OTTAWA – Just days into the new session, opposition parties are accusing the Harper government of showing disrespect for Parliament.
New Democrats and Liberals are criticizing the government for dispensing with the traditional debate and vote on the throne speech.
The blueprint for the Conservatives’ first majority mandate kicked off the 41st session of Parliament last Friday.
Normally, a throne speech is followed by six days of debate and a vote, which is usually the first test of a government’s ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons.
But Peter Van Loan, the government’s House leader, says throne speech debate is not mandatory and there’s simply no time for it this session.
[More]
I gently remind the NDP and Liberals that the budget was debated in the public forum during the election. Seems to me that the people spoke at the voting booth. Next item on the agenda …
Aye, you could indeed say that fernstalbert – and if you did you’d also have to acknowledge that 60% of those Canadians voted against Conservative plans.
How do we know what was in the minds of the voters who didn’t bother to vote ? They certainly didn’t hate Harper or the budget enough to be motivated to get off their rear ends to go and vote !
Anyway, this 60% thing has been rebutted numerous times so I will repeat that even fewer people ” liked ” the other Parties or their program to vote for them and adding up all the losers together as if they where unanimous and identical in policies is just ” delusional ” .
Just for fun lets say that not all of the Opposition Parties had been of the Left or Centre Left and that the breakdown of votes had been Conservative 40%, the Liberal 20%, the NDP 20% and a ” fictional ” other Party 20% completely incompatible in political philosophy with either the Conservatives or the LIB and the NDP vote ! In such a case all we could say is that twice as many people liked the Conservatives more than any one of the other Party.
Again, as others have pointed out using the same standard for all of Chrétien’s majority Government less than 50% voted fro Chrétien ! Please try to find other arguments as it’s getting to be a waste of time.
No Jean, the 60% thing has not been rebutted – 60% of Canadians who voted did not vote to endorse the budget, the CPC, or Stephen Harper… full stop. You can spin the numbers, and invent fictional parties until the cows come home, but you cannot say that any more than 39.6% of Canadians supported the CPC, and simple math tells is that 60.4% did not.
What did happen, as has happened so many times before (with the notable exception of Brian Mulroney’s majority), is that the greatest minority of people did support the budget, the CPC, and Stephen Harper – in this case the greatest minority was 39.6% of voting Canadians and according to Canadian electoral math 39.6% of the vote = 54% of the seats.
Stage, a majority of those in the successful parts of the country voted for a shrinking of government and the canceling of funding for the Bloc etc.
Not surprisingly the parts of Eastern Canada that behave like Greece on entitlements are for the status quo. But those who are paying the bills have said “enough”.
Moreover even in Quebec massive change is underway as the idea of a 20 year revolutionary Party ( the Bloc/ PQ) is being dumped because a 20 year revolution is an oxymoron…20 years of politicians saying the same old thing are not rebels, they are just sitting on a job.
Essentially the ROC is like Germany funding Greece. A majority in the ROC is tired of funding failure and now we are getting the same March budget having had a referendum endorsed by those paying the bills….like it or not, money talks.
Stage, a majority of Canadians did not even want an election; ergo they would have gone along with the March budget.
The problem with progressives is that they are essentially academic, they are process oriented not action oriented. They would prefer gridlock of the “incompatible 60% losers”, as Jean refers to them, than to have a plurality (in fact a majority of those paying the bills, west of Ottawa) take action and make something happen.
It would have been OK 20 years ago for Parliament to sit around and jaw jaw and do nothing because there is no consensus. But in a post NAFTA world of free trade, the economy moves very fast and decisions have to be made to keep Canada from falling behind our competitions. For that reason, the OECD has pointed out how fortunate we are to have a “majority”. That’s the way our system works and if the 60% of losers don’t like it then they can organize themselves in such a way as to make themselves the most attractive to voters in 2015.
Just to butt in here for a moment. “Stage” is playing with the 60% figure of Canadians who voted. That leaves 40% who did not. Could it be that the “silent majority” are quite happy with the status quo and if so would that also mean that Harper did not win by 39% — he won by 79%?
Just asking.
No, stageleft is not – the last numbers I saw said that the CPC gathered 39.6% of the popular vote (ie 39.6% of the votes of those who voted), simple math says that 60.4% of those who voted did not vote for the CPC.
Talk of why people did not vote, and what that means, is a mater of opinion. I could as easily say that the 40% of Canadians who did not go to the polls simply do not feel that the system is worth supporting, or that they do not feel that their vote counts, or that they wanted to send a message to the parties that they are unhappy with their conduct.
– and then say that the CPC actually only won 39.6% of 60% of eligible voters who voted and in doing so formed a majority government with 23.8% of the eligible vote.
… but we won’t go there :-)
The only thing we can say for sure about the people who didn’t vote is that they counted themselves out of the system and by definition don’t count because they didn’t bother to vote.
Sure I can ” SPIN ” with invented Parties or ” SPIN ” with theories about why they didn’t vote and try to add their numbers to the Conservative numbers but my point is that this is as invalid as adding them to people who opposed Harper: As ” Stage ” protests against the assumption I made he continues in my opinion to try and use the 60% percent didn’t vote for harper as if they where a united group with the same opinions about everything. This might be valid if the Opposition Parties had run as a Coalition and even ” Legal ” if Harper had had a minority and we where now talking about P.M. Layton …… but this didn’t happen, so people who oppose Harper or any of his policies would better use their time using good arguments against the policies they oppose and work to win the next election.
Good rebuttal. I like it and I’m gone for the day.
Goodnight everyone.
Well, I sort rebutted the rebuttal and my original point, in short, is for the Opposition to try to find another less boring and unproductive tune to sing. ;)
Whether or not people who didn’t vote “don’t count” or not is an opinion Jean – many of us believe that non-participation is a valid form of protest.
Your opinion that I am trying to “use the 60% percent didn’t vote for harper as if they where a united group with the same opinions about everything” is also wrong, it’s a weak straw-man set up for you to knock over and nothing – I never said such a thing. Numbers don’t lie, 60% of the people who voted did not vote CPC and Stephen Harper can no more claim a legitimate “mandate from Canadians” than Jean Chretien could.
National mandates come from gaining support from a clear majority from those who voted – the last PM to accomplish that was Brian Mulroney.