Quote: Maybe it would be simpler if you told me what is the same in US and Canadian politics?
A bit. Our Conservatives follow neo-conservative doctrine almost to the letter. The Christian right has a lot of influence over them and they keep trying to mix that with politics (abortion, SSM...not too much creationism yet, but it's coming).
Our followers of Leo Strauss here belong to something called the Calgary School (as opposed to the Chicago School). They also use right wing think tanks to influence policy. Our Conservatives have a problem though...they have a bad habit of confusing American jingoism with Canadian soft nationalism since they've been unable to generate much Canadian jingoism.
The Conservatives get much of their money from the business lobby (though that's restricted by our laws) and it shows in their policy.
Our Conservatives are like your Republicans.
Our Liberals have moved right since Paul Martin haas come on the seen and are now close to your Democrats. They play the same game of running from the left and governing from the right once they get into power too.
Because of promises made when they were running, they can sometimes be tricked into putting people ahead of money.
They generally like "free" trade and get much of their money from corporate interests. They tend to be better on social issues than the Conservatives because they don't mix church and state.
They are also better at real-politik. While Harper mumbles about some vast silent majority that simply doesn't exist, the Liberals look at the polls and do what they have to while doing what they can to keep their corporate masters happy.
That's about where the similarities end. Twenty years ago, we didn't have a single party as far to the right on the political spectrum as your Democrats. Now we have one that is basically Republican and one that is very close to your present-day Democrats.
That brings us to third parties. Nader (you really should make him President) got what, less than 1% of the vote last time around right? You have no significant third party movement in the United States. At this point all similarity to the US really falls apart.
Our oldest third party is the NDP. Because we sometimes have minority governments (nothing like it in your two-party system) they have been able to get progressive legislation through to help actual Canadian people. They have gotten Canada universal health care, pensions, labour legislation, unemployment insurance and other social programs by putting forth policy initiatives that were popular with the majority of Canadians. The ruling party (generally the Liberals) have been forced to adopt those policies because they needed the NDP votes and Canadians liked the policies.
Our other major third party is the Bloq Quebecois. They hold more seats than the NDP and were even the Official Oppostion for a while. They exist to break the country up. That is their main reason for being. At the same time they do a decent job of representing the centre-left values of most Quebecois. Imagine if NY, Mich. and Mass. had a single government that was left-leaning and had seccession as it's ultimate goal. That's the BQ.
That's federal politics. The provincial/federal interactions are also much more complex than your federal government has with your states.
), but in the end he backed down because notwithstanding has to reviewed every five years and everybody was pointing at Ralph and calling him a backwards hillbilly.
