Abacus Data’s latest polling has the federal Conservatives out to their biggest lead in over a decade. Unless there is a drastic change over the summer, Canadians ought to prepare for a Conservative majority at some point in the next year or so....
So just like now then. The Liberals are backed by the NDP and maintain power.
Germany has been dominated by two parties since the war under MMP. And proportional representation has done absolutely nothing to inhibit the right wing authoritarians coming into power in much of Eastern Europe, and making gains in Western Europe.
In Israel, Netanyahu's Likud control government with the support of 24% of the electorate in the last election. He had to put together a dog's breakfast of even more extreme parties to do it, but that's always a possibility in that sort of system.
No, he didn't. This is the fantasy narrative that election reformers tell themselves.
The reality is that these efforts always blow up because there is never a consensus on what to change it to, and the general public just doesn't care.
And with the blowback they got for their efforts, they won't touch it again for at least another 15-20 years. The CPC would never even consider it. The NDP are as far from power as ever being essentially dead east of Ontario, and spotty through the rest of the country.
So people can sulk if they want to, but it's going to be status quo for the foreseeable future.
Anyone with experience in politics knows why the Liberals did what they did.
IF the Liberals had pushed through the legislation, the CPC and Bloc were both going to portray it a Liberal power grab, and that message would definitely get traction. The CPC had already said they'd revert back to FPTP, and the Bloc was making noises that they'd back them up.
That's why the Liberals went out of their way to do what they did. What they didn't expect was the NDP going all or nothing on MMP, a system that laypeople find difficult to understand, and certainly not one to be explained easily in a sound bite.
Internal Liberal polling, not the dog and pony online poll, found that most people didn't care, but could easily be convinced it was a power grab. They were putting a lot of effort in something that had no upside, but a pile of potential downside.
They cut their losses, and aside from online forums, paid little price for it.
No, not the committee, in the electorate.
You can get a small majority to support switching away from FPTP. Then the supporters split into MMP, Ranked, STV, and a number of hybrid systems. That's the primary reason why it has repeatedly lost at the provincial level.
No. That's a completely reductivist take. They gave it a shot, the NDP were MMP or bust, the CPC got the others to agree to a referendum that they knew would fail. At that point the project was dead.
MMP is difficult to explain to anyone uninterested in electoral reform, ie the majority of voters. Include things like party lists and members at large, and you can get some pretty significant drawbacks. There was also the more likely possibility of constitutional issues than with STV or ranked ballot, given the seat allocations outlined in the constitution.
Ranked or STV are easy to explain, ranked especially. Ridings and the ballots don't even need to change. Instead of an X, put numbers in the circle. Easy-peasy to explain.
Comments from people who have never had real exposure to the political system are useful as tits on a fish.
Being an MP or MLA is an absolute grind. Even more so now with myriad anonymous threats being levied at not only you but your family. They have some reimbursements, but inevitably end up spending some of that pay on expenses.
And for the most part, they aren't rich.
Here is the list from Manitoba MPs:
Niki Ashton NDP university lecturer
James Bezan CPC Rancher, crop adjuster
Ben Carr Lib Teacher, consultant
Raquel Dancho CPC --
Terry Duguid Lib Non-profit organizer
Ted Falk CPC Construction company owner
Leah Gazan NDP Lecturer
Kevin Lamoureaux Lib ATC assistant & Military
Branden Leslie CPC --
Larry Maguire CPC Farmer, Lobbyist
Dan Mazier CPC Pres Keystone Agricultural Producers
Marty Morantz CPC Lawyer
Dan Vandal Lib Middleweight Boxer, Social worker
Bezan (CPC), Falk (CPC), Maguire (CPC), Mazier (CPC) and Morantz (CPC) are pretty well off. The rest are doing okay, but hardly rich.
Dancho (CPC) and Leslie (CPC) went from school right into politics.
A former MP that I new pretty well was a teacher and served on a small city council, an unpaid position in those days, before getting into federal, and then provincial politics. He was the hardest working person I knew.
He got calls at all hours as a federal MP regarding garbage pickup and street plowing FFS. Some constituents were completely clueless as to what level of government does what. He'd listen and try to direct them to the right people, and the only thing he got in return was abuse.
Corporate taxes used to cover over 30% of government revenue, it's 10% now. The top marginal income tax rate peaked in the 1960s at somewhere around 80% on income exceeding ~3M/year (today's money). We've had 4 decades of tax cuts while the cost of delivering services has increased more or less with the inflation rate. Private equity funds now have favourable tax treatment, and stock buybacks, previously considered illegal stock manipulation is a common practice. And so on and so forth.
If you want what you had, you have to do what you did.
Trudeau's government isn't a far right as the Chretien Liberals, let alone the Mulroney PCs.
People forget the cost cutting and devolution of healthcare and other programs that occurred under Chretien in the name of balancing the federal budget, a policy they kept right through the Chretien and Martin years.
They actively avoided getting into social policy reform as much as possible. For example, weed legalization was absolutely shot down by that government. In this aspect they were largely a care-taker government.
Trudeau has expanded public programs, legalized weed, prioritized diversity in cabinet, etc.
Pierre Trudeau was written off for each of his last three elections. He ended up in power from 1968 until 1984, broken only by the 7 months of minority PC government under Clark.
The Liberals aren't campaigning, while PP has been burning cash in election mode for months. Once the writ is dropped, it's a completely different ball game. The Liberals were in third place behind the CPC and NDP when the writ was dropped in 2015. Campaigns matter.
Two income family with real estate in Ottawa and Calgary, during a big real estate boom, plus being a cabinet minister for much of his twenty years in the House will do that. Given that, his net worth (estimated to be $5M) isn't extraordinary.
That's been a thing forever in the Atlantic provinces. Fish, forestry, military or move.
I ended up moving from NB in 2009, with the company saying I could move back when work improved. Fifteen years later, I'm still in the West and the people who made the promise are long gone.
I'm hoping to retire and move home in a few years. I've had enough.
"Oh, I miss the green and the woods and streams
And I don't like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me
An idiot, I suppose"
The estimate is that 60,000 tonnes of material will need to be sifted through, an effort that will take up to three years and between $84M and $186M dollars, with absolutely no guarantee of success.
It's a performative act and waste of resources. I'd much rather see the $90M go towards funding for addictions and mental health supports, and for homeless shelters. Care for the living, the dead no longer care.
Every almost every season there are a few fishermen who get lost at sea. The CG and DFO will search for a few days then call off the search. It's tragic, but it's the way it is.
Consider a standard sedan with two axles and a total weight of 2 tons. Assuming an even distribution, each of its axles would bear the weight of 1 ton. Now consider a semitruck with eight axles and a weight of 40 tons -- each of its axles would weigh 5 tons. The relative damage done by each axle of the truck can be calculated with the following equation, and comes out to 625 times the damage done by each axel of the sedan.
Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan.
Fairly sure that truckers aren't paying 2500x what passenger vehicles are paying in taxes/fees.
also from the same article:
“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller -- orders of magnitude smaller -- that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Alberta currently has the most expensive residential electricity by far at 25.8¢ /kWh for the first 1000kWh including all fees. Saskatchewan is second most expensive at 19.9¢ /kWh.
Ontario is down at 14.1¢ /kWh and Manitoba is at 10.2¢ /kWh. Quebec is cheapest at 7.8¢ /kWh.
The top marginal tax rate in the US peaked in 1951 at 92% on income in excess of $400k (joint filing two income), the equivalent of about $4.7M in today's money. That should come back.
The problem was, the Liberals favoured ranked ballot but would consider STV, the NDP wouldn't support anything other than MMP, the CPC wouldn't support any change, and the Bloc just wanted to play spoiler. The Liberals were in a minority on the committee because they needed to be to ensure legitimacy. If they'd just imposed a system, the CPC had already said they'd overturn it whenever they gained power. Having cross-party agreement would have made that much more difficult. The only system they could get agreement on was MMP, which is what the committee recommended.
MMP is good for proportionality, but it can have issues with party lists, members not tied to geographic areas can be difficult to remove, and responsibility for geographic areas is shared, making it easier to dodge. Whether MMP would even pass constitutional muster is an open question. The biggest drawback is explaining the system to a general public who only have known a one vote, one member, one riding system. Ranked or STV are much easier to explain and the current ridings wouldn't need to change.
Anyway, the Bloc and CPC were going to campaign hard on calling any change a Liberal power grab. Internal polling (not the dog and pony show web poll) showed that most voters didn't care about the issue, but the "Liberal Power Grab" would gain traction. With the CPC promising to roll back any changes, the whole thing looked more and more like an effort in futility.
In the end, they decided to take their lumps and move on. After all the heat they took for even trying, as far as the Liberals are concerned, the issue is dead. Basically a similar story arc as every time a provincial government has looked at it.
The CPC never wanted it in the first place, and won't bring it up if in power. The NDP essentially don't exist at the federal level east of Ontario, have a shot at maybe a handful of seats on Ontario, a few more in Manitoba, will be shut out of Saskatchewan and Alberta but will pick up seats in BC. The Bloc will continue to play spoiler, and the Greens, after their self immolation, are irrelevant at the federal level.
I live on the Assiniboine near the Legislature, and see a fair number of people bike every day regardless.
When the river freezes deep enough, and they have the ice trail prepped like last year, there were lots. Depending on neighbourhood, it was actually quicker getting downtown in winter than in summer.
The problem was, the Liberals favoured ranked ballot but would consider STV, the NDP wouldn't support anything other than MMP, the CPC wouldn't support any change, and the Bloc just wanted to play spoiler. The Liberals were in a minority on the committee. The only system they could get agreement on was MMP, which is what the committee recommended.
MMP is good for proportionality, but it can have issues with party lists, members not tied to geographic areas can be difficult to remove, and responsibility for geographic areas is shared, making it easier to dodge. Whether MMP would even pass constitutional muster is an open question. The biggest drawback is explaining the system to a general public who only have known a one vote, one member, one riding system. Ranked or STV are much easier to explain and the current ridings wouldn't need to change.
Anyway, the Bloc and CPC were going to campaign hard on calling any change a Liberal power grab. Internal polling (not the dog and pony show web poll) showed that most voters didn't care about the issue, but the "Liberal Power Grab" would gain traction. With the CPC promising to roll back any changes, the whole thing looked more and more like an effort in futility.
In the end, they decided to take their lumps and move on. After all the heat they took for even trying, as far as the Liberals are concerned, the issue is dead. Basically a similar story arc as every time a provincial government has looked at it.
They knew that if they didn't get buy-in from the other parties, the next time say the CPC government got in, they were going to go back to FPTP. Now they were very unlikely to get the CPC on board, but having the NDP and Bloc would have made it more politically difficult for the CPC to roll back changes.
The CPC and Bloc were absolutely going to run on any change being a Liberal power grab. Being a minority on the committee helped defuse that argument.
Any sort of referendum was going to fail. It was the CPC's poison pill. All of the parties were running internal polls telling them the same thing.
MMP is the most proportional, also the one most likely to run into constitutional challenges, and the one most likely to fail in a referendum due simply to how difficult it is to explain to people not interested in electoral reform, ie, almost everyone.
If the NDP had agreed to go to ranked ballot or single transferable vote as at least an interim measure, something could have happened. NDP went for broke and rolled snake eyes.
Electoral reform is dead for at least the next 10-20 years. The Liberals are feeling burnt for trying. The NDP are as far from power as ever. The CPC just won't. And the Bloc will remain spoilers.
Off the Siberian coast, not far from Alaska, a Russian ship has been docked at port for four years. The Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, sends energy to around 200,000 people on land using next-wave nuclear technology: small modular reactors....
Vogtle 3 & 4 are AP1000s. Construction started in 2013 (preliminary work had started before this, but a design change halted it). Unit 3 was originally supposed to complete commissioning in 2017, but only happened last year. Unit 4 should be online this year. The initial $12B budget went to $14B at the start of construction, but will end up somewhere over $30B.
V.C . Summer in South Carolina has a similar project with two AP1000s. The initial budget was $9B, but the project was cancelled while under construction when projections put the total cost over $23B.
There have been 6 EPRs built, Flamanville-3, Olkiluoto-3, Taishan-1 & 2, and Hinkley Point C (2 units).
All of them are/were massively over budget and behind schedule.
Olkiluoto started construction in 2005, was supposed to complete commissioning in 2010, but only came online last year. Costs went from €3B to somewhere over €11B, the contract 'not-to-exceed' amount.
Flamanville started construction in 2007, was supposed to complete commissioning in 2012, but is projected to complete commissioning late this year. Costs went from €3.3B to somewhere over €20B.
Hinkley Point C is still under construction. It's difficult to put an actual start date because a pile of preliminary site prep work happened prior to real construction starting. Concrete was poured in 2016 though and it was supposed to be operational in 2023. They're now estimating 2028 at the earliest. Costs have gone from £16B to and estimated £35B.
Taishan 1 & 2 started construction in 2009/10 and went online in 2018/19, roughly 5 years late. Unit 1 had to be taken offline for a year due to faulty fuel bundles. Both units have had reliability issues. Costs ended up at the equivalent of $7.5B, almost double the original estimate.
Danielle Smith’s Big Pierre Poilievre Problem (thetyee.ca)
Abacus Data’s latest polling has the federal Conservatives out to their biggest lead in over a decade. Unless there is a drastic change over the summer, Canadians ought to prepare for a Conservative majority at some point in the next year or so....
Poll shows 4 in 5 Canadians oppose MP pay raise (www.taxpayer.com)
Housing Crisis, Packed Hospitals and Drug Overdoses: What Happened to Canada? (www.bloomberg.com)
What a mystery this is.
Why Poilievre Will Win | The Walrus (thewalrus.ca)
No mention of the NDP. If only that was the “something different” people were willing to try.
On April 1, Canadian MPs will earn world's second-highest salary for elected officials (nationalpost.com)
I used to judge people who chose to leave Newfoundland for work. Then I had to leave, too (www.cbc.ca)
Ottawa and Manitoba commit $20M each to landfill search for remains of slain women (www.aptnnews.ca)
A tax on electric vehicles and a new property levy (www.cbc.ca)
Albertans will pay more if they smoke, vape, or drive an EV.
Ontario goes backward on heat pumps (www.thespec.com)
Encouraging heat pumps over natural gas would lower long-term costs for homeowners and reduce Ontario's CO2 emissions.
Let’s Set a Maximum Wage for the Rich | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)
Alberta intends to opt out of national pharmacare plan (globalnews.ca)
Alberta intends to opt out of the proposed national pharmacare plan.
Electoral reform didn’t happen. What it means for your vote — CBC (yewtu.be)
Three auto theft convictions should mean three years in prison: Poilievre (www.ctvnews.ca)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says repeat car thieves should not be allowed to serve their sentence 'in their living room watching Netflix.'
Will Trudeau end up regretting his decision to walk away from electoral reform? (www.cbc.ca)
New-wave reactor technology could kick-start a nuclear renaissance — and the US is banking on it (www.cnn.com)
Off the Siberian coast, not far from Alaska, a Russian ship has been docked at port for four years. The Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, sends energy to around 200,000 people on land using next-wave nuclear technology: small modular reactors....