Thread: Election Season

So I am guessing that Canda has a system similar to the UK....

Regardless, how does campaigning compare to the US?

Do you have "primaries"?

Do you elect everyone (Prime Minister, representatives, etc.) at the same time or are the done in alternating years?

With the recent election, who exactly was voted on?

What determines if the new government will have to be a coalition?

When Parliament was dissolved, what was up for grabs in the election?

I could go look this up on the web, but I want to hear the view of an actual Canadian.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

So I am guessing that Canda has a system similar to the UK....

yup

Originally Posted by WireBeard

Regardless, how does campaigning compare to the US?

Well, we get it done in a shorter span, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

Do you have "primaries"?

No. Party leaders are voted on at the leadership convention if a new one is needed.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

Do you elect everyone (Prime Minister, representatives, etc.) at the same time or are the done in alternating years?

All at once.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

With the recent election, who exactly was voted on?

Currently you can only vote for your local MP. The party with the most MP's forms the government and their leader becomes Prime Minister .. usually.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

What determines if the new government will have to be a coalition?

In the antiquated First-Passed-the_Post system our countries both share, it is easy to get an unfair majority, that is a majority of seats without a majority of the vote. If you don't get enough seats for that and must forma more natural Minority Government with fewer than half the seats, the government must create legislation which will gain the support of at least part of the opposition parties. Sometimes a few parties will band together and create a coalition between two or more parties.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

When Parliament was dissolved, what was up for grabs in the election?

Each Parliamentary seat.

X

Cool, thanks! I'm not sure Americans could put up with having to listen to all the people in Congress and the President/VP candidates campaigning at once...even if it was in a shorter time.

Do your candidates do debates?

So, under you system, you could be elected MP one year and them there could be a crisis and Parliament dissolved and you are back on the campaign trail?

What is/was the catalyst for Parliament being dissolved? I am guessing t is not something the PM would do lightly.....

Originally Posted by WireBeard

Do your candidates do debates?

Our locals do all candidates debates and all running candidates are invited. The leaders debate is organised by the very exclusive consortium of Canadian broadcasters. That they (the corporate media) decided to allow Green Party leader Elizabeth May to debate at all is astonishing, but the protesters were out early in the campaign and the very Conservative Prime Minister (he's still PM during the election) didn't want it rattling his campaign so he advised them otherwise.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

So, under you system, you could be elected MP one year and them there could be a crisis and Parliament dissolved and you are back on the campaign trail?

Any real crisis would only occur on a vote of confidence issue like the budget or something else big. An astonishing amount of power rests in the Prime Minister's office alone. It's usually set up by the PM though. He puts something into the budget that he knows the opposition will defeat and we're off to the races.

Originally Posted by WireBeard

What is/was the catalyst for Parliament being dissolved? I am guessing t is not something the PM would do lightly.....

The Prime Minister saw he was running high in the polls and wanted his unfair majority before the opposition leader had a chance to become better known or anything else got in his way. So, yeah he had a meeting with each of the other party leaders and then walked down to the Governor General's house (about 20 minutes of boring TV time) and asks her for permission. She's the Queen's representative. It's a ceremonial position only wielding little to no power. The PM decided he wanted an election and we (300 million dollars later) are right back where we started. A little shift in the seats. The Opposition leader will resign tomorrow because he lost. All he has to worry about is whether people will vote for him. People will get mad if they have to go to the polls again too soon and those voters are tough to control, but other than that it's totally his call.

X

Thanks! I love the time frame.....

Wirebeard, don't you like the two plus year election?

By the way the 300 million was the approximate cost for the whole election. Considering Obama raised 150 million last month alone, wow elections are cheap in Canada.

There were two debates one in French and one in English.

There have been recent attempts to change the system with fixed election dates and proportional representation, but they haven't flown.

The fixed dates in theory sound good but then you end up with the unfortunate truth the election is on November 4th and you start campaigning for the next one on November 5th.

I bet the debate in French sounded better.......

There was a great moment in the French debate when Elizabeth May of the Green Party came right out and called Stephen Harper a fraud for his environmental policy. It was a rousing debate.

X

I liked the moment in the English debate when Gilles Duceppe came out and said to the other four candidates that "I know I won't be prime minister. Three of you won't be prime minister either. You might not know it."

It was a one horse race simply because there are too many centre-left parties splitting the vote, so we are then left with a consolodated right vote, which ends up forming the government with only 36% support (and 64% of the population wanting a centre-left government).

Until someone galvanizes the centre-left, we will continue to have our fractured minority governments...and subsequent elections every 2 years at $300 million a crack of tax payers money...

Mark

Actually, until we get proportional representation and upgrade our ancient democracy to join the rest of the world, people will keep talking about undemocratic stunts like uniting the left or crossing the floor instead of getting on with the democratic job of debating the best way forward for all parties involved.

X