Is Everyone Happy With Our New Government??

[KanBob]

I am ecstatic!

The power isn't in the number of seats, as the Liberals well now. The power is in who has the keys, and the keys now go to the Conservatives.

The next Supreme Court appointment is Harper's to make.

Next Senate appointments are Harper's to make.

Not to mention the other 3000 commissions and boards and other patronage troughs.

And then there are Ambassador postings, Crown corporations, Foreign Policy decisions, policy directions (you can kiss Kyoto goodbye without any formal statement. Same with that wellhead oil tax the Liberals were planning on.)

The list goes on and on.

The Conservatives now have all that power, and the Liberals have none.

I just love saying that!

And now the Liberals have NONE!

You try it, sounds so good!

 

[Briteyes]

I am as happy as I can be with a tory minority. We the country have managed to keep the government in check and I hope Mr. Harper does follow threw with his equalization payments to the provinces and gives the provinces more power. I think both Quebec and Alberta need the rope to hang themselves with. See in Alberta they need to be responsible for there own mad cow problems, and they want private health care let them have it then we will see how they like it. As far as the environment let them deal with the Fort McMurray oil sand mess themselves. I bet they will end up being a have not province at the end of it all and then they will be begging for help from the federal government. As for Quebec let them handle their own affairs and watch that province crumble with the Bloc then we will have a return of majority governments one way or another. In Ontario private health care will not occurr to a large degree.I hope for now because of the liberal government here but who knows. That is my take on our political climate.

 

[poligeek]

Re: RE: Is Everyone Happy With Our New Government??

what "what ifs" are you thinking of calberty?

for good electoral change we also need structural change, not the proposed hybrid westminster systems.

Caracal, it's the other way round. The PR needs to be presented with ALL the nitty gritty details and not glossed over. Check out the proposals that were defeated in the referendums in BC and PEI. they went into excrutiating detail but still people had questions and voted the proposals down.

It's a bit like the referendum on the monarchy in Australia a couple years back. about 60% of the population wanted to abolish the monarchy but the referendum lost because the Aussies couldn't agree on the details of the replacement system. What PR system will be accepted in Canada by such diverse groups as the Inuit, Quebec sovereigntists, PEI potato growers and Alberta rednecks...all of them are vigilant not to negotiate such a vital change without looking after their own power interests and getting other changes in the Constitution.

Won't happen.

It's hardly accurate to say that the PR system was "voted down" in BC... I didn't follow PEI as much.

In BC to get the new system the referrendum had to get a "double-super-majority" meaning it must win in 60% of the ridings and get 60% of the popular vote.

It passed in 77 of 79 ridings (well over 60%).... and it got 57.4% of the popular vote.

It's important to note that just with the first criteria of passing in 77 of 79 ridings that would have been a sweep under the FPTP system. Also porportionally it got more support than was needed for Quebec to separate from the country.

Futhermore all the money by the BC province was put into the citizen's assembly which was meant to select the type of PR proposed and very little money was put into a general public education campaign. Many voters reported not even knowing that there was a referrendum.

Also, the citizen's assembly was bound to the current number of seats and could not move any riding boundaries essentianlly binding them to choose the STV model of PR.

The STV model is much harder to explain and much more mathematically complicated. Also there is a lot of preference for MMP.

The devil is in the details, however I do think that from BC we can see that people are looking for a change.

I think that change will come at the provincial level first, then the federal level.

We will have to see what happens with Ontario's Democratic Renwal Commission.

 

[The Gunslinger]

I was happy as hell when Harper won. Another half dozen seats would have been nice, but whatever works. But my greatest point in achievement were two things.
1. The Conservatives swept a province, damned hard to do in this day and age (I know it was Alberta, but still).
2. A whopping ten seats in Quebec. I thought if we scored two it would be a great victory.

 

[Jersay]

Yeah, I am happy with the 10 seats picked up by NDP in B.C, and the 11 in Ontario.

 

[iamcanadian]

Canadian MPs do pay taxes

They receive a salary of $65,600.00 on which they do pay taxes plus a $21,400.00 tax free allowance.

Cabinet ministers and the prime minister receive a bit more.

That works out to an equivalent to a straight taxable salary of around $100,000 which is not very much for someone expected to run a multi Trillion-Dollar corporation. A good tradesman (carpenters, electricians, plumbers) make more than this a year.

I think there should be a top group of elected, say 12 people whose job pays them $1 Million and call them the Chief Executives. This way out of the 350 people elected we can get 12 top executive types (Trumps, Iacoccas etc.) in from the public sector to help with the restructure government business and clean-out the waste and inneficiencies.

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[Jersay]

:lol:

 

[the caracal kid]

you raise a very valid point, iamcanadian,

given the peoples are driven by selfish desires above an interest to serve their county, how do we attract the people we need in leadership positions to government?

I think we need to develop a renewed interest in serving your country. We need term limits, and a directly elected leader (along with what i will call the "council of canadian territories" for now). We need to make the system such that the people serve the country and not their career interests.

 

[jimmoyer]

I think it's high time that the voters do think of a new
way to have a government that does indeed pay a select
few like 12 people, like the 12 apostiles, like the 12 disciples, each one million dollars.

It's the closest idea we have to a philosopher king.

Apparently 535 congressman in America doesn't work
and however many Candian members of parliament doesn't work right either.

Democracy is a highly complicated matter where tyranny
of the mob, tyranny of the majority, irresponsibility of
a political party and executive branch tyranny are all very real and happening probabilities in western democratic nations.

I do think separatism movements in Canada would stop if
they made the upper house the Senate equal representation to all the provinces, like America did
to quell the problem of separatism by the states.

But this novel idea of creating a group of 10 to 12 in
the executive branch all equal with million dollar pay
instead of ONE Prime Minister or ONE President would
be quite an interesting experiment for the more mature
democracies that have about 100 years into this
grand experiment.

 

[the caracal kid]

jim,

i don't think that there should be a group of equals ruling, but that there should be 1 president, and a council consisting of more like 26 individuals (2 from each territory) that would both represent the territories equally and act as the "caucus" of the president.

it is closer to your (US) system than a rule of an elete group (of couse, the US system can also be considered the rule of an elite group, just a bigge group).

 

[jimmoyer]

Well, Caracal Kid, let's think about this executive branch
thing, where the power of one person usurps much power and much sycophantic behavior by attendees.

Maybe if we elected even just 2 or 3 with just 1 or 2
million dollar salaries, we have 2 or 3 egos jostling with
each other.

Nascent ideas.

Just thinking for awhile.

I do know that one executive causes quite a powerful
chain of reactions. I'm not sure a legislature is as equal.
But possibly a judiciary is.

I'm gonna just gel on that for awhile.

Just gellin'.

 

[FiveParadox]

I am just throwing random ideas out there, and not advocating for any of them in particular — I tend to post whatever comes into my head, lol.

Um, but maybe we could create some sort of Triumvirate Assembly? We could have three Triumvirs, perhaps elected by popular vote?

 

[the caracal kid]

the high salary idea was novel to me. you are correct, the the same egos that would be drawn to the pay, could create a difficult working scenario.

Perhaps the lesson from business we should draw is one of the "$1" salary, but "bonuses" based on performance (of course we would want to keep a strict limit on how high those bonuses could be).

Of course, this whole "high pay" idea runs against the idea of people serving their country rather than serving themselves. The pay initiative could be dangerous since we all know how few would actually be willing to reverse such legislation once enacted.

The important thing is term limits: your country calls on you to serve it, and then afterwards you return to your private life. Career politicians are very ineffectual because of their concerns for self preservation.

 

[jimmoyer]

I think that in overall, you will always be proven
right Caracal Kid in your post emphasizing a Culture of Service to the country.

I'd just like to add that expensive elections pretty much
allow only the rich to run, and the more rules about
election money ironically hurts the poor from running,
rather than the rich from running for office.

And if we pay too little for salaries, then it will only be a pasttime for the comfortably rich.

Maybe we will always be forced to face such dilemnas,
until we inaugurate a culture of thinking, a culture
of service.

 

[iamcanadian]

I see no reason why the Public Interest should not compete with Private Interest for the top executives and professionals.

A performance based pay similar to what the largest corporation do should be fine for the most senior posts and have Term Limits of 4 years. One term of office.

The same should apply for major Professions, such as Public Lawyers and Public Engineers that would have 4 year non-renewable public contracts, which would serve to create rotation in these higher professions and a more uniform level of ethics, competence and integrity to these professions when doing public work.

 

[thulin]

Pardon, but could someone roughly explain to me the difference between the liberals and the conservatives? For instance, what revolutionary steps will the conservative government now take to change the liberal Canada?

 

[missile]

The secret is that whoever gets into power here, their policies always drift towards the middle of the road,so party labels mean little.

 

[thulin]

The secret is that whoever gets into power here, their policies always drift towards the middle of the road,so party labels mean little.

Well, that was my guess... Pretty good really. From my perspecitve canadian politicians dont seem to have very much power over citizens every day life (thanks to not that high taxes and the fact that Canada is a federation), and all (both?) political options are alike (some sort of middle/liberal/consensus politics?).

I am jealous. :wink:

 

[iamcanadian]

The secret is that whoever gets into power here, their policies always drift towards the middle of the road,so party labels mean little.

Well, that was my guess... Pretty good really. From my perspecitve canadian politicians dont seem to have very much power over citizens every day life (thanks to not that high taxes and the fact that Canada is a federation), and all (both?) political options are alike (some sort of middle/liberal/consensus politics?).

I am jealous. :wink:

Canada has no elected representation. We elect people to create the illusion of a democracy.

The government administrators and employed directors for life rule as they please and the power is passed around amongst friends and relatives.

Nothing to be jealous about.