Canadian Politics

PJfanwillneverleave1 said:

dignin said:

http://abacusdata.ca/election-2015-may-trudeau-and-mulcair-images-improve-harper-negatives-rise/

Public feelings about the leaders of Canada’s three main political parties has been shifting.

Negative feelings about Stephen Harper are on the rise. Mr. Harper’s best ratings in the last 18 months were last December, when 34% were positive and 38% were negative towards the Conservative leader. Since then, his negatives are up 9 points to 47%, the highest level since March 2014.

Tom Mulcair’s ratings had been stable until the spring of this year. Since May, his positives have risen from 27% to 41% while his negatives have stayed low.

For Justin Trudeau, the news is also good. His positives had been drifting down over several months, but have spiked back upwards by 5 points this month to 35%.

Elizabeth May’s ratings have increased slightly from last month from 17% positive to 25% positive.

All these stats and percentages are meaningless and you sound like the Charlie brown teacher when you spew this stuff.
It means nothing.
Positives have spiked, increased? What the fuck does that even mean?

Haha. Things not going your way? Someone sounds a little butthurt.

This was too good not to share

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-oh-harper-forgive-us-we-misjudged-you-over-the-duffy-affair


Andrew Coyne: Sympathy for Harper — imagine learning everyone you trusted lied to you


I am beginning to think we have done Stephen Harper a disservice. No, I’m sure we have. In fact, I think we — and by we I mean the media, me included — have been grossly unfair to him, and never more so than in the matter of Mike Duffy’s expenses.

You will be familiar with the picture we have created of him: suspicious, paranoid, controlling, a leader who trusts no one, leaves nothing to others, insists on taking a hand in even the smallest matter. Well, you’d be suspicious, paranoid and controlling, too, if everyone around you was lying to you all the time.

Consider what we have learned about the Duffy affair. More to the point, consider what he has learned. Wholly without his knowledge, several of his closest advisers, including his chief of staff, his principal secretary, and his legal counsel, together with his Senate house leader, the chairman of the Conservative party fundraising arm and the party lawyer, conspired over a period of several months to pay Duffy for his improperly claimed living expenses, then to pretend to the public that he had repaid them out of his own pocket, then to attempt to block, shut down, or rewrite a confidential audit, then finally to rewrite a Senate committee report so as to absolve Duffy of any fault.

But it did not end there. Not content with deceiving the prime minister about this complex plan, with the enormous risks — legal, political, personal — it entailed, they stood by and let him make a series of (unwittingly!) false statements to Parliament and the public about it: not only that Duffy had paid his own expenses, but when it emerged that he had not, that the whole scheme had been the work of one man, Nigel Wright. Not only did he know nothing of it, the prime minister was allowed to say on multiple occasions — indeed, he would have put a stop to it had he known — but neither did anyone else.


Imagine the sense of betrayal he must have felt — the vertigo, the nausea — as it slowly dawned on him that everything he had been led to believe about the whole affair was a lie: that in fact, everyone knew. Everyone, that is, but him. Imagine the humiliation, to have been played for a patsy in this way — him, Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada — and what is more, for the whole world to know it. He is a proud man, but not immune to feelings of self-doubt. Would anyone respect him now? Could he carry on as leader, if he were not master even of his own office?

It must have felt like the room was spinning, like the earth was opening up in front of him. Inevitably, there must have been a certain amount of self-recrimination. How could he have been so blind? Why had he not suspected? Little things that seemed innocent before — the way everyone suddenly shut up when he entered the room, that time Nigel borrowed his Blackberry without asking — must have suddenly taken on a darker hue.

And then, the fears: If he could have been kept in the dark about this, he must have wondered, if the people he trusted most could have conspired in such a scheme, so repugnant to him in every respect, and not only done so but lied about it to his face, and gone on lying even after the scheme had been exposed — for he must surely have made the most searching inquiries after the story first broke — well, what else could they have been up to all these years? What else did he know nothing about? What other lies had they told him? These things don’t usually happen just once, after all. There’s usually a pattern.

And yet, this good man, deceived, humiliated, betrayed on all sides, found it in his heart to forgive them. You or I, had we found ourselves in the same position, might have taken the most foul sort of revenge: fired the lot, paraded them in front of the media, forced them to answer for what they had done. But that is not, we can see now, Harper’s way: this supposedly ruthless autocrat, this cold, vindictive brute of caricature, responded to this monumental breach of trust with comprehensive mercy. No one was fired, though some were allowed to leave. Some are even travelling with him on his campaign. He was even going to forgive Wright, and would have, had it tested better.

But now the braying jackals in the press gallery are demanding he fire Ray Novak, Wright’s replacement as chief of staff, after evidence was presented at Duffy’s trial that he, too, knew that Wright had paid off Duffy, contrary to every statement he or Harper or anyone in his office had made until, well, this very week. In the name of all that’s decent: can’t they at least let the man grieve a little? For God’s sake, this is Ray Novak we’re talking about, the closest of his closest advisers, the one commonly described as being “like a son” to him — his eyes and ears, the guy he depended on to tell him things. And now he finds out that even Novak was lying to him? The press complain Harper won’t answer their questions. Frankly, I’m amazed he can even stand upright.

Oh, we have misjudged him, all right. More than that, we have mistreated him. After what Harper has gone through these last two years, he deserves not our condemnation, but our deepest sympathy.

PJfanwillneverleave1 said:

dignin said:

PJfanwillneverleave1 said:

dignin said:

http://abacusdata.ca/election-2015-may-trudeau-and-mulcair-images-improve-harper-negatives-rise/

Public feelings about the leaders of Canada’s three main political parties has been shifting.

Negative feelings about Stephen Harper are on the rise. Mr. Harper’s best ratings in the last 18 months were last December, when 34% were positive and 38% were negative towards the Conservative leader. Since then, his negatives are up 9 points to 47%, the highest level since March 2014.

Tom Mulcair’s ratings had been stable until the spring of this year. Since May, his positives have risen from 27% to 41% while his negatives have stayed low.

For Justin Trudeau, the news is also good. His positives had been drifting down over several months, but have spiked back upwards by 5 points this month to 35%.

Elizabeth May’s ratings have increased slightly from last month from 17% positive to 25% positive.

All these stats and percentages are meaningless and you sound like the Charlie brown teacher when you spew this stuff.
It means nothing.
Positives have spiked, increased? What the fuck does that even mean?

Haha. Things not going your way? Someone sounds a little butthurt.

What?
All I am saying is that polls and percentages are useless and you sound like the Charlie brown teacher when you repeat that crap.

Your copied paste wreaks of unprofessional junior journalism.
Speak your mind about this election campaign not what others may tell you.
Polls, ha
Dumb

I'm glad to know I'm also a junior journalist! I had know idea I was even in the profession. I must lead a busy life...you know....trying to juggle my post count and working on being a junior journalist!

Haha. Take it easy fan. It's only a fanclub website. You may need to take some time off from trolling here to get a little perspective. But do whatever makes you happy!

Some lie more than others... Actually, no matter who the politicians are, the longer they are in power, the more corrupt they become.
It is human nature. Ralph Klein thought he could do no wrong. Papa Trudeau and Chrétien left Ottawa amidst swirling rumours of boondoggles and cronyism.
Mulroney, same thing... And the list goes on and on and on.
Canadians rewrite history by leaving people in power too long, over and over and over.

We have 35 (40?) million people and carry 2% of the worlds debt. I am looking for leadership to get government spending under control.
Before we end up like Ontario, a province carrying 12 Billion in debt. That is insane.
We are asking our children's grandchildren to pay for our "lifestyle". Why don't we get off our asses and work for it ourselves?

dignin said:

1ThoughtKnown said:

Some lie more than others... Actually, no matter who the politicians are, the longer they are in power, the more corrupt they become.
It is human nature. Ralph Klein thought he could do no wrong. Papa Trudeau and Chrétien left Ottawa amidst swirling rumours of boondoggles and cronyism.
Mulroney, same thing... And the list goes on and on and on.
Canadians rewrite history by leaving people in power too long, over and over and over.

We have 35 (40?) million people and carry 2% of the worlds debt. I am looking for leadership to get government spending under control.
Before we end up like Ontario, a province carrying 12 Billion in debt. That is insane.
We are asking our children's grandchildren to pay for our "lifestyle". Why don't we get off our asses and work for it ourselves?

There is not much to disagree with here. I think term limits would be an option to maybe get rid of some of the corruption we almost always seem to see after these guys have been in power for so long.

That is one option, but it must go further than just the party leaders. Congress and Senate in the U.S. Can serve for life if they want. It has done little to stop corruption south of the border.
Why don't we as the electorate just fire them ourselves?

1ThoughtKnown said:

Some lie more than others... Actually, no matter who the politicians are, the longer they are in power, the more corrupt they become.
It is human nature. Ralph Klein thought he could do no wrong. Papa Trudeau and Chrétien left Ottawa amidst swirling rumours of boondoggles and cronyism.
Mulroney, same thing... And the list goes on and on and on.
Canadians rewrite history by leaving people in power too long, over and over and over.

We have 35 (40?) million people and carry 2% of the worlds debt. I am looking for leadership to get government spending under control.
Before we end up like Ontario, a province carrying 12 Billion in debt. That is insane.
We are asking our children's grandchildren to pay for our "lifestyle". Why don't we get off our asses and work for it ourselves?

A $12 billion dollar debt is insane? What about a $300 billion dollar debt? Ontario's debt isn't $12 billion, it's closer to $300 billion. The deficit is around $12 billion.

The problem as I see things is that voters want everything for nothing. Top rate roads, transportation, healthcare, armed forces and education for free. People are constantly complaining about being taxed to death while whining about substandard services so governments go to great lengths to add more services while lowering taxes. Liberal governments of course tend to focus on the former while Conservative governments focus on the latter (both governments tend to do both though). Is it any wonder that most Western governments have massing spending problems? What politician could successfully get elected on the promise of higher taxes and streamlined services/infrastructure, even if it is fiscally prudent?

Instead we have liberal governments promising more social programs and conservative governments promising lower taxes. Neither option is satisfactory. Basically, everyone wants something for nothing and politicians on both sides are more than willing to promise as much. As for our "grandchildren"; nobody truly cares about what the next generation will have to deal with. Heck, many of us don't even care with what this current generation of 20 somethings is going through. Choosing a new government is akin to picking your poison. There are no satisfactory options here.