TONIGHT
CANADA HAS ELECTED A CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT,
WASHINGTON IS HAPPY THAT STEPHEN HARPER IS OUR NEW PRIME MINISTER,
I'M NOT.

ANOTHER BIBLE THUMPING OIL MAN,

JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS.











****** just finished watching his victory speach. Loved the shout outs to our "military commitments overseas and also the god blesses ******

He reminds me of the Liev Scheiber character in Manchurian candidate.

i don't know how i feel about the speech. Some of it was read off the teleprompter quite well.
Time will tell if this guy is the snake that many think ,or just a good, faggot hating, Christian family man.


SHOUT TO S2 FOR SENDING ME THIS


WELCOME TO DEMOCRAZY!

Canadians have just elected a government that is strongly opposed by 64% of all those who voted. Is this weird, or what?

It is certainly strange to hear people be so enthusiastic about the Tory "breakthrough", when almost two thirds of the country shuddered in their sleep on the night of the election.

Would proportional representation (Pro-Rep) have made any difference? If we had MPs seats based on the parties' share of the popular vote, we would have a Parliament like this:

Conservatives - 36.3% 113 seats
Liberals - 30.1% 93 seats
NDP - 17.5% 59 seats
Bloc - 10.5% 31 seats
Greens - 4.5% 12 seats

In reality, if we had proportional voting, our voting behaviour would change too, and the Greens would likely win closer to 8% of the vote, as they do in Europe.

Is it just tradition which says that the party with the largest number of seats forms the new government? Under the Pro-Rep scenario, if the Liberals and NDP declared that they would vote against the Conservatives, the logical solution would be for the Governor General to invite them to form a coalition government, since they controlled the majority of the seats.

Here's Fair Vote Canada's response to the election: Once again, Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament, and may possibly have even given us the wrong government.

Democracy is a journey that we have only just begun. Historically, it is only yesterday that we were ruled by kings and landlords. At first, it was only rich landowners who could vote. Then, as a result of relentless pressure from the labour movement, the vote was extended to all men.

It took the persistent efforts of the women's suffrage movement, jail and all, to win the vote for women, starting with Manitoba in 1916 and ending with Quebec in 1940. And for all this time, Canada's First Nations were not allowed to vote. This was not corrected until 1960.

I am full of hope for the future of democracy, based on the understanding that we have to work for change every step of the way. Here in Canada, we have reached the threshold of our next great struggle, to upgrade to a new model that is fair and proportional. I invite everyone to join me as a member of Fair Vote Canada (www.fairvotecanada.org), so that we can add this to the steady evolution of democracy in Canada.

Success would also give hope to people in the USA, who live in one of the world's most corrupted democracies, where corporate control of the media, campaign financing, and electronic voting has stolen democracy from the people.

But our vision of democracy needs to evolve far beyond proportional representation.

We need to extend the vote to 16 and 17 year olds, and make voter registration automatic, not something they have to hussle after.

We need to develop "deep democracy", where we really learn to listen to each other's point of view, and engage in respectful decision-making based on this listening.

We need to learn how to use democracy in the family, which is where bad habits often begin. We should ask ourselves "What are our children learning about democracy when they watch their parents discuss things and make decisions?"

We need democracy in the workplace, which invites a huge change in the way businesses are owned and operated. Experience around the world shows that worker-owned businesses can be hugely successful if they are given a chance.

We need democracy in the major decisions that our governments take on the global stage, out of reach of an idle media that pays little attention. There should surely be a public process involving elected MPs before Canadian bureaucrats head off to global conferences to push for global agreements that favour genetically modified organisms, terminator seeds, and the global trade in toxic wastes, as they currently do.

We need the ability to make global decisions democratically as one world, so that we can protect our oceans, protect our atmosphere, and create new legal contracts for the world's corporations, requiring them to embrace social and environmental goals as well as just financial ones.

Democracy is a process, and we are still beginners. Let's work together to achieve the change to fair and proportional voting. Let's paint a picture of the future that fills us with hope, not with weird dreams of an even weirder democrazy.

Guy Dauncey