Bizud

So Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was legal? If there's no such thing as international law, then what crime did Saddam commit when he invaded Kuwait? Canada has fought in wars before, by the way, there just haven't been any legitimate ones to fight in sixty years. It's not like Canada and France are off in left field opposing the war in Iraq. The overwhelming majority of the world's population, even in some countries that did participate, was opposed to the war, and it's not hard to see why: the reasons given were absurd. Finally, opposition to any war never needs to be justified, it's assumed. You never need to give any argument against going to war, it's up to those who say violence should be used to prove it.

Reform >>>> Alliance.

How many members of the current Conservative caucus were once Progressive Conservatives? I forget the exact number, but I think it was four. I could be wrong.

Jack was posturing? The NDP can definitely benefit from the idea that we can have an actual impact on politcs, but I thought Jack's labelling it an "NDP budget" was kind of absurd from the beginning. Except that the Liberals and NDP both campaigned from the left, while the Conservatives campaigned from the right, and most people (yourself included, probably) would argue that the NDP are a much better natural partner for the Liberals than these Conservatives. Besides, the combined Liberal-NDP vote was also a majority of votes, albeit a thin one. It's not about giving the reins of government to the two biggest or three biggest parties, it's whichever group of parties can secure a majority of seats by agreeing to work together. In a PR system if parties can secure a majority of seats, they represent a majority of voters, too, by definition. Moreover, in most countries where coalition politics are the norm, parties basically have to declare who they intend to partner up with, it becomes part of the campaign platform.

That doesn't even make any sense. First of all, the "NDP budget" is a Liberal budget through and through. It was already slanted to the right because it looked like the Conservatives were going to support it, but it does contain one concession to the NDP - namely, there won't be a huge corporate tax cut...yet. That's not an "NDP budget." Second, a majority of Canadians are happy with it according to every poll I've seen. Third, a majority of Liberal voters in the last election said they didn't want the Liberals to get a majority. Oh yeah, and fourth, "The people" didn't vote for the Liberal solution. 36 percent of them did. So tell me again how the majority got screwed, because the way I see it the majority gets screwed if anyone gets a majority government with a minority of the votes.

Now how would the minority pass legislation that a majority didn't want? What are you on? You'd still need parties having a combined majority to agree in order to pass any legislation. When parties "compromise" that doesn't mean majority parties agree to legislation they don't want. Nobody agrees to vote yes on something they oppose, silly. If Liberals and Conservatives teamed up, they'd pass what they agreed on and nothing else. They wouldn't pass some things the Conservatives opposed and some things the Liberals opposed, that wouldn't make any sense. Geez.

1) Hitler got more power because he kept getting more and more votes. That's not surprising, governments were collapsing and getting voted out of office left and right during the Great Depression (which hit Germany harder than almost any other country), and elected socialists, fascists, Social Crediters, you name it. Proportional representation played a very minor role in this. I mean really, there have been dictators elected by just about every voting system under the sun. 2) Labour and Likud are often in coalitions together in Israel. It works out fine. They're called "grand coalitions." Our Liberals and Conservatives could easily govern together. They agree on 90% of issues, and issues they don't agree on, well, Parliament can take it issue by issue. Part of the problem is that in countries that don't have frequent coalitions, all parties treat minority governments as an inconclusive result. You know, the "real result" has just been delayed by a year. Quoth Stephen Harper, "the battle is not won or lost until someone wins a majority." That kind of thinking makes cooperation difficult. But if parties know that they'll never win a majority on their own, they'll be more willing to compromise. And compromise exists in all party systems, whether they're within the parties or between parties. Personally, I like voting for a smaller party with a clear stance on issues, one that isn't made up of a bunch of factions. Coalition governments are more common than single-party government in the developed world. And, it's pretty clear that they make people happier with their government, too. If you want, I'll post a reference later on to a book that argues this point, in my opinion, quite convincingly, it's pretty much a matter of fact. People have more confidence that their governments are not complacent, are always working for them (because if they don't, they will easily be replaced) and will have a difficult time passing unpopular legislation.

Yeah, but they were never in government until they had become the largest party in the reichstag. While they were a fringe group they weren't in government, nor did they exercise any control, because the other parties cooperated to keep them out. Israel is an exception, and one where the major parties are hardliners and extremists themselves. You could also argue that the need to build stable coalitions has moderated the conflicting demands and allowed for a more democratic society. You could also argue that maybe the Israeli parliament should consider using an electoral threshold to prevent lots of one- and two-seat parties from entering parliament, but they don't seem to mind it. Typical of the PR opponent to pick probably the worst example of instability in PR - in fact, maybe the only modern example, except for maybe Italy - and use that to argue that "most PR systems don't work." ;) I probably wouldn't get so annoyed if I hadn't had this debate with opponents of PR like a hundred times during the leadup to the STV referendum in BC.

Matt makes the same "honest mistake" every time PR comes up, has never substantiated his claims that proportional representation means unstable government and frequent elections, or that coalition governments don't work, and ignores all evidence that contradicts his nonsense theories. Even after that post I just made he'll probably continue to argue the point. And I use the term "argue" very loosely. "PR just does not work, you guys, come on, it doesn't work. It would never work, because, you know, it doesn't work."

Alright, alright, we'll do it the hard way. We'll start with New Zealand, since they used to use our voting system and switched to Mixed Member Proportional as of their 1996 election. Since then, they've had elections in 1999, 2002, and there's one scheduled for a few weeks from now. Every three years, exactly the same rate as before the switch since three years has always been the maximum term in NZ. Next up, Germany, the other country that uses MMP. There's an election for the Bundestag scheduled for September, and they've had elections in 2002, 1998, 1994, 1990, 1987, 1983, and so on. So, between three and four years, the standard for a democracy. Single Transferable Vote: Ireland. Last election was in 2002. Before that, there were elections in 1997, 1992, 1987, and 1982. There was a brief flurry of instability right before that, but that was an anomaly - the norm is clearly four to five years between elections in Ireland. Norway uses pure party-list PR. Elections in 2005, 2001, 1997, 1993, 1989, 1985, 1981, 1977, and so on. Every four years exactly. What instability!! Sweden: 2002, 1998, 1994, 1991, 1988, 1985, 1982. Three to four years. Spain: 2004, 2000, 1996, 1993, 1989, 1986, 1982. Portugal: 2005, 2002, 1999, 1995, 1991. And so on and so forth. Need I go on? God I hope not. Finally, That's accurate enough (though I wouldn't place the Liberals on the left - Trudeau was the last left-liberal leader, everyone since has been a "business liberal," rolling back the welfare state, lowering taxes, privatizing crown corporations and opposed to intervening in the economy), but again, I don't see your point. If we had PR, there would be no need to vote Liberal to keep out a Conservative, since vote-splitting wouldn't be a factor. That's kind of the whole point, genius. There would also probably still be a Progressive Conservative party.

Except that these governments don't get dissolved every year. Come on, man, you don't know what you're talking about, you just pulled that right out of your ass. I actually am somewhat familiar with the recent electoral histories of the countries I listed, I could make a really long post showing the average lifespan of a government or the time between elections in these countries, but I hope that won't be necessary. That's by no means the case - the Liberals got well under 40% of the votes in the last election - but I don't see what you're getting at anyway.

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/1505?PHPS...a0cf2c82e0c1bb7

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/050824/b082406.html

Well, you should also know that if a party gets more than 2% of the vote they get $1.75 for each vote. So that's some incentive to vote the way you want, even if that person doesn't necessarily win. And that money helps smaller parties like the Greens much more than a larger party.

Yes, but the point is that those people don't all vote the same way, so in order for a party to win enough votes to govern, they'd have to broaden their appeal past those provinces. The rest of your post is unintelligible.

Jack Layton also has the highest approval rating of any of the leaders, and the NDP are far and away the second choice for the vast majority of Liberal voters and a considerable minority of Conservative voters. Many people don't vote for them because they feel they'd be wasting their vote, which is another reason many people don't vote Green (which makes it all the more impressive that the Greens managed to get over half a million votes - votes that elected no one). But you're an idiot. Let's go through this one more time: If seats matched votes, the Liberals wouldn't sweep Ontario. In the last election they got less than half of the votes in Ontario. Under any sort of PR system, that'd be like 44 seats. The Conservatives would get more than 30 seats, I think, there'd be almost that many for the NDP, and even a few for the Greens. Green and NDP voters could also feel secure in the knowledge that their vote would not be wasted, and so those parties would attract more votes from people who vote Liberal as the "safe choice" as well as from those who just don't vote. Ditto for NDP, Green, and Conservative voters in Quebec. And so on. If we had PR, then the Liberals could never get the number of seats they do just by appealing to Ontario, unless 80% of Ontarians actually voted for them - which basically never happens. Yeah yeah, I know, it doesn't work, though. Man, what a shame. Someone should really tell all those people in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Austria, Ireland, and so on, that their electoral systems don't work. I'm sure once you point that out to them, Matt, they'll be happy to switch to the British model, which even the British are abandoning (the new Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly use Mixed Member Proportional variants, and the movement for PR for the British House of Commons is about as strong, if not stronger, than the PR movement in Canada). ;)

;) In any case, if we (the West) want to become an economic colony of the United States even faster, then yeah, why not separate? :angry:

It did, actually, the Conservatives were ahead of the Liberals in the polls in Ontario for a while. Of course, then people realized that the Conservatives are absolute lunatics, and things more or less returned to normal outside of Quebec (where AdScam really hurt them, and where the Bloc, as the only non-Liberal party that people are comfortable voting for, retain a considerable lead in the polls, about 50% to the Liberals' 26% I think). Even in the West, support for the Liberals is basically what it was before the election. The fact is that neither of the other parties have been able to position themselves as a credible alternative. Harper is a laughing stock, and while Layton has been able to take the NDP back to the levels of support they enjoyed before the 90's and position them as the overwhelming second choice for voters both Liberal and Conservative, he hasn't been able to take them past 20% in the polls because he just doesn't sound genuine (he's no Ed Broadbent).

If we didn't use an antiquated voting system Ontario's dominance would be greatly lessened. The Liberals focus on Ontario because they know that all they need is about half the votes there to give them the vast majority of the seats. Then a bunch in Quebec (unless the Bloc are having a good day), a few in the Maritimes (now that the PCs are gone), and a few in the west, and bingo - a third of the votes equals 100% of the power. Also, as far as federations go, Canada is probably the most decentralized one I can think of.

I'd really question that survey's results, as those numbers are absolutely unprecedented and the Western Standard probably had them ask some really biased question. I mean, sure I'd "consider" the idea of an independent BC. Proportional representation is the answer. Regionalized politics in this country is basically a big myth. In only one of the four Western provinces (guess which one) did the Conservatives get more than half of the vote. Take Alberta, for example. Yeah, the Cons swept Alberta - 26 out of 28 seats - but only got 60% of the vote. The Liberals got about 20% - not an insignificant number - and elected only two MPs, while the NDP got almost 10% and elected no one. Similarly, the Greens got 6% and elected no one. Next example, BC. Conservative stronghold? Hardly. They got 36 percent of the vote and elected 22 MPs. The Liberals got almost as many votes - 28% - but only elected 8 MPs, and the NDP, with 26%, elected only 5 members. The Greens, again, got six percent of the vote and didn't elect a single member. And so on and so on. In Ontario, the Conservatives got almost a third of the vote and less than a quarter of the seats. They got over 8% of the vote in Quebec - that's actually a lot of votes, even though "8%" doesn't sound like much - and no seats. The problem is that we have a voting system that exacerbates regional differences and gives big rewards within a given region to whichever party is strongest within that region. The Liberals got almost three-quarters of the seats in Ontario, but they didn't even get half of the votes in that province. Ontario is called a "Liberal stronhold" because most of the MPs from Ontario are Liberals, but the majority of Ontarians don't vote Liberal. In the 1993 election, Reform and the Progressive Conservatives got almost the same percentage of the votes, but Reform elected 52 members while the PCs were reduced to 2. There are plenty of examples like this. What it leads to is regionalization, since a party can get the most "bang for its buck" - i.e. get the most seats out of its votes - if those votes are concentrated in a given region. That's how the Bloc get 54 seats, about two-thirds of the seats in Quebec, with less than half of the votes in Quebec. The solution is to switch to a voting system where a party's number of seats in the house matches its share of the popular vote. Such systems are used across the world are are actually more common than our first-past-the-post system (which is mostly limited to former British colonies). I've described what form I think the system should take in other threads (most recently "Sample Mixed Member Proportional model for Canada") The alternatives are either break up the country or suffer permanently regionalized politics, as in India (which uses the same electoral system as we do, and has more political parties in its parliament than any other country in the world due to the regionalized nature of Indian politics).

I run from police as a matter of course. Hope I don't get shot.

And what good do they actually do?

It has nothing to do with the less fortunate being jealous of our affluence, that's just utter crap. The reason there's rabid anti-american, and anti-western, sentiment in many parts of the world is because the United States acts in its own interest to the detriment of these countries and peoples (supporting corrupt and dictatorial regimes, conducting terrorism), and the rest of the western world, Canada included, does the same. And what's this "first place you'd hit" nonsense? Like there was some major war against the West that was declared on September 11th, 2001? This kind of terrorism is not a new problem, neither is al-Qaida. 9/11 just happened to be when the US stood up and took notice. Finally, as to the structure of al-Qaida, try to remember that this is a decentralized "organization" (even using that word is kind of laughable) composed of autonomous cells - Osama doesn't communicate with them, doesn't know where they are, doesn't direct them. That's what makes them hard to combat, but talk of what "Osama" is planning doesn't make any sense. That just isn't how underground organizations work.

Everything carries disease. ;)

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...iage050630.html