On September 7, the Canadian government announced that there will be a Parliamentary election throughout Canada on October 14. The current Parliament has no majority party. Canadian polls indicate that next month’s election is also likely to produce a Parliament in which no party holds a majority of seats. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
An MP who was elected as a Liberal and then became an Independent several months ago just recently joined the Greens. It will be interesting to see if he can get re-elected, and if the Green-Liberal alliance in Central Nova will help Elizabeth May get elected.
Also take note that the Green Party of Canada gained their first MP when Independent Blair Wilson choose to join the Greens.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has been trying very hard to get into the Leaders Deabtes. The Media Consortium which runs the debates previously had said that only parties with sitting members in parliament can participate. Now they can’t bar her anymore. Good luck to May and the Canadian Greens! They should be poised to elect their first MPs in an election this year!
If only the US could do it in one month and a week.
About 20 percent of the voters will elect a bare majority of the members of the next Canada House of Commons — due to multiple parties.
I.E. the regime is totally unstable.
The various leftwing parties have NOT been able to get their acts together to demand proportional representation — i.e. each leftwing gang wants to have gerrymander control of the regime by its faction.
Total Votes / Total Seats = Equal votes needed for each seat winner — via vote transfers using candidate rank order lists.
Difficult math only for math morons and party hack incumbents.
Nonpartisan separate elections for elected executive officers and all judges.
The New Democratic Party supports a mixed voting system (i.e. some proportional representation as as well as some single member districts). I suppose it would be similar to the Scottish regional government’s election method.
We tried to institute a form of PR in Ontario a year or two ago (I currently reside there) with a referendum, but it failed. Hardly anyone knew about it, the great majority who did understand it supported the reform. In my view the ruling Liberal Party opposed it (to their own detriment) and worked against public education of the referendum to cause its failure.
What is involved — in comparison to the US — in terms of getting a political party organized and its candidates on the ballot or being on the ballot as an Independent?
Is the Canda Supreme Court friendlier to non-major party candidates/political rights? I would be interested to know the answers to these questions.
Edward:
I don’t know the in and outs of canadian election law to be able to answer your questions. But two points stand out to me as explaining the success of smaller parties there. First, I think constituency size is smaller, making more likely the possibility of a regionally successful minor party to win a plurality. Second, the very regional and culturally specific bloc quebecois can be successful (only in quebec) because of its unique cultural and language ties and the the distinction between french and non-french canada. This second point also helps give rise to a third, and that is simply that there is a tradition of more than 2 parties, so voters think differently about the way they vote.
The Canada election law is on the web.
Just about the ONLY good political thing in Canada is the very easy ballot access laws — that unfortunately results in the nonstop super-EVIL minority rule gerrymander / plurality regimes nationally and in each province — getting worse and worse since the 1760s (repeat 1760s — after the U.K. wiped out the French regime in Canada)
One result was setting the stage for the American Revolution in 1775-1776 — the U.K. regime attempted to do in the American colonies what it did in conquered Canada — de facto enslave the French folks causing the ongoing HATE in Quebec for the English — with on and off attempts at secession / independence.
The western parts of Canada have also making secession noises for decades — directly due to the gerrymander / plurality math of the EVIL *system*.
The consortium of television networks that run the debates have denied the Green Party and May because three of the other parties would pull out of they were invited. One of these is a regional party, Bloc Quebecois, that most Canadians can’t vote for since they restrict themselves to one province.
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/releases/09.08.2008b
http://www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca/
Does anyone know whether, once an election is called, the sitting MP is no longer a Member of Parliament but is now simply a candidate?
Three Cheers for Danny Williams and his ABC policy
don’t trust Stephen Harper see what the conservatives are really like
Jack Abramoff Scandals I was watching PBS and could not help but did notice the number of times Stephen Harper’s picture was in thebackground in the different scenes and with many of his associates.Have you done anything to investigate these links with the conservative party of Canada as we know they used Americana’s that ran Bush’s campaign for there campain . Abramoff was convicted along with his partners of defrauding the American Indians of millions of dollars to prevent casinos in other states and used the relgious right movement with Bush to do this . The Conservatives are using these people in the background