Dead Liberals
I know a good many Liberals who are utterly aghast at where this is taking their party. Simply put, Dion is driving them off a cliff. That picture of Dion, Duceppe and Layton together on the podium will be featured in every Tory attack ad from here to kingdom come. It will burn its way into the public mind. At one stroke, Dion has legitimized the NDP as a party of government, marginalized his own party as a party of the left, and delivered the government of Canada into the trembling hands of the Bloc. To all intents and purposes, this will be an NDP-Bloc government. The Liberals are simply the front, propped up in the shop window to give the thing a veneer of respectability. andrew coyneThe level of anger out West is only going to grow in the next few days. And, so far as I can tell, the people who are angry are not angry at Harper. Rather they are angry at the coalition partners for running a farce on Parliament Hill as they lose their jobs.
Once the Libs lubed up and got the pillow between their teeth it was actually quite easy to say yes to Lizzie May, Oui to a billion or two to Quebec, Hell yes to bailing out the auto industry. Mr. Clarity, ar the prospect of power, was happy to invite the Bloc to take a crack – but with no strings attached.
This is not going to be pretty.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:49 am
How many times does the 40% (up to and including the slightest chance of supporting separatism) of 60% (conservatives) of 13% (Albertans) of Canada that is the western (Albertan) separatists need to be shown again and again that their anger is not enough to overcome their tiny if vocal numbers?
And that you admit they cannot discern Harper’s botch led to this is telling as to, again, how much the little voice that roared should be respected.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
The best thing about western alienation is that, if true, it doesn’t matter.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Where would we be without Jay’s comical prognostications.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Excellent point Alan. Please keep reminding everyone.
Each time you do, 50% of 13% gets a little closer.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
Alan, we’ll deal with Harper later—he’s not the most immediate threat.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:35 am
KG: my math is at 3.12%. If it goes to 3.78% so be it.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
50% of 13% and then it’s the other 93.5% who won’t matter.
If you could add a little more disdain to the what-you-think-is-irrelevant that would help as well.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
The real test will be whether the Triple Alliance can make an electoral pact (ie, mutual non-aggression, one coalition candidate per riding) stick at the polls. Any takers?
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Well, quite so and – just to be clear – you get 50% of the 13% to agree to be, you know, traitors and splintering schismists then it is your entire right to act upon such disloyalty and set up whatever failed regime you want with whatever population and assets you have left once the negotiations for compensation are finalized.
Oops – forgot the happy face… ;-)
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Disloyal? Traitor? You sweet talker.
I think I’ll wear Jack Sparrow-esque hat and a flintlock to the celebration.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Well, isn’t it a teensie-weensie odd that:
1. the response to the outrage of placating separatists in part “X” of the land is…
2. demanding to be recognized as separatists in part “Y” of the land and requiring placation?
Isn’t this a case of “hello, tea kettle? It’s pot – you’re black”?
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Alberta’s “numbers” come from our economic out put…something you smug douchebags in have not provinces may want to remember.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Nonsense.
I am neither outraged at placating Quebec separatists nor do I see any value in being recognized as a separatist. I might be up for placating depending on your proposal but it probably won’t change my mind.
I don’t see, or no longer see, that the utility of the federation outweighs the downside of being a junior participant ( as you have pointed out ) by virtue of the population distribution. I think there is sufficient coherent difference in regional values to justify regional autonomy.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
KevinG – ‘zactly.
Alan – the problem is unlikely to be outright seccesion. It is more likely that some parts of the country will simply withdraw (possibly slowly) their “consent to be governed” by a state that they see does not foster their interests or value their participation. When the segments of the nation that reach that point are economically significant that’s likely to be a problem. In particular, it will be a problem for the parts of the nation that benefit from doing the governing.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
We will not surrender to the Toronto Coalition of
leftards, we’ve made it clear Harper is our PM
regardless of the outcome with the GG I will not
nor will Canadians reconize their legitmacy. We
will use our money and clog the courts with
constitutional challenges. We will smother
these traiters in writs.
The left can’t win by electorial vote and being leftards
they take what they don’t have a right to. Now
we know why they coddle criminals and scorn
victims of crime.
As for the propaganada that the left represent 68 percent
of the populace I say out right lie, forty percent of
Canadians didn’t vote and 38 percent voted for
Conservative so according liberal diluded math
(like they an add) 38 plus forty is gather round libtards.
78 percent don’t support the libtards or the
Coalition.
Keep up the propaganda machine and I’ll keep
rebutting you stupid morons.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
KG: well, that is fine. But “I think there is sufficient coherent difference in regional values to justify regional autonomy” is another way of saying disloyal to the Federation. That is fine and honest but that is all it is – and inventing a new history based on resentment due to wealth is a weird combination. Once separated (because why would Canada keep you around to listen to your complaints… really) and the world moves on from the homogeneous resource base, what do you have? Is it a viable nation? Won’t it also be prone to further splits based on the same motto of “gripe, resent, leave”?
WLMR: As usual, a yawner of a blurt but I will try to remember to remind you of that when oil is at 30 bucks. Dreaming of a new nation built on cash. Can’t wait to to hear the anthem. Disloyalty based on the dollar makes one wonder what your loyalty could ever actually be worth. But good to see that you are at least being honest.
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
...and inventing a new history based on resentment due to wealth is a weird combination.
But that’s not what it is, Alan – it is resentment based on ‘taxation without representation’ if that rings any bells.
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Except there is representation. More like “taxation without going along with pretending that a minority is not a majority”. Somewhere along the way “the west wants in” became “the west wants to run everything and please stock the fridge on your way out.”
If you are at all interested in a reciprocal understanding of mutual unhappiness, can you please list the valid complaints “the east” might have with “the west”? Surely you can’t also believe (if you actually believe this is something real and not just successful jerking around of the populace for ideological reasons by the students of Tom Flanagan) that this is one way street.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:28 pm
That is fine and honest but that is all it is – and inventing a new history based on resentment due to wealth is a weird combination
Well, I’m a little late to the western alienation party but even I understand that it is not a new or invented history but from generations of, among other things, real and perceived injustice. Your remarks here are emblematic: (1) who cares what you think, there’s not enough of you to make a difference, (2) any complaints that you have are illegitimate, manufactured or petty, and (3) you’d all be nothing without ‘us’.
Regional representation as an overlay on representation by population is not a new or novel concept. With weak regional representation and strong centralized federalism it seems inevitable that, at some point, regions with a cohesive identity are going to get jack it.
Some of us are jack of it. Your help with the rest is appreciated.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Except there is representation. More like “taxation without going along with pretending that a minority is not a majority”.
Well, that’s if by “representation” you mean westerners get to have someone sit in a room while the folks who don’t have stuff claim the right to decide how much they’re gonna take from them. Then yeah, the west has “representation”.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 pm
jay, please kill the last post and replace it with my next, with my gratitude.
#19. December 3rd, 2008, at 7:44 PM.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Except there is representation. More like “taxation without going along with pretending that a minority is not a majority”.
Well, that’s if by “representation” you mean westerners get to have someone sit in a room while the folks who don’t have stuff claim the right to decide how much they’re gonna take from them. Then yeah, the west has “representation”.
Majority? Yeah, there’s less of us.
But we have stuff.
So…Unless you can list some stuff Quontario has that westerners need???
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
can you please list the valid complaints “the east” might have with “the west”?
>we didn’t buy enough of your crappy products to keep Ford, GM, or Magna running?
>the equalization cheques were never enough?
>we dared to vote other than as directed by the Centre of the Universe?
>we contribute actual cash to a political party?
>we rooted against the Maple Leafs?
Honestly, I have no idea, Alan – and like you and Renee, my interest is quickly turning to dissapointment that whatever grievances you might have (even legitimate ones) are not deep enough, and not hurtful enough. If the complaint, at least among the political class, is that “Harper never campaigned on a policy of kicking us off the dole,” I can understand that. When Dion and Layton provide an indication of where in their platforms they campaigned on the basis of a coalition with each other (as opposed to the numerous times that they explicitly denied such an intention), let alone with Duceppe, I’ll even buy it as a legitimate issue.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Having lived in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta, I can tell you that the complaints the East has about the West are trivial in comparison. The average Easterner does not understand what policy decisions made out East have done to hurt the West. None probably so much as the NEP.
Alan, you have to understand that policies like the NEP financially devastated Alberta and Northern BC. It got so bad that people were killing themselves because they had become jobless and homeless within a year! And who benefited from the NEP - the East.
Not only that, you had a truly arrogant PM who then comes West and sticks his middle finger out at them as they lose their houses, jobs and families. If you had been in this position Alan, you would feel no differently then Western Cdns do.
Alberta, in particular, has been the largest contributor of transfer wealth payments to the eastern provinces for over 30 years. And what do they get for it? Little representation in Parliament, even when Libs are voted in (a token two or three that never had any real power – including Anne McLellan); taking constant shit-kickings from other Cdns because the west “complains” about this lack of equal representation; and stereotyping them as nothing more than uneducated hicks living in the trailer park.
These are some of the reasons resentment has built up out West. As large contributors to the wealth of Canada, they should have just as many representatives in Parliament as the East does. I don’t think that is unreasonable, do you Alan?
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Partisanship has become an immovable force in the last few years. I consider it’s incredibly significant to me that out of the five people I know who are perpetual Liberals, three of them are—outspokenly—aghast at the coalition.
Anecdotal, I know, but in my world it’s monumentally significant, and shows that recent events are forcing a lot of people to cough up the proverbial hairball.
The spectre of Dion—did you catch his address to the nation?— is going to divide people like nothing before. There’s no doubt that the dividing line just moved considerably further to the left, and that a lot of centrist Liberals are now on the right side. Good news.
The fate of our nation all depends, of course, on a former CBC personality appointed by the Liberals who was seen toasting separatism with her separatist husband.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Thanks for that. I would point out:
1. This is only true per capital due to having more stuff than people: “Alberta, in particular, has been the largest contributor of transfer wealth payments to the eastern provinces for over 30 years. ” Ontario is still the largest contributor even with the have not status and if Ontario did not have the burden of transfer, it would be in a huge surplus, too. This is Ontario’s NEP and no one cares either.
2. Stuff includes the Toyotas you drive. Failing to understand the diversity of the economic engine that is Ontario is failing to understand the country’s economy.
3. The NEP is simply old news. You might was well raise Massey-Ferguson – which I recollect was the eastern evil in the great depression. When the NEP is raised and the idea put on the table that “the east” doesn’t understand it just reinforces the apparent culture of complaint in the discourse that does not reflect the reality of the wealth of the west and the fact of the nation. It sounds like me-me-me when heard by ears that are expecting us-us-us.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:02 am
The NEP is simply old news.
So are the Plains of Abraham and the Conscription Crisis – but they are still the lens through-which forty or fifty of our MPs view the country. If you’d like a more contemporary reference, try a Carbon tax that would exempt (Ontario) manufacturing and (Ontario-built) automobiles, which are incidentally the largest source of GHGs, but include (Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan) energy production – the purpose of which is to provide fuel for the exempted automobiles and heat for the homes of the exempted manufacturing workers. Sounds pretty fair to me, no? Try complete indifference to the fate of the forest industry in BC for the past 12 years, but handwringing anguish about the lack of stimulus and support for the Quebec lumber industry over the past two weeks when Duceppe had to be brought on board. Try a Wheat Board that prosecutes farmers for selling their product – but somehow doesn’t apply east of the Lakehead. Try Dairy quotas that disproportionately favour production in Quebec.
It sounds like me-me-me when heard by ears that are expecting us-us-us.
When Ontario says ‘us-us-us’ it inevitably means ‘me-me-me’ Alan, with some crumbs thrown to Quebec to keep ‘em quiet. Sorry, but that’s your history – you have to live with it, just like we have to live with ours.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Oh, Alan, as for the complaint that “the east” just doesn’t understand, try:
The best thing about western alienation is that, if true, it doesn’t matter.
There are some people who I just hope lose their jobs, their homes, and their pensions – there’s gonna be a whole lot of schadenfreude that day, lemme tell ya.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Furthermore, to some extent it’s anti-Central Canada alienation. People do remember how little was done in general about foreign overfishing ; how ice-breaking rates were set to charge the same to break your way into Halifax or Montreal ; the refusal to allow hydro developments without Quebec getting the lion’s share of the profits ; the release of official government maps showing Labrador as ‘disputed territory’.... that’s all post-NEP stuff too; I’m not getting into the sundry list that dates back to Confederation, and Canada’s first separatists, the Punishment Party (1868).
I’m not defending what Danny Williams can be like now. But there are lots of people outside the west that have no trouble identifying people that believe Central Canada sees the outlying provinces as resources to be exploited, and not as partners in a larger whole.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
It sounds like me-me-me when heard by ears that are expecting us-us-us.
How come the folks who cry “us, us, us” the loudest can’t/won’t/don’t-want-to-have-to even raise enough bucks for their own political campaigns, then?
Hint: it has to do with an overriding belief that the stuff one wants should be paid for and provided by others (the everybody else in the “us” you mention) whether it’s political campaigns, education, day care…
...and the list goes on…and the list goes on…
December 4th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
“...Sorry, but that’s your history…”
I am a Maritimer, just for the record. But happy to live in Kingston, the western bastion of the pre-Canada-Act North American empire.
I think you guys missed the point at #18. If the west has unheeded complaints, then you have to admit that the opposite is likely true. What is it you suppose you don’t understand about the east? Having a history that goes back more than a century, a mixed industrial economy that is not based on the fluke of an underground resource and a population that actually is the majority of Canada might make for an expectation that history, wealth and population might provide meaning in a democracy. As with the huge outflow of money from Ontario supporting the nation, hearing these things also dismissed out of hand might make for disinterest.
If the west wanted in under Manning – what was it that it wanted into? Surely it was Canada, most of which is “the east.”
December 4th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Alan – I asked you what grievances “the east” (in fact, “central Canada”) might have – and other than imagining that they have some, I still have no idea. But when was the last time that a federal leader ran deliberately against a particular region? I don’t think any leader has ever run “against” Ontario – the number of votes make it uninviting; or run against Quebec – the tendency to vote en masse makes that equally daunting. On the other hand, running against Alberta is par-for-the-course for the Toronto Party. When was a particular industry ever targeted as a deliberate policy decision, aside from Oil & Gas in the NEP?
...a mixed industrial economy that is not based on the fluke of an underground resource…
Okay, now you’re sounding stupid again. First, geography is just as much a fluke as geology – don’t tell me that those hardy early Canadians somehow shaped the Canadian Shield and the Great Lakes basin to put themselves within spitting distance of the largest economy on the planet – and that was an accident. Sure, they seized the opportunity, and all the more power to them for doing so – but in the end it is an accident just like the Western Sedimentary Basin or the Grand Banks. Ontario and Quebec have benefited hugely from the “flukes of underground resources” like iron, gold, silver, copper, nickel (not to mention above-ground resources like timber, hydro, and agriculture)- but who was the last Prime Minister who decided that a vital commodity like
saysteel should be sold internally below the world price?...might make for an expectation that history, wealth and population might provide meaning in a democracy…
Do we live in the same country, Alan? – we have a political party pretending to national status essentially on the basis that they won seats in one fucking city!
December 5th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Well, now you are looking stupid. For once after twenty years of trying, the Tories get nine points up on the Liberals in an election and all of a sudden the Grits are pretenders. That is what makes so much of this look like fantasy. It sounds like Harper’s 36% is being taken as 63%. I’ll grant you the point on Ontario’s resources but only if you realize that it means, reciprocally, that the economic wealth of Alberta is primarily based on that, too, and not some superior justifying political and economic theory that folks like Tom Flanagan have cooked up to impose on the majority of Canadians through Harper’s machinations.
And if you resent having an agenda imposed upon your region from a minority perspective – why is the answer having a minority impose it’s agenda on the rest of the country? How far does that resentment get us all?
December 5th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
For once after twenty years of trying, the Tories get nine points up on the Liberals in an election and all of a sudden the Grits are pretenders.
It’s a question of national representation, Alan; the Toronto Party cannot legitimately claim to be a national institution. They may get there again – but after this latest fiasco, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
it means, reciprocally, that the economic wealth of Alberta is primarily based on that, too, and not some superior justifying political and economic theory
Careful with that strawman – I have made no claim that Albertans (or Westerners – I come from a different neighbourhood) have some superior political or economic system; just that they are entitled not to have their hard-earned wealth appropriated on the basis that it is “a fluke of geology” or should have to withstand the claim that their resources belong to the nation, while Ontario’s (and Quebec’s, Newfoundland’s (especially Newfoundland’s) and so on) belong to the Provinces alone.