Bizud

The government doesn't have to budge if it can just say the teachers aren't allowed to strike. It's the government that is being intransigent here, not the teachers. Their demands are not excessive, and a majority of British Columbians agree. The fact is that if a union doesn't want to work for what they're being offered, it is their right to strike. http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/20...ally051017.html ;) My favourite part: "We do not get to obey the laws that we like and disobey the laws that we don't like."

The employer has no such right! A job is something you enter into voluntarily, under terms that you negotiate with your employer. It's just that often nowadays it's framed in such a way that there are no actual negotiations, because the employer is in such a position of overwhelming superiority that they can dictate the terms to you, and you take it or leave it. But you still agreed to the terms. And the thing is, if you don't like the terms and you can convince your fellow workers to support you, you can strike to try to get things changed. You can strike if they don't support you too, but it won't get very far. The point is you have the right to strike. It comes from the very basic fact that in any negotiation, the person with more bargaining power will be able to extract a better deal. In the employer-employee relationship, the employer has a lot more bargaining power than a lone employee and will naturally use that power to reach a deal that favours him - he'll pay you as little as he thinks he can get away with for as much work as he can get, that's almost a universal truth, and it's the reason we have workplace safety requirements, minimum wage, the 40 hour work week and other labour laws, among the most basic of which is the right to strike. Employees have the best chance of getting a fair deal if they present a common front. I'm the crazy anarchist, I think unions ought to run the world. Employees should have a say in how their workplace is run, because they have a stake in how it is run, because the workplace is a central part of one's life. Unions, if themselves democratic, are agents of workplace democracy.

Not the case.

There's something you don't realize: the right to strike is not for governments to revoke at their pleasure. You also have some of the details wrong - the government has already ruled out negotiating by extending the illegally-imposed contract, which is the whole reason for the strike. They say they haven't ruled out "listening to the teachers' concerns," but they have ruled out negotiating a contract. The teachers are saying it's okay to break an unjust law, which it is. The government has deprived these teachers of their rights. The right to strike is among the most basic of hard-earned worker rights and the Campbell government has once again shown that it doesn't care, even though Canada's signature on the UN Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to collective bargaining. And now strike pay is being withheld? Everyone knows that if you take away strike pay you kill the strike. Fuck the law. General strike time, or better yet, let's have a revolution, this government is pursuing a policy of violating human rights and it's disgusting and it has to go.

"Not that I know anything about the proposal, but I'm sure the way we do things now is just fine."

That's very true, but proportional representation at least means decisions have to be approved by members elected by a majority.

But governments routinely do pass legislation without the support of a majority of the population.

So you either come back and keep working and then maybe more people will pick up the torch, or you do nothing.

With that attitude why should anyone try to make a difference?

So there can't be more than one course of action in line with a given set of principles? That's absurd.

In the European tradition, anarchists have always been socialists. In the mid-19th century, the First Socialist International experienced a split between anarchist and statist factions, led by Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx respectively (thus the latter group came to be called Marxists). Since the 1850s, "anarchism" has primarily referred to anti-state branch of the socialist movement.

Svend is almost definitely going to run again, in Vancouver Centre (against Hedy Fry), and according to his own polls he could win. Thing is, Svend remains very personally popular. And I hope he does run, and win, because he is a tireless advocate for human rights, both in Canada and elsewhere, and his absence from parliament this year is the country's loss.

But the Liberals say it's in line with Liberal principles! ;)

You don't pledge your support and then ask for a concession because it looks like you've made a new friend. What the fuck kind of negotiating is that? No party that took that attitude would achieve anything. You say "you'll get our votes IF..." That's what members are sent to Ottawa to do. You might not like it because it interferes with the Liberal agenda, but believe it or not, members are sent to Ottawa to vote either for or against, and to attempt to change legislation into something they can vote for. You know, they're supposed to be doing that. When the Conservatives propose amendments that entirely kill the spirit of a bill, they are doing their job by fighting tooth and nail for the platform they were elected on. Similarly, when the NDP offer their support at a price, they're doing their job. Setting conditions on your support is not "strong-arming," it is negotiating. Negotiation is the essence of modern parliamentary democracy.

How can it possibly be strong arming? The NDP did exactly what they were sent to Ottawa to do, just because you don't like it don't paint it to be something that it's not. It's called negotiation. People who voted for "the Liberal solution" still got it, because the Liberals didn't (and wouldn't) agree to something out of step with their policies. Also, you're right that Liberal voters want "the Liberal solutions." What you don't seem to grasp is that most voters are not Liberal voters.

The federal NDP and Liberals could get along just fine if they needed to in order to govern, as parties all around the world have proven time and time again. Politicians will cooperate as well as they have to, if they have to. So let's make them, assuming that what we want is for our policians to come together from different views and try to reach a consensus based on holding the support of a majority of the population. You might well want something different out of politics.

You mean when PR would have delivered the Liberals + NDP a workable combined majority? Yeah, they would have either worked together or else the government would have fallen, which wouldn't have been the end of the world. I have absolute confidence that politicians and parties can work together. It's just that in our electoral system, it's often not in their interest to. They treat minority governments as an inconclusive result (Stephen Harper: "The battle is not won or lost until someone wins a majority."), so they play for time until they can win a majority and get on with what they were doing before. If the Liberals knew they'd probably never win another majority government they'd change their tune very quickly indeed, as the examples provided by the rest of the world have demonstrated. Matt thinks Canadian politics are too polarized for PR to work? That's garbage, we just have politicians that have no need to cooperate. So they don't.

The Liberals don't have the support of a majority of Canadians. By what right do they claim a mandate to govern us? Our voting system gives them that mandate, but the voters sure don't. The voting system does not reflect the will of the electorate. It should be replaced with one that better reflects that will. Oh yeah, and you insist that single-party majority government is the only way to "maintain order," but have yet to explain how.

Yeah, but with our system they can be re-elected without the support of a majority of the people!

That doesn't make any sense.

We also had minority governments under Pearson and Diefenbaker that are commonly ranked among the best in Canadian history. They certainly didn't have any problems getting things done. The fact is that coalition government is inherently better than single-party government. When the government is composed of multiple parties they can keep each other in check - any government is at its best when it doesn't have a fixed mandate. When a government is composed of a single party, strong party discipline (or even not that strong party discipline) will enable it to have no serious difficulty maintaining the confidence of the house, which means the government can take for granted that it won't be defeated before the parliamentary term is up, which means it's only really accountable at election time. More importantly, it's democratic. It is profoundly undemocratic for one party to get all the power with a third of the votes, which happens in plurality systems like ours all the time, and it's profoundly undemocratic for one party to "win" the election when another party wins more votes (as in BC in 1996), which is another not uncommon occurance in two-party FPTP systems. I'll grant you Israel, which has a very fractured parliament because they have no electoral threshold and a peculiar political culture. Germany, though, you're gonna have to elaborate. It's not enough to just list a few places that use proportional electoral systems that have experience instability. You know, I could do that with first past the post. You have to actually explain how proportional representation contributes to instability in, say, Germany, and I'm really hoping you don't pull the Nazi card (or the Italy card), because that's just too easy to refute.

Maybe, maybe not. It sure isn't providing the type of stability you're talking about in India, and it sure didn't provide stability in 2004. Nor has PR made for unstable politics in Norway, Scotland, Spain, Hungary, or even Germany, where, despite initial overreactions, it's looking increasingly like a stable coalition will be formed that will last the full parliamentary term. I still don't understand how the left-right positioning of the parties has anything to do with the suitability of an electoral system. You have repeatedly argued that proportional representation creates instability. Explain how this is the case.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/09/19/TerasenSale/

Groan. Why do systems like MMP and STV not allow for good government? Demonstrate. Be specific. Give examples.

You live in Saskatchwan, your Green Party is legit. Do it.