flashman

And George is looking for another poodle as Tony's backup.

macadian

And your point is?

Steve_P

If you don't know then I suggest you do some research.

If you agree with their stance, then I reserve the right to disagree with you.

macadian

As do I!

sysclp

Yeah, I would like the Conservatives a lot better if someone other than Harper were in charge. We both agree with you about the NDP. I don't like the lying Liberals either, so maybe I will just vote for the Bloc Quebecois. :scared:

Sucks that this will be the first election I can vote in and the choices are all so bad.

Steve_P

Not my first election by a long shot.

But definitely have to agree with you regarding the choices.

macadian

What does that say about the Canadian Political scene? Things are so bad that a corrupt Gov't is re-elected (Sponsorship Scandel costing millions etc) in the absence of anything better?

Perhaps we should consider preventing the GTA from voting? Only kidding, but the immigrant vote gets them in every time...no matter how corrupt or lacking in integrity they are!

If we get a Sh&*T$ gov't...no one to blame but ourselves...

Lets just get bladdered!

CalgaryBlade

Similar to that in the UK.

People disliking the incumbent but with no viable alternative.

macadian

yes...pains me...but got to agree!

Flipper

That the average Canadian had no problem with the government's refusal to accept another election back in June indicates the decline of this so-called "nation". One member of parliament, Belinda Stronach, like most whores, had a price and few "Canadians" (is there such a thing as a Canadian anymore?) had a problem with that. The only real hope for Anglo-Canada is that Quebec nationalists will finally grow enough balls to secede from this artificial decadent state. It's not a nation anymore it is just a consumer society held together by propaganda and (temporary) high living standards. The sooner the collapse the better.

What I really don't understand is why Albertans haven't formed a serious separatist party. Surely even the stupidest Albertans must realise they would be far better off ditching this artificial deracinated entity known as Canada. Even a couple of my Ontario Canadian-born relatives can't understand why anyone would want to remain a part of this dying state.

Ah well...at least for those of us who are well off it'll be fun to watch the collapse of this country. We told you so!

Judy in Calgary

Since the time of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, there have been different factions of political conservatism in the country.

Some of them have been fiscally conservative but socially progressive. Some of them have been fiscally liberal while being socially conservative. Some of them have been conservative in both the fiscal and social arenas. Some of them have had a national / federal focus while others have had a regional / provincial focus.

Although there have been many fine nuances amongst various political parties that have called themselves "conservative," one division that widely is recognised is the one between the so called "Red Tories" and the so called "Blue Tories."

Generally speaking, Red Tories have been fiscally conservative and socially progressive. Red Tories in the federal arena have included Sir John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. Examples of Red Toryism at the provincial level were Ontario's Bill Davis and Alberta's Peter Lougheed. Many people consider John Tory, the current leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, to be a "Red Tory" in the tradition of Bill Davis.

Blue Tories have been fiscally conservative, in the mould of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They have included Brian Mulroney and Peter MacKay at the federal level and Alberta's Ralph Klein at the provincial level.

The Conservative Party was founded in 1867. Over the years it changed its name several times. The final name change occurred in 1942, when John Bracken, Leader of Manitoba's Progressive Party and Premier of that Province, agreed to assume the leadership of the Conservative Party on the condition that it added the word "Progressive" to its name. Thus it became the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

That party, which went by various names over the years, but generally speaking was known as the Conservative Party, lasted from 1867 to 2003. Although it ceased to exist as a federal party in 2003, eight provincial versions of it survive. There are provincial Progressive Conservative Parties in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

I am guessing that when Hangman referred to the "true Conservative Party," he was referring to the Conservative (later Progressive Conservative) Party that I've been describing, the one that lasted from 1867 to 2003.

In 1987 an Alberta politician by the name of Preston Manning founded the Reform Party of Canada. The Reform Party of Canada was further to the right than the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. As time marched on, the Reform Party of Canada drew a good deal of support away from the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Around 2000 or so, Preston Manning, many of his fellow members of the Reform Party of Canada and many "Blue Tories" (principally from the provincial versions of the Progressive Conservative Parties in Ontario and Alberta) united to form a party called the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. (The name was to have been the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance, until someone realised that the addition of "Party" to that title would have resulted in the acronym of CCRAP.)

The federal version of the Progressive Conservative Party, under the leadership of Joe Clark, declined to participate in the 2000 merger with the Reform Party of Canada.

Around that time, the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance (called the Canadian Alliance for short) held a leadership contest that Preston Manning lost and Stockwell Day won. To his great credit, Preston Manning was gracious in defeat. I do not agree with all of Manning's policies, but I have to say that I have rarely seen a politician whose behaviour has been as gentlemanly as his was then.

During the 2000 federal election, the Canadian Alliance retained the position of Official Opposition Party that the Reform Party of Canada had enjoyed. In that election the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada dropped to fifth place in parliament. It only just won the 12 seats that it needed in order to be treated as a political party in the House of Commons.

To say that the Canadian Alliance went through the wobblies under Day's leadership would be an understatement. He was handsome and charismatic, but I am being kind about his mental prowess when I describe his outlook as extremely provincial.

A temporary split in the Canadian Alliance forced Day's resignation. This was followed by a leadership election, which Stephen Harper won in April 2002.

In December 2003 the Canadian Alliance and the severely reduced Progressive Conservative Party of Canada agreed to disband and form a new party called the Conservative Party of Canada. By the time the Canadian Alliance and the PCs were negotiating to form a new party, Stephen Harper was still the Leader of the Canadian Alliance, and Peter MacKay was the Leader of the PCs. Harper won the bid for the Leadership of the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Joe Clark and two other Progressive Conservative MPs refused to join the new Conservative Party of Canada and stayed on in parliament nominally as PCs but in effect as Independents. Joe Clark retired from politics in 2004.

Although the new party carries the Conservative name, I think there is fairly wide agreement that it is not the "Conservative Party" that was headed by Sir John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark. Although the current party calls itself the "Conservative Party of Canada," it really is the successor of the Canadian Alliance which, in turn, is the successor of the Preston Manning's Reform Party of Canada.

Generally speaking, the current Conservative Party of Canada is further to the right than the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada used to be. To the extent that the Reform / Alliance / new Conservative movement attracted previous Progressive Conservatives, they tended to be former "Blue Tories." Most of the Progressive Conservatives who had been "Red Tories" gravitated towards the Liberal Party of Canada, the Green Party of Canada, and so on.

It is something of an irony that, when Preston Manning founded the Reform Party of Canada in 1987, he drew much of his support from his father's political base. I say that's ironical because, while the older Ernest Manning had been socially conservative, he had been fiscally progressive. Ernest Manning had been an evangelical preacher who had been the Leader of Alberta's Social Credit Party and, for twenty five years, the Premier of Alberta.

Ernest Manning was the successor of William (Bible Bill) Aberhart, who had founded the Social Credit Party of Alberta during the Great Depression. Aberhart wanted to provide support to farmers, to help them bridge the gap between their operating costs and their income. For this purpose he wanted to issue "prosperity certificates," which his critics dubbed "funny money."

In the event, he was unable to do so. John Bowen, the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta, refused to give royal asset to three bills that Aberhart's government passed. The Supreme Court of Canada also ruled that the bills were unconstitutional. The legislation attempted to place Alberta's money supply and its banks under the control of the provincial government. However, the British North America Act, which then served as Canada's constitution, stipulated that the money supply and banking were to be under the control of the federal government.

According to his lights, Aberhart did have one small success. He founded the Alberta Treasury Branches in 1938. They survive today in the form of ATB Financial, which is an Alberta crown corporation that to all intents and purposes functions like a regular bank.

hot wasabi peas

Cheeze whiz Judy... that's a great post. Filled in a lot of blanks I had from ignoring Federal politics in various periods of my life! It's frightening what I don't know about Canada.

dbd33

I'm an immigrant. I assume you're an immigrant so, unless we both consistently vote Liberal, your theory is plainly nonsense. If you think the country's gone to the dogs because of the darkies please say so.

I believe Harper to be a Canadian Pat Robertson rather than an Ayatollah. I see the weirdly named Reform fellows, Stock and Press, as being Canadian analogues of Fred Phelps. Overall I think the competence and awareness of the Canadian right is best summarised by the acronym they chose for themselves: CRAP.

dbd33

Canadians have a high tolerance for corruption. It's usual for bidders on government contracts to sweeten the pot with cash or consumer durables. At the moment there's a bit of a fuss over Dash Domi and his bribes to the Toronto council but, so far as I can see he didn't do anything unusual. On the federal scene the Conservative equivalent of the sponsorship scandal was the Airbus fiasco. Politicians here are dodgy people, quelle surprise, many of them were lawyers before they politicians; of course you wouldn't trust them to babysit. The Liberals are not worse than the Conservatives or the NDP, they've just had more opportunity for looting lately.

As regards the behavior of immigrants, once again, I am the immigrant horde.

dbd33

My God she made that MacKay look an idiot. Serves him right, David Orchard seemed to be a good guy and someone with a sensible package of social liberalism and conservative economics, MacKay lied to him and ****ed him over. He had his turn coming.