Is Canadia like the US where Liberals are highly preferable to Conservative or more like UK where they’re as bad as each other?
I think, though this is personal opinion and democratic taste, that the greatest democratic problem Canada has, is that a party can get 5.1% of the popular vote, and yet your system is set up in such a way that they don’t even get a single mandate in parliament. That is 814 547 votes resulting in 0.0% representation. As for the policies of the People’s Party, I don’t know and I don’t care, I just find it problematic that a 5% popular vote results in no mandates what so ever.
As for Cons getting slightly more popular votes than liberals (by the way, liberals are not socialists or communists, not even Social Democrats, but I get that this is something you say because you dislike Trudeu, which is fair enough), that is fairly normal in parliamentary democracies due to geographical representation and more. These measures are usually necessary so that the biggest cities, where most people live, does not decide the entire course of a country. But I have not so much knowledge about the Canadian system other than that which is politically obvious, though it clearly has many of the same flaws that the UK’s (first past the post is an awfully outdated mode of electing democratic representations, since it discards just way too much of the votes and has no equalisation mandates to make up for it, making voting a questionable affair imo) for historical and cultural reasons.
This is just my personal preferences of what constitutes good democratic principles so feel free to disagree everyone and their dog ! 
Neither is a particularly good comparison. Conservatives here span a wider spectrum than in the UK, with some who would fit right in with Republicans, and some who would fit into the Lib Dems in the UK. Similarly, the Liberals are a very broad spectrum, overlapping (regionalism facilitates this) significantly.
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Hmm, and they won 50% of the seats. FPTP is crooked.
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In Canada’s case, the effect is close to the reverse. If you look at a colour map of the constituencies this morning, you cannot actually see Liberal red very easily. Only the Territories and Labrador are particularly visible, but the Liberals dominated Greater Toronto, and won out in Montreal and Vancouver. You have to drill down to see those dense clusters of seats.
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I think Canada has more “European” (as in actual conservatives) conservatives, rather than populist demagogues playing with neo-fascism, that pretends to be conservative but is clearly not. But of course, being as close to the US as Canada is, American political culture is bound to be a bit infectious and I often see Trumpist Canadians on the internet.
Anyway, Arminius and the rest of of the Canadian posters. I guess I just wanted to flame the US GOP, as I have lost absolutely all respect for those who bend their knee to Trump 
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Interesting.
Liberals and Conservatives partisanship are getting worse (I guess it is everywhere in this world…less tolerance and forgetting that they are supposed to be working for the people electing them). With minority government, Liberals needs the help from other progressive parties (NDP)…Conservative tends to disagree with Liberals on anything they wanted to put forward (and vice versa I guess). As a citizen, I found that is so frustrating.
I have voted both ways before, depending on whether the MPP (provincial) or MP (federal) did his or her job in our local riding. However, as I mentioned above that once Conservatives lost the Progressive part, I found it really hard to agree with their policies, provincially or federally.
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Well, the Conservatives have won the popular vote two elections in a row now. FPTP does provide serious distortions, but some kind of system of reflecting regional diversity is necessary. I would be in favour of a provincial level rep by pop system.
There are also some absurd situations embedded in the Constitution that border on rotten borough status. Prince Edward Island has fewer voters total than the single riding of Toronto Centre, and has four seats.
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I heard from the newscast this morning that with BQ consistently winning / maintaining this large number of seats in Quebec, it is becoming more and more unlikely that there will be a majority government.
(Just realised that I am supposed to keep my view of politics and religions to myself! Haa!)
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NDP too, the whole atmosphere is orders of magnitude nastier. Something started to shift in the Martin era, and really took off after Harper came to power. In the '90s, it was not unusual to see MPs of multiple parties simply socializing, perhaps grabbing a beer at Darcy McGee’s on Sparks Street after a committee meeting. Unheard of now.
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Not commenting upon numbers, I have done no such research on Canada, so obviously must guard my mouth. But if the provincial level representation by population (as I understand you, but I may totally misunderstand) was enacted, would this not then mean that rural places where Canada wants people to live (because obviously the state wants the entire country populated for various reasons) , would in effect be forgotten and have no voice ? Because they would be drowned by the massive populations of urban centres, meaning that people (but I may have misunderstood you) who live in places far from those rural outposts, would decide the future of those rural places without those who live in those geographical areas having a clear say ? Because those who live in Ontario or Toronto, maybe they don’t know much about how life is in Newfoundland, and questions such as local health care, hospitals (this is taken from the Norwegian democratic discourse, local hospitals, kindergartens and elderly care are all incredibly important political issues for voters outside the urban centres) and increasing centralisation affects the life of those who live outside the very urban areas ? But maybe I misunderstood and I may well have.
In Norway, cenralisation of hospitals, birth clinics etc., closure of local police service; all these are incredibly important issues and the reason why our Agrarian Party gets over 10%, in what amounts as a rural rebellion against centralisation of instituations and general welfare towards the cities.
Maybe it is just me coming from a smaller place, but in my country, these issues are explosive and if geographical places with low pop demographically had little representation, it would certainly create large systemic sociopolitical problems in Norway and extreme resentment against “Oslo” from people living in rural places. It would bluntly greatly decrease (in Norway at least) the “political trust”, and we pride ourselves of having very high measurable numbers of “political trust”.
Edit: I may be extrapolating too much from Norwegian politics. I probably did, and we have a different democratic model after all.
While urban/rural matters to some degree, the provincial dynamic is more than that. Urban Calgary voters are a very far cry from Toronto voters. Semmy in Vancouver is as distant from Ottawa as Lisbon is from Moscow. He may be urban, but there are going to some very distinct issues in BC that are radically different than in Ontario.
If you went to national level proportional representation, lists would skew heavily toward urban centers and some key cleavages would not be well reflected. Much better to have the Bloc coming to Ottawa than to have resentments fester. Provincial level would solve the ‘wasted vote’ problem whereby a party can earn hundred of thousands of votes and have nothing to show for it, while still keeping that provincial representation.
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Thank you for the reply. I would need to research this further to have a very valid opinion and appreciate your response. I simply know too little about Canadian politics on such a level to argue with you further. Knowing you, you are probably correct.
why do I hate Trudeau. Let me count the ways:
The Aga Khan
Justin Trudeau first got in trouble with the ethics commissioner in December 2017, when it came out that he’d broken conflict of interest rules by vacationing at the Aga Khan’s private island over Christmas.
At issue: the Aga Khan’s foundation is registered to lobby the government. Also, Trudeau rode in the Aga Khan’s private helicopter. Also, the Aga Khan Foundation has received tens of millions of dollars from the federal government.
Costumes in India
Not an ethics scandal, but Justin Trudeau found himself a laughing stock after a trip to India in February 2018 where he enthusiastically dressed in various local costume, to the bemusement of Indian officials.
There’s another side to this story: A photo emerged on the trip of Sophie Grégoire Trudeau with a man named Jaspal Atwal at a reception in Mumbai.
Atwal was convicted in 1986 of the attempted murder of an Indian politician. This led to numerous questions about how he ended up at that reception.
Costume, part two
The hardest blow to Trudeau personally came during the 2019 election campaign, when a handful of photos came out of him dressed in blackface, a racist caricaturing of Black people. There were three photos: a 2001 yearbook photo when he was a teacher, a photo from when he was in high school, and a video of him as a young man.
“It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time, but now I recognize it was something racist to do and I am deeply sorry,” Trudeau said.
Groping allegations
In 2018, a newspaper piece from 2000 emerged: A reporter alleged that Trudeau, who was 28 at the time, was at the Kokanee Summit in Creston, B.C., raising money for a charity. An editorial in the local paper said Trudeau was accused of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” a female reporter during the event.
Reached by CBC in 2018, the woman said “The incident referred to in the editorial did occur, as reported. Mr. Trudeau did apologize the next day. I did not pursue the incident at the time and will not be pursuing the incident further. I have had no subsequent contact with Mr. Trudeau, before or after he became Prime Minister.”
Trudeau apologized: “Over the past weeks, since this news resurfaced, I’ve been reflecting, we’ve all been reflecting, on past behaviours,” he said. “And as I’ve said, I’m confident I didn’t act inappropriately, but I think the essence of this is people can experience interactions differently and part of the lesson we need to learn in this moment of collective awakening … people in many cases, women, experience interactions in professional contexts and other contexts differently than men.”
The SNC Lavalin scandal
SNC-Lavalin, a Liberal-connected firm in Quebec, was facing charges regarding alleged bribes to officials in Libya. The company had lobbied the federal government for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, which would have allowed them to avoid criminal charges.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada said no, they had to stand trial.
Enter several prominent Liberals who pushed Jody Wilson-Raybould, then minister of justice and attorney general, to find a solution that didn’t involve SNC-Lavalin standing trial and a criminal conviction that would have barred them from receiving government contracts in Canada.
Enquiries confirmed inappropriate actions by the prime minister and several staff members.
Wilson-Raybould resigned over the affair.
WE Charity scandal
In June, the government said WE Charity would run a student grant program, which was part of COVID-19 relief. The contract to WE was given via a sole-source agreement, not an open competition.
At issue specifically is that Trudeau, and former finance minister Bill Morneau, had personal conenections to WE and were involved in the decision-making process, without recusing themselves.
Morneau’s daughter works for WE. His other daughter has spoken at WE events. And, he’d been on trips paid for by WE in 2017 — Morneau has since paid back the $41,000.
As for Trudeau, his family has been involved with and paid by WE. WE initially denied they had paid Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau or his brother, Alexandre.
As it turned out, Margaret has been paid $250,000 for speaking at 28 events, and Alexandre received $32,000 for speaking at eight events.
Grégoire Trudeau, who’s hosted a podcast for WE, was not paid, although she was reimbursed for travel expenses.
The illegal casino magnate
Earlier this month, the National Post reported that Wei Wei, a Toronto real estate developer, has been charged after police raided an illegal casino inside a mansion.
Wei met at least twice in 2016 with Trudeau and was a part of a Chinese government-endorsed industry group that met with Trudeau. A member of that delegation donated $1 million to the Trudeau foundation and sponsored a statue of Pierre Trudeau.
That meeting led to a reformation of Liberal party fundraising rules.
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then there’s this:
I don’t think most people really understand how outright creepy WE is/was as an organization, leaving aside the misrepresentation of what is/was really doing. It is/was some unholy fusion of Liberal youth program and ‘Up With People’ with a smattering of Scientology-adjacent cult-like programming thrown in for good measure. Don’t know if you ever saw this series:
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The worst part of it, is that the program already existed and was run by a part of the government, was called the Canada Summer Student Grant program. the Trudeau goverment tendered it to this supposed “charity foundation” and paid them $30mil to oversee the dispersal of $900mil of goverment funds. it’s a fucking scam.
Can’t wait for our election campaign to be over, it’s been an utter shitshow and I need my hopes smashed asap.
Don’t be so defeatist, at least you have proper elections. Do you think nothing has improved in last decade, last two decades?
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