Political parties in canada

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Fri 16 Jul 2010

Canada needs a new party system?

Posted by kaqchikel under Political parties in canada
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Right now, we have 5 major political parties, all but one of them being left-of-center.

This results in all the Conservative votes being consolidated into one party, and all the left-wing votes being distributed amongst the Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and Green parties. Obviously this is a problem, given that our government is elected on the basis of “most” votes, rather than the majority.

First, I shouldn’t have to explain the ridiculousness of a federal political party existing explicitly to forward the interests of one province (the Bloc Quebecois). This sort of thing doesn’t belong in a federal election.

Second, we shouldn’t be creating parties to support principles that are only marginally different from those of another party. The Liberals and NDP could be easily merged with with minimal restructuring of their political views, the Greens would likely have no qualms about joining the new Liberal-Democratic party. The Bloc will dissolve due to the ridiculousness of it’s presence in federal politics, and members will be permitted to join the Liberal-Democratic-Green party, the Conservatives, or the provincial government of Quebec.

Basically, what I’m saying is this: Canada has many very similar political parties which results in a misrepresentation of Canadians in the House of Commons. A majority of Canadians have left-wing political views, but because these voters are spread so thinly over several similar parties, we end up with a Conservative government. Due to the Green and NDP parties attracting an ever-increasing number of votes, we may soon have a Conservative majority government, despite the fact that only a minority (barely over a third) of Canadians are right-wing.

If we adopted the US political system (I’m not suggesting we do this), we would very consistently elect the Democrats.

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Tue 15 Jun 2010

O Canada

Posted by kaqchikel under Political parties in canada
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Canada (pronounced /ˈkænədə/) is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world’s second largest country by total area and its common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world. The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal people. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled along, the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years’ War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces.[8][9] This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. A federation consisting of ten provinces and three territories, Canada is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual and multicultural country, with both English and French as official languages both at the federal level and in the province of New Brunswick. One of the world’s …

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