed closer to their principles and leaned further to the left.

Jh
I disagree. I was a union steward when Rae days came along. We loved them. Much of organized labour hated Rae for that but it was a mistake. They paid for that when Mike Harris showed up on the scene and many of those opposed to Rae ideas ate crow as jobs were destroyed.

I think presuming all unions are left is a mistake. Some are, some are not. They do what they feel is in their members interests. As you pointed out many became Liberal but many went back to the NDP. I do not think the NDP took the labour vote for granted. Quite the opposite. I think many labour leaders couldn't believe Rae didn't do exactly as they wanted.

Rae days - Considering the economic and budget context - it was lose your job or take some time off. I think time off was and is the best choice. It worked. The economy recovered quickly under Rae. To manage the economy well is not a conservative or right issue. Harris did a terrible job in Ontario leaving it 3 billion in debt. Same pumpkins now are in Ottawa.

The Liberals also had choices and made them. They pulled far right under Chrétien and Martin. They balanced the budget and good for them. But a careful objective analysis reveals a Liberal campaigns left and when in power fails to keep those promises. Time and again. Federally it's why they got destroyed last election. Now they've put all their Eggs with Justin who seems like a nice guy. He's just with the wrong party if he wants to be a real progressive. Wynne is no different. I admire some of her policies like the pension plan but the privatization of Hydro is a very bad idea.

Cutting and pasting other party ideas and calling it a grand vision is what Liberals do. There is no consistent liberal vision, there are no consistent liberal principles there is only say what seems the middle at the time to get elected. Liberals are 'conveniently progressive' which to my mind are the worst kind.

deathtokoalas
see, again: you have to keep in mind that the issue federally was the credit rating. the next step is imf restructuring, including privatization. we had a really hard choice, there: if we didn't find a way to improve the credit situation, we'd be in a situation where we'd start losing things like our health care system. that sounds like a scare tactic, but look around at the world. these financial institutions are vampires.

what the feds had to do was raise taxes and temporarily cut services, then put them back once the revenue stream was put in order. mulroney got the tax in place, at least. and, they followed through with the rest. i've been over this with a lot of people. and, it's very hard to explain it. but, they weren't acting out of ideological persuasion. again: these institutions were horrid.

rae was not under the same pressure. there was nothing stopping him from raising corporate taxes, or even just running a deficit. instead, he went after workers. it's consistent...

jh
Rae was under even more pressure. Ontario did lose its credit ratings of double AA. Whoopdi do. To this day you can find Conservatives that think he was the anti Christ. Despite this he found an interesting solution in very challenging times. The federal Liberals on the other hand caved like wet cardboard. I do agree there was some things they had to do to retain a credit rating at the time but they went way overboard. The cuts were deep and the services not restored. By the way these are the same agencies that gave AAA credit to Lehmans before the 2008 collapse.

The IMF cannot call the shots on Canada because we own a disproportionate share of their financial drawing rights and represent other middle powers of similar standing. We could have threatened to withdraw that cash built up since WW2 to pay down sovereign debt. They wouldn't like that. This was not even investigated nor entertained by the Liberals because they let fear, not hope guide their policy decisions. This is not ideological- just practical.

The IMF and the World bank now have a new world bank to deal with because their policies have failed over and over again around the world and they failed to respond to demands from emerging economies. The consortium is led by China and has 53 countries signed up including the UK.

deathtokoalas
AA is not junk status. there was serious talk of default. and, while it would be nice to see the feds push back like that on a utopian level, the reality is that the retaliation would be swift. it's not something you can seriously entertain.

Jh
"Retaliation would be swift." Really? What would or could the IMF do? The rating agencies? We might take a hit to credit ratings for a brief period at worst. We attack their analysis and conclusions for the nonsense it was. Hell South Korea came out of the Asian financial crisis better and by taking on the IMF and ignoring most of their advice. Seriously? Liberals - no principle and no courage, take credit for others work. Its a consistent pattern.

I understand and accept the Liberals contributed to healthcare in Canada with Mackenzie King and Trudeau but it was the CCF/NDP that had the courage and skill and did the heavy lifting. I apologize for my earlier remark. You are better informed than many on this site.

deathtokoalas
if we were to legitimately give the imf the finger like that, they'd probably launch a coup. i think canada is too big and close to the united states for them to be able to put somebody like pinochet in power. but, the sitting government would be gone pretty quickly, one way or another.

as an aside, the health care thing was a joint effort. the ndp pushed for it, but there was legitimate desire from the liberals for it. also, it was pearson & douglas, not trudeau & lewis.

dtgraham
That was strictly an NDP Tommy Douglas thing in Saskatchewan in 1944. Eventually, bible Bill Aberhart in Alberta bought in and a few others did later, but there was no legitimate desire from the federal Liberals for it at that time. None. That came much later.

deathtokoalas
i know that the ndp likes to pretend that it's entirely responsible for the health care system, but it's simply not accurate.

after the war, mackenzie-king set up a commission to discuss the issue with the full intent of creating a single-payer system like the one in britain. talks fell apart. it was only after these talks fell apart that tommy douglas set the ball rolling on a number of things. however, his initial plan in 1944 was not universal - it was restricted to special categories like pensioners. in 1947, he created a hospital insurance plan that was universal (but this is still not universal medicare). this was emulated by paul martin's father (a liberal mp) in 1957 and passed as a private member's bill while diefenbaker was prime minister. so, this was a liberal bill based on an ndp idea passed in a conservative legislature. sometimes, good ideas are good ideas and get cross-partisan support.

it wasn't until 1962 that a universal health insurance plan was set up in saskatchewan, but it was a very different system than we're used to - it was a traditional insurance plan that everybody pays into. closer to obamacare than single payer. the hospital adaptation was pretty spot on emulation. but the federal health insurance system is really not a direct adaptation of the system initially devised in saskatchewan; it is far superior. pearson introduced this legislation in 1965 and once again got cross-party support for it. pearson did not require douglas' support for the bill to pass, he could have passed it with support from diefenbaker.

in 1984, trudeau then took the acts from '57 and '66 and put them together into the canada health act. this was under a liberal majority.

while one can argue with some likelihood that medicare in canada would be rather different if it were nor for douglas, one can argue just as strenuously that it would also be rather different if douglas had written the legislation.

Jh
Medicare would not have happened without Tommy Douglas and the CCF and the NDP. Period. Certainly Liberals jumped on the bandwagon as the political opportunists they are (hooray :-( ) but let's not pretend the Liberals would have done it on their own. The NDP made it work and the federal Liberals followed cause it was very popular. One could argue otherwise but then they would be wrong.

deathtokoalas
i think that what's more accurate to say is that the liberals would not have had the popular support to do it on their own. if you want to know how canada actually reacted to health care, take a look at the debate in the states. there were howls and cries of government tyranny and dictatorial socialism. the doctors went on strike. that's why the mackenzie-king commission fell apart. and, that was douglas' real accomplishment - he fought the doctors, he set it up and he proved it could work without bringing in death panels. that created a shift in public attitudes that allowed the liberals to bring in single-payer to popular support rather than public outcry.

Jh
I know how they reacted. I know that the NDP led the fight for socialized medicine against doctors and insurance companies and Tommy made it work and consequently more popular. I know the Liberals of the time thought 'hey we should try and take some credit for that idea and movement that the other party represents.' Just like now. The Liberals deserve credit for nationalizing healthcare but they had to. The NDP was growing much stronger and the Liberals made the right political calculus for time. Your initial comment was the NDP try to take all the credit for national healthcare. Well it was their idea, they fought the tough battles, they popularized it and they implemented the first large scale working model. The Liberals copied and nationalized it. So let's agree that the NDP are historically responsible for healthcare in Canada but the Liberals deserve some credit in copying a good policy idea when they saw one and tweaked it to make it work at a national level.

deathtokoalas
as mentioned previously, the discussions for a national health care system in canada were set off by mackenzie-king right after the war, with the intention of emulating the british national health service. tommy douglas began fighting for a provincial system after the breakdown of those talks. his success in building that system allowed the liberals to carry through with their original plan.

want a metric on how weird the election is going to be?

a lawn sign for my zombie ndp candidate just went up on my lawn, presumably from my landlord's brother (who lives in one of the units).

this is a person that has tried to argue with me to stop recycling. solid ndp supporter, apparently.

i suspect he's in support of the energy rebate from the last *provincial* election. energy costs seem to be a priority in the unit. they've been swapping out the electric heaters for gas furnaces. i don't like this, but i can't argue with them - the price of electricity in ontario has become ridiculous.

it's just one example. but, support seems to be solidifying in rather unusual - and perhaps somewhat unpredictable - ways.

listen: this is ridiculous. trying to frame an election around trust is just going to suppress turnout, because....i mean, honestly. politicians. trust. it's absurd. it's a very rare circumstance when voters aren't making a lesser evil calculation. it doesn't matter what kind of voters you're talking about, either; an anti-abortion voter is making the same basic calculation that an environmentalist is: who is going to get me the closest to what i want, with the least damage to what i care about. nobody lines up perfectly behind any kind of platform. there's no trust involved; there's a mental calculation to minimize distrust. it's a house of representatives, it's not a bloody church.

if you can somehow warp me into accepting this narrative and force me to vote based on nothing but trust, i'm going to conclude they're all scheming liars and i'm not going to vote at all. and, the target becomes the benefactor.

i like to say "i wouldn't trust a politician in ottawa to tell me the time of day when we're standing underneath the peace tower". and, it's broadly true. across the spectrum. you want to push this, really? you want to enumerate the lies and psychologically manipulative half-truths told by mulcair and trudeau on the campaign trail, type them up and publish them? do it candidate-by-candidate, riding by riding?

in the end, we'll all be writing in dudley do-right.

voting is a calculated risk. part of the process is working this out - trying to figure out which lies are obviously ridiculous, which lies are attempts to obscure positions, which lies are a big problem in where you stand and which lies don't really matter. but, you don't expect not to be lied to. not unless you're the most ridiculous caricature of the naive canadian ever imagined.

you don't get the opportunity to run for acting and effective head of state in an oecd country unless you've proven yourself an effective liar - or perhaps come from a political dynasty, in which case you've got an uphill battle in figuring the art out.

harper's problem is less that he's a liar. it's more that he's not very good at it, and/or has become flippant and haphazard about it.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/message-management-in-the-harper-pmo-replacing-one-lie-with-another/

JACKROU
WE LEARNED MULCAIR SAID ABSOLUTELY NO PIPELINES UNDER HIS GOV
OIL WILL STAY IN THE GROUND
AND THERE WILL BE A NATIONAL CARBON TAX
AND QUEBECERS LOVE IT

Jessica Murray
actually, i think what he's said - consistently - is that he'll use a rubber stamp review process to try and convince environmentalists to stop opposing the pipelines - in so much psychologically tricky language. because he thinks you're stupid. just like harper....

his basic argument is that gutting the environmental reviews is the cause of the opposition, and that if the government was performing it's proper orwellian functions than the "ministry of the environment" would be properly functioning as the "ministry of industry", and nobody would be upset about this. therefore, in order to get opposition levels down to a point where they can build the pipelines, the government needs to put the environmental review process back in place. it's what people in britain refer to as "new labour psychology".

it's just that he went bond criminal on it and explained it open view - at the *debates*, actually.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-learned-this-week-aug22-1.3196750

this is what happens when you push evangelical christianity down on children with the force of a twenty tonne fist: they reject it in bizarre ways, and identify with it's opposite. the social engineers need to get up to date with some more modern psychological techniques.

the best way to get kids to grasp moral principles is to raise them as atheists and let them arrive at them through reason.

in terms of pure numbers, stalin's holocaust of the ukrainians was larger than hitler's holocaust of the jews. i've seen a lot of criticism of the conflation. but, it's rooted in a denial of how brutal stalin was. a lot of the outside world sees the soviet union as liberators and gets confused by it. but, it's easy to understand the conflation from a ukrainian standpoint if you're aware of the history.

you don't need these kinds of restrictions here in canada because they're universally reviled.

the cape to cairo railroad? geez. that's nineteenth century british imperialist policy, pushed mostly by cecil rhodes, iirc. that old society. can't get rid of these guys, huh? you'd think they'd maybe update it a bit, though.

forget about highways. let's move forwards. how about a high speed electric rail system?

"we want african countries to compete with each other"

africa needs to avoid falling into this trap. for, it is true - if the country next door offers even lower wages and even lower standards, then the company will get up and move. the more that african countries compete with each other, the worse off they all are - as a whole.

rather, the african solution needs to be to form trade blocs that align common standards to prevent that kind of race to the bottom. i hope that african leaders see that, but the corruption on the continent is discouraging. and, there are those pesky trade agreements...