Orchard's anti-merger lawsuit dismissed - Globe and Mail

[Screaming Lord Byron]

A lawsuit launched by David Orchard and a group of federal Conservatives opposing the merger between their party and the Canadian Alliance has been dismissed. No surprise there.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031205.worch1205/BNStory/TickerOverride

[Maple]

1. So their next step

is?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

2. They can't call themselves the PC's. Perhaps Progressives? n/t

[Maple]

3. Well

they rather neatly just got rid of several million dollars of debt.

Not to mention a bunch of social conservatives.

So why not? :D

[Screaming Lord Byron]

4. If we're to have a right-wing party, these guys work for me.

Not that I'm sure Orchard is actually Right Wing, but what the hell. This is very interesting.

[Maple]

5. We'll see if

we can have 'progressives' now, who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. This is what I love about our system.

There are so many pieces in play, and parties are more likely to represent actual constituencies and interests.

The Liberals have been largely successful about masking their true constituency, which has contributed greatly to their monopoly of power. But it's possible the Liberals' corporatist interests will be more evident to the general public with the high-flying pal of Gerry Schwartz at the helm.

Assuming Orchard's righteous remnant and continued success for the Greens in BC, we could see a six-party parliament.

Let's bring on a minority government. Things could get nice and interesting.

[Maple]

7. No thank you

to any minority govt.

The country is on a roll...I don't want it bogged down by the constant political haggling of that scenario.

I hope Martin gets a massive majority, so we keep the momentum.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

8. A minority government would force the Liberals to move left

I'm guessing they won't want to be in a coalition with the Reformers, right?

[Maple]

9. They don't want to be

in a coalition with either wing.

Center spot is best for everyone.

Geez...no corporate campaign financing, decriminalizing pot, gay marriages legal, no deficit, paid down the debt to half of one years GDP...what more do you want?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

10. I'd like Proportional Representation so my vote actually counts for once.

And I still see Martin arguing his way out of Gay marriage and Kyoto, because as we both know he is desperate to win in the west.

[Maple]

11. I don't want a pizza parliament either

which is what pr would give us.

and we will go with both gay marriage and kyoto...it just takes the usual finessing, but we'll do it.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

12. Of course you favour the current system - it's in the liberals interest.

That's fair enough. But for me, I want a better functioning democracy that gives a more accurate representation in seats of votes cast. Our current system means that a candidate can win a seat on 35% of the votes cast, which means that 65% of the votes are wasted. I want to right that democratic deficit.

[Maple]

13. No I favor the current system

because it works best.

There is no democratic deficit. It's the largest number of people who can agree on one candidate. Not every Tom Dick and Harry.

An election chooses winners, it does not create a committee to try and get concensus on everything that ever comes up.

Only losers favor pr.

They forget their preference for it the minute they win.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

14. "They forget their preference for it the minute they win"

Any examples? Didn't think so. I'm sorry you hold democracy in such low esteem. I know many liberals in my province who favour PR, but i'll happily pass on your message that they're losers.

[Maple]

15. Yes, there are examples

The Tories federally, and the NDP provincially.

Neither brought it in once they won.

Pizza parliaments are not democratic...they're just messes that don't accomplish anything, and the govts keep crashing. As in Italy and Israel.

If you're in BC...your 'Liberals' are Socreds.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

16. Alberta. Our Liberals are Liberals. Very reasonable people.

[Maple]

17. They've lost for 30 years straight

Of course they'd want pr.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

18. That's the point. With PR Liberal votes in Alberta would not go wasted

I'm all for people getting their due representation, but in Alberta we live under the Reform monolith. First Past the Post condemns us to perpetual one-party statehood.

[Maple]

19. Then try some policies

and some effort. That usually works.

Rigging the system won't help.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

20. Rigging the system. Great.

What do you think our current system is?

[Maple]

21. PR is deliberately rigging the system.

Our current system has been in use all over the world for centuries.

Works fine...except for those with no policies the public likes.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

22. I'll remind the German, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and French govts of that.

[Maple]

23. Two don't have

the system you're discussing.

Germany has mixed member. France has two round.

And none of them are great examples of govt.

Policies. Policies. Policies.

And a leader.

That's what works.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

24. Proportional Representation refers to several different system

I favour the Single Transferrable Vote, as the Germans use. PR systems are designed to make sure that votes are not wasted. Our current system is extremely wasteful and discounts millions of votes. Your favoured system makes a majority of voters losers. I do not want such a dualistic system. It is fundamentally undemocratic.

[Maple]

25. It's quite democratic

and makes for better govt.

Voters all win when there is actually a govt that can do something, and not a committee just arguing with itself all the time.

If the majority don't like a govt, it's easy enough to vote out.

[iverglas]

26. interestingly ...

"If the majority don't like a govt, it's easy enough to vote out."

... the majority in the last federal election did not like the Liberal government. And still it got voted back in.

I mean, you were aware of that, right? That 58% of voters voted against the Liberals in 2000? That despite having only 42% of the vote, they have 57% of the seats in the House?

Fundamental flaw in your reasoning, seems to me.

.

[Maple]

29. It's the majority

who agree on a party.

Why is this news to people?

No civic classes in school?

[iverglas]

34. why aren't *you* ...

"It's the majority
who agree on a party."


... either getting or responding to the point??

NO "majority" "agreed on" the Liberal Party.

42% of Canadians (who voted) voted FOR the Liberal Party in the last federal election.

58% of Canadians (who voted) voted AGAINST the Liberal Party in the last federal election.

The Liberals had a PLURALITY of the popular vote, they did NOT have a majority of the popular vote.

The Liberals had more votes than any one of the other parties, but the other parties combined had more votes than the Liberals. By a ratio of about 7 to 5 -- 7 votes against the Liberals for every 5 votes for the Liberals.

They also did not even have a majority of the popular vote in most constituencies that they won in that election (in any riding in which there was a serious 3rd and/or 4th party candidate). In most of those constituencies, more people voted for other parties -- *against* the Liberals -- than voted for the Liberals.

Our parliamentary system gives the party with the most seats the right to form the government. Fine.

But it is the first-past-the-post system in each individual riding that results in that party having a majorit of seats when it may well have only a plurality -- or, in the present situation, an actual minority -- of the votes cast in the country.


"Why is this news to people?
No civic classes in school?"

You really ought to

- demonstrate that you understand the issues you're addressing; and/or
- respond to what other people say about them instead of stamping your foot

before you decide to disparage anyone else's (like, my) grasp of those issues.

It truly would be news to me if a majority of Canadians had decided that the Liberal Party should be our present government. Simply because that did not happen.

Perhaps you would benefit from learning something about some of the various proportional representation arrangements made in various systems of government in countries every bit as "democratic" as Canada.

An example is Australia, an arguably close counterpart of Canada:

http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/proportional/proportion_rep.htm

Proportional representation electoral systems are used in Australia to elect candidates to the Senate, the upper houses of NSW, South Australia, and Western Australia, the Lower House of Tasmania, the ACT Legislative Assembly and many Local Government Councils.

.

[ajacobson]

27. Red Tories

Hopefully this is not off topic.

I don't understand the Red Tories thing in Canadian politics. What's the short story on that?

[JohnyCanuck]

28. Red Torries are basically social liberals but fiscal conservatives.

Also they think gov't does have a role in providing funding/services for health care etc., so they are not on the cut government to the bone bandwagon of the far right.

[Maple]

30. Yes , it's color coded

If you're blue, you're closer to the right, if you're red you're closer to the left.

So you can be a red tory...or a blue Liberal.

Which puts them both in the center.

Old names from the Cold war that should be dropped.

[iverglas]

32. completely irrelevant, I'm afraid

"If you're blue, you're closer to the right, if you're red you're closer to the left.
So you can be a red tory...or a blue Liberal.
Which puts them both in the center.
Old names from the Cold war that should be dropped."

The colours in question have absolutely nothing to do with the cold war. (And a red Tory is really well to the left of a blue Liberal. I've never actually heard of a blue Liberal -- but Paul Martin is undoubtedly one. Economically right-wing, socially indifferent.)

They are this historic colours of Conservatives/Tories (Blue) and Liberals/Grits (Red) predating the cold war, and the entire last century, by quite a few years.

I can't think of any reason to drop the expression "red tory". It is the one that best describes the difference between *Canadian* conservatism, as it has historically developed, and what a USAmerican thinks when s/he thinks "conservative", as that word has come to be used in the US.

Red toryism is the counterweight to laissez-faire liberalism. As the 19th century "free market" became increasingly marked by exploitation of labour than by any genuine freedom, as capital became concentrated and internationalized, red toryism became the more modern expression of noblesse oblige, the conservative conscience: the responsibility of the rich for the poor, the powerful for the powerless -- what we now regard as collective responsibility.

I've previously suggested that to imagine a Red Tory, a USAmerican might think about what real "compassionate conservatism" might look like. A red tory is really much more like a USAmerican "liberal" than is a real liberal in the traditional economic sense.

... As can be seen in the, um, civil union of David MacDonald, a former "red Tory" Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament, and Alexa McDonough, the then leader of the New Democratic (social democrat) Party. David McDonald then ran as an NDP candidate in the 1997 Canadian federal election. Not very strange bedfellows at all. ;)


.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

33. The concept of Red Tories works well if you think the PC party

was not necessarily that conservative. A right-wing party may not have Red Tories, but a right-of-centre party might. Joe Clark, former PM and PC party leader could easily fit into the right of the Liberal Party. If you want an example of a Red Tory, my wife is one. She voted for Joe Clark, but would never ever vote Canadian Alliance. In the next election she will vote Liberal. Her family are from the Maritimes, where the Red Tories are most likely to be found. Her mother supported Chretien in 1993 because she considered the PC's to have gotten too Conservative, but voted Clark in 1979.

[iverglas]

35. and me ;)

I've been a candidate for the NDP, and voted Tory (years before) in the 1974 federal, in a riding where the NDP had no hope, as an anti-Liberal vote.

I voted Liberal for the first time in my life in October, as an anti-Harris (Ontario Conservatives) vote. I don't plan to repeat that folly.

I would never, ever vote Liberal federally unless the Liberal Party were an entirely different animal, and there were some serious fascist threat abroad in the country.

Mulroney was a freak of nature. Quebec had decided to punish the federal Liberals by voting for whatever doorknobs the Tories had dredged up to carry the party banner in ridings they never dreamed of winning, let alone expected to win. Mulroney and his corporatist chums hijacked the party of John Diefenbaker and Dalton Camp (paradoxical though that sounds) and Bob Stanfield and Joe Clark -- and Flora MacDonald, and David MacDonald, and even Uncle Bill Davis ... and people who were not adults before 1984 and have not studied their history just don't understand that.

I just didn't really care whether Brian Mulroney or John Turner became PM; same street, different bank's board of directors. I'd feel exactly the same about Paul Martin and Mulroney, if he were around today. As between the Paul Martin Liberals and a party of red Tories, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat.

.

[ajacobson]

36. Thanks for the comments

Being in Detroit here, I try to follow Canadian politics and find it very interesting.

[molok555]

31. How does this factor in?

"An internal Liberal poll that leaked last week suggested the Liberals had 41 per cent support among those polled, followed by 18 per cent for the NDP and 12 per cent for a united conservative party"

Link:http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2003/12/07/280249-cp.html

Seems that Mr Martin may be helping push left-leaning Libs back into the NDP fold.