Reply #39: Wouldn't mind seeing a link to that either...

[Robert Cooper]

Jack understands the urban issues from the inside of Canada's largest city. He has dealt with the problems population density bring. Care to explain what it is exactly you have against him?

As for two lefts and one right, it's actually pretty good. We can select from -two- different brands of Lib/Left, which certainly helps to send a message to Ottawa as to which way we're leaning.

Mulroney's RW landslide and follow-up re-election in the time of Reagan put the scare into our centirst-left Liberals. They leaned right and smashed the Tories and installed Paul Martin as finance minister. Martin served for nearly a decade(?) and much of our financial recovery is due to his austerity budgets. This was while Jean Chretien was PM.

Martin is now PM, and he's still right of centre, tho' not as crazy as the Tories.

If we -only- had two parties, they'd be the liberals and the tories. They'd both be fighting for centre-right. Those of us on the left would have nothing.

But because we have the NDP, and they are a viable party with noble principles, the Liberals can't afford to go hog-wild into freeper country. They've got to look over the shoulders and make sure they appeal to enough of the left, because by far our country is left-leaning.

With the Liberals too far right, now is the best time to send a -lot- of NDP to Ottawa, to steer the Liberals back to their centrist-left base. Liberals have been losing their core base for years and replacing them with LINOs.

The ambitious know no party loyalty.

That's another good point for the NDP. Only those dedicated to the principles are going to have the determination to stick out all these lean years without real power.