Centrist Party of Canada

[centristparty]

The political centre is relative. If the ideological mood of the country shifts to the left or the right, will the Centrist Party follow to maintain its position in the middle or will it stay where it is becoming centre-left or centre-right? If you really want the political centre in Canada, you wouldn't need to go further than the Liberal party. The majority of Canadians vote for parties to the left of the Conservatives. With the Liberals and the Conservatives almost even, the NDP tips the balance slightly to the left. The middle would probably be somewhere on the right end of the Liberal continuum.

I have talked with people about the party and they told me that making it a conservative-minded liberal party (blue liberal) and a liberal-mined conservative party (red tory) is where there is room for a lot of growth. what this means is having a moderate environmental policy that will be accepted all over Canada. What we in the Centrist Party wanted is a true centrist party and that means taking sensible ideas that are good ideas from the Liberals and the Conservatives. This means let us say that the Liberals do not want to have corporate tax cuts in their economic policy we would say that we would probably take the conservative side of the party and accept the corporate tax cuts if it is good economic sense and we go with that. We won't just pick policies because we will see an advantage but we will say we have to study the idea first and see if the majority of the people around the country want it and if our caucus wants it as well. That is how it would work we would want to go by an issue by issue basis and see what the majority of Canadians want and we want as a party to be a middle ground and compromise party and be about achieving a strategy where we can help increase voter turnout by working with the other parties. Our party as a whole even though we are red tory and blue liberal mainly is be centre to centre-right economically and centrist socially. That is a working strategy which could gain a lot of favour across the country.

Ideologically we would strive on all the issues to be between the two major parties and our leaders would be conservative liberal on our left end or even purple liberal on our left end and purple tory on our right end of the party. That is something we can see our party being. Anyways, the liberals as a party are right wing social democrats on their left end and red tories on their right end. We feel we can gain favour by being for all Canadians but our main party ideologies would be red tory and blue liberals therefore conservative-minded liberals and liberal-minded conservatives. I talked with people about a party between the Liberals and NDP but they said the left is already divided so a party between the Liberals and Conservatives where the majority of Canadians are ideologically is a winner of an idea.

I think that you need to base your ideas when it comes to be centrist as always taking the best issues from the two major parties. That way you only have to refine a few things but as a whole you understand that tax cuts need to be moderate, social progress is needed to satisfy the progressives in the party, health care and education can never be touched and that is something most Canadians want, foreign policy would be balanced unlike the conservatives which want to be favourable to just Israel we would want a two state solution and striving for wars as a last resort. We also would want social programs to be done fiscally responsibly meaning it must not impact our debt and deficit too much. Unlike the conservatives we feel that the environment is important and we would want to have a meaningful plan for it and increase our fuel standards. Those are some of the ideas we feel would be wanted and ideas that would never change as a party. For law and order we would want to be tough on crime but have rehab and educational programs for people are given a second chance and people need to understand that dangerous or repeat offenders are the people that we want to concentrate as a party on. We also feel as a party that the reason why the Liberals are weak outside urban centres is because their law and order, the long gun registry, military spending and taxes.

We think if we concentrated on those issues in rural areas we could be challenging the Conservatives on those important areas and we feel that the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens would be following us and the Conservatives in rural areas and we could be a serious challenge in a lot of areas in the country.

I ask the same question about how the Liberals are fascists?

Quit trolling none of the parties are fascist!

 

[JLM]

I don't happen to think we need another brand of crooks.

 

[Corduroy]

I have talked with people about the party and they told me that making it a conservative-minded liberal party (blue liberal) and a liberal-mined conservative party (red tory) is where there is room for a lot of growth. what this means is having a moderate environmental policy that will be accepted all over Canada. What we in the Centrist Party wanted is a true centrist party and that means taking sensible ideas that are good ideas from the Liberals and the Conservatives.

That's not what I would call true centrism. True centrist means being in the middle of the range of popular ideologies in a country. Taking the sensible ideas from only the Liberals and the Conservatives leaves out the NDP (maybe you think they have no sensible ideas ). And taking their good ideas, not the mean of their two opposing ideas, isn't in the centre either.
When you factor in the NDP in determining the political centre in Canada, what you've described as centrist is more right-wing. Even if you exclude the NDP, most of what you described is really just the current Conservative government. What you've described isn't between Liberal and Conservative; it's governing-Conservative on nearly every issue. The only real addition that detracts from the Conservatives is a modest environmental policy and maybe their stance on Israel. Though, to be fair, one could make a case that this is just governing-party policy, regardless of whether the Liberals or Conservatives are power. When in power, parties tend to govern more to the centre of their putative ideologies.
In choosing compromise or the middle ground, you make what I think is a fundamental error in your judgment of the Canadian electorate. Because people are divided, and let's say for the sake of argument divided evenly on the left and right, you assume that people would rather support a middle ground party than one that better represents the totality of their views.
Of course, voters do compromise when faced with what they consider a "lesser evil". Third party voters, NDP in particular, are known for their strategic voting, but if they were as inclined towards this as this centrist party seems to hope, third parties wouldn't even exist.
And of course, the NDP isn't the third party in Canada. It's the fourth. What is the centre policy for Quebec nationalism?

 

[TenPenny]

I ask the same question about how the Liberals are fascists?

Whatever you do, don't answer the question.

 

[centristparty]

That's not what I would call true centrism. True centrist means being in the middle of the range of popular ideologies in a country. Taking the sensible ideas from only the Liberals and the Conservatives leaves out the NDP (maybe you think they have no sensible ideas ). And taking their good ideas, not the mean of their two opposing ideas, isn't in the centre either.
When you factor in the NDP in determining the political centre in Canada, what you've described as centrist is more right-wing. Even if you exclude the NDP, most of what you described is really just the current Conservative government. What you've described isn't between Liberal and Conservative; it's governing-Conservative on nearly every issue. The only real addition that detracts from the Conservatives is a modest environmental policy and maybe their stance on Israel. Though, to be fair, one could make a case that this is just governing-party policy, regardless of whether the Liberals or Conservatives are power. When in power, parties tend to govern more to the centre of their putative ideologies.
In choosing compromise or the middle ground, you make what I think is a fundamental error in your judgment of the Canadian electorate. Because people are divided, and let's say for the sake of argument divided evenly on the left and right, you assume that people would rather support a middle ground party than one that better represents the totality of their views.
Of course, voters do compromise when faced with what they consider a "lesser evil". Third party voters, NDP in particular, are known for their strategic voting, but if they were as inclined towards this as this centrist party seems to hope, third parties wouldn't even exist.
And of course, the NDP isn't the third party in Canada. It's the fourth. What is the centre policy for Quebec nationalism?

Well we as a party feel we are for what most Canadians are for as a country. Remember Canada under this government has been getting more and more conservative and we feel that Canadians are warming up to law and order policies that favour cracking down on violent and repeat offenders. We think the country will favour policies that have rehabilitation policies and educational programs as well so it is the balanced approach.

When you say that we ignored the NDP, we as a party believe that health care and investing in post secondary education is unified for all over the political spectrum at least it is for Liberals and New Democrats. They have essentially the same policy on those issues. We as a party also believe that poverty reduction programs are needed and it must be done as long as it is done fiscally responsibly.

We think all parties have good ideas and remember like I said in previous comments that we are the party of middle grounds and compromise and are open to working with other parties. That is where we are different and we want to create a climate where we can also help voter turnout increase.

We are also for making sure our system can support the social programs we have and also we want to have a system where essential programs such as health, education, poverty, the environment, and social programs are protected. When you say we have forgot the NDP that is not true we want to be viewed as more compassionate conservative than the present day conservatives and we want to also be viewed as a moderate conservative party and we believe we struck a true balance between the Liberals, Conservatives, Greens and NDP. This way we can attract people from all over the spectrum such as conservatives, centrists, progressives and moderates.

On the issue when it comes to national unity we want Canada to remain united and we believe the best way to set an example is to work with other parties to achieve a concensus and that means having a middle grounds and compromise policy and genuinely working with the other parties. We as a party are also the only centrist party to actually propose prop rep for the house and senate and also be for real democratic reforms to improve the quality of the house of commons, how much the mps get, how much they spend, how they act and so on. We struck a smart approach to make government more affordable so we can have government since we believe that government plays a role.

On the environment, we wanted to be close to the Liberals environmental policy but we felt their carbon tax was the wrong idea we wanted a cap and trade system and putting a price on carbon was the smart idea. We feel most Canadians want action on this issue and we feel if we have a smart approach to this issue we can make sure it does cause prices to skyrocket. We need to make sure it works effectively for our environment and helps make sure our economy is more competitive like in Germany where a cap and trade system is implemented and they have a strong economy.

We think we can be more competitive with our law and order agenda, our long gun registry agenda and our military agenda, but on health care, education, poverty and the environment we are closer to the Greens, NDP, Liberals and Bloc. Therefore we are closer to the Conservatives on law and order, military, long gun registry and economic issues. Therefore we struck the right balance and it is something most Canadians would be for.

Thank you and I look forward to all your comments.

Unlike the Conservatives who have shown themselves to be for big business and unlike the NDP who have shown themselves to be for unions we feel to be centrists you need to be in bed with no one and work for all Canadians regardless of political ideology. We also feel that the environment in which you govern is free of ultra-partisanship. We want to be a party which works with parties and not against parties. We also want to make sure we strike the balance for every issue. Like for economic policy we cannot cut too fast there has to be a balance and we need to take all sectors of the economy into consideration. We cannot spend too much or it will overwhelm the system. Just like the problem in the United States they have problems with their economy we need to think about sectors and about incurring structural deficits if we cut too hard and we need to take sectors into consideration. We need to also invest strategically in manufacturing, r&d, the green economy and many other areas to ensure that people have jobs and so the economy is balanced.

That is how you build a strong economy by balancing the sectors and ensuring that if you cut taxes it is done moderately.

Thank you!

 

[Chiliagon]

I have talked with people about the party and they told me that making it a conservative-minded liberal party (blue liberal) and a liberal-mined conservative party (red tory) is where there is room for a lot of growth. what this means is having a moderate environmental policy that will be accepted all over Canada. What we in the Centrist Party wanted is a true centrist party and that means taking sensible ideas that are good ideas from the Liberals and the Conservatives. This means let us say that the Liberals do not want to have corporate tax cuts in their economic policy we would say that we would probably take the conservative side of the party and accept the corporate tax cuts if it is good economic sense and we go with that. We won't just pick policies because we will see an advantage but we will say we have to study the idea first and see if the majority of the people around the country want it and if our caucus wants it as well. That is how it would work we would want to go by an issue by issue basis and see what the majority of Canadians want and we want as a party to be a middle ground and compromise party and be about achieving a strategy where we can help increase voter turnout by working with the other parties. Our party as a whole even though we are red tory and blue liberal mainly is be centre to centre-right economically and centrist socially. That is a working strategy which could gain a lot of favour across the country.

Ideologically we would strive on all the issues to be between the two major parties and our leaders would be conservative liberal on our left end or even purple liberal on our left end and purple tory on our right end of the party. That is something we can see our party being. Anyways, the liberals as a party are right wing social democrats on their left end and red tories on their right end. We feel we can gain favour by being for all Canadians but our main party ideologies would be red tory and blue liberals therefore conservative-minded liberals and liberal-minded conservatives. I talked with people about a party between the Liberals and NDP but they said the left is already divided so a party between the Liberals and Conservatives where the majority of Canadians are ideologically is a winner of an idea.

I think that you need to base your ideas when it comes to be centrist as always taking the best issues from the two major parties. That way you only have to refine a few things but as a whole you understand that tax cuts need to be moderate, social progress is needed to satisfy the progressives in the party, health care and education can never be touched and that is something most Canadians want, foreign policy would be balanced unlike the conservatives which want to be favourable to just Israel we would want a two state solution and striving for wars as a last resort. We also would want social programs to be done fiscally responsibly meaning it must not impact our debt and deficit too much. Unlike the conservatives we feel that the environment is important and we would want to have a meaningful plan for it and increase our fuel standards. Those are some of the ideas we feel would be wanted and ideas that would never change as a party. For law and order we would want to be tough on crime but have rehab and educational programs for people are given a second chance and people need to understand that dangerous or repeat offenders are the people that we want to concentrate as a party on. We also feel as a party that the reason why the Liberals are weak outside urban centres is because their law and order, the long gun registry, military spending and taxes.

We think if we concentrated on those issues in rural areas we could be challenging the Conservatives on those important areas and we feel that the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens would be following us and the Conservatives in rural areas and we could be a serious challenge in a lot of areas in the country.



Quit trolling none of the parties are fascist!

You can't have a Centralist party.

because the ideas and the plans would conflict within. nobody would ever elect a centralist party

 

[centristparty]

You can't have a Centralist party.

because the ideas and the plans would conflict within. nobody would ever elect a centralist party

The truth is centralist means that we build bigger government we are trying to ensure that this party becomes like the old PC party and if you asked the people that want to create the party with me they are all for it. The only thing people will be angry about is 6 major parties at the federal level makes us a lot like Europe in terms of how many parties we have at the federal level.

We just want a party which gives centrist voters another option so they won't have just a and b but now there is c and people thinking about jumping across to the other party can choose a party between them. I say it is a good idea that will get a lot of votes and get a lot of seats in a lot of regions.

 

[Ron in Regina]

You can't have a Centralist party.

because the ideas and the plans would conflict within. nobody would ever elect a centralist party

On Provincial level, check out the Sask Party in Saskatchewan. It was founded by
a mix Liberals & Conservatives. Seems to be working out (more or less) so far...

....so why not on a larger scale?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_Party

The Saskatchewan Party is a centre-right political party[citation needed] in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The party was established in 1997 by a coalition of former Progressive Conservative and Liberal party members and supporters who sought to remove the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party from power.

 

[Corduroy]

We are also for making sure our system can support the social programs we have and also we want to have a system where essential programs such as health, education, poverty, the environment, and social programs are protected. When you say we have forgot the NDP that is not true we want to be viewed as more compassionate conservative than the present day conservatives and we want to also be viewed as a moderate conservative party and we believe we struck a true balance between the Liberals, Conservatives, Greens and NDP. This way we can attract people from all over the spectrum such as conservatives, centrists, progressives and moderates.

You absolutely are not striking a balance between all the political parties in Canada. Most of what you've described is a party slightly to the left of the Conservative core, but still within the Conservative continuum. I would agree that Canada is moving more to the right, but we aren't there yet and whether or not we'll go far to the right isn't a certainty. Canada is still a leftist country and if you summed up and averaged political opinion, the centre would not be what you are describing. The centre in Canada is to the left of most of your policies, and while you claim you're between Liberal and Conservative (which is not the centre), I'd put you more on the Conservative side.

In other words, your claim to be truly centrist (and not just using the name) is wrong on two counts. (1) Where you claim to be on the political spectrum is not the centre and (2) if it were, what you've described is mostly to the right of that.

You should really describe yourself as Red Tory. That seems to be the side you are most identifying with (implicitly and explicitly too it seems). Call the party Centrist but you can't really pretend you're striking any real balance between all the whole political spectrum. What you're doing it taking what you like from all sides and most of what you like is to the right of most of the country.

We think we can be more competitive with our law and order agenda, our long gun registry agenda and our military agenda, but on health care, education, poverty and the environment we are closer to the Greens, NDP, Liberals and Bloc.

Could you describe how you're closer to these parties on health care, education, poverty and environment? I don't really believe it. Particularly on the matter of the environment where you said you supported a policy to the right of the Liberal's policy, which neither the Greens nor the NDP supported (I have no idea about the BQ tbh)

Being a party that takes the policies that most Canadians support and amalgamating them into a single platform might seem like a good idea and maybe more Canadians will support such a party. Personally, I think this is only an illusion of statistics. A majority of Canadians supporting one policy and a majority of Canadians supporting another policy doesn't mean that a majority of Canadians support both policies simultaneously. That is to say, supporters of policy X (a majority of Canadians) are not the same people as supporters of policy Y (also a majority). You could find that by supporting X and Y in your platform, you are in fact alienating too many people that support X but abhor Y and vice versa. You could get away with this while governing, as governing parties often do, but ideologically, in an election, you are essentially without a popular base.

What you should really do is not base policies on what Canadians support but on what you support ideologically. It seems that you actually do do this while pretending not to.

Personally, I like political division. I'm not a fan of hackish partisanship (the my party right or wrong kind), but I am a fan of sticking to one's principles. Compromise is grossly overrated.

 

[Bar Sinister]

What we need is non-partisan oting. It would eliminate the problem altogether.

Short of turning Canada into Wonderland that is not going to happen. Most voters tend to vote for parties not individuals.

No, it does not Bar Sinister,
We have a status quo relationship because of a minority government. If any party had a majority, they would ignore all others and go about shaping Canada in their own image.

It's been done before with Pearson, Trudeau and to some extent under Chretien. I'm sure if the Liberal Party had a majority tommorrow, they'll find something to do with it - i.e. implement environmental legislation that will get all the Albertan Hicks rallied up and add further clauses to the charter of rights and freedom.

Much like if Stephan Harper had a majority, he would probably go about and get rid of the HRC, the charter, the family reunification program, abolish the long gun registry, reduce the number of electoral seats for Quebec; et al.

A centralist party would be one that is not in favour of any change.

That does not change the fact that both the Liberals and Conservatives are still centrist parties. Adding a third would simply give us three.

No it wouldn't,
the New Flemish Alliance is the plurality party in Belgium. Canada's Conservatives, NDP and Liberals, being 'catch-all' big tent institutions, would crumble overnight and the BQ would emerge as the plurality party.

BQ would also go to more effort to field candidates outside of Quebec and there would be potential to align themselves with secessionists in Western Canada.

Not necessarily a bad thing... Could the BQ form a coalition of 51% to dismantle Canada? Unlikely. However, they could get enough votes to reduce the Federal Government (though I bet the Newfies would be upset about an end to the handouts) and give more autonomy to the provinces, something we should have done a long time ago.

That is not going to happen. Canada is not Belgium and in case you don't know it western separatists tend to be very anti-Quebec. An alliance between them would be almost impossible. As for the BQ being the plurality party; doesn't it already have that status in Quebec? If plurality voting had been in place during the last election it would have reduced the PQ's seats by 50%. The BQ could field all the candidates it wanted outside Quebec and would not gain a single seat. In fact it would weaken its campaign in Quebec probably costing its seats there as well. And Canadian provinces already have more power than any US state. They don't need any more.

 

[centristparty]

This is further proof that the Conservatives are being dictated everything by the PMO and Stephen Harper's government. He wants to make sure nothing can go wrong right now but when things start to get bad with his government he will take action and it will seem like he has everything under control. The current Conservatives are a very corrupt bunch. This is why we need a centre to centre-right party resembling the old Progressive Conservatives.

 

[centristparty]

Check out centristparty to see what a successor to the old Progressive Conservative party can bring to our politics. We need a party that is fiscally responsible, socially progressive, for middle grounds and compromise and this new party has to be moderate conservative and between the new parties.If we had a party like this Canada would finally have three choices that are moderate and then we would not have to be stuck with just Liberals and Conservatives but finally have a new party to increase voter turnout and bring civility to our politics.

 

[petros]

Are you trying to reform the Conservatives?

 

[centristparty]

Are you trying to reform the Conservatives?

What we want to do is build a strong compassionate conservative yes and I said compassionate conservative and not neoconservative like the current Conservatives and that means protecting health and education and making them essential services which can never be touched, making sure law and order are issues which get dealt with using all party support and in a way that is not overly politicized. We need a party that is also about middle grounds and compromise. This party is about red tory/blue liberalism as our party's main ideology. We want to be a liberal conservative policy like the old PC party.

We think a party in the tradition of Sir John A. MacDonald is wanted and would get a lot of support across the country but of course a lot of discussions with people is needed first but our party has the ideas to build a strong party between the two major parties and we feel a lot of people want a pragmatic, centrist and moderate conservative party between the two major parties.

 

[captain morgan]

Maybe people might start taking you 1/2 way seriously if you posted more than just the standard cliches that are common to anyone that wants to get elected.

 

[centristparty]

Well the truth is captain morgan I cannot read people's minds I suppose you may have a lot of experience with it but I need to know what your questions are about the party and then I can answer them but if you are silent and vague in asking them how can I answer them. That is what people need to understand.

 

[centristparty]

Anyone here remember Joe Clark

yes his type of conservatism is what we are after. If you want proof there is no ideology in Canada that has liberal conservatism.

Research Centrist Democrat International and you will see the countries and notice Canada has no international organization

with that name representing any of the parties. We are seeking the middle ground and notice the ideological trend of all the

parties and the direction we are headed by following them.

Check out wikipedia on "Centrist Democrat International", this other term "liberal conservatism", "one nation conservatism", "

neoliberalism", "centrism", "right-centrism", "social conservatism", "traditionalist conservatism",

"communitarianism", "conservative liberalism" and "social progressivism".

I would like you to check out all the ideologies on wikipedia since that is the direction we are going to go down

in terms of a party. We are between the two parties economically, we are closer to the liberals on social policy, we are close

to the greens on democracy, all parties are essentially equal on health and education, we are close to the liberals on poverty,

we are close to the conservatives on law and order and socially conservative issues, we are balanced on foreign policy and we

want a moderate environmental policy so we really copy no one there and we make sure constituents are heard and given a true

voice on issues where there are free votes and private member's bills. Lastly, if you check out the Centrist Democrat

International page on wikipedia the party's ideologies will be remarkably close to that of the French and British conservative

parties but a bit more communitarian. Thank you for your time.

anyone want to know what we stand for well email me at centristpartyofcanada@gmail.com and get

in touch our pdf file containing all party info about where we stand is almost done.

I look forward to it so people can stop asking questions about where we stand as a party and we can just provide

what is necessary on each of the issues. Remember so it is next week when the pdf document should be done for the party but

it cannot be posted on the site since it does not contain the aspects necessary to download files onto it. i would know i am an expert

html/xhtml programmer. The site of the party is http://www.centristp...piczo.com/?cr=5

Thank you!

 

[captain morgan]

Well the truth is captain morgan I cannot read people's minds I suppose you may have a lot of experience with it but I need to know what your questions are about the party and then I can answer them but if you are silent and vague in asking them how can I answer them. That is what people need to understand.

Read people's minds?.. Please spare me the rhetoric.

Everything that you have posted regarding your stance on anything is founded on nothing but watery and intangible statements... I won't waste my time in sourcing the exact words you've used but I'm guessing that it goes something along the lines that: "vote for me 'cause we are fiscally responsible with meaningful social policies because we truly care about you.".. Of course, this is followed-up with castrating the existing gvt (and opposition) because they don't exemplify your high standards.

So, what does this (ie. your comments about the centrist party) really mean?.. In case you haven't alraedy figured this out, the fact is that EVERY organization with aspirations of forming a gvt say the exact same nonsense.

If you want anyone to take you seriously, contribute something real and tangible in terms of your position on an issue.

 

[centristparty]

i am raising awareness of a new political party between the liberals and conservatives at the federal level. we would be a moderate conservative party that would try to gain a lot of support from the two major parties.

Also to view our facebook page it is http://www.facebook....gid=34708647457 so you may join if you wish.

Thank you and I look forward to your comments.

i am raising awareness of a new political party between the liberals and conservatives at the federal level. we would be a moderate conservative party that would try to gain a lot of support from the two major parties.

our address to view where we stand on the issues is: http://centristparty...com/issues?cr=5 and our main site is: centristparty

If you have any more information you may contact us at centristpartyofcanada@gmail.com or if you know anyone you may let them know all this information. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you and I look forward to your comments.

 

[weaselwords]

What about using the notwithstanding clause to put the brake on public service unions by effectively saying "collective bargaining, union membership & dues collection are not covered" by the Charter of Rights & Freedoms