FPTP vs MMP

[JoeHill]

Christopher Browne wrote: 

> On 10/9/07, JoeHill <joehill-R6A+fiHC8nRWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Really? Seems to me that the retards that we have in power federally don't
> > have a majority and have undertaken some of the most radical and unpopular
> > reformations of Canadian policy in generations, and they did it in just
> > over a year.  
> 
> What "most radical and unpopular reformations"?

A few of many examples:

1. Completely reversing our position on Kyoto. Last poll I saw showed 80% of
Canadians opposed this.

2. Abandoning Canada's commitment to a two-state solution in the conflict
between the Israelis and Palestinians and implementing a totally pro-Israel
policy that makes American neo-cons salivate.

3. Increasing military spending by many billions of dollars, and eviscerating
our commitment to the role of peacekeeper.

4. Taking the first steps toward private health care, allowing the first
for-profit clinic to open in British Columbia, and encouraging Alberta to set
up its own parallel private system. Harper is on record promising that he
would "not tolerate a parallel private system", but that was before he was
elected.

> a) Continuing the previous Liberal's policy of having troops in Afganistan?

I saw this one coming a mile away. Very popular.

Anyway, the Liberals committed us to Afghanistan with the understanding that
our role would be limited in terms of both duration and character. Harper has
now made our deployment there open-ended and at this point our soldiers are
engaging in 'counter-insurgency' warfare almost exclusively, something never
agreed to by the Liberals. This explains why Canadians' concern with this issue
has increased by ten times in the last ten months, and sadly, why there has
been a drastic increase in the number of our soldiers coming back in black bags.
 
> b) Cutting the GST rate, which was one of the unfulfilled promises of
> the previous Liberal governments?

Amazingly, most Canadians do not give a rat's ass about the GST. Taxation ranks
very low in terms of what is considered important, after the environment, health
care, education, and the Afghan war.

This changes, of course, among people with more disposable income, which is
not surprising at all, considering who makes up the core constituency of the
Conservatives.
 
> My MP has sent me letters claiming this sort of thing, but just
> because an opposition MP *says* that this is so does not mean that the
> Honourable Member is actually telling anything that resembles truth.

You could always look it up.
 
> Indeed, if the Conservatives were actually 'guilty' of such, then the
> REALITY is that it was the incompetence of a succession of Liberal
> governments, including current Liberal opposition, for putting in
> place the conditions making whatever it is that is accused possible.

Ah, yes. The old 'everything is the Liberals fault, even if Harper did it'. I
love that one. I'm surprised you didn't also blame the media for 'making them
look bad', they usually go together.
 
> > Again, the right-wing hysteria ends up being the exact opposite of the
> > truth.  
> 
> Well, left-wing hysteria also seems to be the exact opposite of the
> truth.  Minority governments don't get to enact the legislation that
> they want to; they get to enact the legislation that the coalition
> will agree to.  And none of the *other* bits of the coalitions that
> have had to be built, Federally, were "wild right wing hysterics."

The Conservatives are not _in_ a coalition, but they have played a great deal
with 'hysterics' in order to get their way, constantly threatening to call an
election if even one of their agenda items is defeated, which scares the
bejeezus out of the hapless Liberals. More substantively, though, they've used
some convenient alliances with the Bloc Quebecois in order to avoid being
brought down by a no-confidence vote from the Liberals and NDP.

Of course, he can only do these things because, and this is where we tie back
into the discussion at hand, we use a ridiculously outdated Parliamentary riding
system which lets him and anachronisms like the Bloc dominate the House,
despite the fact that together they represent less than half of the popular
vote. If the parties were represented more according to popular vote as under
something like the MMP, I'd wager Harper would still be writing insignificant
and unread policy papers for those wackjobs at the NCC, with titles like 'Public
Education is Communism!'.

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
Bender: "Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending." 
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