Canada's televised leader's debates

[leira]

Alot of Canadian Threshers have probably already heard about this controversy, as the CBC seems to be giving it a good amount of coverage. For those of you that haven't heard of it yet, here's what's going on:

A consortium of Canadian broadcasters has refused to allow the leader of the Green Party to participate in the televised leaders debate that will be occuring at the start of october. Their reason: apparently leaders of 3 other parties threatened to no show the debates if the Green Party was included. I find the fact that the party leaders did this atrocious, and I find it ridiculous that the broadcasters caved in to such a blatant bluff. One of the great things about Canadian politics is we have so many choices on who to vote for, and I really don't like seeing this happen to a party that's been picking up steam in recent years, whether they are somebody I vote for or not(and in this case, it's not).

Here's a link to a CBC story about this:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/s...y-debates.html

Here's a link to a Green Party petition to get themselves into the debate:
http://www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca/petition.html

I urge any Canadians to sign the petition, and make some complaints(to the parties and the networks). It's not about the Green Party. It's about having another choice available to us and the established parties trying to hinder it. It puts the integrity of the process in question, and we shouldn't allow it. Shame on the networks for giving in on this.

[Aristotle]

Yeah, I have to agree that is discouraging.

Your top 3 parties must be jealous of the disgusting stranglehold the 2 parties have on the US system.

They must want to establish something similar, where nobody is really very different and everyone just sucks off the electoral politics teat.

[Gesslar]

I don't typically sign petitions, but I'm all for objectivity in circumstances such as this. I signed.

[Pae]

Signed. I think that is rather lame as well. In my research into the Green Party I have found them to be much more than a party fighting for a single issue. They may have started that way but are not that any longer.

Maybe since environment has been such a hot topic, the 3 parties think they are at a disadvantage because of the social stigma of the Green party's unilateral stance.

[Jidoe]

Originally posted by Aristotle
Yeah, I have to agree that is discouraging.

Your top 3 parties must be jealous of the disgusting stranglehold the 2 parties have on the US system.

They must want to establish something similar, where nobody is really very different and everyone just sucks off the electoral politics teat.

I don't argue that this is a discouraging behavior. However, I would just like to comment that having too many parties is counter-productive to their causes and to the government's stability. The way it works with our government, we have over 10 different parties, with the threshold being at around 2% (120 seats in the parliament) and the reigning Prime Minister has to constantly give money to the different parties (some times tiny parties) in order to gain their support for different decisions until the point it is just ridiculous.

You may not see it like that, but if we could have just two parties, I'll take it with arms wide open.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Jidoe


You may not see it like that, but if we could have just two parties, I'll take it with arms wide open.

Be careful what you wish for. I agree too many is bad as well, but with just 2 you basically have no choice.

Honestly, once the 2 parties realize what a nice scam they have, it is hardly any different than Soviet Russia where you went to the polls and only had 1 person to vote for.

[Pae]

Thus puts forth the question of what is the ideal?

In Canada we effectively do have 3 parties. Left Wing, Right Wing, and middle of the road.

I like some of the left policies, some of the right... so in theory the middle of the road should be for me. However, the middle of the road takes the things I hate from the left and the things I hate from the right and combines them to form their stance. It's the anti-Pae party.

I would love a fourth that takes the moral stance of the right and the economic structure of the left. But that's just me.

[Gesslar]

I was under the impression that we have 5 federal parties.

Conservatives
Liberals
NDP (New Democratic Party)
Green
Bloc Québecois

I kind of miss laughing at the name of the Progressive Conservative party, though I guess I can still laugh at the fact that the Bloc Québecois is a federal party.

[Snrrub]

Originally posted by Pae
In Canada we effectively do have 3 parties. Left Wing, Right Wing, and middle of the road.

More like centrist, left wing, and even more left wing.

And I don't want the Green leader to be part of the debates. The first reason is because she already endorsed one of the other leaders, and they agreed to not run candidates against each other.

"Yes, Stephane Dion (Liberal leader) would like to see me in the House of Commons and I think that he should be prime minister" - Elizabeth May, Green leader. Source

Secondly, that party doesn't even have a single elected seat in the house, and they never have. Should every independent candidate participate in the debate as well? Of course, Greeners keep reminding us of how the party got just over 4% of the popular vote in the last national election in order to justify their party's inclusion in the debate, but the fact is that a significant number of those votes were probably protest votes or a result of strategic vote-splitting. Only a small portion of the population is even interested in what she has to say, and when she's included in the debate she'll just be taking away time from the other candidates that most people are actually interested in listening to.

Originally posted by Karahd
I was under the impression that we have 5 federal parties.

Conservatives
Liberals
NDP (New Democratic Party)
Green
Bloc Québecois

We actually have 15, the five that you mentioned as well as these 10 (with % popular vote in 2006):

Christian Heritage (.19%)
Progressive Canadian (.1%)
Marijuana (0.06%)
Marxist-Leninist (0.06%)
Canadian Action (0.04%)
Communist (0.02%)
Libertarian (0.02%)
First Peoples National (0.01%)
Western Block (0.01%)
Animal Alliance Environmental Voters (0.0005%)

There were also 90 candidates with no party affiliation.

It looks like we'll have a pretty crowded debate if we adopt Elizabeth May's philosophy.

[leira]

Apparently it's more than a "small number" of people, as I heard on the CBC this morning that due to public outcry, the Green party will be included in the debates after all. Given your own stats, the Greens are different than those other minor parties. 4% is alot more than .19%. I don't see it as the slippery slope you seem to be suggesting it is.