Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Thoughts on Yesterday's Canadian Election: Harper Still Doesn't Speak for Canada Tuesday's election -- prompted by the ambition of the right-wing Conservative party leader Harper to split the progressive vote sufficiently to convert his minority support into a majority government under Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system -- was bound to disappoint everyone. The Canadian electorate remains ornery and angry at the war-mongering Bush-adoring Harper, at the bumbling, scandal-tainted Liberal opposition, at our helplessness in the face of our Southern neighbour's government's arrogance, stupidity, self-loathing and thirst for blood, about our dependence on our natural resources and the environmental devastation their extraction wreaks, and about our failure to be the nation of the 21st century that many thought we might be. But so far we are not angry enough to vote into power a truly progressive government -- the three "third parties" (New Democrats, Greens and Bloc QuÈbecois) are all well left-of-centre socially and economically but remain perpetually on the fringes of power, and so enamoured of their parochial interests that they are unable to get together and present a unified and unambiguous progressive voice.  So we got treated to a virtual replay of the election of two years ago -- the Conservatives got the same 37% of the vote, but nearly won a majority of seats because of a shift in the votes among the two thirds of Canadians who loathe the Conservatives (surveys suggest that in a single-transferable vote system they would get almost no second-place votes). What should be happening is that the Liberal leader should be pulling together a coalition of the four opposition parties to create a government that reflects the interests of the 63% of Canadians who support progressive, not reactionary, government. If we had proportional representation, such as a STV system, the Conservatives would have only 113 seats (they got 143), the Liberals 83 (they got 76) , the NDP 58 (they got 37), the Bloc 31 (they got 50), and the Greens 22 (they got none; in fact, because a lot of Greens voted strategically instead of "wasting" their Green votes, the Greens under a PST system would probably have more than 40 seats today). If that were the case, the idea of an out-of-touch 37% running the government and bragging that they had a "renewed and increased mandate to govern" would be seen as as preposterous as it really is. Such a colossal waste of energy, time and money ($300 million, just to run the election). The fact that the turnout was a record low really says it all. It really shows how dysfunctional our electoral system is. And the fact that Canadians fell for Harper's Bush-inspired character assassination of the Liberal leader, and Harper's falsely smearing the idea of a carbon tax as an "additional tax burden" (the scheme is revenue neutral and would only punish polluters and gas gulpers) was really disappointing -- it demonstrated how depressingly effective negative, dumbed-down campaign advertising can be. Ugh. Here we are, again, in the same place. Category: Canadian Politics 3:41:30 PM  trackback []  comment []

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