My election aftermath post is up at Torontoist.
Also, I don’t think Harper and the Tories will make dramatic shifts to the right on social policy: I genuinely don’t think they’re that stupid, and I suspect if they tried there are enough newly minted Tory MPs that would break ranks (and Layton is smart enough to get them to do it), because regardless of party unity the public would be 90% against, say, banning same-sex marriage or criminalizing abortion. But they’re definitely going to bring in some horrible fiscal policies (income splitting, for example), and destroy a lot of effective government regulation, and let industry write laws benefiting them (man, the telecoms in this country are so happy today) and nothing’s gonna stop that.
Related Articles
19 users responded in this post
I almost 100% agree, but have a couple questions for you.
With possible changes to foreign ownership rules, isn’t that a bit of a hopeful sign that we’ll get at least a LITTLE bit of competition in the wireless/ISP market? Or was Clement’s caving on UBB entirely motivated by scoring some loose Liberal voters that will quickly be forgotten?
Second, I was going to ask something brilliant about party subsidies, but then I actually read your Torontoist piece, and realized that it answered every question I had by uncannily expressing my exact opinions back at me. Get out of my head, Bird!
Yes.
I know you said no more politics for a couple of weeks – but what about Ignatieff deciding to call it quits. Any comment on how that affects the calculus you laid out in the article?
No. Ignatieff was useless and everybody knew he was going to get turfed if he didn’t leave of his own accord.
Is there a term in Canadian politics for Lieberman and Mickey Kaus equivalents?
It hasn’t even been a day yet, and I’m seeing tons of purported ‘Liberals’ crawl out of the woodwork going on and on about how this is the NDPs fault and they could NEVER vote NDP because they’re all crazy socialists and if they try to merge parties well, they and a lot of other people (with great regret of course) will either sit out elections or have to vote Tory. I mean hell, over at your Torontoist link one of the first comments is a guy saying how the NDPs strong union ties are a BAD THING. That guy was a Liberal voter? Really?
News flash to the Liberal party: You are not the Democrats in 2000, with a mostly ineffectual spoiler party coming at you from your edge and bleeding off just enough support to throw an election. YOU ARE THE SPOILER PARTY. Deal.
Four years of that monumental prick running the show… four bloody years.
It’s going to be a long four years.
For anyone who asks: THIS is why I support Proportional Representation.
@ Wizard: But that would mean *GASP* compromise… in Parliament!
COMPROMISE!!
Next thing we know, you’ll be wanting secret ballots and MPs voting the way they think their constituents would want them to, and you know where that leads: a working democracy.
And we wouldn’t want that, would we?
I don’t think your analysis of Liberal funding is quite correct. I have very good sources within the party, and this campaign, in the first week, they raised more money then they did the entire year of 2008. So, they still do have a good deal of donations comming in.
Here in the United States, we have a saying: There is no such thing as Peak Wingnut.
The Cons just won a party majority, which means they can do whatever they want for four-five years or until they do something so illegal it crashes the government (yet again). I guarantee you your conservatives are going to want to convert your public healthcare into a privatized mess, deregulate your environmental regulations to where your side of the Great Lakes are flammable (nicely matching our side), make gay marriage about as illegal as using a live otter in a bar fight, and sell all your nature parks to the Koch Brothers for parking garage construction.
And I Am Not Exaggerating.
Perhaps you can all just surrender yourselves to the U.S. now and save us the trouble of annexing you.
Interesting… I wonder if this is how two-party systems come about?
@ PaulW
Harper wants to be reelected; he’s pragmatic, and he’s not going to do anything that would cause his support to crater. He had to explicitly disavow a lot of the things you suggest he’s going to do.
The federal government can’t ban gay marriage, anyway, between various provincial court rulings that would lead to a Supreme Court override if it was ever attempted. Harper’s not an idiot, and he knows this; it’s not a fight worth picking now.
Harper wants to be reelected; he’s pragmatic, and he’s not going to do anything that would cause his support to crater. He had to explicitly disavow a lot of the things you suggest he’s going to do.
HE ALREADY HAS A ROOM COVERED IN PORTRAITS OF HIMSELF IN PARLIAMENT! EVEN THE OBLIGATORY PICTURE OF THE QUEEN HAS HIM IN THE BACKGROUND! Do not assume he will behave as you would expect a sane individual to behave.
A little ego is not the same thing as blowing all the work he’s spent years accomplishing.
Harper not INTENDING to do a lot of things that cause his support to crater isn’t the same thing as him not doing those things. Brian Mulroney didn’t exactly plan on destroying the party of John Diefenbaker and Sir John MacDonald, but he managed that anyway.
More seriously, it’s unlikely Harper will go the full supervillain, although I would have been impressed if his victory speech had simply been maniacal laughter, Sideshow Bob style. Instead he’s going to hollow out the social safety net as much as he can while making sure all the regulatory agencies are as captive as possible and funneling government money to wealthy corporations and individuals, while throwing juuuuuuuust enough red meat to the social cons to keep them onside while never delivering anything real to them.
Basically, the Republican playbook, only more low-key.
Canadians thought participating in democracy was a real drag and didn’t. An asshole who cares little for them is in power.
Funny how that worked.
Gee, thanks William.
As to Harper’s pragmatism: remember, this is a guy who made a no-possible-way bill a confidence vote, and only realized at the last second that he was going to crash the system.
No Peak Wingnut sounds about right. There’s a couple of things he probably knows he can’t do. But for everything else, there’s Majority Card. He can claim a mandate, and will.
Don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for the guy. I remember him when he was Reform. *Early* Reform. If you think he’s scary now, you should’ve seen him during his grassroots days.