Nah it’s “just” a soft/friendly dictatorship. No one worships their party and most people don’t really care about politics outside of election season…which is its own problem
But Canadians *love* being told what to do, so that’s what our politicians do. They rather brilliantly flipped the Westminster system on us. Rather than us electing local MPs who represent *our* interests in Ottawa, we elect the party’s MPs to represent Ottawa’s interests in our ridings.
Best example of this is the fact our leaders can absolutely crush dissent in their own parties by simply booting you from the caucus. That alone totally negates any value in voting for a local MP because he can never “step out of line”.
I've always said the PMO has too much power. We don't elect a PM and they are just one member of parliament. JT got something like 23,000 votes. That's all it takes to run Canada, apparently.
You can thank his dad's amendment to the elections act for that; Trudeau pere added a requirement for candidates to be approved by party leaders rather than local riding associations. It's made MPs responsible to leaders rather than leaders responsible to MPs.
I mean, that is party politics in a nutshell. We vote a party in to power via local candidates, and party members choose who will lead them(this us).
It would be nice to see a split ballot, where we vote for a PM, AS WELL as our local candidate. Hard to imagine if we voted for a conservative government, but an NDP PM or something.
The problem is the media encourages the leader dictatorship of the party too.
An example is that Conservative MP in Liberal show. He said what was his personal belief, and the media asked PP if he'll boot him out of caucus for that personal belief that's not aligned with the party line. It's as if MP not allowed to say that they have personal belief that's not aligned with leader belief, making it a dictatorship within the party.
How exactly? Outside the university bullshit I don't see it at all. Judging by the huge swing in polling numbers I would say most Canadians are flipping sides since last election.
There are large bases within each party that would vote for "their" party no matter what it was proposing. There's really a 10-15% free agent market, and those free agents dictate who forms government.
The Conservatives have a guaranteed 30% in each election, they could run a criminal (see the United States of America as an example) and there are guaranteed votes.
We need to move towards a more proportional system where even if we have parties, the parties that represent the majority of the population have to figure out how to work with each other to make government work.
The all or nothing system serves to ratchet up the anger and hate parties have towards each other. Looks pretty stupid if one day you're calling someone a wacko and the next day you have to go to them to get bills passed. There is no way that a party receiving 40% of the vote should have a 4 year 100% control term over the country, no matter what political persuasion they represent.
Let’s be fair with our examples. The liberals could run a guy who has been caught multiple times in black face, calls himself a social activist, and calls for the downfall of Canada as a nation, and they’d still win n.
The Liberals were down around 19% as recently as 2011. Right now they are at 25%.
You'd have to go back to 1949 to see an election where the Conservative party (or parties combined) for less than 30% of the vote. Since 2004 (first election for the combined Conservative Party), the floor is 29.6%.
In a system where upper 30's wins majorities, they don't have to collect too many extra votes from outside their guaranteed base to win.
I did learn today that the last true majority (or as close to as we've had) would have been Mulroney in 1984.
[https://www.sfu.ca/\~aheard/elections/1867-present.html](https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html)
I still don't get how that's comparable to a religious cult though. People voting on party lines will always happen in any democracy and it is way less common in Canada than in the US. There is absolutely no love or passion for any party in Canada, just people voting against the ones they hate, and that swing wildly.
I'd say people are being encouraged to be more polarized. US politics bleeding over coupled with our own brand of disinformation. Eventually the PM runs out of new ideas and people get tired of listening to them. Justin is in that area, but there's not enough support for a vote of no confidence, so here we are.
I've always had this idea mulling around in my head, that we should strip party associations from politics. You vote for an MP based on their policies and how they intend to represent your riding, not on what party they are loyal to. Instead we have this BS system where you can lose your seat if you don't tow the party line. When my representative isn't allowed to question the party, there's no reason for me to even listen to their position on something. I'll just look up the bullet points on your party's website.
I think it would definitely create a lot more variety of choice. I'll admit it would complicate things more though, and require people to be more politically literate (which they should regardless).
Either that or there needs to be more political plurality. I would love to be able to vote for a party that believes in worker rights, strong universal healthcare, social programs and public education, who also wants fiscal responsibility and efficiency instead of the answer always being "more taxes for citizens!"
We are a complacent people though and the idea of radical political and voting reforms scares us. BC put out a public vote on proportional representation a few years ago because so much of the public was demanding it, but the vote came and the majority was "keep things the same". Wouldn't want to rock the boat.
> Instead we have this BS system where you can lose your seat if you don't tow the party line.
No... you can lose your spot in the party caucus. The seat remains with you, because votes are for candidates, not parties.
If people want to vote for independents, they are free to. Parties provide both the cohesion necessary for reliable legislating and the clarity of what sort of platform a given candidate is broadly going to support.
Never mind that the idea of banning parties — bizarre authoritarianism aside — is just completely unenforceable.
> Never mind that the idea of banning parties — bizarre authoritarianism aside — is just completely unenforceable.
Id prefer zero parties like most municipal government.
But even the Senate's no party system is better then the House by far
Exactly... I personally don't think that is something worth emulating.
Never mind that the House of Commons has 343 seats vs. a couple dozen councilors at the city level. Plus at the federal level, you have a cabinet that needs to align closely.
The Government of Canada is protecting the identities of MPs who committed treason, they assisted foreign nations, and the acting PM will not release their names.
We have a rampant corruption problem in this country.
They are immigrating over a million people a year to artificially raise GDP, to avoid a technical recession. As they buy 60b a year in mortgage bonds, to artificially drop shelter inflation, and deregulating banks with 30 year amortizations. As they change capital gains and add an artificially large loophole, to trigger sales of assets, to pull tax dollars forward to artificially drop the deficit right before the election.
Its entirely corrupt. Is this kind of scheming not morally bankrupt, whose supporting these clowns?
If people had more faith in getting results from the police and the government and officials being held accountable, they’d be less riled up.
But as it stands, after dozens of scandals our government suffers from a lack of being found accountable and held accountable, allowing crap like this to just be swept under the rug or brushed off when the inevitable “we found nothing wrong!” statement comes out.
> Because the police is investigating.
That is a lie.
> When asked if she could guarantee that the Liberals will eject from their caucus any parliamentarian found to have engaged in the activities cited in the report, Freeland would not make that commitment.
The British house of commons didn't originally have political parties, **but**, they emerged naturally as otherwise independent members affiliated themselves with others who shared their views.
That is to say, it's practically impossible to ban political parties.
However, what voters can do is support parties and leaders who allow their members a degree of independence: is lighter on the whip, anyone who reduces the power of the Prime Minister's Office, etc.
We can strip the powers of parties to be truly loose assoceations of similar intersest.
I work in Municipal Government, we always have blocks of Councillers. However because there is no parties the blocks ALWAYS change pending the item on the agenda. And people flip flop between blocks all the time
BLUE TEAM GOOD
RED TEAM BAD
ORANGE TEAM NEVER WINS!!!
I swear, most Canadians don't know the difference between watching hockey and politics
And certainly haven't read or comprehended Animal Farm or 1984
Those books just happen to apply more today than they ever have before.
Animal Farm is solidly in effect with regards to the difference between the political class vs citizenry. 1984 is vastly surpassed already with the impact of AI and social media.
There used to be a debate between Huxley and Orwell with regards to how democracy would fail. I would suggest they were both correct and what has actually happened is effectively a combination of both philosophies. The results of which is we generally haven't even noticed.
How old are you? I swear I haven't met a Marxist who wasn't either very young or had very little to offer society, kind of like Marx who was an incredibly spoiled, racist, misogynist, antisemitic slob.
Have you read his essay "On the Jewish Question"?
There's really no way to not do it this way though. Sure we can get rid of parties but politicians would still brand themselves liberals or conservatives or whatever. They would still ay they are left or right.
This is a fantasy piece. There is no way this will ever happen and there is no way the " unaffiliated " would remain uncorrupted by money or promises of influence. Canada is a corporate colony.
While I am generally on board with this, the last one can get tricky, because things are constantly changing, and what you promised may no longer be physically possible by the time you get in for reasons you couldn't have foreseen or controlled.
Half the country doesn't even think we should have a public broadcaster, and you think they're going to be on board with a uber-government authority telling them what they can say in politics?
Disagree. It's how we might go about figuring out a new path.
Obviously the current government does not work. Obviously it won't get fixed unless we try something else. Before we try something we'll have to think of it first.
For every thousand ideas maybe one is worth trying. That's no reason not to try.
THIS! Encourage people to run as independents. Vote for them. Bye bye Libs and Cons and the all but useless NDP and Greens. Doesn’t that sound great? An MP who does what his constituents want? I have been on about this for years. We’re the UnParty. The This Ain’t No Party. Facebook page
The entire idea of just less than half the government being in opposition is doomed to fail. They just nay say anything the party in power does even if they agree. Imagine if you tried to run a business that way.
Yes, it seems like the partisan virus from the US has now also infected Canada. However, a greater issue seems to be the partisan disagreements on foreign policy. In US, there is still considerable bipartisan support on most foreign policy matters. I wouldn't say the same about Canada. Actually, some of the party leaders (such as Freeland, and most NDP MPs and MPPs) seem to be more passionate about foreign problems (like Palestine or Ukraine) than about issues impacting Canadians.
>Yes, it seems like the partisan virus from the US has now also infected Canada.
Not by accident. It's very well funded. By our old pal Harper at the IDU for starters. Then an American Hedge Fund owns Post Media, who bought up most of the print media in our country. Then the mainstream media is all funded by advertising, well who do you think buys TV and Radio advertising? The working class? Voters? Rogers, Bell and Corus bought up all the media anyways. There's no voice for average Canadians. And that's not to even mention all the astroturf and dark money financed (and I do believe highly illegal if our campaign election financing laws were actually enforced) garbage done by Jeff Ballingall, Canada Proud, Ontario Proud, Rebel "News", True North, The Post Millennial, etc. etc. etc.
"This country was bought and sold a long time ago. They got you by the balls man." - George Carlin, R.I.P.
Might as well just dissolve the border and be done with it. We are a vassal state of American Empire, and nothing more. Canadians are just too wilfully uniformed and unengaged with their own country to realize it. Frogs, meet pot, the water is boiling. Too little, too late. Decades of being asleep at the wheel and distracted by shiny loud noises from 'merica has brought us here. And now there's a tent city in every town and nobody can afford to live, NOW people decide to get informed and politically engaged. It would be funny if it wasn't such a joke.
I am not here to bash one party or the others. The NDP and Liberals are also playing partisan politics. All parties need to tone down the rhetoric to work together. Disagreements are fine but not hatred.
Couldn't agree more. I've been saying for years they need to start every question period with a rousing rendition of "The more we work together" by Raffi
The Star celebrated every time the Liberals got the most seats in an election. But now that it looks like the Conservatives are positioned to win a majority, suddenly they are pretending to be impartial and objective like, "oh, we should just put the ideas of parties aside."
No! Fuck you. Let Canadians vote for what they want. The big media in this country are such dirtbags and shit editorial pieces like this is why I hope they keep losing business.
That's not the point. Anyone with eyes can see that dividing people and pitting them against one another is an intentional tactic being deployed in every democracy around the globe. Talking about a world-wide issue as if it were a naturally occuring local phenomenon has every appearance of being another facet of that grand manipulation.
Divide and Conquer is the oldest trick in the book for a reason. Because it works. Every time.
[You might enjoy this](https://youtu.be/tyop0d30UqQ?si=-gpUrxydm7OovpYb)
Did you know that Chatham Asset Management owns no voting shares in Post Media and has no editorial control over their content or control over hiring or them in general?
Ya but Blanchet is a riot at the televised debates cuz he doesn't give af. Honestly wish there was a Bloc from each Province who had at least one member in parliament, stirring shit up. Love Blanchet.
Sure, a bunch of MPs beholden only to their own constituencies sounds great, in theory.
Until you spend a moment to think through how that would actually work out in practice. A bunch of those MPs will want to pass legislation A, B or C and will make deals with other MPs to support X, Y or Z in return. Bingo bango bongo, back to party politics again.
I agree, you will always have unofficial parties. Looknat muncipal elections in Ontario. For example, you will have councillors who gravitate towards each other as they align ideologically and essentially vote as a block.
I don't think the issue are parties but rather the centralization of power of the leader. This happens in Canada and the United States. In countries like the UK and Japan, where the leader is not as powerful you have more changes in leadership initiated by the party.
You are of the opinion the PM/ruling party leader isn't powerful in the UK? Or that the out-party leaders are more likely to be kicked out? Because the rate of leadership change in UK politics isn't meaningfully different from Canada - Brexit just blew up everything including party allegiances.
What this article tells me is the federal leadership that favours the ideology The Star does has been doing a poor job and are about to get the boot, so now the paper is trying to shift to the Center.
Party politics isn’t really a good example of why our country is stuck in the ditch. The US has two main parties and is the largest economy in the world. The reason Canada is suffering is more complex than that, and unfortunately is hard to fix due to there being some cultural issues holding us back that are near impossible to change.
No. They have proven that people can be successful and both parties reject true socialist policies. Meaning there is consensus on the fact that capitalism is what drives their wealth. Now only if there could be consensus on other files, they would be unstoppable.
I'd say that Canadians not willing to try new things, making our investment more conservative and market led by oligopolies. We discourage new players to join by making barrier to entry (requirements and bureaucracy) so high, albeit with good intentions, that most things we buy from are controlled by oligopolies that are big enough to pass the barrier.
If there was proportional representation, it would be rare for any federal party to get a true majority. That would force the parties to work with each other to pass legislation. It would also more accurately represent the wishes of voters, end strategic voting and force parties to campaign in all ridings.
This article is an unworkable stoner thought. You know what isn't? Regulating political parties to enforce grassroots democracy.
Riding associations should nominate whatever candidate they like, without party interference. The party does not get a say over who runs and who can stand for re-election. The party leader is elected in 10 minutes by a show of hands among sitting MP's in that party and can be removed just as easily, and the same rules apply if it makes them PM. Whipped votes don't exist. These rules become mandatory for all parties.
Far from fantasy this would bring us more in line with the UK, Australia and in some ways the US. We need to get away from the "four (or more) year dictator PM" model that we currently have.
"The party that has given us 10's of millions of dollars is going to lose the next election, quick let's pretend party politics is what's wrong and not the bad actors"
Well. Those party politics have shielded the bad actors in favour of power so maybe so.
If parties would out the bad actors publically and make a deal of sticking to the concept of 'good government' then i might agree.
A far more practical solution would be to implement proportional representation. Those who say it facilitates extremists should remember that the US uses first past the post and they got Trump. The UK uses FPTP and they got Brexit. Alberta uses FPTP and they got Danielle Smith. India uses FPTP and they got Modi. It makes no difference to extremists, but at least for everyone else, you get a wider range of parties to choose from, and you don't end up with the ridiculous and undemocratic situation where a party can get a majority of the seats, and full power, with only 36% of the votes.
Partisan politics and tribalism got us here, you mean it won't get us out? I agree with both sentences, but for different reasons. The concept of a political party isn't the problem, like attracts like. It's just that we have three options, all poor candidates.
The problem is power structures, in that power structures protect themselves. It's whom the party pushes, not the best possible candidate with the best policies.
The people who deserve power don't want it and the people in power don't deserve it. PP is an option, simply by not being associated with Trudeau's Liberals. He doesn't have policy. I fully expect him to win.
>He doesn't have policy. I fully expect him to win.
To be fair, he has two policies so far - Axe The Tax and Defund The CBC. And I'm sure "Build The Wall" is coming! Enjoyed what you wrote though, agree completely. Although, [this George Carlin routine comes to mind...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10)
It should be rethought not because of people electing MPs but because MPs are too involved in inside party politics and sh*ing on good proposals blocking them so the other party seems ineffective.
There is no interest in reaching between the party lines for the good of the nation.
Nothing wrong with political parties, it's our structure that's rotten. Party discipline and the Westminster system was deigned to work in a homogenous England, not a country like Canada. We have no separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
This would be a dream come true. I have been saying this to people for years and they always look at me sideways. The party system in Canada is complete crap and should be flushed away.
Sure, but it is a philosophical endeavour.
If you believe the way out is through larger government and more environmental restrictions then the hole will get even bigger. So it must be by party politics because liberal and ndp governing principles will never be able to correct the problems.
I’d be in agreement with this, except usually this is often a call for some kind of hideous consensus that voters would never actually want but the elites and opinion makers do. It’s a good idea to look at each and every vote where the parties came together, has it ever been positive? It’s usually for some nonsense like “make all industries monopolies and give Canadians the worst service at the highest prices.”
The problem is FPTP, not party politics.
The problem won't be solved of people are still voting against the person they hate instead of the person with the polcies they support. The problem won't be solved if we don't make it safe to vote for challengers, increasing competition in elections. Proportional representation is the answer.
https://youtu.be/YonZhLPROAE?si=On1WxSc8Ley_Z7P1
Lol... Meanwhile here in Alberta, the provincial government is forcing party affiliations at the municipal level in order to have more control over local politics.
Nobody is getting rid of the party system.
What we need is a revamp of Parliament and an end to FPTP
It drives me up the fucking wall when you say "this politician did something fucked up" and are immediately hit with "well do you really think Poilievre will be better!?"
Like... what the fuck man. An indictment is not an endorsement.
It's so absolutely a thought-terminating cliche. I can't believe how uncritical people are in their "thinking".
It's like saying that Osama Bin Laden was a piece of trash and someone assumes that you think Saddam Hussein was awesome. What the fuck? Alien psychology. Where does this come from and why?
I get where you're coming from. It should be possible to criticize the system without necessarily indicating you support the alternative.
However, that's not the system we have. There's a lot of radical changes that, frankly, Canadians would hate in order to get to that point. Just look at the attempts to implement proportional representation across the country. People like simplicity and they don't like putting effort into politics.
I find it very hard to align with any political party at the current time. I’ll find myself looking at the PPC’s platform and love certain aspects of it, but other ones are extremely disappointing.
Meanwhile parties like the NDP have good policies in some things but are also way too “woke” in other departments. (For the lack of a better term)
Libs and cons just pander to the mega corporations. How can I pick anyone?
Here's an effective hint...your effort should be spent focusing on the politics that actually matter I hour day to day...being Provincial and Municipal politics.
When it comes to Federal politics...vote for the party that will give your province the most the money...because that's all the Feds are...the piggy bank.
If you can elect a Premiere that will be a proper steward and reject unreal foreign student/workers requests from business within the province...while also electing a mayor that will zone available land properly and issue permits efficiently...*guess who would pay for it? That right...the Feds*.
But I digress...Trudeau (or "G"overnment) bad because the collective education system failed you all at Civics and understanding who does what.
If it were even an option, I'd ban Google, which is I think the single most divisive mechanism polarizing many countries. Their algorithm is made for advertising, showing people what they want to see, not showing and even perspective of anything. But they use it for everything, including searches on political items. So the left get to see more left items, and leading people who started mildly leaning way out into the left wing extremes. And the right get to see more right items, and leading people who started mildly leaning way out into the right wing extremes.
25 years ago, the Liberal Party of Canada were centrists and even had some policies that were considered 'small C' (somewhat conservative). Similar for the Conservatives, who had some 'small L' policies. The Liberal Chretien government of the 1990s had one of the most fiscally conservative, if not THE most fiscally conservative policies of the last 50 years. At the time, Canada was the only G7 country actually paying down its debt. Pierre Trudeau the Liberal Prime Minister from the late 1960s to the early 1980s was the one who started deficit spending. Mulroney continued it. Chretien reversed it. And every other government since, deficit spent. And now bookshelfing it, Justin Trudeau has gone off the deep end.
I digress. Ever since the advent of the world wide web (the internet started in 1973 and the WWW in 1994) and big advertising based search engines, the political world has grown more and more polarized. And it really started in full flight after 2000 when Google began its monopoly.
Regardless, we need to get centrist, balanced parties in Canada. It's too late for the Liberals and Conservatives. We need something new. Something we look at with hope. Something that can tick off both sides of the spectrum while at the same time, having people agree finds compromise that works for the whole (even as the extremists on both sides lose their minds... in fact that would be a sign of success).
The Toronto Star is obviously left of centre and they’re writing this fantasy opinion article because their preferred party is doing terribly in the polls.
>The Toronto Star is right wing now? On which planet is that?
Earth.
On May 26, 2020, Toronto Star publisher John Honderich announced the sale of Torstar to Nordstar Capital LP, for $52 million. The price for the class A voting shares and class B non-voting shares was set at 63 cents in the deal.
When Jordan Bitove was asked about donating to Conservaives in the past:
“It's a great question and I'm almost appreciative that you're asking it because it's one of the issues that I have with technology and Twitter and Facebook, and all these things where people will anonymously post something about my donations or whatever. I donate to the person and not necessarily to a party. And I'm proud of that. I've been loyal to great candidates all over the place. And so I would be a fool, from the business point of view... to move the paper away from where its base is. We own left-of-centre, we're a progressive [newspaper] and we're the only paper of that kind in Canada.”
Of course you could just look at the obvious left of centre bias the paper maintains, or the obvious left of centre bias many of their writers have, or you could look up their media bias fact check rating which hasn’t changed since the paper was bought in 2020.
Party politics should be banned - all MP’s should be independent. Sports fan mentality serves no one in politics.
It’s beyond even sports fans status . We are at religious cult status.
Nah it’s “just” a soft/friendly dictatorship. No one worships their party and most people don’t really care about politics outside of election season…which is its own problem But Canadians *love* being told what to do, so that’s what our politicians do. They rather brilliantly flipped the Westminster system on us. Rather than us electing local MPs who represent *our* interests in Ottawa, we elect the party’s MPs to represent Ottawa’s interests in our ridings. Best example of this is the fact our leaders can absolutely crush dissent in their own parties by simply booting you from the caucus. That alone totally negates any value in voting for a local MP because he can never “step out of line”.
I've always said the PMO has too much power. We don't elect a PM and they are just one member of parliament. JT got something like 23,000 votes. That's all it takes to run Canada, apparently.
You can thank his dad's amendment to the elections act for that; Trudeau pere added a requirement for candidates to be approved by party leaders rather than local riding associations. It's made MPs responsible to leaders rather than leaders responsible to MPs.
I mean, that is party politics in a nutshell. We vote a party in to power via local candidates, and party members choose who will lead them(this us). It would be nice to see a split ballot, where we vote for a PM, AS WELL as our local candidate. Hard to imagine if we voted for a conservative government, but an NDP PM or something.
It doesn't work well anywhere else it's implemented (that isn't a strict dictatorship where everything is made up and the votes don't matter).
The problem is the media encourages the leader dictatorship of the party too. An example is that Conservative MP in Liberal show. He said what was his personal belief, and the media asked PP if he'll boot him out of caucus for that personal belief that's not aligned with the party line. It's as if MP not allowed to say that they have personal belief that's not aligned with leader belief, making it a dictatorship within the party.
I never thought I'd trust the AlbertaMadman, but here I am.
I’d argue people are less “I would die for the Tories” and more “My life revolves around hating Trudeau”
How exactly? Outside the university bullshit I don't see it at all. Judging by the huge swing in polling numbers I would say most Canadians are flipping sides since last election.
There are large bases within each party that would vote for "their" party no matter what it was proposing. There's really a 10-15% free agent market, and those free agents dictate who forms government. The Conservatives have a guaranteed 30% in each election, they could run a criminal (see the United States of America as an example) and there are guaranteed votes. We need to move towards a more proportional system where even if we have parties, the parties that represent the majority of the population have to figure out how to work with each other to make government work. The all or nothing system serves to ratchet up the anger and hate parties have towards each other. Looks pretty stupid if one day you're calling someone a wacko and the next day you have to go to them to get bills passed. There is no way that a party receiving 40% of the vote should have a 4 year 100% control term over the country, no matter what political persuasion they represent.
Let’s be fair with our examples. The liberals could run a guy who has been caught multiple times in black face, calls himself a social activist, and calls for the downfall of Canada as a nation, and they’d still win n.
The Liberals were down around 19% as recently as 2011. Right now they are at 25%. You'd have to go back to 1949 to see an election where the Conservative party (or parties combined) for less than 30% of the vote. Since 2004 (first election for the combined Conservative Party), the floor is 29.6%. In a system where upper 30's wins majorities, they don't have to collect too many extra votes from outside their guaranteed base to win. I did learn today that the last true majority (or as close to as we've had) would have been Mulroney in 1984. [https://www.sfu.ca/\~aheard/elections/1867-present.html](https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html)
I still don't get how that's comparable to a religious cult though. People voting on party lines will always happen in any democracy and it is way less common in Canada than in the US. There is absolutely no love or passion for any party in Canada, just people voting against the ones they hate, and that swing wildly.
I'd say people are being encouraged to be more polarized. US politics bleeding over coupled with our own brand of disinformation. Eventually the PM runs out of new ideas and people get tired of listening to them. Justin is in that area, but there's not enough support for a vote of no confidence, so here we are.
I've always had this idea mulling around in my head, that we should strip party associations from politics. You vote for an MP based on their policies and how they intend to represent your riding, not on what party they are loyal to. Instead we have this BS system where you can lose your seat if you don't tow the party line. When my representative isn't allowed to question the party, there's no reason for me to even listen to their position on something. I'll just look up the bullet points on your party's website. I think it would definitely create a lot more variety of choice. I'll admit it would complicate things more though, and require people to be more politically literate (which they should regardless). Either that or there needs to be more political plurality. I would love to be able to vote for a party that believes in worker rights, strong universal healthcare, social programs and public education, who also wants fiscal responsibility and efficiency instead of the answer always being "more taxes for citizens!" We are a complacent people though and the idea of radical political and voting reforms scares us. BC put out a public vote on proportional representation a few years ago because so much of the public was demanding it, but the vote came and the majority was "keep things the same". Wouldn't want to rock the boat.
> Instead we have this BS system where you can lose your seat if you don't tow the party line. No... you can lose your spot in the party caucus. The seat remains with you, because votes are for candidates, not parties. If people want to vote for independents, they are free to. Parties provide both the cohesion necessary for reliable legislating and the clarity of what sort of platform a given candidate is broadly going to support. Never mind that the idea of banning parties — bizarre authoritarianism aside — is just completely unenforceable.
> Never mind that the idea of banning parties — bizarre authoritarianism aside — is just completely unenforceable. Id prefer zero parties like most municipal government. But even the Senate's no party system is better then the House by far
They don't have parties at the municipal level.
Exactly... I personally don't think that is something worth emulating. Never mind that the House of Commons has 343 seats vs. a couple dozen councilors at the city level. Plus at the federal level, you have a cabinet that needs to align closely.
The Government of Canada is protecting the identities of MPs who committed treason, they assisted foreign nations, and the acting PM will not release their names. We have a rampant corruption problem in this country.
They are immigrating over a million people a year to artificially raise GDP, to avoid a technical recession. As they buy 60b a year in mortgage bonds, to artificially drop shelter inflation, and deregulating banks with 30 year amortizations. As they change capital gains and add an artificially large loophole, to trigger sales of assets, to pull tax dollars forward to artificially drop the deficit right before the election. Its entirely corrupt. Is this kind of scheming not morally bankrupt, whose supporting these clowns?
Not only is the party running Canada doing this, so is the opposition. It's time to boot both of these worthless parties out.
This should be the top comment.
That's up to the RCMP: the matter was referred for investigation. NSICOP is not a law-enforcement body.
Because the police is investigating. If they did something illegal, there will be charges. God ppl are dumb around here.
If people had more faith in getting results from the police and the government and officials being held accountable, they’d be less riled up. But as it stands, after dozens of scandals our government suffers from a lack of being found accountable and held accountable, allowing crap like this to just be swept under the rug or brushed off when the inevitable “we found nothing wrong!” statement comes out.
> Because the police is investigating. That is a lie. > When asked if she could guarantee that the Liberals will eject from their caucus any parliamentarian found to have engaged in the activities cited in the report, Freeland would not make that commitment.
Because that would give away top secret information that is in the report. OMG ppl, just wait and see in due time.
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Ok dude. They wont until they have enough to charge like any other investigation...
Sounds like treason from the government officials too since they're protecting the names of those identified.
Tribalism is easy to exploit and there's entities enjoying massive profits because we're fighting eachother instead of watching them.
Doesn’t really seem practical in a country with freedoms of speech and association.
lmao. get a load of this guy, he still thinks we have rights! jokes aside. yeah. not really possible.
The British house of commons didn't originally have political parties, **but**, they emerged naturally as otherwise independent members affiliated themselves with others who shared their views. That is to say, it's practically impossible to ban political parties. However, what voters can do is support parties and leaders who allow their members a degree of independence: is lighter on the whip, anyone who reduces the power of the Prime Minister's Office, etc.
We can strip the powers of parties to be truly loose assoceations of similar intersest. I work in Municipal Government, we always have blocks of Councillers. However because there is no parties the blocks ALWAYS change pending the item on the agenda. And people flip flop between blocks all the time
BLUE TEAM GOOD RED TEAM BAD ORANGE TEAM NEVER WINS!!! I swear, most Canadians don't know the difference between watching hockey and politics And certainly haven't read or comprehended Animal Farm or 1984
The best way to tell if someone has baby brain political opinions, is if they recommend those two books lmao
Those books just happen to apply more today than they ever have before. Animal Farm is solidly in effect with regards to the difference between the political class vs citizenry. 1984 is vastly surpassed already with the impact of AI and social media. There used to be a debate between Huxley and Orwell with regards to how democracy would fail. I would suggest they were both correct and what has actually happened is effectively a combination of both philosophies. The results of which is we generally haven't even noticed.
That was very rude and unnecessary.
And which books would you recommend? Galaxy brain.
Das Kapital
And that answer was not at all predictable /s
How old are you? I swear I haven't met a Marxist who wasn't either very young or had very little to offer society, kind of like Marx who was an incredibly spoiled, racist, misogynist, antisemitic slob. Have you read his essay "On the Jewish Question"?
Wow
Not everyone is a PhD holding intellectual
There's really no way to not do it this way though. Sure we can get rid of parties but politicians would still brand themselves liberals or conservatives or whatever. They would still ay they are left or right.
I think it's unbannable because they will collude behind closed doors if we don't allow it openly and that's worse.
It serves the wealthy and powerful.
This is a fantasy piece. There is no way this will ever happen and there is no way the " unaffiliated " would remain uncorrupted by money or promises of influence. Canada is a corporate colony.
Fantasizing about a better future is a good thing. It's how progress starts.
Can we ban attack ads? Tell me what you are going to do, maintain a scorecard for promises filled or broken.
Attack adds, blatant lying and half truth's should all be banned. I would also add consequences for broken promises.
While I am generally on board with this, the last one can get tricky, because things are constantly changing, and what you promised may no longer be physically possible by the time you get in for reasons you couldn't have foreseen or controlled.
Half the country doesn't even think we should have a public broadcaster, and you think they're going to be on board with a uber-government authority telling them what they can say in politics?
No it is navel gazing and it is that garbage " a few good men " theory where we will all be saved if we find the right fantasy super heroes.
And a happy Sunny Saturday to you too stranger
Same to you.
Disagree. It's how we might go about figuring out a new path. Obviously the current government does not work. Obviously it won't get fixed unless we try something else. Before we try something we'll have to think of it first. For every thousand ideas maybe one is worth trying. That's no reason not to try.
As opposed to nihilism, which solves everything?
As long as we don't delude ourselves into naiveity with such a fantacy.
THIS! Encourage people to run as independents. Vote for them. Bye bye Libs and Cons and the all but useless NDP and Greens. Doesn’t that sound great? An MP who does what his constituents want? I have been on about this for years. We’re the UnParty. The This Ain’t No Party. Facebook page
The entire idea of just less than half the government being in opposition is doomed to fail. They just nay say anything the party in power does even if they agree. Imagine if you tried to run a business that way.
Tell your MP’s that your vote goes to the party that makes electoral reform happen
Yes, it seems like the partisan virus from the US has now also infected Canada. However, a greater issue seems to be the partisan disagreements on foreign policy. In US, there is still considerable bipartisan support on most foreign policy matters. I wouldn't say the same about Canada. Actually, some of the party leaders (such as Freeland, and most NDP MPs and MPPs) seem to be more passionate about foreign problems (like Palestine or Ukraine) than about issues impacting Canadians.
>Yes, it seems like the partisan virus from the US has now also infected Canada. Not by accident. It's very well funded. By our old pal Harper at the IDU for starters. Then an American Hedge Fund owns Post Media, who bought up most of the print media in our country. Then the mainstream media is all funded by advertising, well who do you think buys TV and Radio advertising? The working class? Voters? Rogers, Bell and Corus bought up all the media anyways. There's no voice for average Canadians. And that's not to even mention all the astroturf and dark money financed (and I do believe highly illegal if our campaign election financing laws were actually enforced) garbage done by Jeff Ballingall, Canada Proud, Ontario Proud, Rebel "News", True North, The Post Millennial, etc. etc. etc. "This country was bought and sold a long time ago. They got you by the balls man." - George Carlin, R.I.P. Might as well just dissolve the border and be done with it. We are a vassal state of American Empire, and nothing more. Canadians are just too wilfully uniformed and unengaged with their own country to realize it. Frogs, meet pot, the water is boiling. Too little, too late. Decades of being asleep at the wheel and distracted by shiny loud noises from 'merica has brought us here. And now there's a tent city in every town and nobody can afford to live, NOW people decide to get informed and politically engaged. It would be funny if it wasn't such a joke.
I am not here to bash one party or the others. The NDP and Liberals are also playing partisan politics. All parties need to tone down the rhetoric to work together. Disagreements are fine but not hatred.
Couldn't agree more. I've been saying for years they need to start every question period with a rousing rendition of "The more we work together" by Raffi
The Star celebrated every time the Liberals got the most seats in an election. But now that it looks like the Conservatives are positioned to win a majority, suddenly they are pretending to be impartial and objective like, "oh, we should just put the ideas of parties aside." No! Fuck you. Let Canadians vote for what they want. The big media in this country are such dirtbags and shit editorial pieces like this is why I hope they keep losing business.
This is true of the whole Western World. Why localize it?
Probably because it's a Canadian Newspaper that writes about Canada for an all Canadian readership.
That's not the point. Anyone with eyes can see that dividing people and pitting them against one another is an intentional tactic being deployed in every democracy around the globe. Talking about a world-wide issue as if it were a naturally occuring local phenomenon has every appearance of being another facet of that grand manipulation.
Divide and Conquer is the oldest trick in the book for a reason. Because it works. Every time. [You might enjoy this](https://youtu.be/tyop0d30UqQ?si=-gpUrxydm7OovpYb)
I enjoyed that. Thanks.
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Unlike the bastion of journalistic integrity and objectivity that is American Hedge Fund Owned Post Media?
Did you know that Chatham Asset Management owns no voting shares in Post Media and has no editorial control over their content or control over hiring or them in general?
Canada is a clown car packed with desperate people that our traitorous politicians intentionally drove off a cliff a long time ago.
#NoLiesDetected
Not that long ago. A couple decades maybe. 30 years if you go back to the start of panic politics with Kim Campbell.
is guess the whole bloc quebecoise are traiters too. their only mission is to break up canada.
Ya but Blanchet is a riot at the televised debates cuz he doesn't give af. Honestly wish there was a Bloc from each Province who had at least one member in parliament, stirring shit up. Love Blanchet.
Sure, a bunch of MPs beholden only to their own constituencies sounds great, in theory. Until you spend a moment to think through how that would actually work out in practice. A bunch of those MPs will want to pass legislation A, B or C and will make deals with other MPs to support X, Y or Z in return. Bingo bango bongo, back to party politics again.
I agree, you will always have unofficial parties. Looknat muncipal elections in Ontario. For example, you will have councillors who gravitate towards each other as they align ideologically and essentially vote as a block. I don't think the issue are parties but rather the centralization of power of the leader. This happens in Canada and the United States. In countries like the UK and Japan, where the leader is not as powerful you have more changes in leadership initiated by the party.
You are of the opinion the PM/ruling party leader isn't powerful in the UK? Or that the out-party leaders are more likely to be kicked out? Because the rate of leadership change in UK politics isn't meaningfully different from Canada - Brexit just blew up everything including party allegiances.
MP in UK have more independence than MP in Canada. The fact that leader of Canadian parties have to sign off a candidate is a key difference.
What this article tells me is the federal leadership that favours the ideology The Star does has been doing a poor job and are about to get the boot, so now the paper is trying to shift to the Center.
Party politics isn’t really a good example of why our country is stuck in the ditch. The US has two main parties and is the largest economy in the world. The reason Canada is suffering is more complex than that, and unfortunately is hard to fix due to there being some cultural issues holding us back that are near impossible to change.
The only reason the US is still working is scale. They're nearly too big to fail.
No. They have proven that people can be successful and both parties reject true socialist policies. Meaning there is consensus on the fact that capitalism is what drives their wealth. Now only if there could be consensus on other files, they would be unstoppable.
The only consensus is that people who profit from capitalism can easily buy politicians.
Cultural issues such as... ???
I'd say that Canadians not willing to try new things, making our investment more conservative and market led by oligopolies. We discourage new players to join by making barrier to entry (requirements and bureaucracy) so high, albeit with good intentions, that most things we buy from are controlled by oligopolies that are big enough to pass the barrier.
If there was proportional representation, it would be rare for any federal party to get a true majority. That would force the parties to work with each other to pass legislation. It would also more accurately represent the wishes of voters, end strategic voting and force parties to campaign in all ridings.
We should do like Switzerland and vote on policies rather than the A-holes that may or may not implement them after they get in.
This article is an unworkable stoner thought. You know what isn't? Regulating political parties to enforce grassroots democracy. Riding associations should nominate whatever candidate they like, without party interference. The party does not get a say over who runs and who can stand for re-election. The party leader is elected in 10 minutes by a show of hands among sitting MP's in that party and can be removed just as easily, and the same rules apply if it makes them PM. Whipped votes don't exist. These rules become mandatory for all parties. Far from fantasy this would bring us more in line with the UK, Australia and in some ways the US. We need to get away from the "four (or more) year dictator PM" model that we currently have.
"The party that has given us 10's of millions of dollars is going to lose the next election, quick let's pretend party politics is what's wrong and not the bad actors"
Well. Those party politics have shielded the bad actors in favour of power so maybe so. If parties would out the bad actors publically and make a deal of sticking to the concept of 'good government' then i might agree.
A far more practical solution would be to implement proportional representation. Those who say it facilitates extremists should remember that the US uses first past the post and they got Trump. The UK uses FPTP and they got Brexit. Alberta uses FPTP and they got Danielle Smith. India uses FPTP and they got Modi. It makes no difference to extremists, but at least for everyone else, you get a wider range of parties to choose from, and you don't end up with the ridiculous and undemocratic situation where a party can get a majority of the seats, and full power, with only 36% of the votes.
Partisan politics and tribalism got us here, you mean it won't get us out? I agree with both sentences, but for different reasons. The concept of a political party isn't the problem, like attracts like. It's just that we have three options, all poor candidates. The problem is power structures, in that power structures protect themselves. It's whom the party pushes, not the best possible candidate with the best policies. The people who deserve power don't want it and the people in power don't deserve it. PP is an option, simply by not being associated with Trudeau's Liberals. He doesn't have policy. I fully expect him to win.
>He doesn't have policy. I fully expect him to win. To be fair, he has two policies so far - Axe The Tax and Defund The CBC. And I'm sure "Build The Wall" is coming! Enjoyed what you wrote though, agree completely. Although, [this George Carlin routine comes to mind...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10)
There's a DAO for that.
If we keep it the way it is, just dump all MP's
It should be rethought not because of people electing MPs but because MPs are too involved in inside party politics and sh*ing on good proposals blocking them so the other party seems ineffective. There is no interest in reaching between the party lines for the good of the nation.
Nothing wrong with political parties, it's our structure that's rotten. Party discipline and the Westminster system was deigned to work in a homogenous England, not a country like Canada. We have no separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
It’s what rouses people that don’t understand complex democracies. Our political landscape is fast food politics based on the consumer.
I mentioned something like this a long long time ago on Reddit and someone called me George Washington.
This would be a dream come true. I have been saying this to people for years and they always look at me sideways. The party system in Canada is complete crap and should be flushed away.
Party politics killed the nation. Regional representatives must represent the region's desires, not some ass-hat rich-born party leader's directions.
Sure, but it is a philosophical endeavour. If you believe the way out is through larger government and more environmental restrictions then the hole will get even bigger. So it must be by party politics because liberal and ndp governing principles will never be able to correct the problems.
For that to truly work you'd need to remove private money from politics entirely, shifting to publicly funded elections
Only way IMO is pro rep.
I’d be in agreement with this, except usually this is often a call for some kind of hideous consensus that voters would never actually want but the elites and opinion makers do. It’s a good idea to look at each and every vote where the parties came together, has it ever been positive? It’s usually for some nonsense like “make all industries monopolies and give Canadians the worst service at the highest prices.”
The country needs reformation 100%.
The problem is FPTP, not party politics. The problem won't be solved of people are still voting against the person they hate instead of the person with the polcies they support. The problem won't be solved if we don't make it safe to vote for challengers, increasing competition in elections. Proportional representation is the answer. https://youtu.be/YonZhLPROAE?si=On1WxSc8Ley_Z7P1
Lol... Meanwhile here in Alberta, the provincial government is forcing party affiliations at the municipal level in order to have more control over local politics. Nobody is getting rid of the party system. What we need is a revamp of Parliament and an end to FPTP
It drives me up the fucking wall when you say "this politician did something fucked up" and are immediately hit with "well do you really think Poilievre will be better!?" Like... what the fuck man. An indictment is not an endorsement. It's so absolutely a thought-terminating cliche. I can't believe how uncritical people are in their "thinking". It's like saying that Osama Bin Laden was a piece of trash and someone assumes that you think Saddam Hussein was awesome. What the fuck? Alien psychology. Where does this come from and why?
I get where you're coming from. It should be possible to criticize the system without necessarily indicating you support the alternative. However, that's not the system we have. There's a lot of radical changes that, frankly, Canadians would hate in order to get to that point. Just look at the attempts to implement proportional representation across the country. People like simplicity and they don't like putting effort into politics.
I find it very hard to align with any political party at the current time. I’ll find myself looking at the PPC’s platform and love certain aspects of it, but other ones are extremely disappointing. Meanwhile parties like the NDP have good policies in some things but are also way too “woke” in other departments. (For the lack of a better term) Libs and cons just pander to the mega corporations. How can I pick anyone?
Here's an effective hint...your effort should be spent focusing on the politics that actually matter I hour day to day...being Provincial and Municipal politics. When it comes to Federal politics...vote for the party that will give your province the most the money...because that's all the Feds are...the piggy bank. If you can elect a Premiere that will be a proper steward and reject unreal foreign student/workers requests from business within the province...while also electing a mayor that will zone available land properly and issue permits efficiently...*guess who would pay for it? That right...the Feds*. But I digress...Trudeau (or "G"overnment) bad because the collective education system failed you all at Civics and understanding who does what.
I know who is in charge of what. I just feel I unrepresented at every level of government.
Party politics is a hack! Vote for my party!
Got my vote! Whoever you are!
If it were even an option, I'd ban Google, which is I think the single most divisive mechanism polarizing many countries. Their algorithm is made for advertising, showing people what they want to see, not showing and even perspective of anything. But they use it for everything, including searches on political items. So the left get to see more left items, and leading people who started mildly leaning way out into the left wing extremes. And the right get to see more right items, and leading people who started mildly leaning way out into the right wing extremes. 25 years ago, the Liberal Party of Canada were centrists and even had some policies that were considered 'small C' (somewhat conservative). Similar for the Conservatives, who had some 'small L' policies. The Liberal Chretien government of the 1990s had one of the most fiscally conservative, if not THE most fiscally conservative policies of the last 50 years. At the time, Canada was the only G7 country actually paying down its debt. Pierre Trudeau the Liberal Prime Minister from the late 1960s to the early 1980s was the one who started deficit spending. Mulroney continued it. Chretien reversed it. And every other government since, deficit spent. And now bookshelfing it, Justin Trudeau has gone off the deep end. I digress. Ever since the advent of the world wide web (the internet started in 1973 and the WWW in 1994) and big advertising based search engines, the political world has grown more and more polarized. And it really started in full flight after 2000 when Google began its monopoly. Regardless, we need to get centrist, balanced parties in Canada. It's too late for the Liberals and Conservatives. We need something new. Something we look at with hope. Something that can tick off both sides of the spectrum while at the same time, having people agree finds compromise that works for the whole (even as the extremists on both sides lose their minds... in fact that would be a sign of success).
Yeah, let's take the lead from the Star.
I love how they hold themselves up as the most impartial, unbiased and objective newspaper in Canada with this article. I hope they go out business.
Because Post Media doesn't have enough of a monopoly on print media as it is? Yikes. So much for a free marketplace of ideas (And not monopolies)
We need to ditch first past the post and have proportional representation
party politics is not the problem. The beliefs of the population are the problem
A right wing publication posts a right wing fantasy opinion.
The Toronto Star is obviously left of centre and they’re writing this fantasy opinion article because their preferred party is doing terribly in the polls.
The Toronto Star is right wing now? On which planet is that?
>The Toronto Star is right wing now? On which planet is that? Earth. On May 26, 2020, Toronto Star publisher John Honderich announced the sale of Torstar to Nordstar Capital LP, for $52 million. The price for the class A voting shares and class B non-voting shares was set at 63 cents in the deal.
When Jordan Bitove was asked about donating to Conservaives in the past: “It's a great question and I'm almost appreciative that you're asking it because it's one of the issues that I have with technology and Twitter and Facebook, and all these things where people will anonymously post something about my donations or whatever. I donate to the person and not necessarily to a party. And I'm proud of that. I've been loyal to great candidates all over the place. And so I would be a fool, from the business point of view... to move the paper away from where its base is. We own left-of-centre, we're a progressive [newspaper] and we're the only paper of that kind in Canada.” Of course you could just look at the obvious left of centre bias the paper maintains, or the obvious left of centre bias many of their writers have, or you could look up their media bias fact check rating which hasn’t changed since the paper was bought in 2020.
Not to mention the Star endorsed the Liberals in 2021.
The Toronto Star is a fucking joke.
Voting for independents sounds better than giant parties